Episode 61: Special Guest Matteo Talks About His New Book on Valpo

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Paige: You are listening to “Coffee with Gringos.” I'm Paige Sutherland.

Ian: And I’m Ian Kennedy.

Paige: So today we have a special guest: Matteo from Dynamic English. Welcome, thanks for being here.

Matteo: Thanks for having me.

Paige: So, since you are new to the show, please introduce yourself a little. Where are you from? How long have you been in Chile?

Matteo: I come from California, the northern part, San Francisco, and I’ve been in Chile for about three years now, and a “Dynamic” for about half that time. And for those of you at home I just want to say, this is not a ruse. They have coffee here at “Coffee with Gringos”. Not bad, thanks for having me again. Thanks for the coffee.

Paige: Of course. Now of course, I do have to ask…so are you known as Matteo at home, as well? Or is Matteo the name that you changed because you're in Chile?

Matteo: Interesting story, Paige. I, my given name was Matthew, but I was given that name because Matteo is the most common name in my family tree. And when I was born, I'm not gonna say when, it wasn't really cool to give your kid a Latin name. Now it’s cool. Kids born in the 21st century can be very, very Gringo and zero Latin roots and they give him Matteo because it sounds cool. And I think I was about thirty-one, thirty-two and I decided to just start calling myself Matteo because I think it sounds better—I like it.

Paige: So, it was before you moved here?

Matteo: Yeah, it was actually.

Paige: So today, we wanted to talk about, you have a book that you wrote while you're here in Chile. I mean, Ian, I think I can speak for both of us, we've never written books before. I don't know anyone that has written one. So, tell us a little bit about why you wanted to write a book and what's it about.

Matteo: Well, I was at a bit of a crossroads in my life. Kind of making career changes, I had recently graduated with a Master's degree in Environmental Studies, and someone read my thesis and was blown away. And I don't know, she said “You're a writer” and I was like, “Really? I don't think, I don't think of myself as a writer but if you insist…” She’s like, “You need to write.” And it was this person kind of pushed me in the direction of getting serious about writing. And then I just happened to have a motorcycle accident at that time, which made me in the hospital, and actually, my neck hurts right now and rubbing my neck. It still, just talking about it makes it, makes it hurt. Pretty hardcore…I broke my back and everything. And I actually came to Chile on a whim, reconnecting with a girl that I had met in my travels, some years earlier, who I was very in love with at the time. And, you know, wrote music for and everything and never really fell out of love with her. And we kind of reconnected and she said “Well you're injured and you're not working, why don't you just come and recover in Chile? Be here and do your thing, right and whatever. And I said, “Great!” So, I went to live with her in Con Con, down there by Valparaiso. And within a week, I was out on the street. She didn’t, at the end of the day, didn't want to have me living with her and everything else. So that was, that's how the book begins, actually is me, sort of, like, going through this pretty crazy introduction to Chile. We were, actually, I was at Dieciocho—I went to her family's house for Dieciocho. That's kind of the first part of the book. Very much just Chile through the eyes of a random traveler. The kind of guy who gets stuck here like so many people I think in the history of Chile who, you know, whether it was, you know, in the colonial times, or some other immigrant who came after, or pirates or who knows who. People just kind of wind up here. And it's sometimes hard to leave.

Paige: What a story.

Ian: Yeah, that’s incredible. What a way to start off living here. That's quite the, that's like a baptism by fire, but you look like you’ve made it through the other end okay.

Matteo: Well, I'm from California. And Chile and California are very, very similar in a lot of respects.

Paige: So, I have to ask…you moved here, lived with this girl and a week later she kicked you out?

Matteo: Yeah, five days it was it was amazing.

Ian: What did you do?

Matteo: I cried a lot. I was very upset because I loved this girl. Still, it's funny, you know, love, I think of love as some kind of a mental illness—it has to be. Being in love. I think that being in love, I mean, you do you do stupid things—your brain isn't working right. And so, I, you know, up and moved to this country with a broken back—my back was broken.

