Contexto
How One Word Teaches What Metrics and Social Media Cannot
En este viaje disfruté ver a la gente hablar sobre el contexto del lugar y las experiencias que puedes tener ahí.
(Roughly: on this trip, I enjoyed hearing people talk about the place’s context—and the experiences you can have here.)
It means everything to be able to sense places in real time under the lens of “contexto.”
This morning, my Spanish teacher—fresh from her birthday on the Guatemalan border—helped me summarize what I am feeling about immersing in place—watching, listening, and participating in local context.
Before I came to Mexico, I wrote a piece about “life beyond the meter,” a move from the transactional (e.g. earning fees) to the mutual and clear (an agreed intentionality about the nature of communication and consultancy, which need not be paid).
Many said I had sounded a familiar chord. The monetary meter is far from the only road to mutual benefit or clarity.
With others’ affirmations, I have felt much more sincere in how I am approaching this week, viewing places as best I can, while trying to listen and communicate as my Spanish grows from halting to something that a sympathetic listener can understand.
A reconfirmed sense of purpose helps me understand what is worth noticing in a way that personally resonates, not simply to sell product, moniker, data, or a new podcast name someone else already built.
Ironically, I’ve also noticed how this sense of purpose is the antipathy of what drives Substack or social media “likes,” and is less the province of those seeking monetary reward.
None of which has compromised my tendencies to share “White Lotus” moments on social media nor companion photos of the Hotel California (maybe or maybe not the song’s origin) in Todos Santos. Mildly amusing to some, and annoying to others.
Aside from learning how to ask for a permanent marker, band-aids, antiseptic spray, or an extra shot of coffee, I have also seen new examples of “contexto” that go far beyond what metrics can capture, no matter how skillfully the latter is collected.
For example, yesterday I saw people banter, with animated voices and gestures, about understanding Baja California Sur through New Age convergence experiences right out of The Celestine Prophecy (actually set in Peru)—or maybe those zones commonly referenced in Sedona. Something about feeling the forces of the indigenous amid petroglyphs nearby, sharing the same sensation of founders and former inhabitants, and the role of peyote and mescaline in enhancing such sensations.
Here’s the point—not really about 1990’s woo-woo, leftover 1970’s music, or foregone hippie legends of Baja: I’m focused on individual interpretation and expression—a qualitative understanding—which is what we should be looking to enhance. Uninterpreted data without eyes, ears, or some form of myth, art or poetry tells us less than we deserve to know.
“Contexto” is the human part of the record.
Really enjoying this publication! You should check out Craig Mod, a writer/photographer/walker who focuses on place.