O Extremo Ocidente

Ego trip

2008-05-26T18:36:00.001+01:00

The 26th May 1998 was as good a day as any to start this rollercoaster ego trip as any. The 26th May 2008 is as good as day as any to finish it.

trip revogued

2008-05-14T19:38:00.003+01:00

I went back and forth with this.

The more I thought of it, the less I wanted to do it. But I feel it is becoming easier to listen to myself. When I have trouble asking someone for something it is usually because I wouldn't ask myself and when that is the case, it is usually because I don't agree with myself. When I feel I should or that it is better to do something, I have no problem asking people for it. So it is not out of shyness that I stop myself, it is out of common sense.

It is not all that easy to understand. If I have an idea, it is because I want to do it. Why have a wish you don't wish to carry out? What happened in this case was that I agreed with the idea but not with the timings, the means or the limitations for that matter.

The idea stands. I will set out in this continent and the others, sooner rather than later, connect coasts, meet people. It will take me as much time as it takes me.

This, as it turns out, was not my last march in search of a sight of blue on blue. It will be but the glimpse of the first.

Virada Cultural, 26-27 April 2008

2008-04-29T02:16:00.005+01:00

The term Virada Cultural can be loosely translated as Cultural Turn Around, an event where one is supposed to turn the day around and stay awake all night. It is said, over here, that it is a sort of São Paulo's version of the famous Nuits Blanches in Paris, but this is something else.

Jorge Ben Jor, País Tropical

People, by the hundreds of thousends, went out to the city centre and decided that it was São Paulo that should be turned around instead. Turning every street into a disco, every step into a dance, every corner into a kiss, they turned São Paulo into the best disco I ever laid foot on.

A Brazilian said to me something about Italians that I wholeheartedly agree with. But let me be the one turning things around this time and let me say it about the Brazilians:
If one measures how civilized a people is by its love of music and its dread of war, then Brazil is the beacon of civilization.

Orson Wells Ressurection Award

2008-04-26T17:49:00.003+01:00

The acting is not more than adequate. The music is. But still, Once would not be a remarkable film for most. It is to me.

Awarding it the owra is more of a show of personal gratitude to the makers of the film than an actual praise of it. Of course I was dying to see it and I more or less knew I would be awarding this movie before I actually laid eyes on a frame. But I take these things seriously and so I went to the theater and sat through the thing.

I am very happy I did. The film connects to more than in the way of a personal experience about a song I had heard in a concert and that had stayed with me, mostly covered in silence. It connect to me as an European. In the midst of this vulcanic melting pot called São Paulo, SP, Brazil, I was remembered of an Europe that unites throught sense and sensitivity what that same sense and sensitivety once separated. A melting pot in slow cooking, where east and west, north and south learn rather than teach, sing rather than shout.

For all this, and for the music, it was a film also about me.

Change of heart

2008-04-26T17:19:00.003+01:00

I might have jumped the gun there.
The other day I was invited to go to the Morumbi stadium by a São Paulo FC fan, to watch them eventually go through to the knock-out stage of the Copa Libertadores. And I have to say I thoroughlly enjoyed the whole thing, from the meaty sandwhich I ate before, to the singing and jumping of the crowd, to the undeniabe class of Adriano, even when displayed in short glimpses as it is the case these days.
I am terribly sorry and I apologize to all the palmeirenses, but I reckon the são paulinos got to me first.

A mezzanine in Paris, summer 2004

2008-04-25T21:12:00.005+01:00

It set the standard.

Wherever we were going to live from then on, it had to be that good. Whoever had to find a place to for us to stay, it had to live up to that room;
preferably (didn't it happen always?) with a mezzanine.

We decided - she did and I agreed, as with most of our best ideas - to go to Paris for a few months, to get a taste of the city, a taste of the people, a taste of the language. It was the summer of 2004.

Carla Bruni, Le Ciel Dans Une Chambre

The city is fabulous, the city is Paris.
But I hold closer the memory of that place, lying above ground, well in reach of the ceiling. That and the dying moments of the night we would spend learning Portuguese from the tales of Fada Oriana, learning Italian through French and French through Italian. That and the moments we would fall asleep , well in reach of the ceiling, listening to slow music* about rooms that had none.