Paige: And then you left with a broken heart…

Matteo: Yeah, and then, that wasn't the only thing that got broken. Exactly. So, what did I do? I just ended up, she actually helped me—very gentile—helped me find a new place in Valparaiso, used her connections. And, you know, within a week of my arrival, I was living in a new apartment in Valparaiso in Cerro Alegre. And within a week of that time period, I felt like this Valparaiso is, you know, for anyone who's been there, you know, it's a different place. It's, you know, not your usual day to day and it just, it felt like a fairy tale kind of. Or some sort of myth. And I just was like, I felt like I was living in a book. And so, I just started writing. I just started keeping kind of, like, a sort of like a diary, I suppose. Or just sort of my impressions. And then what I found out now publishing, six years later, is that, you know, putting the pen to page and writing, you know, is the first step in a very, very long journey of producing something that is of reading quality. And, you know, and me having no real formation as a writer, it was an interesting journey to sort of think about well, what is what is it that I'm trying to say? How do you do that? What is their experience going to be, you know, as a reader? So, it was quite the learning process. Yeah, as I said, six years or so getting it together, getting it into form, into something that I felt like, I'm not embarrassed if you read this.

Paige:  So, you started, like you said, 2012, just kind of jotting down notes…blah, blah, blah. When did you actually, like, write the book? Did you, like, send it to an editor?

Matteo: I have not had editorial support. I have had some friends and family read versions, you know, and some of them were very much like, “you have a long way to go.” I was like, “Ash, t's not even really good.” You know, that's just real. I mean, it's been a fun—actually, not fun—it's been a tedious and hard process of coming to realize that it's just a lot of work. It takes, I mean, would I say thousands of hours? Maybe thousands of hours of revision and getting creative and, you know, trying to figure out how to do this. And you have ideas like, “I think I want to do this and, you know, how do you get there? I think of it, a lot like architecture, I do talk about architecture in the book because Valparaiso is known for its unique architecture. And the architecture of a Valparaiso was sort of slapdash—there's some pretty obscure Gringo slang for you. Did I make that up right now? Slapdash?

Paige: I think you might have just made that up.

Matteo: I just made it that point that, we're coining a new term here on “Coffee the Gringos.” Slapdash—what I mean by that, for those of you who don't know is, you know, it was made with just whatever was lying around. You know whether it be shipwrecks, things would wash up on the shore, which is called flotsam and jetsam. Here we're learning the ropes of English

Paige: You’re teaching me.

Matteo: Yeah, we're learning, when you learn the ropes, what does that mean? It means you're kind of getting the hang of something. To get the hang of something, to learn the ropes, is to learn how, you know, what are the ins and outs. People are like, “Oh my god.” This is English people! You learn the ins and outs, you learn the ropes—these are nautical terms, you know shipping. You know, so learning the ropes of being a writer is, you know, figuring out how to, how to edit figuring out, you know, how to be concise. How to be precise, how to make it hypnotic, and not boring and not feel like it's something that, you know, people have heard a million times before, you know. And that's, you know, what I was going through. I was living in Valparaiso sort of putting together a life out of the wreckage of this shipwrecked love affair that had left me washed up on the shores there in Valparaiso, like so many. So yeah, it was a deep dive and just the Chilean history and culture, the arts, other writers, my own unique story—which we don't need to get too into now—but involved, living with some very interesting people. And these are things that the average person is sitting at home and doesn't get out and doesn't, you know, go to live in Valparaiso and, you know, have their heart broken and then be, you know, trying to, to make some sense out of it all.

Ian: But I think what you've done is really interesting because you're definitely not the only one that's had this kind of experience. But you've taken the steps to have a self-reflection about it and to really get introspective with an experience in your life that has been really, really difficult and something really, something really different. And a lot of people don't want to put themselves in that kind of situation where they have to think about it. A lot of people want to kind of bury that deep down or think about something different. But by confronting it head on, like you are, I think you're getting a lot of good self-reflection. And I'm sure you've learned a lot about yourself from this whole experience.

Matteo: Yeah, I think it's true. I mean, pain hurts. And a lot of times, you know, people have traumatic experiences and maybe don't process it. And this is definitely a traumatic experience, you know, broken heart, broken back, whole deal living in this other crazy culture—not crazy but very different. Even for someone who speaks Spanish, which I spoke some Spanish before I got here, and I was like “Oh my god, I'm so lost. What is, what are these people saying?” So, we can, we understand learning another language is difficult. But, yeah, the self-reflective piece and that's, you know, I wanted to not preach to anybody, but at least offer them an example of what you can do in life. You know, deals you a rough hand, you know, you have to play it out and then, you know, you hopefully learn and grow from it. And so yeah, for me it was definitely just about learning and growing and you try not to make the same mistakes in life. And ultimately you just try to, you know, make it count for something.

