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Recently, I heard from an friend that in-person events are back with full force. My friend L. is an editor and lives in São Paulo, but I see the same phenomenon happening here in Rio. Among the various cultural activities that are currently (re-)flourishing, poetry reading soirées seem to be multiplying with particular rapidity.

It is amazing how the written word attracts people of all types and backgrounds! At a literary gathering with audience participation you will inevitably encounter at least of of the following: a student in a top hat who would put the rabbit in the story of Alice to shame, a handful of shy poets who refuse to succumb to the current rule of full exposure in socials, but are comfortable behind the open mic, as well as people who have experienced hard times and managed to repurpose their pain through words.

I write poems since… well, I have the impression that since I was literate and such meetings are not unfamiliar to me, either as a watcher or an active participant, singing or reciting. It is always a nice experience, but… There is something about poetry readings that make me feel, well, uncomfortable. I do not quite know how to explain it, but it is as if some very intimate sphere has been crossed.

And what would that sphere be? There is something very personal about reading and listening to a poem. I am not referring here to a specific need. honestly, I do not think there is a “correct” setting for enjoying poems. There are words to be recited screaming, others more suited to whispering in the ear, in short, there is poetry for the most diverse situations.

My discomfort at poetry soirees is the same I feel at restaurants with live music performances. Someone performing while other people are distracted is not an image I like very much. I am aware that the fields of gastronomy and entertainment are intertwined: we want gigs and venue owners want to sell their products. And you know what? For the sake of our gigs, we wish them and their business well. We all need to live in harmony, for the sake of the scene.

Things kind of take car eof themselves when gigs take place in theaters or concert halls that really understand what they are doing and suspend services during the musical performances. However, this is not the reality in poetry soirées, which are characterized by a climate of, shall we say, healthy chaos, meaning that while some pour their souls into the open microphone in front, others pour out the news of the week in loud shouts at the side tables and counters in the back.

On the one hand, I find some comfort in knowing that my discomfort is not shared by many and that soirées will live long and propsper. On the other hand, I would like my confession to serve as a wake-up call to the fact that maybe, just maybe, we are just too loud. Everywhere, not just at concerts. And speaking loudly is a feature that is usually part of a package that includes, among other unpleasant things, the inability to hear.

My impression is that despite (or perhaps precisely because of ) the frenetic production of words and sounds, our capacity for assimilation has greatly diminished. I do not have the solution for what might be a twentty-first century sindrom, but I am sure that it does not lie in our ability to make eye-catching videos of up to three seconds.

We worship speed since the beginning of the nineteenth century and it is simply not working: we do not work less because of computers os smart phones, neither faster cars have solved traffic problems. Speed is definitely not the answer to our growing lack of attention. Are we really going to keep insisting?

We can do better than that.

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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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.