W I D E I N T E R V E N T I O N

Girls - " Love like a river "

2012-01-20T03:40:00.000-02:00

Wye Oak - Holy Holy

2011-11-24T02:37:00.000-02:00

Holy, holy, holy
There is no other story
Holy, holy, holy
It is blindly seeking my story

Holy, holy, holy
Would you like to know me?
And don't fall unless to free
And lonely seeking as they need

Further choice and secrets our heart stores
We are the only way in my real world
A children for the blessed, for an old count
A tri-star upon your mind in my delight

All they say is, can we contain this?
A human, you're his precious
And I, oh sure, know this
When everyone should know this

Holy, holy, holy
There is no other story
It is blindly seeking my story
We will be who we want to be

Further choice and secrets our heart store
We are the only way in my real world
A children for the blessed, for an old count
A tri-star upon your mind in my delight

Ah, you will be mine
Ah, you will be mine
Ah, you will be mine
Ah, you will be mine

Holy, holy, holy
There is no other story
Holy, holy, holy

SEU JORGE and ALMAZ - Pai João [LIVE IN SÃO PAULO]

2011-11-07T03:48:00.000-02:00

Tropicália - Beck & Seu Jorge

2011-11-07T03:44:00.000-02:00

Dá-lhe Jorge!

Florence + The Machine - Shake It Out

2011-10-30T04:31:00.000-02:00

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play

And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest before the dawn

And I've been a fool and I've been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I'm always dragging that horse around

And our love is pastured such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues strong
But it's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaaah

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
Cause I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

And given half the chance would I take any of it back
It's a final mess but it's left me so empty
It's always darkest before the dawn

Oh woah, oh woah...

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark and right at my throat
Cause looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

Experimento

2011-10-16T04:45:00.001-02:00

Tudo pode ser tentativa.

Mélanie Laurent - En t'attendant

2011-10-16T04:16:00.000-02:00

Je fais des clins d'oeil aux nuages
Des battements de cils
Je defis les plus grands orages
Parapluie en exil
Je fais des brasses dans de l'eau douce
Un peu maladroite
Des châteaux de sable dans la mousse
Éphemères et pas droits

Le temps prend tout son temps

Et moi je perds le mien
Je m'invente des jeux enfantins
Je fais peu avec rien
Le temps prend du bon temps
Et je m'en ennuis avec le mien
Je m'invente des jeux qui ne valent rien
Je fais peu mais je fais bien
En t'attendant
En t'attendant

U2 Even Better Than The Real Thing (Fish Out Of Water Mix)

2011-10-15T00:36:00.000-03:00

Damien Hirst and U2? Not bad.

The F word: Famine is the real obscenity

2011-10-10T02:36:00.000-03:00

Aeroplane [Red Hot Chili Peppers]

2011-08-19T22:41:00.000-03:00

The Dead Weather - Hang You From The Heavens

2011-07-16T00:33:00.000-03:00

Raw, basic, trembling sound.

...and Li Na has just won the French Open. No pressure...

2011-06-05T01:14:00.000-03:00

This "No Pressure" approach to work realy seems to work :-)

No pressure

2011-05-28T04:13:00.002-03:00

The Language of God

2011-05-28T03:58:00.000-03:00

The Language of God from United Church of Christ on Vimeo.

"Oração". A banda mais bonita da cidade.

2011-05-24T22:12:00.000-03:00

É prá salvar seu coração!

Asian Dub Foundation - A History of Now

2011-05-24T01:14:00.000-03:00

I give up, I live up, I fill up
Gotta keep my mind in motion
Gotta keep motion in my mind

Cut it out, leave it out, take it out
All the things that make confusion
And diversions in these times

Breathing out, hold it out, hold it down
I´m buttoning down frustration, out of neutral into drive

Ray of hope, keep afloat, take a note
Need another survival strategy just to keep myself alive

Too many ideas buzzin´ round inside my brain
Live in the history of now
And I'm feelin like there's
Nothing left that I can really explain
Live in the history, live in the history of now

In a maze, in a haze, in a rage
Can't tell the difference between my TV, internet or me

Who is that? Who is this? Who said that?
America's next top strictly dancing ghost celebrity

And I'm always phasing between blinding lights and the deafening sound
And I can't even make out the words or make them match up with the mouths

Too many ideas buzzin´ round inside my brain
Live in the history of now
And I'm feeling like there's nothing left that I can really explain
Live in the history, live in the history of now

