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1/29/2008

Peachy Pitches

Yesterday I decided to face the music and follow the flow ("Dancing As One":)
I subscribed to the meettheauthor site where authors get the courage to show up their faces (sometimes their "Flat Feet":P and talk about their books. I wanted to differ from the circle, so I exposed myself in different angles. I am getting some pretty good "pinches" already: Such "Stigmas"...




www.quedeletras.com

1/27/2008

Secret, Sacred, Socrates

Today I went to a lyrical gala, with the amazing interpretation of marvellous sopranos, tenor and baritone, accompanied by a chorus, in various arias from famous Operas, all that presented in the middle of a park, near the streets, in a bridge/stage and the sound of the river constantly flowing. No, that was not one of my favourite dreams, but indeed it did happen this Sunday at noon, here in Santiago. A man sat beside me started to cry when the tenor sang the aria "Che gelida manina" from La Boheme, although I myself felt inside the role of "Rudolph" when he said in Italian, "Who am I? I am a poet. What do I do? I write. And how do I live? I live."

Then when it started the duet of flowers, from the Opera "Lakme" by Delibes, my eyes were filled with tears, as I listened to those two angels singing, which transported me into their garden, like a Taj Mahal made of an holographic vision. They were so in sync, so delicate and perfectly in tune that I travelled beyond time and space. I was, then, one of them, breathing in that beautiful scene, living there, between swans of white wings, over the margins of the flowery rivers, softly sliding among mythic creatures, where the bird sings to collect the blue lotus and make a collar of love for our protection.

t'was "a democratic (culturally, not in politics) event, accessible to all" to quote the ambassador of Spain in Chile who had just arrived from Madrid. And I believe Santiago is perfectly "cosmo-polite" city, pleasant to both tourists and neighbours, for this type of eventful content. But then I noticed that even in a public space in an open (democratic;) area, only a selective amount of people was able to appreciate it, like a sophisticated food that only a palatal experience can improve with a trained taste. Opera like Ballet is an elitist art. But elitist not in terms of a monetary access but of a cultural assessment. Education is a matter that money can buy, but the inclination to appreciate fine arts is only available to those who have a refined soul. And to achieve to that point one must experience life, something that no school may teach, though it might show the way. And the way, like a circumference of possibilities might as well one day, as always, return to itself, or "mighty swell" turn into the centre, the source of all life: "Know thyself" as the maximum visceral and exponential search of the human soul. But for a river you don't need to mention about its freshness in the hot summer.

Even in architecture, for all its textures, rhythms and tones, one should take the journey, the enterprise as a feminine role, for it should engage in unity, in comfort, rather than dissuade, separate, concur or conquer. A city must be composed as a feminine entity for it doesn't judge its habitants, it awaits patiently and with a compassion for each citizen, just praying that whoever walks through her streets may feel it belongs in her arms, like a child, or a lover, lost in its labyrinth but finding her way in each corner. Each obstacle is nothing but a challenge that may facilitate the brave ones and digress or dissipate the weak ones in their profanity attempt. So to reach into the core of a city one must first learn how to obey and abide within her limitations, for there is not a definitive place in this world, but many daily places we may call our own.

With paintings from one of Chopin's most favourite artist, William Adolphe Bouguereau, and the Opera from one of my favourites musicians, Leo Delibes (the same who composed one of my most favourites Ballets, Coppelia) here an homage to the feminine in time and space:

Sous le dôme épais où le blanc jasmin
À la rose s'assemble
Sur la rive en fleurs riant au matin
Doucement glissons de son flot charmant
Suivons le courant fuyant
Dans l'onde frémissante
D'une main nonchalante
Viens, gagnons le bord,
Où la source dort et
L'oiseau, l'oiseau chante.

Sous le dôme épais où le blanc jasmin,
Ah! descendons/ Ensemble!
Sous le dôme épais où le blanc jasmin
À la rose s'assemble
Sur la rive en fleurs riant au matin
Viens, descendons ensemble

Doucement glissons de son flot charmant,
Suivons le courant fuyant
Dans l'onde frémissante
D'une main nonchalante
Viens, gagnons le bord
Où la source dort et
L'oiseau, l'oiseau chante.

