This evening I went to the Hilton Hotel in Brussels to celebrate Angola's national day (they became independent from Portugal on 11 November 1975). It was the usual stuff. Mingling, talking, gathering information, pretending to be amused, interested; sometimes I was. It was funny to see the Israeli ambassador walking around with her two body-guards.
The music was far too loud, everybody had to shout in each others' ears to get any point across. There was a moment when the singer came out of the stage and started walking around with his mic and singing "My Way", the Frank Sinatra "My Way". He stopped by the Angolan ambassador, like a troubadour in the Middle Ages must have done before his Lordship. It was amusing. So loud. Goodness, can anybody shut him up for a minute? We're trying to do some diplomacy around here.
Anyway, it was on the way home that the evening's beauty had time to wash over my senses. It was cold today. Almost freezing cold. I walked down the boulevard to catch the tram at place Stéphanie. It was Armistice Day today, and shops had been closed all day. There were so few cars, Brussels felt like a village. The air was dry and walking kept me cozy. I was wrapped inside my big Italian anorak. It felt like the cold was warm.
I was walking silently listening to my ipod, and the lights in the shops, the Gucci, the Versace, the Louis Vuitton, the Ferragamo, the Chanel, were shining like underwater ghosts. Soft, very softly. Like whispers of light. Then I caught the tram. The driver was cute and friendly. He said bonsoir. When was the last time a tram driver said bonsoir to me? It was that kind of night with stars. I felt so good.
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Sunday, 8 November 2009
the unexpected power of the body
I heard the phrase this morning on the BBC's Worldservice radio. I liked it and it stuck with me throughout the day wanting to be written down on my blog.
Friday, 6 November 2009
the geography of love
We were in Stockholm a couple of days ago visiting uncle Dag and aunt Memi (but she only wants to be called Memi). Then Susan and her daughter Sarah were here from Chicago/New York (via Heidelberg and Amsterdam). Susan and her companion, Beth, are going to rent their flat to us in Chicago when we go there next year in the summer for three whole months (Wow, just think of that!). Next summer it will be wonderful to spend time with aunt Becky and uncle Ed, and Ben, Karen and their son Jacob, as well as Debbie and her family, in Chicago.
Tomorrow Fidelma is coming to visit us from Ireland. I wonder when we will next see aunt Denise, who lives in Strasbourg. It would also be fun to go again to London and see our cousins, all of them. I wonder when we'll be able to meet again aunt Kat and our cousins Emil and Viktor in Copenhagen. This Christmas we'll spend it with Farmor and Farfar in Lund. I hope it will snow. The Botanical Garden will look like a fairytale. Maybe the Danes will join us too.
I'm also planning to go to Lisbon with Georgie and see Mami and Vóvó before the end of the year, before Mami goes to Luanda to spend time with the Angolan side of the family. In Lisbon, it would be great if we could meet all of our cousins and uncles and aunts, and our friends too, like Zé, Manuel and Gonçalo and their son Guilherme, and aunt Guida of course.
Thank goodness for our few friends in Brussels, like Pascal, Antonio, Charlotta and Agneta, otherwise it seems our heart is always somewhere else. The (many) acquaintances fill in some gaps, but they don't taste real; like fake sugar.
We are like gypsies of the heart, travelling all the time to meet the ones we love. Elis Regina, the late Brazilian singer, has a song where she says that her dream is to have a house in the country, where she could keep her books, her friends, and her records, and nothing more. Well, I wished I had them all in one place too. Close to the heart, forever, and ever, and ever. Around the corner, literally. It sounds possessive, I know.
When I look at a map of the world, I see these dozens of hearts throbing in all the corners of the globe and their glow keeps me company, but it also reminds me of how lonely it feels sometimes here in Brussels.
And the vessels of my heart are the runaways of airports, and its blood is made of air and clouds, and the cells are airplanes fueled by love and solitude; sweet pain of combustion. Anti-gravity laws. Up, up, and away. Like superman.