* As little as anyone could have guessed, little did we know we once fell asleep to the mellow voice of a first lady to be.

Ouro Preto, April 2008

2008-04-22T19:57:00.004+01:00

It was the 21st of April, yet another anniversary of the popular movement called the Inconfidência Mineira, that declared the first Brazilian epublic as far back as 1789. To no avail of course, as the Portuguese readily qwelled the rebels, took their leader, Tiradentes, hung him and sliced his body, sending the different parts for display in several cities of the colonial Brazil. The capital of the province of of Minas Gerais, where Tiradentes was from and where he had gathered his backing, was Ouro Preto back then. And that is why it was awarded his head on a stick.

So be it. As a proud representative of the Portuguese atrocities, I decided to attend the cerimonies in remembrance of this "rebel hereo" of Brazil, in the central square of Ouro Preto, most appropriately called "Praça Tiradentes".

John Williams, The Raiders March

I headed to the square, holding a pamphlet exerting the silent crowds to rebell, like the heroe of the Inconfidência Mineira had done, against the horrors perpretated by the imperialistic leaders, "no different from the Portuguese", that are leading the country to ruin. The piece of paper came quite in handy when I used it to wrap a Coca-Cola tin can that I had in my other hand, so to give the emsemble more aerodynamic pull, when I threw it into the bin.

I could already see te back of the stage that was set, and listen to the army band that was playing some old tunes, classic bossa nova stuff and some military marches. I could hear it from a distance.

But as I drew nearer to the square, the band became silent for a second, as though they were preparing something fresh. I reacted to the surprise a bit faster than most, as the first silent chords of the famous melody had already given it away to me. The smile only came upon everyone's faces when the familiar tune of Indiana Jones spread around the square.

How many tt are there in ta ta ta taaa?

Itacolomi

2008-04-22T18:28:00.006+01:00

This was the place, this was the threshold, where the road became too winding. The place that was too far away from my sea, too close to something else.

This was the first point where the pioneers started taking inroads into the Brazilian wilderness, setting as their only reference an identifiable rock in the hill, awkwardly shaped like a dick.

And it makes complete sense to me. If I was ever to break the threshold and start taking inroads, I would start by a rock that is shaped like a dick. In fact, that's exactly what I did.

Bairro Alto, very late 2005

2008-04-16T20:06:00.003+01:00

It is mostly a blur to me, a phase in between, something of the premise of what was to come already there. Vivi had just spent some six months in Coimbra and then Lisbon and there was the vague plan to move out of Portugal, find something "in Europe" for both of us to stay together. Nothing definite.

Bloc Party, Baquet

And yet, there was something creeping under my skin. The only clear idea in the midst of the blur that comes from that period, is the memory of a party in Frágil were I got the most drunk to date and I decided to rank my degree of drunkness by my willingness to vote for Cavaco for President of the Republic (I havent't got to that point yet, although I have sometimes reached the point when I thought he was not so bad). I have smiled as much as I did that night, but never for so long in a row.

Something was creeping under my skin. An idea. Here, there, wherever, I was definitely gonna be an indie kid.

Between the Tyrrhenean and the Ionian Seas, July 2006

2008-04-16T20:00:00.004+01:00

Luna Pop, 50 Special

On the deck of a ferry boat that was carrying my train into Sicily, a girl couldn't help but asking what a ragged looking guy, gathering thoughts on a ragged looking notebook, was doing there. "I'm travelling, I answered, just losing time".

She then told me that i looked like Lorenzo Cremonini: "you know, the guy from Luna Pop". I didn't know, but I pretty much took it as a compliment.

Beauty

2008-04-16T18:26:00.001+01:00

Beauty always comes first
Even if it usually doesnt come at first.

Ai miei amici italiani

2008-04-16T15:51:00.001+01:00

It is with no modesty that I almost daily commemorate the fact that I know Italy, that I know Italian and that I know Italians.

Su ragazzi! Chi se ne frega della politica.