Sous le dôme épais où le blanc jasmin,
Ah! descendons/ Ensemble!" Lakme et Mallika

Under a dome of white jasmine
With the roses entwined together
On a river bank covered with flowers laughing in the morning.(Flowers Duet)

1/24/2008

Better stranger than fiction

Principe e princesa e diretor da realeza na passarela chilena:

Prince and Princess and Hollywood director all here in Chile in less than a week. I just wrote a poem about a Francis Ford Coppola's movie and here he was, dear Francis in person, in Zapallar, a place I almost went last Sunday (a day before he arrived there). I decided for a more cultural entertainment and went to Santo Domingo instead to see a Mesolithic monument, "la Piedra del Sol" an heritage from the giants who lived in Patagonia, and mostly decimated by a cataclysm. As I am fascinated with history in general, especially when I can witness rocks that were once carved by ancient civilizations, I am dazzled to find so many fables. But all those stories were only able to survive throughout thousands of years by word of mouth. Hopefully that same force might protect them from the peril of an environmental destruction. Don't let me even start by saying that a Darwin frog only found in Chile and Argentina are an endangered species already.

While I typed my words on Bram Stocker's Dracula, "The Count", the movie director was here, so near, having lunch in Valparaiso, and touring around the Chilean winery "Casablanca" (nothing to do with the film, to be clear) which we passed on our way to San Antonio and with the name on the top of the mountain slightly resembling the Hollywood sign. And as I think about submitting my novel "The Royal Diary" there it comes the Royal Norwegian Couple to spend a day in Isla Negra, the place I went just last Sunday, and where the writer Pablo Neruda spent his last days. Besides his strange house, there he still lies, beside his wife, in a bedside (well, that phrase sounded accurate though quite odd). Actually there it lies a tomb with the couple, in a romantic view of the Pacific Ocean. Isn't that true that life is so much more impacting and exciting than any fiction? (A story that no television drama could surpass, or only a very skilled and imaginative writer's mind would ever be able to come up with: "Close Encounter of the First Kind") So let's open a bottle of a Chilean wine to celebrate life:

Cheers!

1/21/2008

What A Night!!

Yesterday night was awesome! I went to a Mega Concert from the Serbian musician Goran Bregovic with the Santiago Orchestra and choral. Bregovic is an effervescent exciting soul who composed for many movies, including "Queen Margot" (with Isabelle Adjani at forty and lookin' beautiful as always) which he played along with the chorus. The beginning sounded a little like Carmina Burana, and that already rang me the bell, for how fond I am of this sound! And let me just ad(d) that his "Orchestra for Weddings and Funerals" band was exactly what Mr. Bregovic delivered to more than twenty-five thousand people. I danced along with the upbeat cords and flute sounds as if I were actually attending a great/Greek or Jewish wedding, but sometimes there were sad beats, but always in a folkloric harmonic and colourful symphony, a mixture from the gypsy and the east culture of Europe. The audience was composed from little children lying on the grass to young and older people, dancing as one. But what a surprise when I heard him almost in the end singing in Portuguese and it sounded like a fado, with a root word meaning FATE, usually a very sad song and quite popular in Portugal. All other people listened to the words without understanding. When I heard the words ausencia, carinho, solidao, "sozim" (alone), I knew what he was talking about. A wonderful diversity of being among so many people, a whole crowd of many different faces/phases and yet, understanding deep inside the meaning of it all, as he touched the core of our souls while playing the roots of all civilizations: that we are ALL-ONE!

GORAN BREGOVIC
Ausencia
Ausencia, ausencia
Si asa um tivesse
Pa voa na esse distancia
Si um gazela um fosse
Pa corrê sem nem um cansera

Anton ja na bo seio
Um tava ba manchê
E nunca mas ausencia
Ta ser nôs lema

Ma sô na pensamento
Um ta viajà sem medo
Nha liberdade um tê'l
E sô na nha sonho

Na nha sonho miéforte
Um tem bô proteçäo
Um tem sô bô carinho
E bô sorriso

Ai solidäo tô'me
Sima sol sozim na céu
Sô ta brilhà ma ta cegà
Na sê claräo
Sem sabe pa onde lumia
Pa ondê bai
Ai solidäo é um sina

Ausencia, ausencia

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Absence, absence...

If I got wings
To fly at that distance
If I was a gazelle
To run without getting tired

Then, at your side
I would see the daylight
And "absence never again"
It would be our lemma

But only in my thoughts
I travel without fear
I got my freedom
Only in my dreams

In my deep dreams
I have your protection
I have your love
And your smile

Oh, I’m feeling lonely
Like the Sun alone in the sky
The sunshine is blind
Can’t see his clarity
What he is illuminating
Where he goes next
Oh, solitude is my FATE...



