Mil Vidas [English translation]

One lifetime is not enough for a man

The earth gave me a 'when' and a 'where'

Trapped now in this sleepless era

I want to live more lives than my share 1

Travel to landscapes that hide all memory

See myself at the beginning of time without self-awareness

A homosapien whose science is survival

With my skin bare, my patience tames fire

Mother Earth gives the essence which then sustains

Live on the Nile before Jesus Christ 2

Be a scribe in Ancient Egypt, see that I exist

And I still hold out with my Pharaoh Cheops 3

Know who is the owner of the dreams I have and of my reason

Civilisation in grace like Greece

Feel the passion of Plato's world view in person4

From the Parthenon his legacy

Amongst the Corinthian pillars his lessons clean my conscience and they are

Light for the heart, they are light for history

They are light like magnolias in Mongolia

Feel like a samurai, with thirst for glory

Defend my empire, conquering as the only means to make history

[Chorus] (x2)

A thousand lives, I'd like to live them all

One alone is not enough and I crash against the waves

Of time, hours going without direction

Why only one era?, Why only one perspective?

The waves of time reach the Renaissance

There Leonardo is ready for me with a new invention

I sit next to Copernicus in a spherical and metallic world

Meanwhilst the Inquisition follows my steps without a breath

Vienna, 1700, a city full of culture

I feel the beauty of a far-off place

When I reach Mozart I enjoy watching him play

And caress eternity between the notes of his piano

Symphony in harmony

Wanting to live the lives that weren't mine, it's not absurd

Like entering the palace of a tzar in Saint Petersburg

And shouting, Revolution! , to change the world

And whilst it changes I watch it

Nations invade, nations, centuries and losses, destroyed civilizations

Seeing myself next to the Sitting Bull, 5 being a shaman

Meditating in enlightenment in the fields of Dakota

And magic pours forth from my hands, cure of the white man

And the madness that spreads and like this the future is foretold

Meanwhile the sun from its throne watches over and passes judgment

Human beings are only a flicker of all it has seen

Come and crash against the waves of time, millennia which fuse into just one moment, I want to live a thousand lives

[Chorus] (x2)

A thousand lives, I'd like to live them all

One alone is not enough and I crash against the waves

Of time, hours going without direction

Why only one era?, Why only one perspective?

Chicago in the '20s I wear a gabardine, 6 patent leather shoes

I feel chaos watching in every corner

The dry law 7 is established so I attend a cabaret show

In order to forget that Al Capone's mafia 8intends to liquidate me

Travelling to Woodstock 9 and from dawn lying [down] having given myself over to free love and pleasure

Seeing Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Tim Hardin in concert

High on LSD, this is my garden, my camp site

My endless freedom and there I see myself, I plunge

Into the meadows of history and its fortune

I want to escape along with this pen from a present that crushes me

Be in the pupil of Neil Armstrong as he walks on the moon

Be a black panther, with my fist raised high, with an afro

Sit with Rosa Parks back in that bus

Learn from Crazy Legs 10 and from T-Kid 11 in their first signings

End of the '70s the South Bronx, there's no more puzzles

Except the desire to live more lives than just one

Madrid '83 I'm restless at the Roccola port

Engrossed in smoking a cigarette

Thinking that the path that separates cradle and grave 12 is short

A thousand lives, I wanted to be there, and I wanted to see everything.

1. lit. than that which corresponds me 2. that is to say 'BC' 3. also know as 'Khufu' 4. lit. 'live' as in 'live show' 5. a holy man 6. in other words a raincoat 7. Prohibition of alcohol 8. Al Capone = American Gangster 9. music festival 10. a break dancer from the Bronx, New York 11. well-known graffiti artist from the Bronx, New York 12. lit. cementery

• Artist:Nach
• Album:Un Día En Suburbia (2008)