Paige: Yeah. So, it sounds like Ian, you might be inspired to maybe write a book. You're going to write your own book now?

Ian: I think so. I'm going to go pen to paper as soon as I get home.

Matteo: Buckle in…it's a long journey, my friend.

Ian: Yeah, I believe you. I believe you.

Paige:  I can imagine. Six years is no little time. So, given that this is your first book, do you envision other books in the future?

Matteo: Unfortunately, I do. Yeah, yeah, and hopefully the next one will take me three years, you know. And the one after that, maybe a year and a half, you know, who knows. I think it is getting…you get into the hang of it. I mean, what is the process of revision, you know? It's just looking at it and being like this sucks. And you look at it, and you try to make some changes, go back again after letting it sit, you go back and you read it again. You're still not good, and just finding that right time when you're feeling creative. I mean, it's not magic—it's work.

Paige: I am no author, by any means, but being a journalist, I write a lot. So, I definitely know the experience of just never thinking something's good enough. Because when you're writing, whether it's a book or journalism, your name’s on that and it's out there forever. So, you're like, “oh, this is good” and then you read it and you can't change it once you hit ‘publish,’ once it's on paper. And when it's out there, it's out there—and it's yours. Yeah, so no, I agree. I feel like I would take forever to write a book because I would be like “it's not done yet. I need to fix this.”

Matteo: Leonardo Da Vinci, genius, famously said that “a work of art is never finished, it is merely abandoned.” And so, at some point you just have to say enough is enough. And I'm at that point.

Paige:  Do you think you said another book is in your future. Do you think this same genre, like memoir type style, is what you're going to do?

Matteo: Yeah. For now, I do have a vision to do a grand, sweeping tale of the West based on the legend of Joaquin Murrieta, but I'm not ready for that. I'm still not able to, I don't think, tell that story. That is my ultimate goal, but for now, I have been through some other challenging times here in Chile since that initial one and yeah, having sort of a follow up to “Los Valparaiso Blues”, which is the first book. That's in the works and it'll be more similar kind of memoirs. You know, exploring, not just, you know, my own experience but that's that's the launching pad for the deeper reflections about, you know, things that, you know, are generally true that people can relate to. And, you know, the idea is to try to find a way to make sense of this crazy, little thing called life. But yeah, and then eventually I would like to get something or not talking about myself so much. But for now, yeah that seems to be what I know how to do. And so yeah, going from, you know, the sort of being a part of the public to then being a creator takes some bravery, takes commitment, takes time and energy, and more time and more energy and…But yeah, anyone can do it, obviously, and then it's just about sticking with it until you get where you want to go. Like a lot of things in life, you know, any goal you have it's just, it's not going to come easy.

Paige: Like learning English.

Matteo: Exactly.

 Paige: Well, on that note, we're all teachers here I think, reading is such a good way to better learn English and so maybe read Matteo’s book for audiences. How can people get it?

Matteo: If you want to take that next step—it's a big step. On lulu.com, you can order it internationally, I guess. It has arrived to France, I know that. So, I imagine you could arrive to Chile. And that's doing a kind of an independent publishing route, because I don't have connections in the big publishing houses of New York, yet. But yeah, if someone's interested.

Ian: And can you tell us again the name of the book?

Matteo: “Los Valparaiso Blues”, a little bit of Spanglish in there.

Paige: Thank you so much for being on the show. It really was a pleasure having you. 

Matteo: Pleasure was all mine.

Key Vocabulary, Phrases and Slang:

1.     ruse (noun): trick, deception.

a.     He tried to think of a ruse to get her to leave the house.

2.     crossroads (noun): a point in which an important decision has to be made.

a.     He was at a crossroads in his life and had to decide his future.

3.     to blow away (phrasal verb): to be very impressed, surprised.   

a.     I was blown away when I heard him play the guitar. He’s incredible!

4.     to insist (verb): to demand.

a.     She insisted that I eat the food, even though I told her I wasn’t hungry.

5.     to push (verb): to motivate.

a.     She pushed me to try out a new hobby that I was interested in.