Eye to eye
Gotta get back to the desert
Gotta get right back to my soul

Burning sky
Where every drop of rain
Is a blessing to behold

Cos I can't be a relay
On an expanding circuit board
My mind won't fit on a server somewhere I could never afford

You can't download the sun
You can't download the sea
You can't download the sun
You'll never download me

Too many ideas buzzin round inside my brain
Live in the history of now
And I'm feelin like there's nothing left that I can really explain
I Live in the history, live in the history of Now

Words of Wisdom, by Michael Koresky

2011-05-24T00:19:00.002-03:00

Poetry
Dir. Lee Chang-dong, South Korea, Kino Releasing

What if the words won’t come? This is a problem that Mija, the 66-year-old protagonist of Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry must wrestle with. The question ends up taking multiple meanings as the film progresses. Mija, long a widow, who lives in a small apartment with just a grandson, has enrolled, in a fit of inspiration, in a poetry class—she has the proper spontaneous nature to be an artist, but not, as it turns out, the chops. Unable to let the writing flow out naturally from her personal experience of the everyday world, she overthinks every attempt, distrusts every impulse. However, words also fail Mija in a more functional sense—right from the beginning, when she visits a doctor to have diagnosed a prickling sensation in her right arm that she suspects is arthritis or neuralgia, she admits to finding that she increasingly forgets the names for things. The doctor is clearly concerned more about her memory than her tingling appendage, and though there is no talk of it for a long while of screen time, the moment hangs over the film ominously. Eventually, a diagnosis comes, expectedly to us, if not Mija: that seemingly unstoppable, barely treatable worldwide plague known as Alzheimer’s.

That Alzheimer’s still cannot officially be diagnosed pre-autopsy, at least in the routine, casual way presented here, may be lost on the filmmakers, but it hardly matters to the scope of the drama—Poetry, a remarkable study of age, class, loneliness, responsibility, art, and the illusory nature of being, is not a film about the disease, nor, mercifully, is it a film that uses the disease as a device or even metaphor (an easy enough thing to do considering that one of cinema’s longest running, headiest topics is the impermanence of memory). Rather, Poetry allows the threat of Alzheimer’s to exist as a very real character trait, part of this woman’s shifting emotional makeup. Lee Chang-dong charts Mija’s late-in-life transformation: we know what her sad endpoint will be, but Lee has constructed a far less predictable narrative around her, one that gives her the choice and power that her brain and body will soon deny her.

All this remains unspoken, subtextual—in typical Lee fashion, Poetry openheartedly narrativizes its themes but also keeps them close to its breast. In this sense, Poetry is not unlike another recent bravura film from South Korea, Bong Joon-ho’s marvelous Mother, an emotionally rich, classically told narrative of an aging woman whose life spins out of reason when her mentally retarded son is accused of a horrific crime. Mija also finds herself radically changing her life upon discovering that a loved one has been accused of involvement in some nefarious business. Like Mother’s protagonist, she is dowdy and working-class, struggling to make ends meet; yet Mija, as played by the lovely Jeong-hee Yoon, is more of an ingratiating, likable presence. Dressed in bright colors and sporting a Pollyanna smile, Mija is initially a winsomely spirited woman, even turning that first doctor’s visit into an optimistic encounter.

Lee establishes darkness on the horizon before we meet Mija: in the opening sequence, the limp corpse of a young girl floats down a rushing river, spotted by a group of children frolicking on a bank nearby. How the circumstances around this high school student’s death—a suicide, we soon discover—tie into the unfolding story of Mija is best left unexplained for those who haven’t seen the film (as in Mother, Poetry’s pleasures are largely wedded to the grace with which its narrative unfolds). The mystery itself is easily forgotten for a great deal of running time as the commanding screen presence of Jeong-hee Yoon more than keeps our attention, and she imbues Mija with a compelling weary ambivalence, whether she’s casually but energetically playing street badminton with grandson Wook, going about her menial duties as a housemaid for a stroke-afflicted geriatric, or struggling to scribble out a verse for her writing class. As a single elderly woman basically on her own, working part-time and living off government subsidy, Mija is rarely afforded respect: Wook, sprouting acne and a dirty smear of a pubescent moustache, gives her a surly cold shoulder, perhaps blaming her for his mother’s abandonment; neighbors and women at the local supermarket often don’t appear to listen to her when she speaks, sometimes ignoring her completely; her attempts at tapping into an inner artistry through poetry are likewise met with patronizing skepticism. A crucial plot turn finds Mija surrounded by a group of younger men, all fathers of Wook’s school peers, and the contempt they barely conceal for Mija’s stronger feminine sensitivity is palpable; in their presence she is humbled, but her silence speaks volumes, as does the way Lee places her in the frame, withered yet composed, at once present yet also dissolving into the background.

