Virada Cultural, 26-27 April 2008

The term Virada Cultural can be loosely translated as Cultural Turn Around, an event where one is supposed to turn the day around and stay awake all night. It is said, over here, that it is a sort of São Paulo's version of the famous Nuits Blanches in Paris, but this is something else.


Jorge Ben Jor, País Tropical

People, by the hundreds of thousends, went out to the city centre and decided that it was São Paulo that should be turned around instead. Turning every street into a disco, every step into a dance, every corner into a kiss, they turned São Paulo into the best disco I ever laid foot on.

A Brazilian said to me something about Italians that I wholeheartedly agree with. But let me be the one turning things around this time and let me say it about the Brazilians:
If one measures how civilized a people is by its love of music and its dread of war, then Brazil is the beacon of civilization.

Orson Wells Ressurection Award

The acting is not more than adequate. The music is. But still, Once would not be a remarkable film for most. It is to me.

Awarding it the owra is more of a show of personal gratitude to the makers of the film than an actual praise of it. Of course I was dying to see it and I more or less knew I would be awarding this movie before I actually laid eyes on a frame. But I take these things seriously and so I went to the theater and sat through the thing.

I am very happy I did. The film connects to more than in the way of a personal experience about a song I had heard in a concert and that had stayed with me, mostly covered in silence. It connect to me as an European. In the midst of this vulcanic melting pot called São Paulo, SP, Brazil, I was remembered of an Europe that unites throught sense and sensitivity what that same sense and sensitivety once separated. A melting pot in slow cooking, where east and west, north and south learn rather than teach, sing rather than shout.

For all this, and for the music, it was a film also about me.

Change of heart

I might have jumped the gun there.
The other day I was invited to go to the Morumbi stadium by a São Paulo FC fan, to watch them eventually go through to the knock-out stage of the Copa Libertadores. And I have to say I thoroughlly enjoyed the whole thing, from the meaty sandwhich I ate before, to the singing and jumping of the crowd, to the undeniabe class of Adriano, even when displayed in short glimpses as it is the case these days.
I am terribly sorry and I apologize to all the palmeirenses, but I reckon the são paulinos got to me first.

A mezzanine in Paris, summer 2004

It set the standard.

Wherever we were going to live from then on, it had to be that good. Whoever had to find a place to for us to stay, it had to live up to that room;
preferably (didn't it happen always?) with a mezzanine.

We decided - she did and I agreed, as with most of our best ideas - to go to Paris for a few months, to get a taste of the city, a taste of the people, a taste of the language. It was the summer of 2004.


Carla Bruni, Le Ciel Dans Une Chambre

The city is fabulous, the city is Paris.
But I hold closer the memory of that place, lying above ground, well in reach of the ceiling. That and the dying moments of the night we would spend learning Portuguese from the tales of Fada Oriana, learning Italian through French and French through Italian. That and the moments we would fall asleep , well in reach of the ceiling, listening to slow music* about rooms that had none.

* As little as anyone could have guessed, little did we know we once fell asleep to the mellow voice of a first lady to be.

Frases feitas

"Há vários tipos de Estado, o Estado comunista, o Estado Capitalista!
E há o Estado a que chegámos!"

Cap. Salgueiro Maia, 24 de Abril de 1974

Ouro Preto, April 2008

It was the 21st of April, yet another anniversary of the popular movement called the Inconfidência Mineira, that declared the first Brazilian epublic as far back as 1789. To no avail of course, as the Portuguese readily qwelled the rebels, took their leader, Tiradentes, hung him and sliced his body, sending the different parts for display in several cities of the colonial Brazil. The capital of the province of of Minas Gerais, where Tiradentes was from and where he had gathered his backing, was Ouro Preto back then. And that is why it was awarded his head on a stick.

So be it. As a proud representative of the Portuguese atrocities, I decided to attend the cerimonies in remembrance of this "rebel hereo" of Brazil, in the central square of Ouro Preto, most appropriately called "Praça Tiradentes".


