One of the leaders of the student movement of October 2nd of 1968 in Mexico was Luis Gonzalez de Alba. After the repression suffered in Tlatelolco, Gonzalez de Alba was taken to jail, the Lecumberri. While in there, he listened to the song “Those were the days”, he described it as a sound that came from inside the jail and in that moment of pain it was a chant of liberty.
In a weird way, very stupid way may be a better description, I hold myself to falling in love with the person I knew was the one. Why did I do that? Well, because I was so obsessed with the idea of my liberty, thinking that being in love would hold me back from being myself. I thought that not having that dependency on someone else means that I would be able to do whatever I wanted to. Little I knew that what I wanted was to be in love, and I just restrained myself from the privilege of being love back by the person I love.
I heard all of those stories and experiences of crazy youth and I became so obsessed with the idea to get to live that. I chose new experiences, and put the woman I love in second place.
Nobody will ever know how much I love you, you will always doubt if it was real, and I have to live with that. It does not matter how much I tell you that I love you, It does not matter to say how sorry I am. I tried so hard to make you stay. But I had nothing, I knew that it was over and all I can do is to see it all falling apart.
This is not a song of liberty, this a song of regret. This is a song of not choosing the woman I love; instead, going for the stupid idea of “you should do this before you marry”. Now that everything is gone, the little hope I had has banished with that last phone call, and all I have left to say is that THOSE WERE THE DAYS…