This is a woman already robbed of a voice; that she will also lose her thoughts is an unimaginable cruelty. Yet Lee never dwells on this tragedy, instead embroiling Mija in a complexly woven plot that grants her control over her decisions at a moment before she loses that control. Mija’s ultimate decisions in Poetry function as a moving correction to the blind, agonized foolishness that overtakes the protagonist of Mother, which leads her to a kind of purgatory. Where Mija’s heading is more ambiguous—her future has been cruelly, cosmically preordained. We know that soon enough she will lose faculty of her speech, then body; her family and friends (in this case already shadows) will be unrecognizable to her; her mind will become a sort of prison. For now Lee grants her supremacy.

“Nouns are most important,” a character says at one point, stated as though fact, amidst a classroom conversation about the engagement of words. It’s an almost Bressonian statement when applied to the cinema. While Lee might not offer such a stringent style, there’s an unforced purity to his filmmaking that doesn’t make room for much embellishment. For a film so attuned to character, and which ostensibly takes the pursuit of art in a violent world as its central through-line, Poetry is surprisingly plot-driven, lengthy but not given to flourish or elegiac cutaways. Even Mija’s final moment of poetic triumph is muted: right when she finds her words, she also sacrifices her own voice.

----------------------
Reverse Shot, Issue 29.
Reverse Shot is a quarterly, independently published film journal.
www.reverseshot.com

The Dead Weather - "Will There Be Enough Water" - Live from The Roxy

2011-05-24T00:04:00.000-03:00

WARNING: That´s very bleak. As cold as a guitar solo can get. Jack White at his best.

Player One, by Douglas Coupland

2011-05-08T23:42:00.000-03:00

Player One, by Douglas Coupland – REVIEW

Douglas Coupland's tale of four strangers, holed up in an airport cocktail lounge while the world around them crumbles, has an odd tenderness

Stephanie Merritt

The Observer, Sunday 24 October 2010

Airports lend themselves usefully to fiction; they represent a world of fleeting contacts, of strangers suspended between origin and destination, a transitory moment in which identities and inhibitions can be cast aside. For the characters thrown together at the Toronto Airport Camelot Hotel cocktail lounge in Douglas Coupland's latest novel, it's a chance to reflect on the nature of time and what it means to be human. Each of them, in his or her own way, is preoccupied with the idea of life as a coherent story.

For Karen, a divorced mother nearing 40, the soulless bar represents the possibility of connection – with Warren, a man she met two weeks earlier in an internet chatroom. Rick, the recovering alcoholic bartender, is also in a state of anticipation; he means to turn his life around by paying all his savings to a perma-tanned life coach. Luke, a middle-aged pastor, has just raided the church renovation fund and left town with $20,000 in cash in the pockets of his crumpled suit. Rachel, an impossibly beautiful young woman whose autism lends her the manner of an automaton, has decided to become impregnated to prove to her father that she is fully human. A fifth voice also contributes to the narrative: the enigmatic Player One, whose identity is only revealed towards the end, and who addresses the reader directly with the lofty tone of an omniscient narrator.

None of them are expecting the apocalypse. Yet within minutes of their arrival in the bar, the world is exploding into fragments around them. The rolling news shows an oil crisis: prices have rocketed to $250 a barrel and almost immediately order breaks down. Electronic communications fail; the sky outside is filled with chemical explosions and, most urgently, a sniper has found his way onto the roof of the cocktail lounge and is taking random shots at people in the street below.

There are echoes here of Hey Nostradamus!, Coupland's 2004 novel, which also featured multiple narrators caught up in a shotgun massacre. There, too, characters obsessed about the afterlife and the notion of redemption. In Player One, the cocktail lounge becomes a sanctuary from the chemical blizzard raging outside. In this interim refuge, with all social convention peeled away, these strangers are free to exchange their private stories of fear and failure and their desire for significance. "We have to count," says Luke. "I want to be part of history. I want a Wikipedia page. I want Google hits. I don't want to be just a living organism that comes and goes and leaves no trace on this planet."

But it's Bertis, the sniper, who offers the starkest condemnation of our age. "Look at you," he observes. "You're a depressing grab bag of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of the most banal form of capitalism."