John Williams, The Raiders March

I headed to the square, holding a pamphlet exerting the silent crowds to rebell, like the heroe of the Inconfidência Mineira had done, against the horrors perpretated by the imperialistic leaders, "no different from the Portuguese", that are leading the country to ruin. The piece of paper came quite in handy when I used it to wrap a Coca-Cola tin can that I had in my other hand, so to give the emsemble more aerodynamic pull, when I threw it into the bin.

I could already see te back of the stage that was set, and listen to the army band that was playing some old tunes, classic bossa nova stuff and some military marches. I could hear it from a distance.

But as I drew nearer to the square, the band became silent for a second, as though they were preparing something fresh. I reacted to the surprise a bit faster than most, as the first silent chords of the famous melody had already given it away to me. The smile only came upon everyone's faces when the familiar tune of Indiana Jones spread around the square.

How many tt are there in ta ta ta taaa?

Deus Teenager Est

A subir o monte de todas as coisas, o Cristo, flagelado, cruz às costas, saberia que o fim vinha perto; que vinha perto, com ele, o novo começo das coisas todas.
Pois não teria o Cristo, flagelado, cruz às costas, tido aquela vontade de cantar baixinho as músicas que aprendeu em adolescente?

Itacolomi

This was the place, this was the threshold, where the road became too winding. The place that was too far away from my sea, too close to something else.

This was the first point where the pioneers started taking inroads into the Brazilian wilderness, setting as their only reference an identifiable rock in the hill, awkwardly shaped like a dick.

And it makes complete sense to me. If I was ever to break the threshold and start taking inroads, I would start by a rock that is shaped like a dick. In fact, that's exactly what I did.

Bairro Alto, very late 2005

It is mostly a blur to me, a phase in between, something of the premise of what was to come already there. Vivi had just spent some six months in Coimbra and then Lisbon and there was the vague plan to move out of Portugal, find something "in Europe" for both of us to stay together. Nothing definite.


Bloc Party, Baquet

And yet, there was something creeping under my skin. The only clear idea in the midst of the blur that comes from that period, is the memory of a party in Frágil were I got the most drunk to date and I decided to rank my degree of drunkness by my willingness to vote for Cavaco for President of the Republic (I havent't got to that point yet, although I have sometimes reached the point when I thought he was not so bad). I have smiled as much as I did that night, but never for so long in a row.

Something was creeping under my skin. An idea. Here, there, wherever, I was definitely gonna be an indie kid.

Between the Tyrrhenean and the Ionian Seas, July 2006

Luna Pop, 50 Special

On the deck of a ferry boat that was carrying my train into Sicily, a girl couldn't help but asking what a ragged looking guy, gathering thoughts on a ragged looking notebook, was doing there. "I'm travelling, I answered, just losing time".

She then told me that i looked like Lorenzo Cremonini: "you know, the guy from Luna Pop". I didn't know, but I pretty much took it as a compliment.

Beauty

Beauty always comes first
Even if it usually doesnt come at first.

Ai miei amici italiani

It is with no modesty that I almost daily commemorate the fact that I know Italy, that I know Italian and that I know Italians.



Su ragazzi! Chi se ne frega della politica.

blank

Não me conformei ao medo de te ver vazia
Nem me conformo à ânsia de te querer encher
O vento cantar-me-à a resposta
Ao ouvido

Clubitis

Everytime I get attached to a country, be it because I lived there or because I got close to someone that comes from there, I wind up choosing a football team that I support. My extensive list of football affiliation, at this point, stands like this:

Portugal - FC Porto (above and beyond)
Belgium - Sint Truiden VV
Italy - AC Milan
England - Liverpool FC
Germany - VfB Stuttgart

and now,
Brasil - SE Palmeiras

How could I ever not support a team that just lost the city derby against the all-mighty São Paulo FC with an irregular goal by the emperor Adriano (formerly with Inter), put in with his hand. Moreover, I was missing a team that played in green.

