Border in our House [Frontera en Nuestra Casa]

Lyrics:

I don’t care… I don’t care…

I don’t care if you’re shouting on about
She’s just staring across the border in our house

Let it roll
Let it roll
Let it roll…

I don’t care if you’re lonely
I don’t care if you need control
I don’t care if you love me
I don’t care I don’t even know

I don’t care if you’re shouting on about
She’s just staring across the border in our house

Lyrics and Music by Dave Ryder and Dan McHugh.
Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.

Info regarding the lyrics and recording the music:

Technically, the album should have started with this song because the original Odyssey* begins in medias res (in the middle of things), meaning that the plot begins in the middle of the overall story, and that prior events are described through flashbacks or storytelling.

We felt that starting the album with Black Light [Luz Funesto] was a better choice with it’s forbidding mood and ambiance, foreshadowing the dreadful events that occur later. The rest of the album and screenplay follow a linear plot also, my reasoning being twofold – it’s less confusing (believe me, the story is convoluted enough without the added confusion that jumping around in time would bring to the table), and a director is going to edit the movie as he sees fit anyway, most modern directors view a screenplay as little more than a guideline, so why waste time agonizing over clever ways to shift around in time without losing the audience? That’s the director’s prerogative.

_{*When speaking of Homer’s Odyssey I will refer to the hero as Ulysses. When referring to this version, his name is Ulises (or occasionally I will call him by his surname Santiago) in an effort to avoid confusion.}

I think this photo works on several levels: Our protagonist feels estranged from Calypso early on, largely because of the differences in their upbringing, which slowly becomes amplified as they are forced to work so closely together for so long. This “border” or divide in their home seems to me to reflect the current state of US-Mexico relations, and the tense border situation that continues to escalate, particularly in light of recent events.

Another level is the fact that the camera is facing east, so Mexico is on the right, which for some reason seems to me to be the “north” and the US is on the left which seems “south” to me. This juxtaposition made me think how easily our positions could be reversed.

The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.