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Autumn Leaves is one of the most popular jazz songs, with several versions in different languages. It was composed by Joseph Kosma in 1945 with original French lyrics by Jacques Prévert (later it would gain English lyrics by Johnny Mercer) and the instrumental version by pianist Roger Williams reached the top of the 1955 US Billboard charts.

Another song that deals with this time of the year is Autumn in Rio, by Ed Motta, released in 2000. While the French song highlights the sad character of the season, from a European point of view, the Brazilian artist exalts the arrival of mid-season. According to Motta: There is a place to be happy / Besides April in Paris/ Autumn in Rio.

In 2013, on my first CD, I also vocalized my special affection for the season that brings relief to the inclement heat of the tropical summer. After Summer is the name of my homage to the golden lights and mild temperatures of autumm. In my ode to the season, it represents a ritual of saying goodbye to summer and its promisses to enter a period of achievements (in Brazil, we say that the year only begins “after carnival”, which in practice means “after summer”).

Ten years later, I look back at this summer of 2013 and feel a little nostalgic. There are many dreams involved in releasing a first album and, most of the time, only a small part of them come true (we cannot all win all the awards, can we?). Perhaps the great lesson of these last ten years has been exactly this: that it is necessary to keep going, even if one or two projects fall by the wayside.

Or maybe the greatest lesson of the last ten years was learning how to turn those left-behind-dreams into fertilizer for the dreams that will still grow. Just as the leaves that fall in autumn will serve to enrich the earth, in a perpetual cycle of creation. How many past ideas merged into the projects I now take to the stage? How much of yesterday remains in today and will certainly accompany us tomorrow?

A little too philosophical for your taste? True. It must be the season.

Be seeing you!

G. F.


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One of the things I like most about podcasts is the possibility of doing other things while listening to an episode. I am not a fan of multitasking at all, but sometimes the only way to get started on a necessary, but boring task is to combine it with a more pleasant chore. Podcasts work like a charm! There is just one catch to the format: it makes anyone too susceptible to the power of voices.

As I often say, voices are very powerful. I once read that hearing is the second sense to reach the brain the fastest, second only to smell. So how do you escape the spell of an interesting podcast narrated by a beautiful voice? It is simply impossible!

Anyway, precisely because I am aware of this weakness of mine, I try to change programs quickly, so as not to develop any severe form of crush on an unknown voice. You do not have to tell me, and for the sake of discretion, I will not ask you, but I am sure it has happened to you, too, and we both know that kind of crush can be a huge problem.

While a flesh-and-blood obejct of desire is subject to mistakes, like any human being, the voices hover over our heads, fluttering, intangible and infallible. Enigmatic, voices can be very deceiving. One of the most commom mistakes is to assume that the rest of the body matches the voice, which is not always true. For whatever reason, some extraordinaire voices choose the most plain bodies to live. Go figure!

Today I received a very kind compliment on the comments of one of the podcasts I produce (the complete list you can find by clicking here), which made me very happy, because a kind compliment is always welcome. On the other hand, it reaffirmed what I already knew: voices go much further than we may ever suppose. It also made me think about the size of the responsibility of any content producer, which today basically means all of us.

In this moment of virtual assistants, the multiplication of applications that allow you to change and edit voices with high fidelity, and very sophisticated chatbots, I would like to suggest a moment of silence and reflection on the role you want your voice to play.

Oh, and you can access my current number one crush-podcast by clicking here. Unmissable, essential and another great reason to learn Portuguese.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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The Girl Code is the tenth episode of The Simpsons 27th season. Its first segment holds a delightful scene at Springfield Elementary:

Principal Skinner: “Welcome to computer coding class, which, uh, replaces our last educational fad -mindfulness. Did anyone ever figure out what that was?”

Class: “Uh… Uh… Uh…”

Milhouse: “Uh, shutting up?”

Principal Skinner: “Sure. Why not?”

I just love the definition of mindfulness as ‘be quiet’ because it is impossible to argue with. The episode came right to my mind, when I heard about J.O.M.O.

Oh no, another hipster acronym? Probably, but this one might interest you for the Joy of Missing Out may be a form of liberation.

Do not worry, we are not talking about happiness through alienation (never worked for me), but the ability we have, but which we increasingly give up, to enjoy the here and now. that is, it is mindfulness with a touch of happiness.

You not only do not do stuff, you choose not to do them! I have already written about the right not to do things, which sometimes seems like a taboo. Well, J.O.M.O. is not about defending a right. It is about having a choice. What kind of choices? All kinds, from staying informed but not watching all the news (is it just me?).

