Sunday 31 January 2010

Aya de Yopougon

It's my favourite bande déssinée. Yopougon is a middle-class neighbourhood of Abidjan, the capital of Côte d'Ivoire. Marguerite Abouet (author) and Clément Oubrerie (cartoonist), have created a universe full of humanity and joie de vivre.

Aya is the central character. She's serious, engaged, intelligent, gracious. A bit like the cricket in Disney's Pinocchio, she's everybody's conscience in Yopougon. "Give a little whistle, give a little whistle..."

It's hard to remain insensible to the characters, their problems, their dreams, their hopes and their achievements. Yopougon seems miles away from my corner in Brussels, but yet I feel it so close, dêh! It's a wonderful way to learn more about Africa and to realise, if need be, that wherever there's people, our love, our hatred, our happiness, our sadness, our blood, are really the same. Cliché? Well, it doesn't make it less true, does it?

I found the BD by chance. I was coming home some time ago and passed by the BD shop in rue vanderkindere. I had never been inside it in all these years of living here. I looked at the cover of tome number 1 and was transfixed. This looked good, my goodness! A real story, with credible characters, in Africa. Not about wars and famine, but about the daily lives of people I could identify with. The drawing was good too. Full of nerve, and colour, and humour. So I bought the whole 4 volumes and came home. I devoured them.

Today, I bought the fifth one in a BD shop in Boulevard Anspach, that happens to be open on Sundays, and the anticipation in the tram coming home was just so nice to feel. To sit on the sofa and open one more tome of Aya de Yopougon and travel far, and feel so close to home.

Saturday 30 January 2010

snow

Snow. Again! I'm sick and tired of this white mess!

Friday 29 January 2010

Division Street America

The title is from a book by Studs Terkel (1912-2008), a best-selling American author and journalist who lived in Chicago. It's a book of interviews published in 1967, in the midst of one of the hottest periods of XX century cultural transformation in the US; the civil-rights movement is one good example of that transformation, to mention just one major thing.

It's a book about Chicago, and it's part of my evolving love affair with this town. It's a great selection of testimonies, by people from all walks of life, and a fascinating way to get inside America, and inside a city that shaped so much of what we know about the US as a whole; free-market capitalism, sky-scrappers, post-Bauhaus functionalist architecture (by the German-born Mies van der Rohe), the industrialisation of meat production and its consequences on civilisation as we know it, racial zoning laws and Black ghettos, labour and anarchist movements, the birth of urban sociology, the invention of futures and derivatives in agriculture, gangsters (remember Al Capone?), the melting pot, the Blues, anti-Vietnam war protests, a new concept of community work with Jane Addams and Hull House. NYC, move over!

Part XXI, called The Inheritors, a series of interviews with young people, opens with the following lines by Lucky Miller, aged 19, "I love life. I only wish some of it would come my way". Ah, Lucky you, to make poetry so easily!

Monday 25 January 2010

butterflies in a powerpoint

And what if butterflies came flying into your powerpoint? Then what? Would you leave the office with the softness of flowers in your eyes? Would you cross the street and see a river? Would you caress the walls? Would you sleep inside a tree? Would you?

Just imagine, you are doing a powerpoint presentation. The world is grey. And suddenly butterflies burst into your powerpoint presentation. Then what? Would you carry on oblivious? Would you flutter your eyelids? Would you sing a love song to your boss? Would you kiss the geranium in its pot? Would you make a bed of twigs? Would you become like light? Would you fly? Would you hold my hand? Would you?

Imagine a butterfly, then two, then three, then four, then five, then six, then seven, then many, invading the screen, one after the other, running, flying. Then what? Would you scream? Would you go outside and lay on the grass? Would you eat a sandwich? Would it be Times Square in New York? Would you become a neon light? Would you sigh? Then what? Then what? I know, I know. What good is there in telling? No good, no good at all. Just butterflies, butterflies, butterflies inside your eyes, into your life, in your powerpoint presentation. Everybody mesmerized. And alive. Alive. Alive. Like in a dream.

Today, I watched with Jarl a short film called Futures & Derivatives by Arthur Halpern of the USA. It lasted 18 minutes. And I agree with Caetano Veloso when he sings that Americans bring lots of happiness to this world. Just 18 minutes. Oh, wow!

Friday 15 January 2010

Uma Casa Portuguesa

Uma Casa Portuguesa (A Portuguese House), is an iconic Portuguese song, made famous - I mean stratospherically famous - by Amália Rodrigues, an icon herself of flesh and blood, and miraculous powers some would say...

But I read in one of my recent book explorations - Angola, Terra Prometida (Angola, Promised Land) - that the song was first created in former Lourenço Marques, now Mozambique's capital Maputo, and sung there in 1951 by Sara Chaves at the age of 19 (an Angolan-born, white Portuguese singer). This was two years before Amália would make it known.

This so-very-Portuguese song of all times, was first heard in a contest for young singers in a small theatre house in the neighbourhood of Lhanguéne. This is Portugal the way I like it. Creole. 'Nha Terra.

Monday 4 January 2010

Brussels was beautiful tonight

I was walking home tonight after an office New Year reception at the house of my Director General. Entertaining to say the least. All the ambitious people, me included, trying to mingle, get information, be on top of the game. We played a lottery, with all the gifts he gets from foreign visitors and which he doesn't wish to keep. I wonder if they ever heard about this... Some people were lucky. I came away with a book about Raphael's Villa Madamma (chosen from an ad hoc selection; first come first served), which Jarl says costs 60 euros on the Internet. Anyway, this doesn't really deserve a post.

My post is about discovering the beauty of Brussels. It took me 13 years to find it. Yeah, I'm slow in love. I was by the Royal National Library. There's a garden there, with two rows of trees, a fountain, several sculptures, an equestrian statue. It was all covered in snow and there were supertroopers in rainbow colours shining from the roof of the library onto the bushes below. And then, to the side, there was a square of blue transparent glass coming out of the earth. It's the entrance to the new Brussels Conference Centre. It looked precious. Like a cube of ice.

One of the buildings in the garden had been transformed into a Chinese pavilion. Europalia is about China this year, it seems. A bit odd, but there it was, with thousands of yellow and red paper lanterns, like a dream in the night. There was absolutely nobody around. Just me and my footsteps. In the distance I could see the steeple of the Hôtel de Ville, illuminated from within and the Flemish brick houses around it. It smelled of calm and silence. Of order too.

Brussels looked beautiful for the very first time. It spoke to me for the very first time. I could recognise in it a little of my home. I was touched. Goodness, it took me 13 years to get here, to find its beauty. To find it beautiful. For it to speak to me. For me to understand it. Can you imagine? A momentous moment. It really deserves an alliteration.

My footsteps sounded like felt on the pavement. The snow has the power to erase all ugliness. The cold creates a feeling of awe. The empty garden was suspended in light, and glass, and night.

Friday 1 January 2010

1st thought on new year's first day

My first conscious thought this morning just out of bed was "ser é uma batalha para a vida inteira", "being is a battle for one's entire life". It came to me while walking from the bedroom to the bathroom. 2010 has started under the aegis of being. It was, is and will be my life's enduring battle. Ser.