This song, “Doce Segundos de Oscuridad” is the title song for the album he made in 2006. He wrote this album while living in Cabo Polonia, Uruguay, a town by the ocean with no electricity. He had just received an Oscar for Original Song for “Al Otro Lado del Rio” featured in the film Motorcycle Diaries and had subsequently gone through a difficult divorce.
“Doce Segundos de Oscuridad” means “Twelve Seconds of Darkness”, which is the time between each flash of a lighthouse. The darkness between the flashes of light symbolize his feelings of loss and being lost in his life. The song is about him finding his way in a difficult time, like a ship finding its way in the night with only a lighthouse as a guide. He says “Pie detrás de pie/ Iba tras el pulso de claridad/ La noche cerrada apenas se abría/Se volvía a cerrar”, “Foot after foot/ I followed the pulse of clarity/ The night closed as soon as it opened/ It closed again.” In these lines he is using multidimensional language as he speaks of the night opening and closing with the flashes of light, to him the night comes in and out of existence. In this case the night is his sense of being lost and the light is a symbol of him working through and understanding his problems. In this lonely place, he finds his meaning in the darkness: “No es la luz lo que importa en verdad/ Son los 12 segundos de oscuridad”, “Truthfully it is not light what matters/ It is the 12 seconds of darkness.” To him the light guides but does not take him along, it is his way of coping with the darkness that allows him to learn and move forward. “Pie detrás de pie/ No hay otra manera de caminar/ La noche del Cabo/ Revelada en un inmenso radar”, “Foot after foot/ There is no other way of walking/ The night of Cabo/ Revealed in an immense radar.” He is indicating the burden of living in pain but he is also showing signs of hope by saying that marching along is the only way out. In these lines, he shows that the light reveals what seems not to exist without it. By naming the song “Doce Segundos de Oscuridad”, he is playing with the idea of taking a time of silence to mourn someone who has passed. His song could have also been named “Doce Segundos de Silencio” to show he is taking his time to mourn a failed relationship.
This song has helped many people move past difficult times. It takes a mundane, neglected and lonely object, a lighthouse, to give a certain haunting beauty to pain and hope.
I had no idea you were from Buenos Aires, that's so cool! Besides that, I really like your post, its nice that your able to do a song that isn't in English.
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