I could hardly believe that I was giving this young woman fever all through the night being as I'd only known her for a few minutes and I'm beginning to wonder if maybe we'd met in some other existence. But I guess she must have had someone else in mind.
We got chatting and she told me her name was Haylly, which is a Quechua name, though she does not speak the language. She loves singing , it's her passion and is hoping to get some gigs locally with some jazz/blues group she knows.
Then her friend Albero turned up with his guitar and happy attitude. He's an architect student in his third year but not at classes because of the teachers/lecturers strike. We got to talking about music we all liked and books and stuff. He is a Morrison fan, Jim not Van. Don't think he knows much Van. But he likes to call himself Al Morrison, as a tribute to the late Jim. So Haylly says, but she may have been in jest.
Meantime she has taken his guitar and is playing away happily and singing some Beatles tunes. She said she knew some Dylan songs but then began to sing a Janis Joplin song I'd never heard before. I asked her if she knew "Me and Bobby McGee", which she did and a couple of minutes later she is singing and playing it for me. She knew the whole song, beginning to end, and it's not a short song to remember. She sang it beautifully, and a few wise people stopped to listen.
You can find Janis Joplin singing it on YouTube. Or even Kris Kristofferson himself, its one of his finest songs, if you don't Sunday Morning Coming Down and Help me make it Through the Night, and a few others which escape me right now.
I just love being in Cusco. It's moments like these and many others that make it all so worth while, never mind the joys of spending time with the kids at La Policia. I cannot imagine any beautiful young girls back in Edinburgh, stopping by to sing me a song; though there was one time when someone sang Lakes of Pontchartrain for me in a private, intimate performance but that was different, we were both young and beautiful. I still am of course. You can still find a very young Paul Brady sing that particular song on YouTube.
Albero was telling me he was an anarchist himself and didn't think we should have to work for a living. He was taken aback when he heard that I'd had the misfortune (or fortune depending on how you see it) of having worked for 40 years. I don't think the idea appealed to him and I could see the sense of what he was saying as we sat there in La Plaza listening to Haylly serenade us.
I showed him the book I was reading "The Wild Places", as he was fond of all things natural, mountains and rivers and stuff. He produced a mathematics text book from his bag, and said "for me this is beautiful". Impressive young guy, hope he finds all he seeks in life. I'm sure he will make a fine architect. My second architect of this trip.
Haylly, not to be left out of things, produced her current reading, which turned out to be some book by a fifteenth century Italian philosopher, name of which and whom I forget, but had an introduction by Borges, who was a fan.
Enough rambling for now. I might put a picture of Haylly up but I'm not sure as I'm in it as well, and don't wish to upset my readers. I handed my camera to Albero to take a photo, which is not something I would normally do, but he decided to include me in it as well, so I took one of him.
Teachers are still on strike, after two weeks. There were big demos in Lima and other cities yesterday, but not in Cusco, or at least not that I'd seen anyway. The workers united.
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