This is all familiar Coupland territory, but there is an odd tenderness to this novel, and it has to do with recapturing the sense of life as a story in a world of information overload and non-linear narratives. For some of the characters, the ending offers hope of transcending loneliness. Though it is swallowed up by the knowing black humour of the appendix, a glossary of apocalyptic neologisms, the humanity of Player One's valedictory words lingers: "Life need not be a story, but it does need to be an adventure."

Sufjan Stevens: from 2004 through 2011

2011-05-08T00:09:00.005-03:00

We will join the trees in the clapping.

Are you raising your hand?

Really too much riding on that.

E eu também não estou de brincadeira!

Ótimo artigo/entrevista sobre/com Sufjan Stevens
no The Guardian de 8 de maio de 2011:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/08/sufjan-stevens-interview-age-adz

Gotta be ready.

2011-05-05T02:29:00.001-03:00

Ótimo movimento.

Adele - Rolling In The Deep (Live on Alan Carr: Chatty Man)

2011-04-06T00:48:00.000-03:00

There's a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch and it's bring me out the dark,

Finally, I can see you crystal clear,
Go ahead and sell me out and I'll lay your shit bare,
See how I'll leave with every piece of you,
Don't underestimate the things that I will do,

There's a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch and it's bring me out the dark,

The scars of your love remind me of us,
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all,
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless,
I can't help feeling,

We could have had it all,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
Rolling in the deep,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),
You had my heart inside of your hands,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
And you played it to the beat,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),

Baby, I have no story to be told,
But I've heard one on you and I'm gonna make your head burn,
Think of me in the depths of your despair,
Make a home down there as mine sure won't be shared,

The scars of your love remind me of us,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
I can't help feeling,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),

We could have had it all,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
Rolling in the deep,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),
You had my heart inside of your hands,

(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
And you played it to the beat,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),

Could have had it all,
Rolling in the deep,
You had my heart inside of your hands,
But you played it with a beating,

Throw your soul through every open door,
Count your blessings to find what you look for,
Turn my sorrow into treasured gold,
You'll pay me back in kind and reap just what you've sown,

(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
We could have had it all,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),
We could have had it all,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
It all, it all, it all,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),

We could have had it all,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
Rolling in the deep,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),
You had my heart inside of your hands,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
And you played it to the beat,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),

Could have had it all,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
Rolling in the deep,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),
You had my heart inside of your hands,

But you played it,
You played it,
You played it,
You played it to the beat.

BBC - UNLIKELY LINES TO READ IN THE BIBLE - Mock the Week Series 9 Episode 2 -...

2011-03-27T02:03:00.000-03:00

Totalmente auto-explicável.

2011-03-09T04:00:00.001-03:00

Love Like a Sunset, by Phoenix

2011-03-09T03:43:00.002-03:00

O filme "Somewhere", de Sophia Coppola, é perfeitamente ensaduichado na abertura e nos créditos pelas partes 1 e 2 de "Love like a sunset", balística balada synth-pop da banda francesa Phoenix.

Inside Job

2011-03-07T16:33:00.002-03:00

Watch Inside Job

Grammys 2011 feat. Eminem, Rihanna, Skylar Grey, and Dr. Dre

2011-02-20T13:05:00.000-03:00

Somewhere | trailer US (2010) by Sofia Coppola

2011-02-14T23:23:00.000-02:00

Sofia Coppola demonstra, com suavidade, o ensurdecedor barulho da angustiante solidão.
A esperança está no calar o ruído, literalmente.

Os benefícios do Transporte Público (Jonas Bertucci)

2011-02-13T17:26:00.000-02:00

...the existence of spirit in the midst of the ugly, the quotidian, the seemingly meaningless ....

2011-02-07T00:01:00.000-02:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/28/MVUE1HDAG6.DTL

Drama. Starring Javier Bardem and Maricel Alvarez. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. In Spanish with English subtitles. (R. 130 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

In "Biutiful," director Alejandro González Iñárritu has a story to tell, set in a particular time (the present) and place (Barcelona, Spain), and he tells it, but he's after something a lot bigger. His ambition is to express how enormous life is, and what it feels like. He is trying to capture on film the meaning and the experience of being alive.