It has also to do with not feeling pressured to watch all the series and, instead, rewatch an old movie or maybe go back ten pages in the book I am reading, just for the pleasure of rereading a passage.

The way I see it, J.O.M.O. has mainly to do with knowing what your priorities are and recognizing that for every door we open, several others remain closed. It is not possible to do everything, all the time, and this is not easy for me to recognize.

I am usually that person who is constantly applying for calls, while looking for gigs in the summer and (why not?) filling out forms for artistic residencies during the winter. Not to mention the “almost finished” article that the magazine asked me to write . .. last year. In short: I am the one who tries to open all the doors or at least peek through the keyhole.

As much as I love what I do, it is always necessary to know how to put limits on the to-do list. After all, not even the most organized of the agendas can change the fact that there are only twenty-four hours in a day, regardless of how many activities you schedule to perform.

As much as “overcoming internal challenges” is a frequently repeated subject nowadays, there are times when the best thing to do is to embrace external limits and invite them to dance.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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Last week I told you about the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of my first album, including a new single release, Jules & Jim and live congratulations on the date and very kind words from the host of my favourite radio show called Jazz Livre (“Free Jazz”).

The host, Sidney Ferreira, described me as “a tremendously jazzy singer and songwriter”. Is not it beautiful? I was so happy! It meant the world to me, beacuse the curation of the Jazz Livre is simply amazing. This compliment, along with homemade popcorn and a glass of champagne, and wow, what a Tuesday night!

The thrill do not stop there, oh no! The next task I took on, also brought tears to my eyes.

In order to apply for a scholarship, I needed to update my CV. By the way, how long has it been, since you updated yours? In my case, I would say it has been ages and the reason is simple: I do not tend to think about those lines that are supposed to chronologically order the highlights of my existence.

I am not bragging about it at all. In fact, I really admire people who can keep their resumes updated. It is quite a healthy practice and can teach you valuable lessons, if you think about it. Certainly, a few pages are not capable of defining a person, but if your resume cannot be seen as the complete script of your life, it can at least have the importance of, say, a well-written movie synopsis.

After all, those few lines are the first, quicker impression you can get from the oeuvre, and in a world where the average attention span hovers around three seconds, a well-written resume may be the tie-breaker between grabbing the attention of your reader or being left out.

Therefore, I would like to invite you to think about how your synopsis is going. Is it fun? Dramatic? Affirmative? Does it point in any direction or is it more like a set of intertwined experiences forming a circular pattern? What would you change about it, and what information would gain more prominence in a new edition of it?

After tackling the long-postponed task and finally updating my resume, I can say that the payoff is immense. You realize that you have done much more interesting things than you recall, and surprising yourself is an incredible feeling.

So, if you, like me, are a little slow when it comes to updating your CV, maybe this is a good time to roll up your sleeves and get yourself prepared for future harvests.

Be seeing you,

G. F.

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Do you remember what you were doing exactly ten years ago? I do.

It was hot summer night in Rio, and it was the date of the release of my first solo album (Geisa Fernandes, 2013).

On that very special night, several things turned out just as I wanted, several others did not. I remember many friendly faces and a long time signing dedications on the CD booklet. And above all, I remember that it was a happy night.

They say that memory is half editing room, half filming and I am sure that, if I were to try to remember every detail of my magical night, I would probably flourish a lot. You know how memory is.

For this reason, I will stick to a single, indisputable fact: The night was happy because, as my own manager, I fulfilled my part of the agreement with the venue and with the musicians and because, as an artist, I gave the best of myself., and this trait I can proudly say I have maintained over the last ten years.

That said, I would like to share with you another moment of this beautiful night that turns ten today and that occurred on my way back home: in the car full of things (and if you have already produced an event, you know what I am talking about) I thought about my to-do list for the following day. And if you have understood the lesson here, you can consider yourself a real pro.

Enough lessons, it is time to celebrate! My new single Jules and Jim hits streaming platforms tomorrow. Click here to pre-save.

And to prove you that I am really serious about celebrating every achievement, it is time for some champagne, too. Cheers!

Be seeing you!

G.F.

p.s. Times were different and that’s why there are very few video recordings of this show, but you can go back in time with me here and here.

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Yesterday was my birthday. I have already talked here about all the tension and the drama of having your birthday at the end of the year, but this time I would like to point out some solutions, or rather describe some lessons I have learned in this last passage of the sun through Sagittarius. What kind of lessons? The kind you can use in your career. Ready to write down some valuable tips? Follow me.

As years go by, it is clear to me that the key word is resilience. December is always a month of intense temperatures, whether it is cold or hot, depending on which half you live in on this little blue planet. For this reason, the difficulties start already in the organization. I dare say that organizing a birthday party in December is more difficult than organizing a small tour with a trio (for those who do not get the reference, organizing tours is always a lot of work).