6.     hardcore (adjective): most active or committed to something.

a.     He is a hardcore fan of hockey. He watches the league every weekend.

7.     whim (noun): sudden desire or wish.

a.     I decided to move to Chile on a whim.

8.     to recover (verb): to get better, to improve, return to a normal state.

a.     He decided to recover from his accident somewhere warm and sunny.

9.     to wind up (phrasal verb): to finish or end up in a certain situation.

a.     He winded up living in South America after living in Asia for two years.

10.  baptism by fire (phrase): challenging or difficult introduction to something new.

a.     The policeman had a baptism by fire on his fire day of the job.

11.  to jot down: to write.

a.     I always jot down thoughts I have in my notebook.

12.  tedious (adjective): long and slow.

a.     Writing a book can be very tedious.

13.  slapdash (adjective, slang): something made quickly and not carefully.   

a.     The boat is very slapdash, so we are nervous about taking it into the water.

14.  obscure (adjective): not clearly defined or understood.

a.     His writings are pretty obscure. I’m not sure exactly what he is saying.

15.  slang (noun): informal words used in a language.

a.     Slang words are the most interesting to learn in a language!

16.  to coin (verb): to invent, make something new.

a.     She coined a new term today in class.

17.  shipwreck (noun): the leftover material from a ship that has crashed in the ocean.

a.     There are many shipwrecks off the coast of the country.

18.  to wash up (phrasal verb): to come up on the beach from the ocean.

a.     The trash washed up on the beach over the course of the week.

19.  flotsam and jetsam (noun): useless or thrown away items.

a.     The boat was made of flotsam and jetsam since there is always trash floating on the shore.

20.  to learn the ropes (idiom): to learn how a particular job is done.

a.     He is still learning the ropes of the job, but he’s doing great.

21.  to get the hang of something (phrasal verb): to become comfortable, to become skilled in something.

a.     Now that I listen to this podcast, I’m really getting the hang of English!

22.  ins and outs (noun, slang): the details of something.

a.     My boss wants to know the ins and outs of the new project.

23.  nautical (adjective): associated with sailing or sailors.

a.     The sailor’s nautical knowledge was very impressive.

24.  hypnotic (adjective): fascinating, attention-grabbing.  

a.     The music is so beautiful and hypnotic. I can’t stop listening to it.

25.  wreckage (noun): leftover damage from a crash or negative situation.

a.     The car crash left a lot of wreckage in the street that needed to be cleaned.

26.  deep dive (noun): a deep look or investigation into something.

a.     The police decided to take a deep dive into the murder case.

27.  self-reflection (noun): serious thinking about one’s own character or actions.

a.     While it was a difficult situation, he also had some important self-reflection.  

28.  introspective (adjective): thinking about one’s own mental or emotional being.

a.     Traveling is always an introspective experience for me and I learn so much about myself.

29.  to confront (verb): to face a problem or situation. 

a.     I need to confront the problem now before it becomes more serious.

30.  head on (adjective): directly.

a.     We need to fix the problem head on.

31.  to preach (verb): to say or spread something to others.

a.     He is always preaching his political views to everyone he meets.

32.  rough hand (noun): a difficult or challenging problem or situation.

a.     What will you do whenever life deals you a rough hand?

33.  to play out (phrasal verb): to develop or end in a certain way.

a.     Sometimes you just have to play out certain choices and see what happens.

34.  buckle in (phrasal verb): to prepare oneself, to secure oneself safely, usually with a seat belt or securing device.

a.     Make sure to buckle in if you are considering writing a book—it’s a lot of work!

35.  to envision (verb): to visualize, to plan.

a.     She envisioned lots of people coming to visit her new home.

36.  to suck (verb, slang): to be negative, to not be enjoyable.

a.     It sucks having to do so much homework every day.

37.  merely (adjective): only, just.

a.     Don’t worry, it’s merely a small cut. You’ll be okay.

38.  sweeping (adjective): wide, totally including.

a.     He wants to write a sweeping tale of the West whenever he finds the time.

39.  launching pad (noun): starting point of something.

a.     Reading has always been a launching pad for his new ideas.

40.  Spanglish (noun): combination of English and Spanish languages.

a.     She likes to speak Spanglish at home with her brothers and grandparents.