Seduction...Confessions from Lhasa I've heard many La Llorona stories and many La Malinche stories, and the meanings that can be drawn from them are endless. Political, historical, psychological... My father who wrote a book on La Malinche and the history of the Conquest told me everything he knows about La Llorona, and for years I turned these stories over in my mind. I drew pictures painted paintings and wrote constantly about her. The version of her story that I focused on is the simplest one and the one that suited my purposes the most: a beautiful, mysterious, solitary woman who is seen by a lake or a river or on an open road in the middle of the night. By song or silence she lures men to her and turns them to stone with her kiss. For vengeance. For me she came to represent the dark side of love. The kind of love that doesn't have much love in it. Seduction, tragedy, revenge. In any order. I was writing love songs of that kind, tragic. And slowly learned to have a bit of a sense of humor about my own propensity for tragedy. Calling my album " La Llorona" was in a way a joke on myself. In Mexico a "Llorona" is also a cry baby, a complainer, someone who feel sorry for herself. I never idealized La Llorona. She is destructive. Of course, she has reason to be. Her children were, depending on the version of the story, massacred or taken from her. But- who is it that said EVIL IS SOMETHING YOU DO IN RETURN? We all have an infinity of excuses for self-destructiveness and destructiveness. I meet La Llorona constantly, in myself and in the people around me. Every time I armed myself with bad memories and old wounds because I'm afraid of life. Every time I'm seduced by the vision of my life as a tragedy. Tragedy is glorified suffering. Glorifying suffering, it seems to me, is an international pastime. And it shows our real indifference to ourselves and to each other. I think it's not a coincidence that La Llorona is a beautiful woman, not a monster. She's very seductive and magnetic. Even though I've learned how dangerous she is, I'm drawn to her again and again. Tragedy is so irresistible.

Submitted by: Lhasa de Sela Musical Artist