Hello, stranger! I'm Diego Garcia , formerly known as Hotel . This is a doom-scrolling website designed to encapsulate the ongoing forward motion that is living as a single human in Planet Earth using all mediums available to translate what we've been through into new and tangible, repeatable forms - may you find at least part of what you seek in its digital, borderless pages
Flower Eater Anonymous / Jeanette Fan Club / Corotico Studio / Tape Enthusiast / Transatlantic dreamcatcher / Open Guitar Tuner / Tik Tok Detractor / Low Volume Jams / Sun-Drinker / Reluctant Zuliano / Padmasambhava Admirer / Hobbyist Game Boy Game-Maker / Oneiric Albatross / 2023 Dragon's Lair's Pioneer League Final Top 8 Finisher / Suitcase Man / Cloud-factory Worker / Lydian Naturalist / Minimalist Drum Machine Operator / Late Bloomer
RECORDS
2021 New London Fantasy
2015 Paisajismo Nocturno
2013 Otras Muertes
GAMES
it was at four in the morning that my cellophane sleep was suddenly disrupted by an invisible bird that had decided the time was ripe to erupt into song outside my window - I listened for a few seconds, in a state of sedated shock while trying to climb out of my brain and becoming increasingly aware of the singing’s impossible zigzagging melodies, tasteful flourishes, emotive range and volume.
The more I listened to it the more its melodic lines seemed to branch out, develop, circle back, tell a story. It sounded effectively like full blown gospel desperation, wild with abandonment, equal parts celebration of life, sensual crooning and fist fighting bravado… every vocalist’s idea of a trascendental performance - looking like a paid actor that has just received its cue, I jumped off the bed and started scrambling for my meagre recording equipment.
I pressed buttons, plugged cables into sockets and placed a microphone on the floor pointing out through the window and waited impatiently for my laptop to let me click through to the Logic Pro session I’ve just been tinkering with to open a track, arm it, choose Channel 2 on my interface and turn the hilariously large knob almost all the way clockwise until I heard the singing in my headphones and then quickly tap R to begin recording.
I must have looked completely deranged, standing by the kitchen sink, eyes closed, lights out, headphones on, rocking back and forth slightly. I was hearing the song I’d recorded a few hours earlier - a 3 chord, droning affair written in a made up language under the guise of “credits roll in a theatre were everyone has already left” music for my record - along with the bird’s prodigious singing, and it was making me feel like we were having a telepathic conversation. You have your song. I have mine.
The act of singing it is enough for us. I see you there in the darkness. I’m listening. Then I looked down and of course only then realised everything was blinking red, with big MUTE letters trying to let me know only silence was being committed to my hard drive.
My fingers flew over the keys in a frenzy, rerouting things so the machines could talk to each other properly. I set the digital playhead back at the beginning and then the second I pressed R the singing stopped. The software set in motion diligently, recording nothing but ambience noise. I was gutted. I waited in vain for about 25 minutes for the singing to restart, getting increasingly furious at my short-lived collaborator. Come on you fuck. A second ago you were Elvis. Aren’t you supposed to be trying to get laid?!
Come on, sing! And on it went. At the end I persevered (I was already up, after all) so I recorded some more. I got some small delicate birds chirping, rustling of leaves, a slight breeze and some other birdsong here and there. A lovely backdrop in its own right. Some of it sounded even suspiciously like the original bird in question, yet distant and deflated in comparison. Maybe it was the same bird but it had changed trees and I was hearing it faintly because of the distance.
Maybe it had gotten sick of the whole thing and called it quits on the spot and I was hearing other lesser performers. I’m tempted to write here that perhaps I had imagined it somehow, composed it in my dreams. But the thing is, I heard it. With my headphones on, standing by the kitchen sink in the darkness with my eyes closed. I listened.
Moon in Cancer, an old song from when I was living in Västertorp and this woman I was living with left to chase some policeman's love in Greece, leaving me an empty apartment to record.
Deborah (New London Fantasy B-Side)
Deborah (Deborah)
thank you for your advice
I'll take it to heart
Deborah (Deborah)
thank you for your advice
I'll take it to heart
"Take what you need
and leave the rest"
"There's no in-between
you deserve happiness"
Oh, Deborah
thank you for your advice
I'll take it to heart
Oh, Deborah
thank you for your advice
I'll take it to heart
(to heart, to heart)
Big Dumb Sun
I'm over acting smart
I'm going to let the days wash by me
not call back anyone
stay inside and rot my mind off
with a barrage of pixels
on a screen trying to cheat reality
colours more vibrant than life itself
the most fragile of lifelines you'll see
The sun came out today
I saw it burning through my windowpane
have they all gone insane?
I get the newsfeed pumped into my veins
Oh, what a cavalcade of children
playing with their hands open to the wind
One day they'll be fathers and mothers
soon they'll close their fingers in a fist
One day they'll be leaders and lovers
and they'll close their fingers in a fist
One day they'll be dreamers and cutters
closing their hands against the wind
Against the wind
Against the wind
Against the wind
Against the wind
As a whole, we remain obsessed with our appearence - the way we present outselves to the world is a carefully curated accumulation of isms with which we try to shape our personality, whatever that word means, the feeble armature to which we cling in the hope of making a place in the world for ourselves - we send selfies to loved ones, we paint portraits, we write songs, we go shopping for clothes, we look back on our pasts armatures and don't recognize ourselves in them, the spheres we use to let the light in distort all images, we wobble through life blind, trying to learn how to see