Diana pressed record on her phone and held it toward the market vendor haggling over fish prices. She wanted to capture Cumaná's real voice—not polished folklore, but the living rhythm of conversations, arguments, and laughter that filled the streets. Her dream was simple but consuming: record an album that mixed traditional songs with these raw, contemporary sounds. She'd been a university choir soloist for two years, but that felt like wearing someone else's clothes. What she wanted was to create something true, something that made people feel the salt air and cracked pavement of this place. The vendor's voice rose and fell like a wave. Diana smiled and stopped recording. That would work. The next morning, Diana stood outside a small stucco building with an antenna on the roof. The sign read "Radio Cumaná" in bright letters that had faded under the sun. She'd walked past this place a hundred times but never thought of it as hers. Now she pictured herself inside, layering her street recordings over Ricardo's cuatro, building something that didn't exist yet. Her fingers tapped against her bag. This could be the place where her album became real. Inside, dust floated through strips of sunlight. A vintage reel-to-reel tape recorder sat on a wooden table, its metal casing dull but solid. Diana touched one of the large spools and imagined her voice spinning onto it. She could test her original songs here, play them live into the machine without polish or apology. Her small red tape recorder—the one she used for street sounds—sat in her bag like a companion. Two recorders, two kinds of truth. Diana pulled out her phone and played back the fish vendor's voice. It filled the quiet room with life. She closed her eyes and felt the melody that matched it—the rise and fall, the push and pull. This was how she worked: body first, then notes. She didn't need permission to start. She just needed to press record and trust what came out. The dream wasn't someday anymore. It was here, in this room, waiting for her to begin.