Anna

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Kane kouragio Anna,
fight with time
My Anna, with the different habits
the different moves
You had very good manners
It was obvious that you were coming from another world
But you were doing everything you could
in order not to show it
You didn't contemn poorness
but it didn't attract you as well
Everything in you was different
Your room with the rare objects
the letters, the gifts
You bet that you had a better taste than mine!
You were coming to find me
My bed, your breast...
Anna, little dirty lady
And outside (down) the windows, a wet road
the sound of the train, the nightfall
And my room, Anna
hanged in the air
like an orange
Kane kouragio Anna

Who knows where you are now
who knows how you are doing
Who knows where you are now. How you can do
without having what you love
and without loving what you have...

You know Anna, for the two of us,
it was written (in the destiny) to meet
What could others know? How could they know?
My cutaneous little lover
Do you remember? Millions of moments
moments that become fewer and fewer
as some foray them
in front of our eyes, every day
Hopelessly (!) I fight to keep them, hopelessly (! again)
they trickle slow and they go
towards the big sea
So many years have passed
I don't wear my student jacket any more
and I can hardly get used
to this well needled costume
I don't condemn money
but it doesn't attract me so much
Agnus Dei, Yesterday

Tonight I will visit your first dream
Don't get old Anna, don't get old
Lie to your husband
Rip the invitation, cancel the dinner
Touch me, like that time, with your knee
under the table
Tonight, Anna
In the best hotel
Tonight
In your first dream
Kane kouragio Anna

Who knows where you are now
who knows how you are doing
Who knows where you are now. How you can do
without having what you love
and without loving what you have...

Don't get old Anna, don't get old
because I won't have anybody and anything
to keep me young
I am alone, still insisting here
although it has again started to rain
as it always rains in the islands
during October
Remember?
A sea made of lead and a sky of pines
Remote, mixed voices
The voice of the mother, of the friend, of the daughter,
of the brother, of the lover
of the siren of the ship
White clothes, removed quickly
just before the rain
The light was lost with them
A short walk
still...there. Next to the sea
And then...the end, the end
Kane kouragio Anna

Who knows where you are now
who knows how you are doing
Who knows where you are now. How you can do
without having what you love
and without loving what you have...

Kane kouragio Anna...
[Pou Na 'Sai Twra, Anna (Don't Give Up Anna)
Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]

1/18/2008

Why We Write

There are just many, many hidden (ridden and read on) reasons why do writers do the write thing. Isn't that so? Click on Why We Write (with a comment of mine:) and read a piece of Danny Rubin, writer of “Groundhog Day” at whywewriteseries.wordpress.com to view how many successful writers may cope with when they are not allowed to write. (Well, even when they cannot, they write). I remember each and every phrase of a good conversation, and if I do not have a pen and paper, at least I count on my own memory to Words Wide Wrap. I remember having read in some newspaper that if the educational system continued as it was, as people were reading books less and less, the world would be full of idiots who cannot even write their names. I recently read (not in the same news, but still a paper) that there is a Sci-Fi book written by a famous author (that I never read/heard) where only ignorant people would inhabit the planet, for the real intelligent ones wouldn't have children. Thank God neither one of those predictions seem exactly right. At least, the majority of people in this planet can read or write. And with the upcoming of the internet, more and more people are writing and reading. But prior to that all, quality and intention must be at the upfront. If there are poor information, most clearly they will generate poor educated people. If families, as a support system, didn't exist at all, more and more children would be left in their own devices, which in turn would be a shame for humanity. So, what really matters here? Is it just to write, or to write well, or what we write to our children? The same goes with television, cinema, theatre and all the media which make accessible information (including, especially, the internet): Good choices lead to better results. And by having a clear vision to make those choices we must share information, we must write our ideals, our experiences, our lives. I'm not a Imdb name holder, or am I on any internet "move" database nor am I a journalist (I gave up that dream when a man to whom I entered my inscription to the University told me I would add in the already big list of liars in the media) to discuss and make opinions (as I do not have any 'pinions neither am I-care(^l^)ess a peanut to think I can win one). But I recently heard (now at a TV News station) two journalists complaining about "opinionating blogs made by amateurs with no comments added" to their sharing. And I got to the conclusion, with a Confucian confusion in my head saying that Yes/No, we should write to be read, but most importantly with guts to read and hear our own selves (and now is my Socratic stomach speaking). And yes, this is a narcissistic activity, but what is not? Even when we are helping someone else, as much as it seems so altruistic, we are actually helping and thinking of ourselves, for that action comes from solely, only and lonely our own hearts, making it beneficial to our own personal growth, and if we are lucky enough may benefit others in our way to our epiphanies. And that's why I write.