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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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Renunciation is liberation. Not wanting is power.
Fernando Pessoa

Today I decided not to take part in a music competition that promises a huge amount of money as the main prize. You see, I did not say that I gave up participating, but that I made a conscious decision, after informing myself and reflecting on the matter. In fact, I spent a lot of time on this process, enough to remind me of a college story.

M. was one of the colleagues with whom I shared student housing. She had built a solid reputation as a heartbreaker and one day, for reasons I no longer remember, she tried to convince me (or, more likely, tried to convince herself) that her last disastrous relationship had, after all, been worth it, for as the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa would say:

“Everything is worth it
If the soul is not small”

Pessoa is a very intriguing author and I am also a fan of these famous verses that praise the courageous character of human experiences. Perhaps inspired precisely by the taste for labyrinths so typical of the author, I replied: if all experiences are acts of courage, so is to refuse to have an experience.

Saving yourself from a bad time or company would also be a worth living experience. In other words: it is also ok to say “no” sometimes.

I still remember the expression on her face. M. was shocked by the new angle I was presenting. Months later she would tell me that those words had indeed had a big impact on her, which I took as a huge compliment.

One of the most famous poems in the vast oeuvre of Fernando Pessoa, Navergar é Preciso (“Sailing is Necessary”) refers to an ancient Latin expression credited to the Roman general Pompeu (1st century BC), who used it to encourage his sailors: “Navigare necesse, vivere non est necesse” (“Sailing is necessary, living is not necessary”):

“Ancient navigators had a glorious phrase:
‘Sailing is necessary; living is not necessary’
I want for myself the spirit of this sentence
transformed the shape, to match who I am:
Living is not necessary; what is needed is to create”

The beautiful sentence that inspired Pessoa is also found in the song Os Argonautas, by Caetano Veloso, released in 1969. I wonder how many times the topic will come to light, whether in the arts or in daily conversations that will one day become memories.

Living, sailing, creating: if the soul is not small, what to fear after all?

Be seeing you!

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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Have you ever experienced a Sackgasse period? You know, the “dead end street” feeling. The one that usually comes during the times (days? weekes? months? we better stop here), when nothing seems to change, and the more you try to move, the more you find yourself in the same place.

The feeling that nothing changes, despite your greatest efforts, is probably one of the most destructive ones, for it goes against nature. Life is all about changing, as we recently discussed. Actually, if you think about it, change precedes existence.

I was deep immersed on these thoughts as I got a message notification from my friend A. She wanted to know how things were going and we chatted for half an hour or so, while she was waiting for her flight to departure. I asked her if the trip was business or pleasure and she told me that she could not afford any leisure time, since the war in Ukraine had deply affected her job and life plans. Long story short: her “home” has now been reduced to two suitcases.

A. is a trooper, so I know she will be all right, and it was very nice to hear from her, but I could not help wondering how weird it felt to be talking about a war, as a natural ocurrence. Frankly, I was expecting a little more from the twenty-first century.

How far from the thruth were our furturistic dreams! We took aim at The Jetsons and ended up on a Orwellian-esque plot (did anyone mention reality shows?). How come?

My vision of the future also includes long and passionate discussions about really relevant things, for example, Why is Vermeer so important? , why some of the most detailed images of the universe  look a lot like a jazz album cover? Or maybe the links between jazz and comics. Creative, important stuff and not, you know, the current death-and-devastation set.

I wanted to have a happy closure to our conversation today, but I think I owe you this one. Or maybe we owe it to ourselves and we will finally decide to pay it off.

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.