Sounds a little sad? If you apply resilience it will sound more like consistency. A practical example? Test all possible models until you find one that works for you, just as it is necessary to test different combinations of musicians until you find the one that is ideal for your music.

The philosophy of chop wood, carry water needs time to be assimilated and, depending on your moment in life, it may even seem counterproductive, but time will teach you to realize the value of small, regular things for big results in the long term. In other words: you learn by doing, even if you do not realize it at first.

Another lesson I have learned, not necessarily linked to being born in December, is that the definition of an ideal celebration varies a lot from year to year and depends on many variables, exactly as it happens with the different projects that develop throughout a career.

Last, and certainly not least, I also learned that you always need to reserve some room for a champagne toast. And if you have a slice of cake to go with it, wow, you’re one happy, lucky birthday kid!

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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During the incredibly strange year of 2020, many people found in a hobby a most-needed moment of relief and relaxation. Homemade bread, painting, gardening, each one sought refuge in the comfort zone provided by any activity that gave the feeling of having some practical use. I chose a course on time planning, more specifically an online course on how to put together the perfect weekly schedule.

The nice young lady who presented the pre-recorded lessons made the tedious process of putting together a weekly schedule of appointments seem like a delightful experience. This is often the problem with online courses: they make everything look easy and there is no point in answering a loud “No!” when, at the end of the lesson, the instructor asks: “everything alright?”, because they will not listen.

If it worked? Yes and no. I managed to get to the fifth version, if I’m not mistaken (the idea was that each week everyone would check what had worked or not in the planning and what could be improved for the following week), but I could not stick to my planning.

Do not blame the planning. It was good one. It even left somne room for the unforeseen. In fact, there are no culprits, just life itself. There are times in our lives so crazy, that not even the best of weekly plans will be able to organize.

The end of the year is usually one of those times. By the way, a good indication that the year is coming to an end is that the stress level goes through the roof and if you do no’t want to join the year-end stress crowd, perhaps the best thing to do is to admit that your schedule will suffer repeated upheavals, including strokes of luck.

Last week, for example, I managed to get an appointment for a very busy doctor simply because I called after patients who canceled. A true stroke of luck that not even the most perfectly conceived agenda could have foreseen, but which nevertheless changes the planning of the day. But what if the surprise is not such a pleasant one?

Accepting that it will not always be possible to stick with the plan and realizing that, sometimes, it will not be possible to recalculate the route, and that you may end up losing control and even hit head-on with what you wanted, can be an important tool for maintaining your mental health, strange at it seems. And staying mentally healthy is the best gift you can give yourself, this or any other time of the year.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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Among the many wonderful quotes by Oscar Wilde, the one that says “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it” remains a firm favorite of mine. Perhaps because it works so well in so many different situations in life. Take, for example, myself.

After a very short and quite well-deserved period of celebration (meaning two beers) for getting two projects approved in the municipal culture incentive law, I had to sink my feet into the harsh reality that it is necessary to seek supporters. Could this situation be any wilde-a-nesque?

It should not be difficult to convince people to redirect part of their taxes to pre-approved cultural projects, and yet it is. Very difficult. There is a certain generalized climate of distrust and my desire after leaving the meetings is one of deep fatigue. I am already happy, when I can actually talk to the person in charge. Why? Because I have already faced, on the same day, two “the person in charge is traveling”.

Yes, I know that this is part of the craft, it comes with the teritory etc. I also know that even professionals with a long road behind them need to wear, at times, the hat of entrepreneurs and speak the language of business. I was aware of all this when I sent my projects for approval, but even so, the feeling is that I am carrying out the task of several people and the worst thing about this situation is that I cannot even complain about the other team members!

Being a project leader means taking responsbility for things. Yes, I would also like to have someone else making the boring decisions, so that I could focus solely on things strictly related to music, but the truth is that if I do not play the role of a business woman now, I will not be able to make music possible in the future.

You have to play the full game, despite the fatigue. Not forever, but at least for today. Or, as we say in Brazil: if you do not know how to play, do not go to the playground.

Perhaps the half-mocking, half-tragic words by Wilde remain timeless because human beings are permanently dissatisfied beings, who keep seeking what they do not have and then want something else, even more complicated to achieve than the one they previously wanted.

Yes, my friend, in many ways, we are very irritating little creatures and we do not have the vaguest notion of our limits. Flying without wings, swimming without gills: we have always done things we were not meant to do. Or were we?