Orson Wells Ressurection Award

In Brussels, we used to take turns to choose the movie we'd use our month cinema card on. To my blockbustery taste, she would always reply with one of her "movies in French", the perfect remedy for my suburbaness. Persepolis was the greatest of her victories and one of my owras.

If not for the courage of portraying people as people, Iranian, Austrian or otherwise, for a delicious scene where a perky little Karl Marx incites God to go on with the "struggle".

Oui, Marjane, la lute continue!

Orson Wells Ressurection Award

It is as rare as it is precious the work of artistic creation that manages to tap into the recogniseable core of experiences of what one may call "humanity". To do so in a German context, a German story deep inside the German history, is, for very opposite reason, all the more rare and all the more precious. And all the more worthy of my Orson Wells Ressurection Award.

The film traces the steps of Captain Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, a ruthless, methodical officer of the East German political police, the Stasi, that finds himself a new mission. The film then goes on to collect the events that lead Wiesler, code name HGW XX/7, to change the nature of that mission.

With the intimacy and the reserved distance with which a member of the publikum watches a "play" - in this case, the life of Georg Dreyman and Christa-Maria Sieland - HGW XX/7 will eventually seek salvation for his own life.

Orson Wells Ressurection Award

It is usual to say that Islam constitutes an irrational, violent religion, still immersed in its own Dark Ages. Albeit all, I ask how can such a thing be said about a people that is so in love with something they would spend the whole day singing* to It.

For a love song on the phone sung between two mending lovers, Dans Paris got one my Orson Wells Ressurection Awards.

* Koran means "recitation", which means that, in practice as well as in spirit, everytime they pray, Muslims sing back to God the words God sang to the Prophet.

Répose dans ma tendresse

Uma vez tentaram Sansão com uma cantiga do bandido.



Quis ela que o lembrasse disso.

Ao meu avô

De um pulo, franqueou os três degraus que davam às portas abertas da igreja da Guadalupe. Entrou e sentiu escorrer-lhe no pescoço a frescura da ermida, sombria em contraste com a luz amarela e quente que lhe envolvia o corpo lá fora.
Passou o punho pela testa enquanto tirava o chapéu da cabeça e encaminhou-se direito, de passo acelerado, à imagem da cruz. Enquanto engolia de um trago a coxia central, visou à direita do altar uma imagem de Nossa Senhora, de olhos suplicantes fixados no tecto da igreja. Foi sentar-se ao lado dela.

De olhos baixos, rodando impaciente a aba do chapéu, sentiu subir-lhe estômago a cima uma gargalhada que a ermida proibia. Tentou, a esforço, esconder dos olhos suplicantes da virgem, o sorriso que quase lhe escapava pelo canto da boca. Parou de rodar o chapéu, olhando de soslaio a Virgem Santíssima. Os olhos agora escondiam tão mal o sorriso quanto o canto vincado do lábio. Baixinho baixinho, começou a cantar.

Ao passar da ribeirinha, pus o pé,
Molhei a meia, pus o pé,
Molhei a meia, pus o pé,
Molhei a meia

Não casei na minha terra, fui casar
A terra alheia, fui casar
A terra alheia, fui casar
A terra alheia

Estancou o canto, de olhos fixos no chão com o riso a tremer-lhe irreprimível nos lábios. Voltou a visar o olhar suplicante da Virgem pelo bico do olho.

Minha Mãe dá-m’um conselho, que me dói
A passarinha, que me dói
A passarinha, que me doí
A passarinha

Ò filha coç’à c’o dedo, qu’eu também
Cocei a minha, qu’eu também
Cocei a minha, qu’eu também
Cocei a minha

about a pulse

it couldnt have come as a shock. But then again, how could it not?
My grandfather is dead.

