How did I get so old so soon?

Estava mesmo a precisar de um som assim. 
O frio não se afugenta com sorrisos, nem com vozes que nos abraçam com a simplicidade das palavras. Mas o coração deixa-se aquecer, como que um chocolate quente em dia de chuva.
Oscar Wilde escreveu “Youth is wasted on the young.” Parece-me que, para não variar, ele bem que estava certo.
O tempo voa com asas que não se gastam - são eternas! Não fosse o nosso corpo - a carne, os ossos, o sangue - que, sem darmos por ela, se desgasta com o rápido sopro das penas.

Gosto de pensar que não desperdicei a minha "juventude". Aliás, gosto de pensar que ainda a vivo - intensamente (ainda que uns dias mais que outros) - com suor, sangue e lágrimas, mas, acima de tudo, com Amor. Porque este, tem asas bem mais robustas que o tempo! 

“may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile”

 (E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems, 1904-1962)

"Where there is love there is life"

Talking to friends last Saturday, I mentioned how I really like this song - and I know I really like it because it's one of those songs that make me want to dance with my eyes closed and smiling. One of them was surprised: "This song is so depressing!", she said.

I don't know (and I'm probably wrong here), but isn't this song about love - the "right kind" of love?

Isn't it about how it doesn't matter that life may be cutting you to pieces, because love will glue it all back?

Isn't it it about how the sense of not belonging anywhere is regained once you are with the one you love (who luckily might love you back)? And however unfairly the world treats you, being with that one person makes everything look/sound/feel better?

Because Love is the light that never goes out. 
And that, I'm sure, is not depressing at all.

Pior que um murro no estômago

Digo eu, que nunca (ou ainda não) apanhei.

A verdade é que estou cansada. 


Ouvir quem já tem "tempo de antena" que chegue, de tal modo que as palavras se tornam migalhas que nem os pombos na praça querem comer, é cansativo. Fazem-se ouvir - até porque, a seu ver, a sua voz é a mais digna de ser ouvida. Os outros cacarejam e é claro que ninguém se preocupam muito com o que as galinhas dizem quando os falcões pairam no ar.   

Estou cansada.
Porque esta cidade não é o que diz ser, muito menos o que eu sonhei que fosse.

Assim sendo, esta canção (cuja qualidade não será discutida nesta publicação) servirá para muito pouco. 
E esse muito pouco será apenas o meu hino pessoal à cidade que me acolhe (cada vez menos).

[antibióticos]

Tenho para mim que, quem disse "se não morro do mal, morro da cura" terá, inevitavelmente morrido graças a um cocktail bombástico resultante de úlceras/gastrites.

Assim, de repente...

... quase consigo imaginar esta canção interpretada por Jeff Buckley.

A afirmação não procura comparar ou equiparar Anna Calvi a Jeff Buckley. Dito isto, confesso: talvez o tenha feito - só um pouco - quando a ouvi ao vivo em 2012.

De qualquer forma, não será nunca uma comparação musical mas uma quase comparação sentimental. Pois não é o que oiço de Calvi que me remete a Buckley - é, antes, o que sinto quando oiço. Aquele doce e melancólico sussuro que inesperadamente explode e quase nos quebra as costelas.

Maria João Pires: Prodigy and Genius Meet

Classical music (successfully) facing its "fear", I think. 
Based on "the academy" (from conservatories to music departments of universities) which produces performers, trains talent and institucionalizes a way of thinking about music in such an organized set of formal arrangements, finds itself in the proximity of folk music - Maria João Pires, had she not good memory (and academic) skills, she would have entered the spontaneous and natural world of "popular culture".

“There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do.” ― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

(And, though this happened  in 1998, I last read it here.)

Words of Wisdom. Words of Love.

