#OffTheDome ep 1 (english)

[00:00:00] Hi, it's Chekos. Um, I just spent the week in LA at the Spotify studios with the rest of the sound up team, talking about this program and listening to other people's pilots. And I was super inspired by how incredibly talented and how incredibly kind everyone is. And I had a song stuck in my mind the entire week, because four lines at the beginning of this song that kinda captured how I was feeling, how I was imagining everyone, um, in their journey, in this journey of creating our own podcast and having the support of a massive machinery like Spotify is and them believing in us to do what we're doing. If you've heard me talk about LoQueAndoOyendo you would know that it's kind of hard to explain, and this is my way of kind of showing what I'm talking about.

[00:01:21] Um, I'm gonna have small episodes where I describe a song that, uh, has been stuck in my mind for a while, provide the context for you to see what I'm seeing, or, you know, hear what I'm hearing and you can listen to the full song. In context, because it's a music and talk podcast. So these are gonna be smaller episodes. I will be doing them once a week. I will have 'em in English and Spanish. All right. Let's get started. The song we're talking about today is called Suelo Soñar Correr y Tropezarme by Gera MX.

[00:02:08] Gera MX was in LA actually last week for the very first time. Touring the United States. He was born in 1994 and he is living his dream. He has been rapping since he was 13. The song is in this album called Precipicio, precipice. He actually wrote this album thinking if this doesn't work, then I will have to quit. I will keep doing rap, but I won't be telling myself that this is a viable career and this was why he called it Precipicio.

[00:02:48] He's a at a cliff and you know, you either jump or you turn around. He wrote the album, uploaded it to YouTube and left to Canada to work with his mom. He would come back six months later, the album was doing pretty good and he would go on and start making some money. Out of this rap stuff. And I was thinking about this song a lot, because a lot of us in this program, honestly, we didn't think, I don't think we realized how big of a deal this was and how much Spotify was betting on us. I think, after realizing this, I know. Uh, it's the case for me, but I, I know some of us, um, are now having to think about what comes after, right? If this does work out, what do we do? And I was thinking about this song a lot because the first four lines go "Hoy que mis sueños son tan grandes parece estoy a la altura. Mis benditas estructuras construyen un buen futuro. Cuidé de mi locura para caminar seguro y aunque el camino fue duro no doblaron mi armadura."

[00:04:18] That first line, "Hoy que mis sueños son tan grandes perece estoy a la altura" now that my dreams are so big, it also seems I'm at that same height. "Mis benditas estructuras construyen un buen futuro" my blessed structures are building a great future. This is how it felt for all of us. It seems like we all have some talent and a story to tell, and we had this crazy dream and we had been kind of working towards it this entire time in the background. We were building that foundation those structures.

[00:05:07] And now we are at a la altura, you know, we're at that same height of those big dreams, we were there in LA the Spotify studios where this huge company is betting the future of podcasting. That was, that was something. And the last two lines "Cuidé de mi locura para caminar seguro y aunque el camino fue duro no doblaron mi armadura." Cuidé is to take care of, but I am interpreting it as safeguarding. You know, when you're a little kid, you have huge dreams or, or you have these ideas of what life is going to be. And you want to do everything and there's nothing stopping you from it. And as you grow, as you grow older, you have to face certain realities.

[00:06:09] There's, there's limitations to what you can do based on, you know, your geography, your socioeconomic status, your network, things beyond your control. And slowly, I would say - and I don't wanna sound super pessimistic but those dreams, stop being dreams and become "locuras" right. Just crazy thoughts when the context changes.

[00:06:38] It's not the idea or the dream that changes is the context around you. If you are, you know, 12 and you wanna be an astronaut, no one is thinking that you're crazy. It's like, yeah, of course you're a kid. You that's what you wanna do. But if you are 36 and you decide that you wanna be an astronaut, people think you're crazy.

[00:07:03] Is it crazy? Um, I don't know, you 36, you know, you can still turn around and do whatever you want. But what he's saying here is like "Cuidé de mi locura para caminar seguro" I'm interpreting it as you had this dream, that becomes a crazy thought, it becomes "una locura" because the context around you is changing. "Y cuidarla para caminar seguro"

[00:07:33] Taking care of it to walk safely, instead of interpreting it as I'm not gonna let this crazy thoughts get in my way, I'm thinking I'm going to guard this dream from outside forces and almost keep it a secret, you know, so that people won't try to stop me, "para caminar seguro" to walk safely. You know, that's, that's how it felt talking to some other people in, in that room.

[00:08:02] It's, it's something that, it, it, it's things that we care so much about and had to protect it from the outside world. It comes out because we love it so much. And it's such a big part of us, but...

[00:08:21] I don't know. I, I, you know, we didn't let too many people. see the whole picture because we knew that it was kind of crazy to be thinking about this one thing so much, and we needed to protect ourselves. Um, and you know, that last line "Aunque el camino fue duro no doblaron mi armadura" even though the path was tough, they didn't bend my armor. That's kind of what it felt like this last week. It was like we had this one thing and we were keeping it to ourselves for the longest time. And we had this armor to protect ourselves, to walk safely. And we had been laying the foundation for this talent to be, you know, understood and highlighted. And appreciate it. And now here we are eye to eye with our dreams, a la misma altura.

[00:09:42] So this is the first episode of the series of minisodes. I am Chekos. This is LoQueAndoOyendo and this is Gera MX with Suelo Soñar, Correr y Tropezarme. Thank you for listening.