Songs Written with a Machete #13: "Lost in Shots" or I've Been Drinking for Three Days
I spent eighteen months of my three-year South American adventure in the Colombian wilderness, in a mountain village near the infamous Medellín. As a bluesman, I was impressed by local songs, whose lyrics would wake up even Oblomov from his lethargy. I decided to translate the juiciest pieces and bring them to you in the series Songs Written with a Machete.
The first time I came across a completely wasted cowboy was in a pub in the mountains near Medellín. The local vaquero had got so plastered that he fell on his knees right in front of me, started to hug my legs with his arms to stop his face from falling on the dirty floor, and in the process kept asking me if I loved his native land. When I started to whistle the melody of Colombia's national anthem, he burst into tears and immediately fell asleep in a kneeling position, resembling Buddha after a slimming diet.
When a cowboy is so drunk that he can't get on his horse, he puts his hands on the horse's bottom and gets walked home, where his angry wife beats him with a broom. In Colombia, "Borachos" or drunks are the butt of jokes, the central figures in police reports and the subject of many songs. One of the most beautiful drinking songs is "Perdido en las copas" (translated as "Lost in Shots") by Romulo Caicedo, a Medellín bus driver and casual labourer who became an extremely popular and successful songwriter during his lifetime.
Lost in Shots
I've been in this bar for three nights now
Drinking and crying because of an unhappy love
Drunk and lost, stuck in the shots
Cause that ungrateful woman has forgotten about me
And if she's gone, what does my life matter?
It's a law of fate, what am I going to do?
Wander at night, drink like a madman
May God have mercy when he sees me like this
Sir bartender, pour me another drink
Pour it big enough to make me cry
The damned pain of that lost love
That even drunk I can't forget
And if she's gone, what does my life matter?
It's a law of fate, what am I going to do?
Wander at night, drink like a madman
May God have mercy when he sees me like this
I've been in this bar for three nights now
Drinking and crying, because of a bad love
Drunk and lost, stuck in the shots
Cause that ungrateful woman has forgotten about me
And if she's gone, what does my life matter?
It's a law of fate, what am I going to do?
Wander at night, drink like a madman
May God have mercy when he sees me like this
A Medellín anecdote says: "There was a drunkard who was said to be a genius. "Because every time a bottle was opened somewhere, he would appear out of nowhere..."
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