Clubitis

2008-04-14T23:04:00.000+01:00

Everytime I get attached to a country, be it because I lived there or because I got close to someone that comes from there, I wind up choosing a football team that I support. My extensive list of football affiliation, at this point, stands like this:

Portugal - FC Porto (above and beyond)
Belgium - Sint Truiden VV
Italy - AC Milan
England - Liverpool FC
Germany - VfB Stuttgart

and now,
Brasil - SE Palmeiras

How could I ever not support a team that just lost the city derby against the all-mighty São Paulo FC with an irregular goal by the emperor Adriano (formerly with Inter), put in with his hand. Moreover, I was missing a team that played in green.

Orson Wells Ressurection Award

2008-04-14T20:27:00.000+01:00

In Brussels, we used to take turns to choose the movie we'd use our month cinema card on. To my blockbustery taste, she would always reply with one of her "movies in French", the perfect remedy for my suburbaness. Persepolis was the greatest of her victories and one of my owras.

If not for the courage of portraying people as people, Iranian, Austrian or otherwise, for a delicious scene where a perky little Karl Marx incites God to go on with the "struggle".

Oui, Marjane, la lute continue!

Orson Wells Ressurection Award

2008-04-14T15:40:00.000+01:00

It is as rare as it is precious the work of artistic creation that manages to tap into the recogniseable core of experiences of what one may call "humanity". To do so in a German context, a German story deep inside the German history, is, for very opposite reason, all the more rare and all the more precious. And all the more worthy of my Orson Wells Ressurection Award.

The film traces the steps of Captain Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, a ruthless, methodical officer of the East German political police, the Stasi, that finds himself a new mission. The film then goes on to collect the events that lead Wiesler, code name HGW XX/7, to change the nature of that mission.

With the intimacy and the reserved distance with which a member of the publikum watches a "play" - in this case, the life of Georg Dreyman and Christa-Maria Sieland - HGW XX/7 will eventually seek salvation for his own life.

Orson Wells Ressurection Award

2008-04-11T22:56:00.000+01:00

It is usual to say that Islam constitutes an irrational, violent religion, still immersed in its own Dark Ages. Albeit all, I ask how can such a thing be said about a people that is so in love with something they would spend the whole day singing* to It.

For a love song on the phone sung between two mending lovers, Dans Paris got one my Orson Wells Ressurection Awards.

* Koran means "recitation", which means that, in practice as well as in spirit, everytime they pray, Muslims sing back to God the words God sang to the Prophet.

about a pulse

2008-04-08T21:58:00.000+01:00

it couldnt have come as a shock. But then again, how could it not?
My grandfather is dead.

Before i left him for the last time, lying in that bed,
no clothes, no glasses, no skin,
just the breathing bones of a man getting old a little bit too much,
i made one last gesture to him, my last gesture to him

when i was a kid, i was told to have an arrithmic heart,
(a concept i have come to embrasse in a poetic way, in the lack of any particular physical consequence)
and my grandfather would press my whrist, to feel my faulty pulse
to certify that all was well

when he died, no glasses, no skin,
i went to him one last time
and i held his whrist, faultier than mine had ever been
and i felt nothing

with a smile in the corner of my lip,
i sparked a sware word,
"fuck, i cant feel a goddamned thing"

like him, my grandfather,
it is most funny to me
how i was never too good at getting the pulse of others.

Passports for dummies

2008-04-02T18:28:00.001+01:00

I’m sitting at the open wireless space at the ultra-fancy Zürich Airport, waiting my long hours for the connection that will eventually take me to S. Paulo.

But if someone had told me this morning, round about 8.00 AM, Lisbon time, that I would be that I would be taking such relaxed advantage of the fanciness of this place, I would have said I doubted it. This morning, round about 8.00 AM, Lisbon time, I didn’t own a passport of my own and the prospects of getting my hands to one before the flight departed at round about noon, Lisbon time just as well, were certainly not great.

This trip started yesterday, as any good trip, before it started, when I realized that my good’old passport, other from not being in the place where I usually keep it, was no-where else to be found. This, I repeat, a few hours shy of taking off. I looked and looked, trust me, time and again, under every rock, in every dark corner, in the middle of every page, but it wasn’t there.

