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“The sun on the newsstands
fills me with joy and laziness
Who reads so much news?”
– Alegria, Alegria (Joy, Joy)
Caetano Veloso, 1967

What´s New? is one of the many incredible interpretations of Billie Holiday. The 1939 song by Johnny Burke and Bob Haggart was included in the album Velvet Mood: Songs by Billie Holiday, released on Clef Records in 1956. I wonder about the first verses: “What’s new? How is the world treating you?” and how they relate to the last verse of Notícia de Jornal (Luis Reis and Haroldo Barbosa), sang by Chico Buarque : “Our pain doesn’t come out in the newspaper“

I don’t know where you live, but I can bet that the vast majority of the incredible amount of news flashing across your screen daily rarely treats you well, let alone mirrors your pain. And yet we waste precious scrolling down an infinite screen of events that might fill our hours, but are fairly unable to appease the feeling of not being informed enough.

At the end of the day, which always seems shorter than the previous one (what do you mean it’s already that late?), how much information do we retain afterall? Very little. The bitter truth is that nobody needs so much news, and this is not an easy thing for me to admit for I am a confessed news junkie. Fear of Missing Out hadn’t even been invented yet and I already suffered from it.

Frankly, before digital media everything seemed to be under control, because the volume of news that a newspaper or printed magazine could contain was limited, not only in terms of the physical space occupied, but also in terms of time. Even in publications with two runs a day, once the edition was over, there was not much to do, even in the event of the biggest scoop ever.

The patience factor was even more important when it came to weekly or monthly magazines. Now think about the number of times the same content can be updated, rewritten and re-edited in the interval of, say, half a day. Pretty insane, isn’t it?

I remember an interview with the late Portuguese writer José Saramago, in which he said that if he subscribed to forty-three printed newspapers and magazines daily, his neighbors would certainly call him crazy when they saw the volume of information dumped at his door every morning. On the other hand, no one would question a cable TV subscription which included the same number of channels.

As we say in Brazil, Saramago shot at what he saw and hit (also) what he didn’t see. Not only we got used to a connstant hyper-supply of news, we have also expanded the concept of what can be considered relevant enough to gain the status of news. The faits divers, for instance, have been fully upgraded and are now sometimes considered more important than, well, basically anything else.

We discussed previously the importance of sorting out relevant songs in order to build up a consistent set list. Maybe exercizing fine curation also in other departments of life is not a bad idea at all. Sometimes it is good to take a break and take it slow.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

p.s.: in case you want to take five minutes relaxing from the news, I would like to suggest this lyric video of a song from 1893, which got new lyrics due to the 150th birth anniversary of the composer, Ernesto Nazareth.

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Do you consider yourself an organized person? I would love to tell you that I have my whole year planned in advance or, at least, the entire month, but instead I have to admit (with a little bit of shame) that despite my efforts to classify my priorities in short, middle and long ones, in terms of sticking to a pre-schedule list of activities, I barely reach a week.

How come? Well, if life happens while we are busy with our little things, sometimes it throws a big flaming ball on our direction. “Catch it!”, life says. You know you are going to hurt yourself anyway, but what can you do? You simply try not to drop the flaming ball, than you handle it (and your burns) the best you can, and when it cools dows a bit, you keep playing the game.

Some call the flaming balls “problems”, but I´d rather prefer to describe them as big things. All right, I know we learn to remember and cherish the good big events in life, but let us be honest: we all know that there will also be lots of rainy days, some storms now and then and, eventullay, even biblical floods.

“It is allright, if it is going wrong“, sings Ed Motta in the refrain of his 1997 song Vendaval (Windstorm). Gilberto Gil reinforces the message in Retiros Espirituais (Spiritual Retreats):

In my spiritual retreats
I discover certain banal things
How to have problems,
Be the same as not
Resolving to have them, is to have them,
Resolving to ignore them, is to have them

Last week I got one of those flaming balls thrown right in my face. Lots of burns, probably some scars. Needless to say, my weekly schedule was (again) totally ruined, but gee, did I manage to handle it well! Now, dear life, it is my turn. Catch it!

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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Valsa do Pequeno Amor (Little Love Waltz) is a composition of the great Joyce Moreno. Part of the album Slow Music (2009), it is about the little loves in life that prepare the soil and the soul for the event of a big love. Dealing with the little things in life help us to handle the big ones. It is a complex, continuous movement wonderfully described in the song. But what happns after that? What comes after the big love?

Joyce has the answer for that question, too and it comes in the form of another equally beautiful track from the same album called Sobras da Partilha (Leftovers from sharing). This time, her crystal voice sings about all those things that one accumulates in a lifetime as a couple and that need to be separated after a breakup.

Maybe because I am not the collection type, I have always found that material memories are the easiest to deal with in those situations. The symbolic partitions are the treicky part. To separate yourself from a happy laugh, from the touch of hands, irreplaceable little things that once gone, are gone for good, this is the real hard task.