On Sunday morning, I rose early. I had decided the night before to go to the ocean, so I slipped a book and a bottle of water into a sack and caught a ride to Rockaway Beach. It felt like a significant date, but I failed to conjure anything specific. The beach was empty, and, with the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy looming, the quiet sea seemed to embody the contradictory truth of nature. I stood there for a while, tracing the path of a low-flying plane, when I received a text message from my daughter, Jesse. Lou Reed was dead. I flinched and took a deep breath. I had seen him with his wife, Laurie, in the city recently, and I’d sensed that he was ill. A weariness shadowed her customary brightness. When Lou said goodbye, his dark eyes seemed to contain an infinite and benevolent sadness.I met Lou at Max’s Kansas City in 1970. The Velvet Underground played two sets a night for several weeks that summer. The critic and scholar Donald Lyons was shocked that I had never seen them, and he escorted me upstairs for the second set of their first night. I loved to dance, and you could dance for hours to the music of the Velvet Underground. A dissonant surf doo-wop drone allowing you to move very fast or very slow. It was my late and revelatory introduction to “Sister Ray.”Within a few years, in that same room upstairs at Max’s, Lenny Kaye, Richard Sohl, and I presented our own land of a thousand dances. Lou would often stop by to see what we were up to. A complicated man, he encouraged our efforts, then turned and provoked me like a Machiavellian schoolboy. I would try to steer clear of him, but, catlike, he would suddenly reappear, and disarm me with some Delmore Schwartz line about love or courage. I didn’t understand his erratic behavior or the intensity of his moods, which shifted, like his speech patterns, from speedy to laconic. But I understood his devotion to poetry and the transporting quality of his performances. He had black eyes, black T-shirt, pale skin. He was curious, sometimes suspicious, a voracious reader, and a sonic explorer. An obscure guitar pedal was for him another kind of poem. He was our connection to the infamous air of the Factory. He had made Edie Sedgwick dance. Andy Warhol whispered in his ear. Lou brought the sensibilities of art and literature into his music. He was our generation’s New York poet, championing its misfits as Whitman had championed its workingman and Lorca its persecuted.As my band evolved and covered his songs, Lou bestowed his blessings. Toward the end of the seventies, I was preparing to leave the city for Detroit when I bumped into him by the elevator in the old Gramercy Park Hotel. I was carrying a book of poems by Rupert Brooke. He took the book out of my hand and we looked at the poet’s photograph together. So beautiful, he said, so sad. It was a moment of complete peace.As news of Lou’s death spread, a rippling sensation mounted, then burst, filling the atmosphere with hyperkinetic energy. Scores of messages found their way to me. A call from Sam Shepard, driving a truck through Kentucky. A modest Japanese photographer sending a text from Tokyo—“I am crying.”As I mourned by the sea, two images came to mind, watermarking the paper- colored sky. The first was the face of his wife, Laurie. She was his mirror; in her eyes you can see his kindness, sincerity, and empathy. The second was the “great big clipper ship” that he longed to board, from the lyrics of his masterpiece, “Heroin.” I envisioned it waiting for him beneath the constellation formed by the souls of the poets he so wished to join. Before I slept, I searched for the significance of the date—October 27th—and found it to be the birthday of both Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. Lou had chosen the perfect day to set sail—the day of poets, on Sunday morning, the world behind him. ♦ILLUSTRATION: TOM BACHTELL

Leiam o original aqui:  http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2013/11/11/131111ta_talk_smith

Breathe Me II

There are songs you'll never forget and will always love.

There are songs that remind you of past moments and places.

Then there are those songs your own heart sings to your mind - just when you're about to sleep. And it's not the singer's voice you hear - it's your own. It's your heart's tempo.

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”  -  Maya Angelou

Quem não sabe, pergunta.

Ele é assim tão magnífico como dizem? (ou, como refere o comentário deste vídeo: "Detentor de uma voz poderosíssima"?)

O talento - ou talvez seja melhor dizer, a aptidão - musical, quando se julga algo como sendo "bom" (ou "mau"), desempenha 50% do papel. Os restantes 50% dependem da capacidade de controlar as pessoas - isto é, a audiência (incluindo o júri) -, dependem da aparência do intérprete (desde o seu estilo visual à personalidade que transmite), das canções que opta interpretar e das circunstâncias em que, tanto intérprete como audiência, se encontram (sejam elas circunstâncias pessoais, sociais ou até económicas)

A popularidade não deverá espelhar a qualidade de um músico ou canção. São duas medidas diferentes.

Assim sendo, pergunto, ele é assim tão magnífico como dizem?

Deixem o Pimba em Paz!

Na passada quinta-feira, a noite sorriu-me e eu retribuí.

Há, por exemplo, canções de "grandes" bandas como The Beatles - e, na minha opinião, Coldplay - bem mais triviais e corriqueiras que canções "Pimba".

Pessoalmente, este espectáculo - um enlaço entre o teatro e a música - é uma homenagem ao que tanto nos une: a música - até mesmo a Pimpa, sim!

Ouviram-se versões (e falo de versões - em oposição a covers) tão bem trabalhadas a partir dos originais que, mais do que rir, fizeram sorrir.

Porque o Pimba é tão digno quanto o Pop Pock dos Clã e o Fado do Camané (e até o Hip Hop que fez lembrar os Da Weasel). Será necessário um humorista famoso, dois (excelentes) cantores e três músicos para nos lembrar isso? Temo que esta sociedade o exija, ainda que seja uma exigência descabida.

Os mais cépticos dirão: "pois, isto apenas revela que qualquer um - como o Bruno Nogueira, que não canta bem nem para salvar-se da morte - pode cantar Pimba."

Pois os cépticos que Deixem o Pimba em Paz!

De volta?! Why not?

This album sure makes my day - whenever I listen to it, whatever mood I'm in.

Personally, I find it optimistic (which may be an odd comment - we are talking about Radiohead, right?!)

Nevertheless, I do think there is a positive vibe here, a sense of hope and confidence. I dare say the whole album inspires me.
Anyway, music (if we're personally judging it as "good music") can never be pessimistic, right?