Calle Juarez, Ciego musico/Blind Music, Juarez – 1982
Juarez
This man played in the streets of Juarez for all my first years in La Frontera. He was blind. He was small. He made music like a special desert bird, joyful to bathe in just a drop of water, joyful to sing, even to the passing and witless American tourists.
I never asked his name, a regret. I never followed him home. A regret. I never asked him how he became blind, where he was from, what was his favorite music, how he learned the guitar and the sweet ballads that he sang, and how, most of all, he was always so, “up.”
All regrets.
One day, in the early nineties, after I was beginning to recover from a long and bedridden illness, I went to Avenida Juarez looking for this blind musician. I needed his joy for the price of 10 pesos (at that time) in a tin cup.
He was gone.
He never came back.
All I have is the image.
It’s a lot.
There should be more.
