Man, just coming back to this thread. Thank you for saying this. To add a slight bit more color, I didn’t think of myself as fat and depressed in that moment, more that I had been feeling gorged on the emotions of life and had metaphorically eaten my sorrows.
To me, kummerspeck is the feeling of being unable to distinguish between the tears running down your face or the grease on your chin. It’s a feeling of relishing in the grief of burying someone who would want you to eat a ton of bacon at their funeral to celebrate their life.
Emotions are rarely simple or easy to explain. It’s still worth the effort to try though.
One could very well be in the emotional state for Kummerspeck in that state of their lives, which is what is implied here.
Basically parent means: "[Corea] saw in me that I have wanderlust, and that I'm depressed and fat from it".
That is, the parent feels like Corea identified and expressed his personal and emotional state at the time, with his playing....