Tomorrow Fidelma is coming to visit us from Ireland. I wonder when we will next see aunt Denise, who lives in Strasbourg. It would also be fun to go again to London and see our cousins, all of them. I wonder when we'll be able to meet again aunt Kat and our cousins Emil and Viktor in Copenhagen. This Christmas we'll spend it with Farmor and Farfar in Lund. I hope it will snow. The Botanical Garden will look like a fairytale. Maybe the Danes will join us too.
I'm also planning to go to Lisbon with Georgie and see Mami and Vóvó before the end of the year, before Mami goes to Luanda to spend time with the Angolan side of the family. In Lisbon, it would be great if we could meet all of our cousins and uncles and aunts, and our friends too, like Zé, Manuel and Gonçalo and their son Guilherme, and aunt Guida of course.
Thank goodness for our few friends in Brussels, like Pascal, Antonio, Charlotta and Agneta, otherwise it seems our heart is always somewhere else. The (many) acquaintances fill in some gaps, but they don't taste real; like fake sugar.
We are like gypsies of the heart, travelling all the time to meet the ones we love. Elis Regina, the late Brazilian singer, has a song where she says that her dream is to have a house in the country, where she could keep her books, her friends, and her records, and nothing more. Well, I wished I had them all in one place too. Close to the heart, forever, and ever, and ever. Around the corner, literally. It sounds possessive, I know.
When I look at a map of the world, I see these dozens of hearts throbing in all the corners of the globe and their glow keeps me company, but it also reminds me of how lonely it feels sometimes here in Brussels.
And the vessels of my heart are the runaways of airports, and its blood is made of air and clouds, and the cells are airplanes fueled by love and solitude; sweet pain of combustion. Anti-gravity laws. Up, up, and away. Like superman.
Monday, 26 October 2009
Morrer como um homem
To die like a man. It's the title of João Pedro Rodrigues' new film. I saw it last Sunday at the Nova cinema in Brussels during this year's edition of Pinkscreens. It is a very beautiful film. It's not just the fact that I know so many of the people and the characters in it - the film is a slice of Lisbon at night as I knew it in the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's. As I told the director during the Q&A session that followed the screening, his film has lucidité sentimentale. People tend to think that those at the margins, like transvestites, live lives detached from reality, but I actually think that they live lives that are intensely real and that is why they dream so much, and hurt so much in the process.
There was someone behind me who said to someone beside him that all Portuguese are crazy, that we are cut off from the rest of Europe, that we have nothing in common. But the themes explored in this film, apart from being universal, are very European. It deals with the quest for identity in general and gender identity in particular, with tragic love in the best classical Greek tradition, with the role of women as the initiators of mankind into the world of dreams and mysteries. Le féminin sacré; sacré féminin!
I loved seeing Maria Bakker (alwyas double K!) in the film. MB became a character à part entière, bravo! I wonder where the German quotations came from. Was it Schiele? Gonçalo Ferreira de Almeida, the actor playing MB, was for many years the flatmate of my former lover, Zé Manuel. I met him many times in their flat surrounded by a haze of creative cannabis. MB is his creation and a powerful one. In the film, it made an interesting contrast to the character of Tonia, who, although apparently free to be what she wants to be, is in reality constrained by many mental strings. MB is free in her essence, not bothering to question herself about whether she is a real woman. No one is a real woman, not even biological women, in the sense that femininity is construed, invented, and is as much the product of its creator as it is in the eye of the beholder. MB does not need a sex-change, because she incarnates her imagined woman.
There are many poetic moments in the film, but there were two high such moments for me. The gambuzinos' hunt in the forest and the tableau vivant of Tonia, her boyfriend, MB, Paulinha and the doctor, resting on a tree trunk surrounded by the red of the night and listening to that song that came from everywhere and nowhere. Was it Antony, from Antony and the Johnsons? Maybe not, but it was close. I think there should be a film about MB, she is ripe for it. I hope she'll invite me to come and sing a song. Ah, me and MB, it would be a riot!
Then there is the last scene, with Tonia singing at her funeral, with Lisbon in the back, the buildings, the cars, and the red-dusk bridge over the river Tejo, with its two arches like the breasts Tonia had to give away.
