Erasure - the band

Ooh, Sometimes,
the truth is harder
than the pain inside,
yeaah,
Ooh, Sometimes,
it's the broken heart
that decides.

The first time I heard this song, and saw the video, I was 16 or around that age (the band released the single in the UK in 1986). I remember Andy Bell, the singer, with his crisp blue-jeans and immaculate white shirt, and gorgeous hair, and toned body, dancing on a building's rooftop. I wanted to dance like him.

At the time, it was not just the rhythm but the lyrics too, that enthralled me. There was something queer about them, something that appealed to me, deep down, as if I could also speak their language, or they could speak mine.

Been thinking about you
I just couldn't wait to see
fling my arms around you
as we fall in ecstasy.

This wasn't the way male singers talked about their girls in pop songs. This was about a boy, I felt (I didn't have enough words at the time to make it a thought, just a feeling).

Erasure, the band, was part of my gayducation. And that's my own word, by the way.

Erasure - the book

I said some time ago that I would write a post about this book. I said I was hooked. It's difficult to convey now all the emotions the book made me go through at the time of my reading. It suffices to say that it was a fine surprise of a book, which I bought in a tiny English-speaking bookshop in Brussels, Nicola's Bookshop; sadly gone. I guess it was another victim of the economic downturn. But while it lasted, it was one of the best places to find unexpected books, by unexpected authors. The owner made her own selection, as if she was offering her library back home to the public to discover, and that's what was so special about the place.

Now, back to Erasure, the book. It dealt with race issues in the US, and played with our prejudices, misconceptions and expectations. It was amusing and at times difficult to understand. The main character, a writer and a professor of literature, makes a speech in one of the chapters of which I almost didn't understand a word. But somehow it really didn't matter, I just went with the flow.

There's a book inside a book. In order to get published as a "black writer" - a category everybody seems to be interested in pinning him down into - the main character writes a "black book", i.e. what it's "really" like to be black in America. What's disturbing about it is how entertaining his stereotypical description of ghetto life is. I actually enjoyed it, and it was sometimes easy to forget that although it sounded real, it wasn't real, but a construct, a codified literary construct of what "black life" in America is supposed to be.

Anyway, the real story, with real people, in real time, the one that takes place in Washington D.C., for instance, is what kept me turning the pages, the one I wished would keep on going for a little while longer when the book finally ended, because I liked the characters and got to enjoy their company. But yes, I know that they too were literary constructs.

By the way, the author's name is Percival Everett. Beautiful. And as someone in the novel might have asked, the character's literary agent for instance, "is that supposed to be a real black person's name?". Ah, reality...

Christmas went by

This Christmas was kind of weird. We were in Lund. There was less snow than I expected, but when we arrived, there was still plenty of it around. Jarl's father was at the rehabilitation clinic, after more than a month in hospital, and everybody was slightly out of synch, I guess. It was strange to visit him there. Sometimes it felt unreal, like a parallel world. Soon, in a couple of minutes, your life will resume its normalcy. I sort of expected a voice saying those words coming out of the blue in the middle of our visits to Bror. It didn't happen.

The bed in our flat was hard as rocks. Even I got a back pain, and I'm not very sensitive when it comes to sleeping arrangements. Was it always that hard? I didn't sleep very well most of the nights and woke up feeling like I needed another eight hours of sleep during the day. Georgie had trouble to fall a sleep. That flat is too small anyway. We need more space. All sorts of space. We spent inordinate amounts of time with food. What for, my sweet goodness? I felt like a fish out of water. Hard to breath. Nowhere to swim. Flapping soundlessly. I feel terrible when I sleep badly. No endurance in the sleep-deprivation department, I'm afraid. Unless it's for a good cause, like writing a blog...

But I enjoyed those tiny moments when Jarl and I could crack a joke together in French. Well, just speaking French sends us both into hoots of laughter, it does. Something only the two of us can really get, or at least that's the way we feel, and we want it to be that way. C'est très tendence! Oh goodness, it was really funny, just between me and him. Private. Intimate. Perfect. Jarl can be real funny in a silly-kiddy-intellectual kind of way. I love that about him. He looks so young and cute, and smart and playful.

And then there was Georgie around, saying things that mesmerize me, amuse me, annoy me, entice me, inspire me, irritate me, elate me, surprise me, embrace me, motivate me, spin me, love me. Georgie has the power to transform trees into castles and mud into gold. Birds can talk. Flowers can cry. You can dream that you flew over the waves. That you made a puzzle of Galo de Barcelos together with papa and papalu. And that's more than magic, it's alchemy.

colours

Sometimes Jarl doesn't understand that I'm not purple, I'm mauve. Sometimes I don't know either what colour he really is. Sometimes we're both colour blind.

Saga Lusa IV

The night of the 1001 cousins. That's what I call the dinner party on Sunday in Lisbon. Sandra had the idea of bringing together a group of paternal cousins with whom I had grown up. Most of them I hadn't seen since my father's funeral in 1996. I didn't know most of their children, although a couple of them I had met as babies and toddlers. Two of them were now celebrating 18, and one also the fact that she had a driving license!

It felt a bit like childhood revisited, although all of us had a few more wrinkles, the men with a few more kilos, and the women still quite fit and smart! Who said that men age better than women? Only on TV! It reminded me of one of those birthday parties of long-time-no-see ago, the way we scattered all over the place, as if it were an indoors picnic. It felt easy to talk, no awkwardness at all. Mind you, I was a bit nervous before getting there.

Georgie mingled so easily with her cousins. It was special to see our children playing together. David, Sandra's youngest, said to Georgie "just call out cousin and everybody will come to you, don't even bother to learn all the names". It was sweet and to the point.