To explain what Iñárritu is attempting here, it might be best to ask a question: Have you ever stepped outside and felt a fleeing sense of euphoria that made you believe you could almost hold the whole world inside your head? "Biutiful" is like an attempt to keep that euphoric conviction and put it into action. What Iñárritu gives us is not a beautiful world or an amazing world. It is simply the world, and therefore, by definition, beautiful and amazing - and painful, awful and mysterious.

The film is far from a complete success, for reasons that are worth elaborating on. But when a director goes for the brass ring - the ultimate brass ring that Terrence Malick reached for and snatched with "The New World" six years ago - you have to respect that, watch closely and take it in. We're not talking about just another night at the movies.

The Barcelona depicted here is not a tourist's dream, but a rough, workaday city full of poverty and day laborers. Javier Bardem, looking just as rough, plays a shady guy who makes his living on the fringes. He supplies goods to illegal street vendors and provides undocumented aliens with work on construction sites. And every day he goes around putting out fires, negotiating prices and bribing policemen.

He's a decent guy in a parasite's line of work, and it soon becomes clear that he is driven by a desire to protect people - African sidewalk hustlers, Chinese laborers and, most of all, his two children, who live with him and not his ex-wife (Maricel Alvarez), an unbalanced alcoholic. But his capacity to protect the weak is limited, and it's further compromised by illness: He is urinating blood, and from his reaction to it (he is not freaking out), this has apparently been going on for quite some time.

In trying to distill a grand vision, Iñárritu does two things, one not so good, one great. He tries widening the scope of his story, the way he did in "Babel," taking time to show us the tribulations of an African family in Spain and the burgeoning relationship of two gay Chinese criminals. As in "Babel," this effort feels labored, perfunctory and aching with politically correct politeness. The narrative stalls.

But when Iñárritu pauses to see the world in a grain of sand, he finds it. He focuses on Bardem and through cinematographic means illuminates a single consciousness. Through inspired handheld camera work and poetic editing, he instills in the audience the visceral sense of walking down a frenetic street while lost in anxious thought. Or the experience of lying in bed and discovering the ceiling. Or the familiar yet sometimes unreal feeling of plunging into social life while a part of us is elsewhere. "Biutiful" exists, at its best and beautifully, in that space that's hard to define, between the outside and the interior, action and thought, body and soul.

That place is, ultimately, one of spirit, and the spiritual dimension in life - the existence of spirit in the midst of the ugly, the quotidian, the seemingly meaningless - is the movie's true area of concern and, to put it prosaically, its ultimate message. Bardem, with that face that might belong to a brute or a mystic, eludes the temptations of cliche or easy emotion and carries that message as though it were revelation, with all the purity and dignity it deserves.

-- Advisory: This film contains nudity, drug use and disturbing images.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.

Simbiose

2011-02-06T23:41:00.000-02:00

Jose Gonzalez. "Far Away".

2011-02-05T19:22:00.001-02:00

Step in front of a runaway train just to feel alive again.
Pushing forward through the night, aching just to blow aside.

It’s so far, so far away.
It’s so far, so far away.

Cold wind blows into the skin.
Can’t believe the state you’re in.

It’s so far, so far away.
It’s so far, so far away.

Who are you trying to impress, steadily creating a mess?

Step in front of a runaway train, just to feel alive again.
Pushing forward through the night, aching just blow aside.

Aching just to blow aside, aching just to blow aside…

Step in front of a runaway train, just to feel alive again.
Pushing forward through the night, aching just blow aside.

Aching just to blow aside, aching just to blow aside…

Runaway (Kanye West)

2011-01-30T01:23:00.001-02:00

Ah, por falar em bailarinas, gostei muito de "Black Swan", com Natalie Portman no topo dos próprios pés (e da performance também, por mais que isso possa deixar qualquer um louco!).

HURTS. Wonderful Life

2011-01-12T00:55:00.001-02:00

Wonderful Life.
HURTS.

On a bridge across the severn on a Saturday night,
Susie meets the man of her dreams.
He says that he got in trouble and if she doesn't mind,
he doesn't want the company.
But there's something in the air
They share a look in silence and everything is understood.
Susie grabs her man and puts a grip on his hand
as the rain puts a tear in his eye.

She says:
Don't let go! Never give up - it's such a wonderful life.
Don't let go! Never give up - it's such a wonderful life.

Driving through the city to the temple station,
Cries into the leatherseat,
And Susie knows her baby was a familiy man,
But the world has got him down on his knees.