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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For the last two weeks I have been neck-deep in a task, fighting against the deadline which, by the way, had already been extended. I was working on a videopoem of approximately 18 minutes, a collage of excerpts from songs and poems, with images in the background. Put that way, it does not seem like a job that will need the full attention of the team. The problem is that my team consists of only one person: myself.

Depending on who you have by your side, working alone can prove to be a huge advantage, but the process is often quite tiring. And, of course, it gets worse if you get too caught up in the details, as I tend to be. It is a problem I have not only as a content producer, but also as a consumer: I pay too much attention to details.

Is the audio loud and clear enough or can you still her me breathing? Is the music coming in at the right time? Is the fade out too long? What if I remove the final 0.3 seconds of that video clip? Details that certainly an inattentive spectator would never notice, but that worry me and prevent the project to be considered concluded, until I reach the desired point.

I do not remember if it was a colleague or a professor from the my PhD days who said: you do not finish writing a a thesis you simply abandon it at some point. I think this comment also applies to the process of mixing an album (face it: you will never achieve the “ideal mix” you have in mind) or reading a book.

Am I suggesting you should quit your readings before reaching the end? No. I have already done that, and the feeling is terrible, I do not recommend it at all. On the other hand, I certainly do not recommend my reading methods either. They inlcude, for instance, deciding in the middle of page 157 to return to page 80, because I just remembered a delightful character quip, and I would like to enjoy it one more time. Yet again.

This is exactly my problem now. I am stuck on volume three of In Search of Lost Time by Proust precisely because the book is so good. And, of course, you could say that it is not about the time it takes you to read from cover to cover, but rather the pleasure of reading. Ok, agreed, but even this pleasure can be put to the test if you cannot set a pace for reading.

The problem with getting too caught up in the details is that eventually you will forget about the main plot. Focusing on details is great, and a neat execution is even better, but for every project there is a sweet spot to be reached. Your mission is to get there or, in some cases, as close as possible.

Trying to reinvent that sweet spot over and over is a huge waste of time. It will only prevent you from getting involved in other projects or, even worse, it will make you miss some deadlines. Remember: an imperfect project, however duly entered in a call, is infinitely better than a project kept in a file, lost in the memory of your computer.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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You probably know the story of Ugly Duckling , but just to be sure: Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) first published it on November 11, 1843. The tale was part of the the first volume of “New Fairy Tales”, and it has been been adapted for various media, including opera, musical, and animated film.

In the plot, a baby duck suffers a lot of verbal and physical abuse because of his appearence. After a classic “hero’s journey”, during which he goes through a harsh winter hiding in a cave on the partially frozen lake, the ugly duckling, now grown, finally discovers that it was, in fact, a majestic swan.

The way I see it, Ugly Duckling and Superman have a lot in common. I talked about super heros here already, but today I would like to talk specifically about Superman, more specifically about the Kryptonite x Superman relationship. And his relationship to Ugly Duckling.

You see, in both cases the first source of destabilization came from the family. The parents of Superman and the solo mother in Ugly Duckling both tried, in some way, to protect them, but their efforts were not enough to free our characters from the terrible suffering caused by their origins, whether in the form of bullying or as a symbolic artifact. WActually, we could sumarize both plots in two words: family, caution.

Maybe the reason for the huge success of these characters is related to the fact that we feel represented, when we realize that families/environments of origin in general, and not only ours, can be the source of much of our joys and good memories, but they might also become the first element of oppression one must face.

I am particularly impressed by the number of people who claim to have their most fervent supporters among their family members. People who believed in and supported their ideas and encouraged their careers from the ground up. Very beautiful stories indeed, but they do not even remotely resemble mine. Some of us need to get things done without the extra support of family members.

Despite what the gossip magazines say, a significant part of us needs to go on even without standing ovations, without huge financial sums involved in our contracts. The truth is that a huge number of performers have a routine much closer to a factory worker than a fairy tale princess.

Perhaps people get confused by the way the life of many artists is represented on screen and in literature: they are either starving bodies carrying tormented souls, or millionaires followed by paparazzi day and night. The dichotomy confuses our family and closest friends, who think that if you are not rich or famous like that guy they showed on TV, so maybe this thing you do is just a hobby, and you should probably get yourself a real job.

Most of the time, this distorted view is not even expressed in words. Non-verbal signals include disapproving looks or small gestures (rolling eyes come to mind) that can be quite painful for those at whom they are directed.

If you are part of the happy 100%-family support bunch, you probably have no idea what I am talking about. For the rest of us is either Ugly Duckling or Superman.

I do not know how you handle your kryptonite, but I really wish you would not give up on your swan flight.

Be seeing you!

G.F.