I thought of my father. What would he say? I genuinely think he would be happy. I wished he could be there to see us. Because these are the things that really matter, the thread and substance of life. Love, friendship, feeling, hands, eyes, mouth, nose, ears.

I hope to keep in touch with my 1001 cousins, on my mother's and on my father's side. They are the closest thing I have to siblings and the truth is that all over these years of sometimes emotional exile I never forgot them for a second. They remain part of me. Tucked away or out of doors, they're truly part of me.

Saga Lusa III

I read a book by Adriana Calcanhotto the last night of our stay in Lisbon. Saga Lusa. Does it need translating? I would guess not. A Swedish and a Portuguese word in one sentence. Just like me and Jarl. Trying to make sense. Looking odd side by side, yet so right.

I had been out having dinner with my cousins and drank two glasses of Coke. Enough to keep me awake for the night. I went looking for an antidote in the form of reading and found the book in Manuel's collection. The irony, or coincidence, or fate, or destiny - I never quite knew the difference between all these - was that the story was about pill-induced insomnia. How appropriate!

I read the book in about two hours. The book reads like a long, addictive, gigantic personal e-mail, or a long diatribe against the flu virus and anti-inflammatory pills. Sounds what, lame? But it was really entertaining, although far from high-art. Would it have been published if the author had been someone like you and me? Hell, no! But this is the era of celebrity culture and even a special musician-poet-composer-singer like Calcanhotto falls into the category these days.

I read it all and fell asleep. And there's nothing more to say.

Saga Lusa II

We stayed with Manuel, Gonçalo and their son Guilherme. They gave us their usual bread of tenderness to eat and made us feel at home. Gonçalo told me that their street used to be called Caracol da Penha de França. For those unfortunate enough not to speak portuguese, I agree to translate: the Curl of the Peak of France. It sounds royal, yet it's so simple and straight to the point. The street raises and falls like a mighty curl, and the penha is like a peak indeed, bursting out of the soil, full of buildings like teeth inside a giant's mouth. From now on, that's how I'll refer to Rua Marques da Silva. A curl is a curl, and it can move imaginations, like a spring. Pling!

Carla and Zé came for dinner on Saturday. Carla came with her two children. Zé came with his lovers, in absentia. We talked and laughed. We talked about our kids and our lovers, past, present and future, who knows... Then we laughed about our kids and ourselves, and our lovers, all tenses confounded. Zé said he doesn't want to fall in love. Ever again. It reminded me of that song by the Fine Young Cannibals, "never fallen in love with someone, never fallen in love, in love with someone, never fallen in love, in love with someone who's never fallen in love with. Did you ever fall in love? Did you ever? Did you ever? Did you ever?". And then my heart went on to sing, but so, so very low and softly, that I could barely hear it myself above the fray of his speech and the cars outside in the streets:

"Some day he'll come along, The man I love, And he'll be big and strong, The man I love, And when he comes my way I'll do my best to make him stay! He'll look at me and smile; I'll understand, And in a little while, He'll take my hand; And though it seems absurd, I know we both won't say a word! Maybe I shall meet him Sunday, Maybe Monday, maybe not, Still I'm sure to meet him one day; Maybe Tuesday will be my good news day! We'll build a little home Just meant for two, From which I'll never roam; Who would? Would you? And so, all else above, I'm waiting for the man I love!"

That's by George and Ira Gershwin, and I'm sure you knew. I didn't say a word. I just sang it softly with every breath I took. Can you imagine me not saying anything? I almost can't. Pourtant...

Saga Lusa I

I was in Lisbon last weekend. I took Georgie with me. She is great to travel with. We had fun together. I love holding her hand walking down the street watching people go by. I know, I wrote this here before, but I really do. And it sounds like a song. I loved showing her the light of Lisbon, the way the sky bends at the horizon. We went to the Oceanário and saw the sharks, the manta-rays, the sun-fish, the penguins, the puffins, the oters, the fish, the fish, the fish. We also saw the ghost-fish, who shone in the dark. A bit spoky those fish.

We rode the telepheric at Parque das Nações and laughed like crazy all the way up in the air. Like hot air balloons. And then we went to the book fair inside Gare do Oriente, where I bought Caím by Saramago. Ah, the pleasure of buying a book on the Index of the Catholic Church... diabolic pleasure without the smell of sulphur. A book can still move mountains. It's good to be reminded of that.

We saw little children, and big children too, play violin at Reitoria da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, nearby Lisbon's Great Mosque (which looks so much prettier than last time, with a proper minaret shining bright in the evening sky of Praça de Espanha; and go tell that to the Suiss who voted down a month ago the sight of minarets among their ozone-layer-depleting cows!). It felt good to be sitting there next to Guida listening to Christmas music, from Bach to Little Star. Our friendship is like a heart-shaped red box of chocolate pralines. Georgie loved the stripped gloves she gave her. It made her look like Emília, the super-smart, silly-naughty doll in Sítio do Picapau Amarelo. This was centuries ago, when Brazil arrived at our doorstep in the shape of a magic place on TV.

We heard Berstein's West Side Story on the stero in our bedroom. I fell to my knees, tears about to cry, when the shooting gun was heard and the last song was sung. I sang with all my strength "there's a place for us, a time and a place for us, hold my hand and we're half way there, hold my hand and I'll take you there, somehow, somewhere, someday". Something like that. Emotion is never accurate, only it knows what it feels is real. I shared this moment with Georgie. She became a fan. She is a bit of a drama queen too, like her papalu. I'll always be sorry for those who don't fall on their knees with tears in their eyes, with Lisbon in the background, and the sun like a shield of gold, and the sky with clouds the colour and the shape of cotton, when on a stereo plays a record by Berstein with West Side Story. Where do they get their tears from?