Ribs and other emotions
I am a Lorde girl at heart.
And in my head too I guess because she plays constantly as the soundtrack for this trip at all times. All my favourite moments relate to a Lorde song.
Lorde is for the people who feel bittersweet about experiencing a great moment because they already feel loss knowing it will end.
Yesterday a group of 8 of us decided to explore some local sites. We packed into 2 taxis and set out on what turned out to be an 8-hour expedition. We visited Moray, Chinchero and Salineras de Maras. I felt grateful to be exploring with so many beautiful people that made my heart feel full. But I’m also already wishing I could go back to yesterday. Funny how that works.
While driving from place to place our taxi driver made the mistake of letting me have aux privileges. This meant our car instantly became a karaoke room. The music ranged from Lenin Q-pop to The Killers to Charlie XCX and we sang our hearts out to every song. Eventually, we ran out of cell service driving through the mountains and I was forced to take in the scenery without the emotional crutch of 2010s pop. This is where the emotion of Ribs comes in.
Ribs by Lorde, if you haven’t listened to the masterpiece, is a sad song that has a fun little beat. From my perspective, it’s about the fear of getting older and romanticizing the past. There’s this nostalgic call for things to stay in place/rewind because growing means change and that’s petrifying.
Visiting ancient ruins of Inca society reminds me of this nostalgic call for a standstill. Lorde sings “I want ‘em back, the minds we had, it’s not enough to feel the lack.” As I am studying Indigeneity in Peru and visiting these sites that are simultaneously brilliant and devastating I feel like it’s not enough to feel the lack. I am standing on the edge of greatness and there is something that I am unable to grasp due to a lack of… something. Idk what, I wish I did, which only contributes to the frustration of trying to remain in the moment and take it all in. And even if it was frozen in time it wouldn’t actually be the same. That’s the bittersweet thing about life and, in this sense, culture. There is no way to perfectly preserve it because to be alive is to change. Culture is living and therefore must continue moving. So me looking at ruins is looking at something that is and is not Inca. The ruins are belonging to the Inca but the ruins themselves are not Inca. Just like I am and am not who I was yesterday. That was me but me writing this is also me and I am now different.
Maybe that’s all a bit meta but Lorde makes me want to stare at the stars and cry about my fleeting youth.
In the words of that bowler Ben loves “who do you think you are, I am.”
Blaring Ribs until I feel better,
Orla
Ribs is one of my favourite songs! Shoutout to our driver that day, I am sure he was beyond sick of us by the end of the day. I Think these ruins leant particularly well to this feeling as there were very few people, no employees to usher us through as fast as possible, freedom to roam as we please (so long as we got back to the cars in time. I cant describe the feeling either but I definitely felt it too.
What if I told you that I remember when Lorde's first songs came out? So I know that feeling perfectly well. Curiously, in my case it becomes more and more recurrent. “If I could go back just a few days…” Sometimes I have thought: “If I went back six weeks ago, I would do things differently…”.