4 November 2008 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Beatles, Music
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!
People that know me might recall my tendency to listen to an album over and over and over again, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks (and sometimes for longer: those who don´t believe this or don´t know me might want to check see my previous post “Food for the Soul”).
Well, this week´s album was “The Essential Leonard Cohen”. I bought this disc months ago, together with another half a dozen Cd´s (one of those crazy sales that promise you each disc for $0.99 if you buy this many, and then you do, and then it ends up being considerably more than the buck/a disc they used as bait, but by this time you’ve committed to the discs already, so you go with it).
Now, I have a policy against buying more than two CD’s at the same time, precisely because I need to listen to each of them over and over and over before my brain registers them as being part of my collection. It is as if I had to brand them onto my brain, memorize the titles, the order of the tracks, the lyrics, before I could come to facts that, yes, now I do have this album, I have it in me, left and right brain, left and right ear, upper and lower lip, hands and feet.
So, for some reason I didn’t get to Leonard Cohen when I bought it, and what with other discs requiring my attention, new ones to be branded on my brain, old ones claiming they’ve been neglected, constant moves across the city, I just never got to listen to Leo.
Until this week. One other thing that people that know me may or may not know about me is that every so often I need to listen to all my Cd’s in the order they’re shelved. So if this time I go alphabetically, next time I start with Woody Allen Soundtracks and U2, and hum all my way back to Abba. If this time it’s the Brazilian shelf, then next time is the non-Brazilian shelf. And if this time it was the Beatles shelf (they have a shelf of their own) then next time maybe the Legião shelf (they also have their own). And thus it was that this week I noticed Leonard Cohen sitting beside Phil Collins all neglected.
So I played it once. I liked it. I played it again. And once more. And listened to it in bed. And when I woke up. And while getting dressed for work. And when back from work. Found chords for some of my favorite tracks online. Got to do “Hallelujah” so many times I don´t even need to look anymore (cheesy, I know, everyone loves “Hallelujah”. But there is a reason everyone loves it: it is absolutely lovable: melodically, rhythmically, lyrically, gutturally, biblically, absolutely).
And days went by. My fingers, unused to the practiced, now felt we were back in high school again. So did my throat, my guitar and my heart. But I haven´t dared to ask my neighbours´ opinions on this yet.
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.
It all began the day I arrived in Brasilia from Canada, and my brother Chico invited me to go to Naty´s thesis defense the next day. So I went. It was super nice. It was about the Brazilian artist Chico Buarque. After the defense, a group of my brother´s friends went out for a beer and great conversation. Brains working full throttle.
Then I realized that Chico Buarque was one of those great Brazilian musicians I knew through osmosis, but didn´t really know that well. I decided then to make up for the time lost. I scavenged and played everything in Chico´s Chico´s collection (things by Chico Buarque in the things belonging to Chico my brother).
Since everything is really well-known, it wasn´t like “wow, I´ve never heard this before!” But there was that feeling that comes when you suddenly realise something you´d never noticed in something you´ve heard a gazillion times since you were born. Things that make you go “wow, this is so surprising, and at the same time, so typical!”
The first bursts of laughter came when listening to “Façamos”. This was not only because the lyrics are really funny, but also because it is a very well thought out version of “Let´s do it (Let´s Fall in Love)”, by Cole Porter (which is always the warm-up song in my lindy-hop class). Hardly recovered from the first explosion, laughter seized me again when “O Malandro” started playing, such a fantastic version of “Mack the Knife” that felt more like an original Brazilian samba than anything.
But what spurred the thought “Wow, I have to start a blog about this!” was “Mulheres de Atenas” (“Women of Athens”). This song illustrates so well what I´m reading for my comps, that it´s unbelievable! But when I got to write the blog, first I had to sum up part of what I´m reading for my comps (Page du Bois, J.R. Martin, etc), so the blog got longer and longer. And this is how we got here.
I don´t want to reinvent the wheel here with a full analysis of the song, especially since this is a new re-descovery of my own. All I wanted to say is that if Page du Bois or Jane Roland Martin listened to (and understood) this song, they´d go berserk.
Apart from the cadence and the rhymes which are absolutely genius, the accuracy with which it reflects both the Ancient Greek context and current reality is simply out of this world. Chico Buarque is fabulous in the way that he manages to adapt works of art created in different places, ages and reality and re-create them in such a way that the version is more original and seamless than the original, be it “Mack the Knife” or Homer´s Odyssey.
From the very first line (“Look up to the example of those women of Athens”) we see, ironically but accurately, the idealization of ancient customs which scholars like Du Bois attack. The description of the ideal woman “without preferences, without desires, with neither flaws nor qualities” is so terribly on the mark, that many thought the author was meant it earnestly.