And so it was passportless that I decided to face the airport gateway to Brazil, a country one cannot enter passportless. And yet it all worked out in the end, as things tend to when the end draws ever near. The Portuguese Republic, in all its might, has created a modality of passport that can be made on the spot, in case you find yourself in a tight one. Of course, as with everything with my republic, it wasn’t going to allow me to give it due praise without a fight. Before getting this passport, one must go to the police station at the airport and claim that his good’old document is lost. A number of dumb questions will obviously garnish the whole experience, as a testament to your own dumbness in having lost the God damned thing. “Where did you lose it?”, they asked me.

- Uuurh, I don’t know?

- Well, but how did it happen?

- I guess I thought I knew where it was, but when I went to look for it I found out I didn’t know after all.

- Ok, but what’s your name again.

- I think it’s easier if you just copy it from the ID card I already gave you.

I answered everything calmly, pacified by the notion that I deserved that for not having been able to find my passport the very day before I was ever going to need it. And so I answered, I waited, I saw time passing by, and when the nice officer finally made it to the printer and handed me the piece of paper, I ran.

“No need to hurry”, I was told. The republic shone its brightest face at me again. I met with the officer of the border control, Ana Paula, the nicest person all day (needless to say my parents, and quite rightfully so, lost that title the very second they realized I lost my freaking passport. “What time is your flight, sonny?” Paula asked. “In just 2 hours”, I replied, hiding my nervousness behind my fakest smile. “Oh, there’s more than time”, and she was right. This passport takes 10 minutes to make. It is all hand-written and thinner than the usual one, because it is only meant to last 6 months and one is not expected to ask for the whole lot of strange visas in that period, especially when all you have is a hand-written passport.

It’s also of a different color. It is dark blue instead of the usual burgundy ones, a special color, for a special set of people. As if to say, “count your blessings, jackass! And thank God we won’t make you go around with a good'old «dummy» sign on your back.”

Night train

2008-03-26T00:28:00.000Z

This night train takes you to an imaginary space of escape, a city at the end of the world, where people talk as if they are imagining; a place that can't really exist. (...)
Has anyone ever been on a night train to Lisbon?
Pascal Mercier, during the launch of the Portuguese-language version of the Nachtzug nach Lissabon.

Sometimes I feel I was one.

Night train

2008-03-26T00:25:00.000Z

Any story worth telling is always about two characters: The one that understand and the one that is understood.
Pascal Mercier, during the launch of the Portuguese-language version of the Nachtzug nach Lissabon.

Sometimes I feel we were both the both of them.

the sky today

2008-03-26T00:22:00.000Z

The bluest blue in the sky all but breaks the rock-thick clouds
and yet
one can almost more than guess
the cotton-white topping that the silver lining announces.

Favourite quotes

2008-03-23T12:36:00.000Z

"All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the
life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this
planet.
But let us begin."

Pres. John F. Kennedy

The Orson Wells Ressurection Awards

2008-03-19T21:33:00.000Z

Also known as the OWRA, or just "the owras", the Orson Wells Ressurection Awards were based on the review Joel Siegel made of the 2006 movie Little Miss Sunshine. He says: "Orson Welles would have to come back to life for this not to make my year-end Top 10 list", a statement I wholeheartedly endorse.

Since then, whenever I really really like a movie, I kind of recurringly get the feeling that I wouldn't classify it as the "Movie Of My Life or whatever", but that it holds a special place, a place that cannot be better described than "Orson Welles would have to come back to life for this not to make my year-end Top 10 list".
Not that I'm a profound connoisseur of Orson Wells, but the thing just stuck with me.

holiness

2008-03-16T01:11:00.001Z

In my arrogance, I often ask myself at the end of a day or a moment, if mine were the actions of a holyman. As arrogance is perhaps the unholiest of attributesl, I feel I'm automatically ruled out;
but I sometimes nonetheless try.

prayer

2008-03-13T12:06:00.000Z

I mum words along the way. One step after the last, I turn my eyes up to the sky, my chin still facing down.

The words then become rhyming, meaningless sounds. The frantic repetition gains the shape of a smooth calling, a recitation, a momentary song without fear.

Nothing says "i'm sorry" like...

2008-03-05T18:49:00.001Z

... flowers, i guess. I mean, has to be, right?

And the Oscar goes to...

2008-02-25T11:45:00.000Z

Hope.

