InterMEDIAte is an exploration of life, and all the things that make it up, through media. No form is superior to another. All belong and deserve to be explored. This is an attempt to be more critical about the media I consume. Media is the mediator between life and human experience.
Bad Bunny’s DeBĺ TiRAR MáS FOTos was released on Jan. 5, 2025. I remember listening to the title track on Polish radio sometime in the third week of January, around a week after my grandma passed away.
Rosalía’s Lux was released on Nov. 7, 2025. Just like with Bad Bunny’s album I was late to the party. Michaelmas had been a never-ending challenge for me.
I listened to both albums in the midst of personal and academic troubles. Both Lux and DtMF resonated with me on different levels. Yet, I hadn’t thought of considering them alongside each other until, on the New York Times’ Podcast, Rosalia was asked why she chose to include 13 languages on her album. She responded with, “I think I’m the opposite of Benito,” This led to passionate reactions on the internet. Some sided with Bad Bunny, heralding his stance as political, while downgrading Rosalía’s choice as only rooted in matters of “language and communication.”
I remember thinking that the comment was blown out of proportion and the opportunity was taken to pit two artists against each other. However, this solidified the fact for me that 2025 was the year for music in Spanish.
Or was it?
In English, ‘Spanish’ refers to the language originating from Spain and the official language for the whole country. I think it is better referred to as Castilian, with the term ‘Spanish languages’ instead encompassing all the languages of Spain. The country has regional languages which are official on the regional level. For example, Catalan is the language with which Rosalía grew up, originating from Barcelona. On the other hand, Bad Bunny, originally from Puerto Rico (PR), grew up with Boriqua, the dialect of Spanish typically used there .
This train of thought left me pondering about how language has shaped my life. I grew up in Spain, speaking Polish with my Polish mother. Then upon our move to England, I recalibrated myself to speak English in school, at the shops, at the doctors.
Yet I have always felt a missing link with my father’s culture and language. From my father I should have learnt Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, but a complicated family dynamic robbed me of this opportunity.
Hence I can’t help but feel that Bad Bunny’s stance of sticking to his native language is completely justified. DtMF, with its distinctly Puerto Rican instrumentals and dialect, makes me feel both thankful and regretful. Thankful because I was blessed enough to be brought up with my mother’s language, my grandmother’s cooking, and my family home in Poland. This doesn’t diminish the nostalgia I feel for a language I don’t know, food I can somewhat recognise, and a house that I visited a handful of times.
I feel both gifted and cursed. Sometimes, I feel lopsided. One side heavier than the other, scraping the ground with every step; the other so lightweight it is like a balloon about to be swept up by a gust of wind. This gust of wind is not just metaphorical. It is every time I have been asked whether I speak Darija or Arabic, if I go to Morocco every summer, if I know what this or that is. The gust comes, wrecks havoc on the balance of my identity and sets off, leaving only a few autumn leaves sprawled at my feet. A reminder that just like autumn, these questions will keep coming.
But the leaves evacuate for a while, with new ones sprouting. And along with them, I begin to think that I should take things into my own hands and teach myself Arabic. I thought about it so intensely last time that I even requested a textbook from the Bodleian Offsite Storage. It is now waiting for me at the Humanities Library. I hope I don’t just leave it there until it is automatically returned to storage.
I try to counter these thoughts with the rationalisation that, although unbalanced, I have the privilege to learn about my Polish side. My childhood summers were spent in my grandparents’ house: running through their gardens, meeting my childhood best friend, being taught how to cook Polish food, the smell of freshly cut grass, and the enthralling sunsets visible across the golden fields. No one can take these away from me.
This feeling intensified when my grandma passed away in January last year. Whenever I hear “Debí tirar más fotos de cuando te tuve,” I instantly think of all the memories I could have captured with my grandma. To have tangible proof that we did these things together, that we spent time together, and that all these memories were not just a figment of my imagination.
“Ey, hoy voy a estar can abuelo to’l dia, jugando dominó”, turns back time for me. I am four years old in my grandma’s kitchen waiting for her food. I am eight years old and she is teaching me how to fold pierogi. I am eighteen making Christmas biscuits while my grandmother sits at the table drinking her tea and we are talking about her upcoming birthday. It hits me that the overweight part of my identity is so grounded in her existence. Now, with her gone, I feel like there is nothing anchoring me to my Polish side.
But the song “LA MuDANZA” shows me that my identity is not just grounded in my feelings or my self-perception. It is present in the things I do, the way I speak, the way my thoughts form, the places I have been to, all the places I have left a bit of myself and learnt something new.
This is where Rosalía’s “Reliquia” converges. Through this song we are made privy to all the things Rosalía has left in the places she has been to. She lost her eyes in Rome; she lost her tongue in Paris and her time in LA. We travel nearly across all continents. The most poignant line of the song is “Coge un trozo de mi, quedatelo pa’ cuando no esté”. It is not an invitation to dismantle Rosalía for the sake of the dismantler. Rather, it is a statement that shows that people have taken pieces of Rosalía without permission. This fits perfectly into the overall theme of the album: the female experience.
Rosalía uses female mystics from various religions and countries to draw upon the universality of the female experience. This universality is not just within the realm of female mystics. It also transcends geographical location, religion and time. Although Rosalía focuses on the things left behind, there must be things she has gained: her consciousness of this creative process, new experiences, as well as a level of freedom. The things left behind were squatters, burdening Rosalía’s existence.
Unlike Bad Bunny who narrows his identity, Rosalía globalises the female existence. They may seem negatively interdependent, where only one of these can exist simultaneously. Yet, they both inhabit my mind. Like described, I find comfort in the security in the confines of my identity, but my existence extends beyond this border. Just like Rosalía in “Reliquia”, I have left many things around. I have left friends in Spain, my childhood in Poland, my family at home, my sanity in Oxford, and an unknown part of me in Morocco.
My friends studying English taught me the meaning of liminal, which I think I understand as the following – existing between two things, leading to an unclear definition of the thing existing. “Reliquia” alludes to this as one exists in one place and simultaneously in all the places that contain the relic of the person. “Sexo, violencia y llantas” fit this theme even more. The song questions the existence of someone who can live between heaven and earth, who can fully devote first their earthly life and, later, their mystical one to something beyond oneself. It speaks of female sacrifice that highlights what females go through.
Although I can’t say I have felt this, it reminds me of my grandmother. And her now liminal presence in my mind. Photos of her, memories of her, videos of her, the knowledge that she was alive make her liminal to me.
Ultimately, once I moved past the controversy, I saw “Lux” and “DtMF” as encompassing the liminal experiences of my life. These experiences are not particular to me. Many people have lived through the loss of a loved one and many feel confused and conflicted in their heritage.
Media, in this case music, allows us to feel the things we were not aware of. It helps us understand what we are feeling without the need to articulate oneself. Whenever I feel unsure about my identity I play DtMF, while Lux accompanies me when I want to explore the female experience. They both take up space not only in music, but within my identity.