Before i left him for the last time, lying in that bed,
no clothes, no glasses, no skin,
just the breathing bones of a man getting old a little bit too much,
i made one last gesture to him, my last gesture to him

when i was a kid, i was told to have an arrithmic heart,
(a concept i have come to embrasse in a poetic way, in the lack of any particular physical consequence)
and my grandfather would press my whrist, to feel my faulty pulse
to certify that all was well

when he died, no glasses, no skin,
i went to him one last time
and i held his whrist, faultier than mine had ever been
and i felt nothing

with a smile in the corner of my lip,
i sparked a sware word,
"fuck, i cant feel a goddamned thing"

like him, my grandfather,
it is most funny to me
how i was never too good at getting the pulse of others.

Passports for dummies

I’m sitting at the open wireless space at the ultra-fancy Zürich Airport, waiting my long hours for the connection that will eventually take me to S. Paulo.

But if someone had told me this morning, round about 8.00 AM, Lisbon time, that I would be that I would be taking such relaxed advantage of the fanciness of this place, I would have said I doubted it. This morning, round about 8.00 AM, Lisbon time, I didn’t own a passport of my own and the prospects of getting my hands to one before the flight departed at round about noon, Lisbon time just as well, were certainly not great.

This trip started yesterday, as any good trip, before it started, when I realized that my good’old passport, other from not being in the place where I usually keep it, was no-where else to be found. This, I repeat, a few hours shy of taking off. I looked and looked, trust me, time and again, under every rock, in every dark corner, in the middle of every page, but it wasn’t there.

And so it was passportless that I decided to face the airport gateway to Brazil, a country one cannot enter passportless. And yet it all worked out in the end, as things tend to when the end draws ever near. The Portuguese Republic, in all its might, has created a modality of passport that can be made on the spot, in case you find yourself in a tight one. Of course, as with everything with my republic, it wasn’t going to allow me to give it due praise without a fight. Before getting this passport, one must go to the police station at the airport and claim that his good’old document is lost. A number of dumb questions will obviously garnish the whole experience, as a testament to your own dumbness in having lost the God damned thing. “Where did you lose it?”, they asked me.

- Uuurh, I don’t know?

- Well, but how did it happen?

- I guess I thought I knew where it was, but when I went to look for it I found out I didn’t know after all.

- Ok, but what’s your name again.

- I think it’s easier if you just copy it from the ID card I already gave you.

I answered everything calmly, pacified by the notion that I deserved that for not having been able to find my passport the very day before I was ever going to need it. And so I answered, I waited, I saw time passing by, and when the nice officer finally made it to the printer and handed me the piece of paper, I ran.

“No need to hurry”, I was told. The republic shone its brightest face at me again. I met with the officer of the border control, Ana Paula, the nicest person all day (needless to say my parents, and quite rightfully so, lost that title the very second they realized I lost my freaking passport. “What time is your flight, sonny?” Paula asked. “In just 2 hours”, I replied, hiding my nervousness behind my fakest smile. “Oh, there’s more than time”, and she was right. This passport takes 10 minutes to make. It is all hand-written and thinner than the usual one, because it is only meant to last 6 months and one is not expected to ask for the whole lot of strange visas in that period, especially when all you have is a hand-written passport.

It’s also of a different color. It is dark blue instead of the usual burgundy ones, a special color, for a special set of people. As if to say, “count your blessings, jackass! And thank God we won’t make you go around with a good'old «dummy» sign on your back.”

Mar meu

Olho o mar meu
Um mar de medo
De um brado escuro, ledo, calado
Mudo no lábio trémulo
Brando num mar de mau grado

O mar meu manso
Na maré vazia da morte
De um mar de mora
Milha perdida ao tempo
Ao verde achado ora

O mar meu vivo
Onde vive perdida a hora
Mar de mel, mar de sol, mar de sim
Mar meu onde perco os olhos
A achar um mar de mim