So she throws him at the wall and kisses burn like fire,
And suddenly he starts to believe,
He takes her in his arms and he doesn't know why,
But he thinks that he begins to see

She says:
Don't let go! Never give up - it's such a wonderful life.
Don't let go! Never give up - it's such a wonderful life.
Don't let go! Never give up - it's such a wonderful life.
Don't let go! Never give up - it's such a wonderful life.

She says:
Don't let go! Never give up!
Don't let go! Never give up - it's such a wonderful life.

Wonderful life, wonderful life, wonderful, wonderful, Wonderful life.

Wonderful life, wonderful life, wonderful, wonderful, Wonderful life.

Don't let go!
Don't let go!

Abnormal vision

2011-01-11T23:08:00.004-02:00

My ophtalmologist´s first words at today´s appointment were: "it´s been 3 years since we last met!"

Nostalgia aside, my myopia grade increased 0.25 in both eyes in the period. That means it grew more than this blog in the same time. Btw, do they even use this curious and boring word, "blog", anymore?

So, at least to keep up with my own eyes (or with my enhanced awareness of the limits of my vision, both literally as well as metaphorically speaking), and thanks to Doctor Renata´s complaint, some sparce postings will follow along the year.

It´s very likely that several words will be blindly distributed, unveiling a certain amount of unfairness, for which I apologize quite in advance. It´s part of my condition.

Yes, I wear glasses.

The "holly days"...

2011-01-11T23:06:00.000-02:00

"Rise", by Eddie Vedder

2007-12-09T02:20:00.000-02:00

Such is the way of the world
You can never know
Just where to put all your faith
And how will it grow

Gonna rise up
Burning black holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold

Such is the passage of time
Too fast to fold
Suddenly swallowed by signs
Low and behold

Gonna rise up
Find my direction magnetically
Gonna rise up
Throw down my ace in the hole

Don't let the darkness eat you up!

2007-12-06T23:43:00.000-02:00

"Devil's Arcade"
By Bruce Springsteen
In: "Magic"

Remember the morning we dug up your gun
The worms in the barrel, the hanging sun
Those first nervous evenings of perfume and gin
The lost smell on your breath as I helped you get it in
The rush of your lips, the feel of your name
The beat in your heart, the devil's arcade

You said "Heroes are needed, so heroes get made"
Somebody made a bet, somebody paid
The cool desert morning and nothing to save
Just metal and plastic where your body caved
The slow games of poker with Lieutenant Ray
In the ward with the blue walls, a sea with no name
Where you lie adrift with the heroes of the devil's arcade

You sleep and you dream, your buddies Charlie and James
And wake with a thick desert dust on your skin

Voice says "don't worry, I'm here
Just whisper the word tomorrow in my ear"
House on a quiet street, a home for the brave
A glorious kingdom with the sun on your face
Rising from a long night as dark as the grave
On a thin chain of next moments and something like faith
On a morning to order a breakfast to make
A bed draped in sunshine, a body that waits
For the touch of your fingers, the end of the day
The beat of your heart, the beat of your heart
The beat of your heart, the slow burning away
Of the bitter fires of the devil's arcade

In God we doubt

2007-09-08T01:46:00.000-03:00

From The Sunday Times, September 2, 2007

He went looking for God and ended up an angry agnostic – unable to believe but enraged by the
arrogance of militant atheists. It’s hard to see the purpose of the world, he says, but don’t blame its evils on religion

John Humphrys

I still recall the exact times and places when the Big Questions declared themselves to my childish consciousness. The first arrived when I was in short trousers and knew even less than I know today.

I had been playing with some friends on a disused aerodrome near my home in Cardiff. We used the abandoned carcasses of old aircraft to attack the squadrons of imaginary German bombers droning above us in the darkening sky. When we had wiped them out, my friends went home for tea. I hung around. It was one of those days when my mother, a hairdresser who worked from home, was giving a perm to a neighbour and I hated the stench of the chemicals.

By now it was dark. The glory of the night sky had yet to be lost to light pollution and on cloudless nights the stars went on for ever. That was what troubled me. How could they go on for ever? And if the universe was everything, what was it all in? And how could it be in anything because that would have to be in something else and . . . and . . . and so on. And what was there before any of it existed? And how did it all come into existence? And finally – the really, really Big Question – why?

The other Big Question came to me at about the same age. I was on a bus returning from our week’s holiday in Aberyst-wyth. I hated buses. I was always sick on them. It was while I was hanging over the platform at the back that I discovered mortality. For the first time in my short life I realised that one day I would die.