The film was so sad it felt like singing all the time. And indeed it reads also as a musical, with the songs of António Variações and Marco Paulo providing most of the soundtrack; songs that the characters sing themselves on the road to their destiny. I also go through life singing. There is nothing more natural than that.
MB's relation with Paulinha, her maid, her assistant, her pianist, her lover?, made me think of Fassbinder's Petra Von Kant. It had the same qualities of dominance and submission, dependence and betrayal. After all, where would MB be without Paulinha? And what would Paulinha do if MB started to treat her right? The director said he studied Fassbinder and that there where elements of the German director's cinematography in his own films, but the Petra Von Kant thing had not been intentional, it was just me adding another layer of interpretation to the film. Yep, that's what viewers do too!
There was someone behind me who said to someone beside him that all Portuguese are crazy, that we are cut off from the rest of Europe, that we have nothing in common. But the themes explored in this film, apart from being universal, are very European. It deals with the quest for identity in general and gender identity in particular, with tragic love in the best classical Greek tradition, with the role of women as the initiators of mankind into the world of dreams and mysteries. Le féminin sacré; sacré féminin!
I loved seeing Maria Bakker (alwyas double K!) in the film. MB became a character à part entière, bravo! I wonder where the German quotations came from. Was it Schiele? Gonçalo Ferreira de Almeida, the actor playing MB, was for many years the flatmate of my former lover, Zé Manuel. I met him many times in their flat surrounded by a haze of creative cannabis. MB is his creation and a powerful one. In the film, it made an interesting contrast to the character of Tonia, who, although apparently free to be what she wants to be, is in reality constrained by many mental strings. MB is free in her essence, not bothering to question herself about whether she is a real woman. No one is a real woman, not even biological women, in the sense that femininity is construed, invented, and is as much the product of its creator as it is in the eye of the beholder. MB does not need a sex-change, because she incarnates her imagined woman.
There are many poetic moments in the film, but there were two high such moments for me. The gambuzinos' hunt in the forest and the tableau vivant of Tonia, her boyfriend, MB, Paulinha and the doctor, resting on a tree trunk surrounded by the red of the night and listening to that song that came from everywhere and nowhere. Was it Antony, from Antony and the Johnsons? Maybe not, but it was close. I think there should be a film about MB, she is ripe for it. I hope she'll invite me to come and sing a song. Ah, me and MB, it would be a riot!
Then there is the last scene, with Tonia singing at her funeral, with Lisbon in the back, the buildings, the cars, and the red-dusk bridge over the river Tejo, with its two arches like the breasts Tonia had to give away.
The film was so sad it felt like singing all the time. And indeed it reads also as a musical, with the songs of António Variações and Marco Paulo providing most of the soundtrack; songs that the characters sing themselves on the road to their destiny. I also go through life singing. There is nothing more natural than that.
MB's relation with Paulinha, her maid, her assistant, her pianist, her lover?, made me think of Fassbinder's Petra Von Kant. It had the same qualities of dominance and submission, dependence and betrayal. After all, where would MB be without Paulinha? And what would Paulinha do if MB started to treat her right? The director said he studied Fassbinder and that there where elements of the German director's cinematography in his own films, but the Petra Von Kant thing had not been intentional, it was just me adding another layer of interpretation to the film. Yep, that's what viewers do too!
Friday, 23 October 2009
sometimes it snows in April
Today was just that kind of day. I hope you know the song. It's by Prince. If not, listen to it. It's beautiful and kind of sad. Why today? It has to do with the Treaty of Lisbon. Oh, my, now this is becoming a bit of a joke.
But seriously, there will be changes next year that will affect my work, and although I don't risk loosing my job it's hard to tell what I will be doing in say, 6 months time. Since I just started this new job in April this year, and am enjoying it!, I feel a bit cheated by the whole thing, although it was more or less to be expected. But I think the Lisbon Treaty is a good thing for Europe.
Anyway, who said feelings were neat and rational? Nobody. In fact, a bit of snow right now would cheer me up.
