obsession song: meu amor, meu amor
this is the song I walk with through infinite grey, bare Berlin landscape.
I heard this Elina Duna remake before I found the original — a 1969 fado song by Amália Rodrigues. Elina Duna interprets the song in a way that is crystalline, hollowed, haunted. her voice is jazz cool and liquid mercury smooth — like she’s singing about a love that no longer hurts. a feeling that once burned, now cool to the touch. when I listen to her voice while walking through the endless Tempelhofer Feld pavement, I feel like I’m traveling through memories made from silk.
so, now listen to the original, recorded by Amália Rodrigues in 1969.
the original title of this song is “Meu limão de amargura,” which means, “My lemon of bitterness.” and you can hear this acidic, astringent bitterness in her voice — even if this pain happened twenty years ago, she reconjures it like it was yesterday. her voice is somewhere in between a wail of pain and a song. and fado, like tango, feels almost too hot to listen to in a city as cool as Berlin. like hot tears, frozen upon first touch.
when Elina Duna sings this song, it’s not a bitter lemon, it’s a memory of a bitter lemon. what’s left is a ghostlike image; a skeleton of a flower. it is more bearable to touch. Amália Rodrigues uses time to make pain more potent, more sharp, more pungent.
Original lyrics (in Portuguese)
Meu amor, meu amor,
meu corpo em movimento,
minha voz à procura
do seu próprio lamento
Meu limão de amargura,
meu punhal a crescer,
nós parámos o tempo,
não sabemos morrer
E nascemos, nascemos
do nosso entristecer
Meu amor, meu amor,
meu pássaro cinzento
a chorar a lonjura
do nosso afastamento
Meu amor, meu amor,
meu nó e sofrimento,
minha mó de ternura,
minha nau de tormento
Este mar não tem cura,
este céu não tem ar,
nós parámos o vento,
não sabemos nadar
E morremos, morremos
devagar, devagar
Translated lyrics (from here)
My love, my love
My body moving
My voice looking for
its own lamentation
My bitter lemon
My aggressiveness/selfishness¹ grows
We stopped (frozen) the time
We don't know how to die
And we are born, born
of our sorrow
My love, my love
My grey bird
It is crying because of
the distance we are from each other
My love, my love
My confusion and suffering,
My huge tenderness
My ship made of torments
This sea doesn't heal
this sky has no air
We stopped the wind
We don't know how to swim
And we die, die
slowly, slowly