Archive for Beatles
She said, she said
Asked a girl what she wanted to be
She said baby, can’t you see
I wanna be famous,
A star of the screen
This makes me feel
Like I’ve never been born
Like we’re fast-forwarding to the past
Like it’s the 1960′s
Again and already
It was 20 years ago today,
Sgt Pepper taught the band to play
This makes me feel like
We’re back in the 80′s,
And I was a (not so) little girl
Who loved videogames
And she said:
You’re gonna make mistakes
You’re young
Come on, baby, play me something
Like “Here Comes the Sun”
Good morning, good morning
Back to the future
This is the 21st century
And I’m almost 30
I told that girl
That my prospects were good
And she said baby, it’s understood
Working for peanuts is all very fine
But I can show you a better time:
The farther one travels
The less one knows
Working for peanuts is all very fine
But here comes the sun
Life is very short and there’s no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend
You say yes, I say no,
But we can work it out
So come on, baby, play me something
While my guitar gently weeps
You’re gonna make mistakes, you’re young
But don’t you know it’s gonna be all right?
Neither too old nor too young to play
Fact 1: Last August, I discovered a new game which is now my latest obsession: Rockband, a videogame in which the “controller” is a like a musical instrument, which you use to play the notes you see on the screen.
Child’s play? Maybe. But it’s really cool. I really wish there’d been something like this when I was growing up: I would have learned how to play the guitar in no time. Wouldn’t be the perpetual noob that I am.
Fact 2: I spent thousands of hours as a teenager teaching myself how to play the guitar. By “play the guitar” I mean “learning Beatles’ songs.” The two are synonymous in my head. (For more information on the severe case of Beatlemania which affected me about thirty years after it had hit the rest of the world, click here )
Fact 3 = Fact 1 + Fact 2!!!!
In other words:
ROCKBAND meets THE BEATLES!!!!
That is the coolest thing ever!!! When I grow up, I’ll buy one of those for meself! Yeah, yeah, yeah!
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1598228/20081030/beatles.jhtml
Imagine…
Imagine that I seriously considered staying in Sao Paulo for another couple of nights until tomorrow. I did. Seriously and exhaustively, because my imagination knows no boundaries. And I almost did decide to stay. Were it not for the fact that:
1. Imagine that the holiday next week (November 15, Proclamation of the Republic of Brazil) makes it three times cheaper to return when I did than to leave it for next week. This was before one of the airlines declared bankrupcy on Tuesday and cancelled all their flights, which probably will make the situation even more chaotic. Even so, I still might have made an effort, imagine that, so that I could stay a bit longer. Were it not for the fact that:
2. Ah, you can´t imagine how much work I have on my plate. According to my calculations, in order to do everything I´d like to get done by Christmas, November will have to last about five months, can you imagine? But I think I would have bit the bullet, choosing to work extra hard next week and the next, so that I could stay in São Paulo until tomorrow. Were it not for the fact that:
3. I wouldn´t have liked to miss yet another class. For besides going to the gym, I am currently enrolled in two classes: Krav Maga and Tai Chi Chuan (one for explosion, the other one for collecting energy). And imagine that in this hardly one month since I´ve started taking these classes, I have missed so many of them already… That´s not good. But I might have consented to missing just one more class, so that I could stay in SP until Friday. Were it not for the fact that:
4. I wouldn´t have any place to stay there. I mean, in theory I could stay for another three nights in the hotel where I was staying, which was very nice and extremely inexpensive for the comfort it provided. Were it not for the fact that:
5. I´m short on money. This visa business is costing me serious dough, especially with this unnecessary trip to SP. I don´t even want to imagine what the credit card bill is going to be like this month. But amidst so many extravagances, one wouldn´t think much of adding just another one, were it not for the fact that:
6. If I had at least taken more clothes with me. But I had packed for only a couple of days. I even considered finding a landromat (since item number 5 restricts the possibility of purchasing new clothes, and besides, my backpack was already too full). Were it not for the fact that:
7. I had forgotten what rain felt like, and didn´t take a single closed shoe or sock, or long-sleeved shirt… And it rained non-stop for two days, imagine that. So I would be in need not only of a landromat, but also of new shoes, jacket, just imagine… And all this would go against items 5 and 6.
But can you imagine that I thought very seriously of making all these efforts so that I could stay in São Paulo until November ninth double-o-seven?
I imagine that you´re betting the reason I wanted so badly to stay a bit longer was to spend more time at the Paulo Freire institute, right? Either that, or to be done with the whole visa story. But not so: both these goals could be achieved at another opportunity, and though I am an extremely impulsive person, I can sometimes manage to exercise the virtue of patience.
But it wasn´t that. What I really wanted to be doing right now was to be at São Paulo´s Theatro Municipal. I have never been there, and, honestly, there is nothing that has been there for decades now that could not wait for another while.
Except for one thing that is there only tonight. Something I would never have imagined to see in Brazil, and so accessible to the public.
Well, imagine that, as I write, Ms. Yoko Ono is performing in São Paulo´s Theatro Municipal. I didn´t even know that she held public performances, or that she went on world tours. She seems to be more handsome now than 40 years ago, when she first got to be known worldwide, if you can imagine that. And the ticket cost merely R$ 60,00 (around $30).
Can you imagine me missing something like this?
But so I did. Given motives 1-7 presented above, all I could do was to return to Brasília, and seek consolation in the good old”Imagine”:
“In the middle of a dream,
In the middle of a dream
I call your name:
Oh, Yoko…”
Food for the Soul
Yesterday I went out for brunch at a place I hadn’t been to in a long time, and that was nice. I used to like going there because they always happened to play the Beatles. Whole albums. From beginning to end.
This time they played not Beatles, but Elvis. Not bad at all, though it made it harder to concentrate on the conversations I was having (when I was having them, that is… the interruptions were just too many). After Elvis, an assortment of oldies, that made not only myself sing along, but the people at the next table too.
I left the restaurant, and went to a bookstore to look for some inspiration to write. It came, but not so much from the thousands and thousands of attractive titles all promising to give me the solution to all my problems (I am sure the solution must be there somewhere, but my lifetime is finite, and the number books in the world — or in a bookstore — I’m pretty sure isn’t).
The inspiration came from their playing “Help”, by the Beatles, in the backgroud. Not just track number 1 from the album of the same name — which in itself reflected my mood and somehow uplifted it. They played the whole album. All the fourteen tracks of it.
As my poor younger brother well remembers, “Help” was the first album I ever bought. With customary teenage tenacity, I played it over and over and over again (I don’t know whether so “customary”, but I was 13, and my purchase power was limited by monthly allowance). I’d almost say I played this album “ad nauseam”, only I never got sick of it (not sure the same cannot be said for my brother). I learned the lyrics (even though I didn’t understand English at the time — but it sure helped me with that). I learned the chords (two things the Beatles inspired me to do: to learn English and to play the guitar. But now at the bookstore I could not for the life of me remember the last time I had listened to the album from beginning to end.
I wasn’t looking for anything in particular (other than the ultimate answer to life, the universe and all there is — as I said, nothing in particular). So I just browsed aimlessly from shelf to shelf. I went from Aboriginal Studies to Zoology, through Health and Well-Being and back through Digital lifestyles, humming — what am I saying — singing, lound and clearly, prounouncing each word deliberately, remembering the time I didn’t even know what they meant. Some people, I noticed, turned around and stared at me. Some others were too busy in their own quest, while others were busy singing along too.
At the final chord of “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” the search for inspiration was over and I came home, fully satisfied with my Sunday brunch+bookstore combo. And I could not decide whether it was the food or the music at that restaurant that made me always so happy and energised.