The Footballer Who Shagged Me

2008-02-21T22:04:00.000Z

Last night, Cristiano Ronaldo was reportedly hit by a "laser".

My God, man! Do they want tea?

2008-02-21T00:02:00.000Z

I was going through the blogs of a few friends of mine as I made my usual stop at João Maurício's good'n old History Spot.

(in all honesty, it used to be "usual". now that blog seems to have gone into hibernation.)

In his last installment of tales of the heroes of the skies in both World Wars, Maurício tells us the story of Hasso von Wedel, a German aviator and officer.

(for those who cannot follow the grace with which the author masters the Portuguese language, I will translate to the best of my scarce abilities the riviting tale of Oberstleutnant von Wedel in England.)

In fact, as the famous battle for the control over the skies of Britain was reaching its peak, von Wedel was shot down and, as he tried and emergency landing, he incidentelly destroy a house, unawaringly killing a woman and her two children in the crash that followed.
Although he was himself unharmed, he felt so distressed by the demise of those innocent people that he readily turned himself over to the local police who, in grand British style, offered him tea.

2008-02-20T17:41:00.000Z

His feet dipped in water, still, Adam looks on. Memories of a land, of a garden, fade in between two shades of blue.
He stands there, patience his first long lesson.

A rumour of a whisper, curly, calling, becomes unwavering. Adam, adam, adam...
As a tear falls in the wet sand, he lets himself, feeling his first short lesson.

It is not so much the rumour of a whisper as it is the shaddow of a dream. It not so much the beginning as it is the end.

Ich bin ein Tripeiro

2008-02-19T18:39:00.003Z

My wet dream for tonight's game:

Schröder 04 - null
FC Porto - vier

Viva o Porto!
Fuck Gazprom.

Poison

2008-02-17T22:38:00.000Z

There is something tragically human in poisoning oneself. There's something quite tragically human in tragedy too.

A dark place

2008-01-27T21:55:00.000Z

The further I go, the darker dark gets.

Sure as I am that this is but a partial clue, Sunday evening Berlin, in January, is a dark place. The broad street and the low range
It is a dark place, this, which is not to say it is inhabited by dark people. Instead, they walk with their heads up, the people here look in the eye of darkness and whatever dreams and nightmares it has or is to create.

live messenger

2008-01-11T11:20:00.000Z

Now, under the slot called "amore", there is only an italic, light grey sentence:
"Drag a contact to this group".

Well, that's an awfully nice way to put it.

Epiphany

2008-01-02T10:41:00.000Z

I followed my Star and it brought me to Köln, again, to the golden address of the 3WiseMen. I'm quite sure this was not the way the story went, but you know what they say: Epithanies are written straight through crooked lines (posso traduzir assim?).

Heading back

2007-12-17T23:28:00.000Z

Not always, not even frequently, but sometimes, in the middle of noise and all the foolish screaming and shouting, there is still a shy boy that eats in silence the food prepared by his mother.
There is still someone that is reminded that the language of his parents sounds more like the sighing whispers of the sea.

So

2007-12-17T23:22:00.000Z

This blog is to turn into a collection of moments; brief, unrelated and boringly autobiographical moments.
To make it both accessible and ormai truthful, they will be handed out in the most spoken language in the world: broken English.

ad Maia

2007-11-12T21:23:00.000Z

Pessoas com o meu nome sentir-se-ão, sempre e em qualquer lugar, compelidas a agir da mesma maneira.

Transição

2007-10-14T19:37:00.000+01:00

Diz que estou num período de transição entre um período a sério e outro período de transição que me há-de levar a outro período a sério.

E ainda assim, ando sem paciência nenhuma para andar a perder tempo.

Stand up quote

2007-03-08T07:31:00.000Z

Whatever you fuckin' do
get paid to do it.
Otherwise, you'll just be another fuckin' nigger.

Chris Rock on racism

Conclusão

2007-03-08T07:29:00.000Z

Duas coisas podem tornar-se demasiado diferentes
só por passarem demasiado tempo sem se irem tornando mais iguais.

Auto-determinação

2007-02-20T11:29:00.000Z

É óbvio que sou pela auto-determinação dos povos.

