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.
Friday, 15 January 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
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.
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...
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...
Monday, 28 December 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, 19 December 2009
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.
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