Now, one may think that such an error is absurd, caused by either female hypersensitivity and hysteria, or by male ignorance and sexism, to think that the author wanted his song to be interpreted literally. But given the amount of serious and well-intended scholarly work with this kind of rhetoric, as well as how widespread this pattern of domination still is, such a mistake is completely understandable.
Which is not to say that we can just let it go and shrug our shoulders amazed at people´s ignorance. The error is grotesque, true. But it´s an error that only proves how grotesque contemporary civilization still is. The mere comtemplating that “Mulheres de Atenas” may perhaps be an ideal worth having proves that, in this respect at least, we are not that much ahead of the Greeks of over three thousand years ago. This is sad. Also sad is not to recognise this fact, and think that this equity has already been reached, as if mere positive thinking was enough to make unjust inequalities disappear.
What I like in the works I´m presenting here, like Martin, du Bois, Reagan, Monteiro Lobato, and others which are still to come, like Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Nísia Floresta, Cecília Prada, as well as this song by Chico Buarque, is the way that they show how these patterns apply over time and space, mutatis mutandi. I only wish I had Chico´s knack for translating so well not only the content but the whole feeling, from one context to another, one reality to another. Meanwhile, I´ll do what I can in my own esterical way to introduce these wonderful thinkers to other wonderful thinkers I know. To illustrate this, I end with a rough esterical version of the lyrics of the fabulous “Women of Athens”. Enjoy and weep!
Mulheres de Atenas (by Chico Buarque) (Women of Athens – trans. by Ester Macedo)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas (Look up to the example of those women of Athens) Vivem pros seus maridos, orgulho e raça de Atenas (They live for their husbands, pride and power of Athens) Quando amadas, se perfumam (When loved, they apply their perfumes,) Se banham com leite, se arrumam (Bathe in milk, dress up) Suas melenas (Their hair) Quando fustigadas não choram (When chastised, they do not cry) Se ajoelham, pedem, imploram (They kneel down and implore) Mais duras penas (For further hardships) Cadenas (Further chains)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas (Look up to the example of those women of Athens) Sofrem por seus maridos, poder e força de Atenas (They suffer for their husbands, might and force of Athens) Quando eles embarcam, soldados (When they board their ships, soldiers) Elas tecem longos bordados (They weave long fabrics) Mil quarentenas (A thousand quarantines) E quando eles voltam sedentos (And when they return, thirsty,) Querem arrancar violentos (They want to snatch, violent,) Carícias plenas (Full caresses) Obscenas (Obscene caresses) Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas (Look up to the example of those women of Athens) Despem-se pros maridos, bravos guerreiros de Atenas (They undress for their husbands, brave warriors of Athens,) Quando eles se entopem de vinho (When they fill themselves up with wine) Costumam buscar o carinho (They usually seek the affections) De outras falenas (Of other ladies) Mas no fim da noite, aos pedaços (But at the end of the night, in shreds) Quase sempre voltam pros braços (They almost always return to the arms) De suas pequenas (Of their dear little) Helenas (Helens)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas (Look up to the example of those women of Athens) Geram pros seus maridos os novos filhos de Atenas (They beget for their husbands the new sons of Athens,) Elas não têm gosto ou vontade (They have neither preferences nor desires,) Nem defeito nem qualidade (Neither defects, nor qualities,) Têm medo apenas (Only fear) Não têm sonhos, só têm presságios (They don’t have dreams, only omens,) O seu homem, mares, naufrágios (Their husbands, seas, shipwrecks,) Lindas sirenas (Beautiful sirens) Morenas (Brunettes)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas (Look up to the example of those women of Athens,) Temem pro seus maridos, heróis e amantes de Atenas (They fear for their husbands, heroes and lovers of Athens,) As jovens viúvas marcadas (The young widows, wounded,) E as gestantes abandonadas (The pregnant women, abandoned,) Não fazem cenas (Make no scene,) Vestem-se de negro se encolhem (They dress in black, withdraw) Se confortam e se recolhem (Comfort themselves, retire) Às suas novenas (To their novenas) Serenas (Serene)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas (Look up to the example of those women of Athens,) Secam por seus maridos, orgulho e raça de Atenas. (They wither for their husbands, pride and power of Athens.)
References, allusions and recommendations: - Homer´s Odyssey - “Mulheres de Atenas”, by Chico Buarque - “Let´s Do It (Let´s Fall in Love)”, by Cole Porter (also “Façamos (Vamos Amar)”, by Chico Buarque) - “Mack the Knife”, by Bob Darin (also “Opera do Malandro”, by Chico Buarque) - http://www.mundocultural.com.br/analise/Mulheres_de_Atenas.PDF
People that know me might recall my tendency to listen to an album over and over and over again, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks (and sometimes for longer: those who don´t believe this or don´t know me might want to check see my previous post “Food for the Soul”).
