An Unsung Ode to Selena Quintanilla-Perez, 1971-1995

[Copyright© 2009 – CRX @ cyberaxis.wordpress.com. Selena, its on.]

An Unsung Ode to Selena Quintanilla-Perez, 1971-1995: An unapologetic celebration of  Selena from an alternate space; a cloistered garden where silences have talismanic powers to heal – CRX

[With Music]

Meditación

I have pondered the death of  Selena in the listless hours between remembrance and oblivion and come to the conclusion – the inescapable conclusion – that Selena will live forever because she represented something in all of us that did not die in the weening  hours of March 31st, 1995.

Beyond skepticism, beyond cynicism,
Selena was the incarnation of goodness
That lives,  moves and has its  being amongst men;
The every-woman with the heart of gold
Who refused to see evil until the very end.

Selena Quintanilla-Perez, 15 Years Later – Still “Una Mujer Del Pueblo”: “She never forgot she was Chicana. She never forgot she was Tejana,” ( 15th anniversary celebrant, March 31, 2010). MOMENTO PENSIVO: One of the few pictures of Selena that captures a pensive moment, and possible manifestation of “moments of shadow and doubt … and interludes of fear and trepidation” referenced in poem. (Cyberaxis)

She will live forever because she represented
the joy of youth  that gives without stinting:

“When she laughed,
she laughed harder
Than anyone I knew.
And when she cried
She cried harder
Than anyone I knew.”
(Christopher Perez)
The one she called
“El amor de mi vida”
To her sister’s “Me mejor amiga,”
Why do words fail?

Por siempre Selena

Throughout her life she sought happiness
And ways to spread it, and reveled in both.
It was never about the music, but life
Unencumbered by the trappings of  fame and fortune.
Selena will always be the plucky little girl  in “Little House on the Prairie,” 
Trippin’ and fallin’ and pickin’ herself up,
Running,  always running towards love.  (Selah)

But WERE there  moments  of shadow and doubt,
Quiet interludes of fear and trepidation
Twixt the montage of a woman-child having a  ball.

Her favorite flower was white.

“Oftentimes the pure white rose
was depicted as being stained by blood,
or made to blush from a kiss.”
(The  History and Meaning of
White Roses, Samantha Green)

Was Selena, beyond the smiles,  in touch with the pall of her impending doom?

Princesa Azteca

Framed by silk  and a singular curl, here she lies,
As beautifully regal in death as she was in life,
Up on this paneled dais in surreal estate;
Intimations of Aztec royalty unsung
The same that came and left us in the  Spring.

Beyond wishing, her soul rests
Within and without like a garden:
Vital,
Verdant
And ethereal;
The embodiment of that which remains
Long after time and circumstance
Has swept away the engrams of sorrow and regret,
For in the larger scheme of things
This too shall pass. (Selah)

The now iconic image of Selena taken by Mr. George Gongora of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on November 14, 1994, a scant 4 ½ months before Selena was killed. The bouquet of flowers had just been given to her following an educational presentation at the Cunningham Middle School in Corpus Christi, TX. (Cyberaxis)

Pass when Selena is born again
(As she already has)
With a bouquet and a smile
that will now remain forever young.

“Smart (lass*), to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.”

(A.E. Housman, To An Athlete Dying Young)

(*’Lass’ substituted for ‘lad’ in original Housman poem)

Journey to Corpus – Like  “Journey to Addis“

There is nothing new about vagaries of fate
From Hotel Rwanda to the Brandenburg gate.
For through rococo bursts of color and artifact
We  squeaked through the eye of the needle
and left our hearts in Corpus Christi,
This crusted city by the Nueces,
atop the  Rio Grande; our destination
By “The Bay”, By “Mirador de la Flor ”
The “Overlook of the Flower”
‘Neath the salt showers.

[Momento de Silencio/Moment of Silence]

Here she stands
in muted tones of bronze
and a storied laurel.

Selena Quintanilla, incandesced by night lights waxing gold at Mirador De La Flor, “The Overlook of the Flower, ‘Neath the salt showers.” Corpus Christi, TX  – arguably the most sentient depiction of Selena’s statue.

Observación: The ordinariness of this memento belies the broadside; the shiver that one feels upon first approach.  Something happened here too  – something which moved heaven and earth beneath this ornamented promenade; the voice the City of Corpus heard above the din “of the madding crowd.” Abraham and Marcella’s little girl now belongs to the ages. The greened bronze belies the moment, but we are here to bear witness:

For here in this cloistered cove by “The Bay” we are about to bear witness through the beat of an ancient drum to an athlete who died  young.

Selena para las edades.

Lake Jackson,
Corpus Christi
Houston Astro.

We go back but return to celebrate the living,
Because that is what Selena did … with her song. CRX

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Seaside Memorial Park, garden of Selena Quintanilla’s earthly rest in Corpus Christi, TX, a stone’s throw from Corpus Christi Bay & downtown Corpus. (© Texas Tripper, LLT Media Group)

Selena Quintanilla spectral mind space ….. “Like a garden vital, verdant and ethereal; The embodiment of that which remains, Long after time and circumstance, Has swept away the engrams of pain and regret . (Unsung Ode to Selena Quintanilla-Perez, CRX, Cyberaxis)

[Copyright© 2009 – CRX @ cyberaxis.wordpress.com.]