My guess is that if we thought of life as a succession of small things that together form a majestic design, like a mosaic, some events that we take as a waste of time would gain a new outline and some meaning. I know we always wait for great events, those three lines of great deeds that will appear in our biography, but how much life, I mean real life, is there?

Think about the time it takes a musician to create a song and all the steps to recording and publishing it. The work is immense, extremely time consuming and most of it is not even heard, never gets an applauded, not even comes to light. The same is true for all arts and professions. Big results come from accumulating small triumphs in a long process that mainly involces hard work.

There is a fat chance that you will completely disagree with me on that and, frankly, you have the entire dense mesh formed by social media and digital influencers on your side. In the current business model, in which the main goal is the so-called engagement in socials, it seems that everything must be gig: big deeds, big numbers of likes and sharings, big deals.

This aspect, in itself, is bad enough, because it is based on a model that is very far from the reality of someone who works with music, but is not a millionaire (needless to say that this is the majority of cases). However, in addition to the false expectations, there is still another aspect, worse and more perverse, as it acts discreetly and gradually: the change of focus from music to…, well to everything that is good for business, basically: licensing songs for publicity, personal life scandals, personality cult and a lot of showing off.

Still sounds too vague? Here is a quick exercise: think about two or three digital influencers linked to music. Now think about how much of the news about them you’ve seen in the last twenty-four hours has really had to do with music, strictly music. Not much, I’m sure.

Anyway, these are just reflections I wanted to share with you, as I finish a cup of tea. There is still a lot to do before I can call it a day. A bunch of wonderful, magical little things. As John Lennon said in Beautiful Boy, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”

Be seeing you!0

G.F.

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I am a big fan of Leonard Cohen. Among his many amazing songs, Dance me to the end of love has a special place in my heart. It moves me to tears in a very tender, bittersweet way, as only a true work of art can do.

It is one of those examples of a song in which lyrics and melody combine so perfectly that they get lost in each other to the point where it’s impossible to hear the notes on the chorus without singing along. Its sweet and sad refrain echoes like a promise and a redemption: since even love comes to an end, may we be led to it with tenderness.

Brazilian musician Chico Buarque de Holanda also addressed the theme of the end of love, but his interpretation was a little different. In his song Futuros Amantes (Future Lovers) love does not end, it simply passes from lover to lover, dodging time and space.

The love from yesterday will be revived by the lovers of tomorrow in a continuous flow of love. What a wonderful theory, isn’t it? And brilliant, as we are used to seeing in the work of this great artist.

I particularly like this idea of love that continuously comes and goes, for it explains the fact that so many songs talk about this feeling. The truth is: they are talking about the same love. Sure each experience of love is very personal, and a million other factors will be responsible for turning every single story unique, but the core of love would be the same.

And how to get to that core? How to reach the source of love? The verses of Futuros Amantes give a hint:

Don’t worry, nothing is for now
Love will always be lovable
Future lovers, perhaps
They will love each other, without knowing
With the love that one day
I left to you

The source of love can only be reached by loving. Preferably with the right music in the background.

Be seeing you!

G.F.

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My first performance beyond my backyard was at school when I was six. If I am not mistaken it was during my Elementary School end of term pageant. The story: Vinícius de Moraes had written a book in verses for children, adapting the story of Noah’s Ark. The book became a hugely successful TV special, with songs written and performed by great names of the Brazilian popular music, such as Chico Buarque, Moraes Moreira and Elis Regina.

My school’s end-of-year pageant consisted of performing some numbers inspired in the hit musical. The students sang and danced dressed like the animals represented in the songs. There were the lions, the elephants, the giraffes. My class got the song about bees. Our costume consisted of a white T-shirt and shorts and orange cellophane wings attached to the shoulders by a fragile wire base, the same used in the “antennas”, held in a hair bow and finished with styrofoam balls covered in glitter.

This wonderful childhood memory was my only experience with bees and I don’t think the fact that being a consumer of honey, propolis and pollen makes me a queen bee, but the fact is that the bees in the neighborhood apparently feel good in my life. home, with a special preference for the kitchen. They´ve found a minimal space in the anointing between the sink and the wall that apparently holds water and turned it into a drinking fountain. Rumor has it that they plan to build a spa on the site.

Anyway, I can’t be angry with such ingenious and (why not say?) sweet creatures. On top of that, threatened with extinction by human actions! Let´s face it: tecnally, if someone had to leave, that would be me. Although I have the slight impression that I am being manipulated by the bees, the fact is that I had to learn to live with them and until now we´ve managed to share the space quite well: they leave, respectfully, every time I start cooking or washing the dishes and return as soon as they realize the coast is clear, so to speak.

Maybe I am able to communicate with them (I just forgot how) or maybe they just liked my elementary school performance. Maybe I will find out someday. Until then, as the song of my childhood said: come and see how they give honey, the bees of the sky!

Bee seeing you 😉

G.F.