But seriously, there will be changes next year that will affect my work, and although I don't risk loosing my job it's hard to tell what I will be doing in say, 6 months time. Since I just started this new job in April this year, and am enjoying it!, I feel a bit cheated by the whole thing, although it was more or less to be expected. But I think the Lisbon Treaty is a good thing for Europe.
Anyway, who said feelings were neat and rational? Nobody. In fact, a bit of snow right now would cheer me up.
Saturday, 17 October 2009
I miss the summer
I was standing by the kitchen window and sighed. Georgina asked, Papalu, why did you sigh? and I replied that I was feeling melancholic. What's melancholic? It's a happy kind of saudade. When you miss something with the taste of honey in your mouth. And what do you miss? I miss the summer. You miss the summer, Papalu.
And then I watched the neighbour in the garden across take a yellow bucket with water to rain on her plants. She was wearing a grey dress the colour of her hair. I saw the orange surf board against the garden window of another neighbour in the distance. Our car was still outside the garage in the patio. Black like the cat who comes to stretch on the roof of the garages.
Today he came to get a bit of sunshine on his shimmering coat. We call to him many times and he looks at us with those eyes-of-seeing-through. The leaves are barely autumnal and there's still a slight swing of warmth from the sun in their fading green. Then the cat was gone. Miao.
And then I watched the neighbour in the garden across take a yellow bucket with water to rain on her plants. She was wearing a grey dress the colour of her hair. I saw the orange surf board against the garden window of another neighbour in the distance. Our car was still outside the garage in the patio. Black like the cat who comes to stretch on the roof of the garages.
Today he came to get a bit of sunshine on his shimmering coat. We call to him many times and he looks at us with those eyes-of-seeing-through. The leaves are barely autumnal and there's still a slight swing of warmth from the sun in their fading green. Then the cat was gone. Miao.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Ourania
Ouranos is "le ciel étoilé". Le Clézio's book, which I'm currently reading, is wet like a river. The sentences are like water and they leave you wet. They taste of water. They are so fresh you feel taken by the current of the river.
There is actually a funny story behind this book. I got it for my birthday in 2008 and forgot about it. It was the time Le Clézio had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Then I took it with me this summer on the plane on my way to Moroni, Comoros. I was going there on a mission to check the political situation. But the book is what matters. I lost it on the plane. I noticed it coming out of the plane in Nairobi. I was enjoying it so much I decided to stay in line for I don't know how long just to make sure that they would find it. They had found no book in French inside my plane. Maybe on the way back from Moroni? The cleaning staff would make sure to keep it safe.
On my way back I again waited for an even longer time to see if the book had been found. No, not really. They had found a Bible, a book in English about fishing, but no book in French, I'm afraid. I guess I felt the way smokers must feel inside a non-smoking flight, anguished, sad. How will I survive all the way from Nairobi to London and then Brussels without my sky with stars, without my river? I survived, but how I missed Ourania on that flight.
And here I am now, savouring again its pages, the language so crystal clear it really feels like water. A cascade of water pouring down inside my head. Ah, it feels good when a book rains all over you!
There is actually a funny story behind this book. I got it for my birthday in 2008 and forgot about it. It was the time Le Clézio had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Then I took it with me this summer on the plane on my way to Moroni, Comoros. I was going there on a mission to check the political situation. But the book is what matters. I lost it on the plane. I noticed it coming out of the plane in Nairobi. I was enjoying it so much I decided to stay in line for I don't know how long just to make sure that they would find it. They had found no book in French inside my plane. Maybe on the way back from Moroni? The cleaning staff would make sure to keep it safe.
On my way back I again waited for an even longer time to see if the book had been found. No, not really. They had found a Bible, a book in English about fishing, but no book in French, I'm afraid. I guess I felt the way smokers must feel inside a non-smoking flight, anguished, sad. How will I survive all the way from Nairobi to London and then Brussels without my sky with stars, without my river? I survived, but how I missed Ourania on that flight.
And here I am now, savouring again its pages, the language so crystal clear it really feels like water. A cascade of water pouring down inside my head. Ah, it feels good when a book rains all over you!
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