Once again the question was: why? What was the point of being born if all there was to look forward to was dying? For the length of that ghastly journey and into the next day, everything seemed completely and utterly pointless. Then the normal service of childhood was resumed and it went away. But it came back. Questions like that always do.

It took me a few more years to grasp that rather a lot of people were worrying about their own versions of the Big Questions and had been for quite a long time.

The 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal described the predicament of those who do not know “. . . why I am set down here rather than elsewhere, nor why the brief period appointed for my life is assigned to me at this moment rather than another in all the eternity that has gone before and will come after me. On all sides I behold nothing but infinity, in which I am a mere atom, a mere passing shadow that returns no more. All I know is that I must die soon, but what I understand least of all is this very death which I cannot escape”.

Pascal did not come to believe in a personal God until his early thirties. I was one of the many whose questions were answered by the church right from the beginning. There was no question of my not going to church. That’s what we did in my family.

At 15 I left school to work on a local newspaper and then, two years later, left home to work for a bigger paper in the Welsh valleys. It was then that I stopped going to church. Saturday night was pub-crawl night, which meant that Sunday morning was spent recovering. But in any case I realised that going to church was a meaningless exercise. I was bored by the ritualised responses, by priests who seemed to have nothing to say, by my own failure to be genuinely moved by any of it.

Yet I continued to pray. I prayed every single night without fail for half a century. The problem was that I had absolutely no notion of the God to whom I was supposed to be praying or, for that matter, why I was praying. Did I really think my prayers would make any difference? I doubt it. So, if I was getting nothing out of it and neither were the people I was praying for, why was I bothering? Mostly, I wanted to believe. I envied friends with an apparently solid faith their certainties and the comfort their faith appeared to bring them.

My years as a reporter and foreign correspondent took their toll. I was not much more than a boy when I watched the miners of Aberfan digging for the bodies of their children after the coal tip crushed their school. A few years later I was watching weeping mothers trying to free the bodies of their children from the ruins of houses wrecked by an earthquake in Nicaragua. In various African countries I have seen children, all hope gone from their blank and staring eyes, slowly starving to death. In divided countries all over the world I have seen the bodies of young men horribly mutilated by other young men for no other reason than that they belonged to the wrong tribe or religion.

In war zones I have listened to soldiers – ordinary people like you and me, with their own children to love and care for – justify the slaughter of other entirely innocent human beings, other children.

And over and over again I was asking myself the other Big Question, one that would not have occurred to the innocent little boy on the aerodrome: where was God?

My spiritual journey – if that’s not too high-falutin’ a notion – took me from my childish Big Questions to my ultimate failure to find any corresponding Big Answers. I have ended up – so far, at any rate – as a doubter. It’s clear that I’m far from alone.

In almost half a century of journalism I have never had such a response to anything I have written or broadcast as I did to last year’s Radio 4 series Humphrys in Search of God. The letters arrived by the sackful. It felt a bit like putting my fingers on the religious pulse of the nation; and the pulse is still strong. However empty the pews may be there are plenty of people with a sincere and passionate belief. There are also plenty of people who think it’s all a load of nonsense.

What surprised me is how many think of themselves as neither believers nor atheists but doubters. They, too, are sincere. Devout sceptics, if you like. And many of them feel beleaguered. I’m with them. SINCE starting to write my book, I have fallen into the habit of asking almost everyone I meet if they believe in God. And here’s the interesting thing: it was only the atheists who seemed absolutely certain.

Of course, this proves nothing: it’s purely anecdotal and statistically worthless. But let me try to sum up the attitude of those militant atheists who seem to hold believers in contempt:
1. Believers are mostly naive or stupid. Or, at least, they’re not as clever as atheists.
2. The few clever ones are pathetic because they need a crutch to get them through life.
3.They are also pathetic because they can’t accept the finality of death.
4.They have been brainwashed into believing. There is no such thing as a “Christian child”, for instance – just a child whose parents have had her baptised.
5.They have been bullied into believing.
6. If we don’t wipe out religious belief by next Thursday week, civilisation as we know it is doomed.
7 Trust me: I’m an atheist. I make no apology if I have oversimplified their views with that little list: it’s what they do to believers all the time.

