Amarla Café
Psychoanalysis and desire
Esteban Pelaez Arroyave says that, ‘when asked about Amarla, he didn’t like to talk about it much. It has been a very personal process and not at all easy.’ Amarla Café, in the city of Medellín, Colombia, is for him his invention, a big part of who he is.
At a certain point in his life, when everything seemed to be going perfectly, like an imagined life in its fullness, the tastelessness of something that divides him arrives. ‘The feeling of discomfort, that something is not going well.’
That is how he came across psychoanalysis. ‘You start to think about yourself, seeking to know yourself most intimately, to find something that had perhaps been somewhat forgotten.’ Esteban continues: ‘It’s as if what I was doing at that moment wasn’t me, it was someone else.’
‘What is important to me emerges during the analysis sessions.’ What is most valuable to him in his singularity corresponds to his dreams. At that moment, psychoanalysis tells me: do you want to do it? Then work for it.’
This is how Amarla began to emerge as he worked on the analysis. He remembered the dreams he had brought back from a stay abroad. That dream of creating a warm and friendly café for visitors. He also remembered his days studying at university and, above all, those days at the Estanislao Zuleta Cultural Corporation, an organisation named after the philosopher born in Medellín. There, studying the texts of Freud and Nietzsche, ‘I was filled with questions and curiosity.’
‘I regained my taste for poetry. Which I would say is my mechanism of sublimation, my delirium for facing life.’ These pieces come together again, and Amarla emerges. It is a café, but it also carries poetry, ‘the same poetry that I carefully selected and shared with care, so that whoever drinks a cup of coffee is also touched by poetry.’ The brand workshops began with psychoanalysis, and Amarla emerged like a tufted knot between culture, poetry, good coffee, and a part of its founder.
Esteban, inspired by Poseidon, says that Amarla is a project that makes him feel that life is worth living. “There are more responsibilities, more work, more sleepless nights. And yet, I am letting go of a burden. I take on the burden of desire and empty myself of everything else. ‘On that path, the path of desire,’ hands reach out to help, to share what they know, to accompany you.”
Many other surprising moments accompanied him during its creation, including those in which, in addition to the coffee, Amarla’s efforts were appreciated, ensuring that, in keeping with the brand’s narrative, poetry and myths arrived alongside the good coffee. Amarla has been created from a singular desire, an invention accompanied by psychoanalysis.