Mas, neste país em que estou (o reino da Bélgica, para os menos contextualizados), existe uma grande pressão para que uma das partes se torne independente: a Flandres.
A argumentação é a de sempre:
1. A outra parte do país é mais pobre e só nos está a a consumir a riqueza pelos impostos.
2. Eles são completamente diferentes de nós, falam uma língua diferente, têm costumes e tradições diferentes.

A partir daí, se é este o argumento, acho que se devia partir o país em regiões. E as regiões em cidades e campo e as cidades em bairros, os bairros em ruas...

Quando cada casa fosse uma nação independente - sim, porque em cada rua há sempre casas mais ricas e mais pobres - é que começava a diversão.

Os pais haviam de querer tornar-se independentes dos filhos. Se há relação que existe uma parte da população que não compreende a outra e paga bem pago a sua perguiça, é a relação entre pais e filhos.

Declarada a independência, cada pessoa um estado, começariam os conflitos intra-corporais. A cabeça, raínha do corpo, não havia de querer ter nada a ver com as mãos sujas e toscas
e a palma de cada mão, argumentando ser diferente de cada um dos dedos, havia de exigir o seu direito à auto-determinação.

Não haveria osso ou tecido que sobrevivesse até que cada elemento da tabela periódica não declarasse a independência. Imagine-se se o ouro se havia de misturar com o ferro...

Depois entra a ética. Será que o ouro, ele próprio, seria capaz de conviver com um passado de vergonha. Não seria o ouro nazi, arrancando ao dente do judeu, ostracizado ele próprio pelas restantes moléculas que "não concordam com a sua ética".

Cada átomo então... cada átomo um estado auto-determinado. E mesmo assim não chega. O que diriam os electrões, ocupando as suas órbitas, dos electrões que estivessem nas outras. E o que diriam dos próprios electrões que ocupam a mesma órbita mas que, naquele momento, não estão no mesmo sítio. Se há diferença que nunca será resolvida, é a do "eu" estar num sítio e o "ele" estar necessariamente noutro. Quanto a isso não há volta a dar-lhe: auto-determinação.

Ficariam pois os protões e os neutrões sozinhos no universo, como era tradição e costume acontecer nos tempos idos do big bang. E talvez nessa altura, como aconteceu com aquele protão revolucionário - e extremamente mal visto - do átomo de hidrogénio primordial, um deles volte a dizer:

- Sabes, neutrão, somos em tudo iguais, pesamos o mesmo, temos a mesma matéria dentro de nós. A única diferença é que eu, protão orgulhoso de mim próprio e dos meus irmãos, sou positivo (+)! É essa a minha grandíssima e inimitável virtude e, por isso, nunca seremos iguais.

Mas será, neutrão, que és menor que eu?

E talvez nessa altura, volte a nascer qualquer coisa de bom.

A triste sina do marinheiro...

2007-02-14T10:06:00.000Z

É certo e sabido que, quando se vive no meio de pessoas estrangeiras, se ganha uma nova consciência do sítio de onde vimos e do quanto isso nos identifica. E é verdade que os que partem são, normalmente, mais ciosos da sua origem e do que ela respresenta.

Mas alguém que vive algum tempo no meio de pessoas estrangeiras, compreeende os seus vícios e, se lhe derem tempo suficiente, até os adquire. E quando regressa para junto da família e dos amigos já não é exactamente como eles. Pior, já vê para além deles e passa demasiado tempo a prestar atenção ao do que eles são feitos. Um bocado como alguém que vê um mau film de stop animation, em que se percebe demasiado a impressão digital sobre a plasticina, percebe como é que as coisas são feitas e perde-se o feitiço que faz correr o tempo como se nada fosse.

E depois volta ao estrangeiro, e depois a casa outra vez...

E acaba, ao fim e ao cabo, quando está no meio de estrangeiros, por ser um exemplo sublime e acabado daquilo que já não consegue ser em casa.

The Frames

2007-02-12T10:04:00.000Z

This song is the optimistic tale of a dog with three legs,
that is dying of cancer,
in a sinking boat,
in the middle of the sea...

There is always hope.

a triste sina do marinheiro...

2007-02-12T10:03:00.000Z

... com saudades da terra quando está no mar
e com saudades do mar quando está em terra.