México Remembers Selena

Here in this album clip, 10 years after the death of Selena, 15 Mexican stars revisit the scene of collective heartbreak with a musical elegy that proves once again that nothing outside of the human voice can out-wail  the horn and the accordion when it comes to expressing grief. The best track of this comp is this rousing rendition of “No Me Queda Mas” by Palomo. The band pulls off the feat by slowing everything down to a funereal but stately beat (tempo maestoso indeed.)  This stylistic sleight of hand transforms the song,  once about unrequited teen love,  into an anthem of universal longing; a paean to loss untrammeled by flights of fancy …. or romance. As musical hat tricks go, this one ends up being quite stunning.

Stately musical elegy to the late Selena Quintanilla-Perez: Album cover of “Mexico Recuerda a Selena”; definitive minuet of heartbreak.

Following the Google Doodle of October 17, 2017, Selena finally gets  a star of her own, in on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 3, 2017:

And finally a star of gold, in a firmament all of her own: Selena Quintanilla-Perez receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 3, 2017. Post: Unsung Ode to Selena Quintanilla-Perez (Colorized Image Insert by Santi Singuenza, Courtesy, Selena Museum)

[Copyright© 2009 – CRX @ cyberaxis.wordpress.com.]

Appendix:

And The Best Die Young: The short life and death of Selena Quintanilla-Perez (CRX)

To An Athlete Dying Young (A.E. Housman, 1859)

Visitors mark anniversary of Selena’s death (Doreen  C.  Bowens – Corpus Christi Caller Times, April 1, 1999)

“All the wonders you seek are within yourself.” (Sir Thomas Browne)

“For in him we live and move and have our being.” (St. Paul)

I Wanna Know What Love Is (Lucky Dube) When the time comes, I will tell you what place I was entering when this song started playing …….. Absolutely true story, like squeaking through the eye of the needle.

I Wanna Know What Love Is (Foreigner) I have a serendipitous story about this song, that I will tell in due time along with others connected with the above poem. (CRX)

Now That We Found Love (Third World)

Journey to Corpus – Like Journey to Addis: Third World, Now That We Found Love, Island Records, Album Cover Design: Tony Wright (2288×2448 PIX)

A 23rd Anniversary Musical Dedication: An achingly poignant rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Scaborough Faire” by  The Real Feel’s John Raymond, Gilad Hekselman and Colin Stranahan.  If the link breaks, Google them to Youtube. This song, this rendition happened to be playing on my computer as I was reviewing this post on Selena’s 23 anniversary. R.I.P.

And the best die young: The short life and death of Selena Quintanilla-Perez

(And the best die young: The short life and death of Selena Quintanilla-Perez –  Copyright© 2009 – cyberaxis.wordpress.com. Selena, its on.)

March remains the cruelest of all months;  and the 31st,  the day time stood still  in a space so surreal it deserves its own  time-line.

Flashback reminiscent of November 22, 1963:  It’s  a little after 1.05pm and the news that would rock Corpus Christi and the world begins to fan out of  Memorial Medical Center (now the corporately-branded Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi):  Selena Quintanilla-Perez, the celebrated  Queen of Tejano has just died after being shot by  the former president of her fan club.  Incongruity: Selena the most loving person in the world had just died following the most hate-filled encounter. The collective mind could not wrap itself around this. It still cannot.

Avatar Masquerading as Star and One to the Universe: The late Selena Quintanilla-Perez April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995. The symbolism in this pic is stunning “Como La Flor.” Selena has through fate and circumstance, become the symbol of our joy and pain clarified and bottled like an essence; stunningly potent in its essence and guises. (Original Copyright: George Gongora, Corpus Christi Caller Times, TEXAS)

And so it has been with this tragedy, that the majority of us  have been  condemned to start the story of Selena at the end of it with a casket,  instead of  the irrepressible little girl who would transfix the world with her song.

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“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend.”  — Colleen McCullough (The Thorn Birds)

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This is the paradox of Selena and Selenidad : a collective apprehension of what had been, through what had just been lost – a phenomenon Deborah Paredez describes as “the performance of memory.” Over two decades later, it shows no signs of abating. Perhaps there is a tale somewhere in here that  still has  to be told in a time and space bigger and a bit more removed from what has just unfolded. Perhaps we are just be too close to the rupture of Selena’s death to comprehend anything beyond what we tell little children.

We will try and keep things in perspective, cognizant of the time and place of her story’s unfolding; but even after factoring in the cult of personality and inevitable worship of celebrities, there is still something about Selena that transcends the American  cultural froth: the  sweet little girl who stumbled upon stardom on a fated lark and the multitudes who all of a sudden realized what they had – only to lose it in the very next moment. Against such charms there  are no  talismans, personal or otherwise, even amongst the most hard-bitten; the terminally jaded. Those in doubt should read the accounts of other musicians’ encounters with  Selena to get a sense of what this is all about – what Selena was all about. This may, perhaps be the nub of the story:  octave pyros and belters are born every minute, but melters are much harder to find.

To be clear, Selena was a star, long before mainstream America and the world, by extension, discovered her. By the time  Selena’s  cross-over opus,  “Dreaming of You”, was released posthumously on 7/18/95,  she already had about eight variably successful albums under her belt.  However it was this posthumous album, a cross-over masterpiece, that show-cased the seminal brilliance and precocity of  the fallen chanteuse. But as Newsweek’s Joshua Alston astutely points out, the “cross-over” characterization was a bit provincial and misleading because Selena had already crossed-over into Mexico with her Tejano Music – a spruced up version of Conjunto music.

Part Gift to the World and Part Unplanned Elegy: Selena Quintanilla’s “Dreaming of You Album” (which would turn out to be her last) is absolutely heartbreaking. And the reason for this has as much to do with what the world lost as who the world lost. This (in a word) is the nub of the Selena Quintanilla story. Text Copyright: Cyberaxis.Wordpress. Photo Copyright: EMI Latin Records.