So let’s answer each of those points:
1. This is so clearly untrue it’s barely worth bothering with. Richard Dawkins, in his bestselling The God Delusion, was reduced to producing a “study” by Mensa that purported to show an inverse relationship between intelligence and belief. He also claimed that only a very few members of the Royal Society believe in a personal god. So what? Some believers are undoubtedly stupid (witness the creationists) but I’ve met one or two atheists I wouldn’t trust to change a lightbulb.
2. Don’t we all? Some use booze rather than the Bible. It doesn’t prove anything about either.
3. Maybe, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Count the number of atheists in the foxholes or the cancer wards.
4. True, and many children reject it when they get older. But many others stay with it.
5. This is also true in many cases but you can’t actually bully someone into believing – just into pretending to believe.
6. Of course the mad mullahs are dangerous and extreme Islamism is a threat to be taken seriously. But we’ve survived monotheist religion for 4,000 years or so, and I can think of one or two other things that are a greater threat to civilisation.
7. Why? For those of us who are neither believers nor atheists it can be very difficult. Doubters are left in the deeply unsatisfactory position of finding the existence of God unprovable and implausible, and the comfort of faith unachievable. But at the same time we find the reality of belief undeniable.

It’s bad enough being a failed Christian – sneered at by atheists and believers. It’s even worse being what I suppose you could call someone like me – a failed atheist. Or maybe it’s not. That’s what Giles Fraser has been calling himself for years and he happens to be an Anglican vicar.
Here’s his own description of himself when he was younger: “a bolshy kid who discovered Marx at school and gave myself over to it hook, line and sinker”. During the miners’ strike in the mid1980s he realised what a sham it all was – “a privileged public schoolboy like me playing at politics”, as he told me. His “faith” in Marx-ism collapsed but he remained an atheist.

It was his interest in atheism that made him take religion seriously. He did his PhD on Nietzsche, and theology became “a sort of hobby”. He immersed himself in the great theologians and, after years of looking into theology from the outside, he discovered that he was on the inside looking out. He realised that he believed in God. He seems genuinely puzzled by it.

There are many like him in the Anglican Church who share his scorn (if not contempt) for the more traditional approach to Christianity. He is embarrassed by “stupid” Christians thinking they know more about the nature of the universe than clever atheists like Dawkins. Ask him to prove that God exists – one of the subjects of his philosophy lectures at Oxford – and he cheerfully admits that he can’t. He goes further: “The so-called proofs of God’s existence are all rubbish.”

Ask him if the resurrection of Jesus Christ really happened and he says: “Umm . . . dunno . . . can’t prove it.”

Ask him about evangelical Christians and he snorts: “Evangelicals have misunderstood the Bible. They turn it into some bloody Ikea manual.”

Ask him to sum up the state of battle between militant believers and militant atheists and he says: “Atheists have the best arguments, which makes belief such a precarious thing.”

In hours of conversation over the kitchen table I have tried hard to pick a proper argument with him about theology – he teaches it – but I have failed. That’s partly because he freely acknowledges that theology is not some sort of intellectual platform on which faith can be built.

He quotes Augustine: theology is “faith seeking understanding” – which means you get your faith first and then try to make sense of it. And faith is not a belief that certain propositions about the world are true. It is not grounded in rational argument and neither is there any good line of reasoning that can persuade one to believe. Belief just isn’t like that, says Fraser. So what is it like? Why does a believer believe?

What’s interesting is that you get much the same answer to that question whether it comes from a philosopher/vicar like Giles Fraser or a theo-logian/archbishop like Rowan Williams or an old lady who has never read a book on theology in her life and wouldn’t know the difference between an ontological argument and a pork pie. Why should she? Theology, as Fraser says, is not the foundation of faith.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the little old lady might use a different vocabulary to try to explain why they believe, but it comes to the same thing in the end. They believe because they believe. This is not about intellect or learning: it’s more basic than that. It is both more profound and more simple.

I suspect that on the most primitive level it is not all that different from the little scrap of blanket that so many small children rely on. They need it whenever they get tired or life looks a bit threatening.

I invite you to imagine the impossibly grand figure of the Archbishop of Canterbury sitting on the steps of his cathedral with his thumb stuck in his mouth, stroking his bearded cheek with the little bit of satin at the edge of his comfort blanket.

This image may not do a great deal for the dignity of the primate’s office, but the comfort blanket is not a million miles away from what religion offers at its most simplistic. Strip from Christianity the notion of proof, evidence and historical events (or nonevents) and what drives belief has little to do with the head and a great deal to do with the heart.

Many atheists, as my list suggests, say that people believe because of the way they were brought up: children are credulous and accept what they are told. As they grow older they get rid of their comfort blankets and often the beliefs with which they were inculcated. But not everyone does that – and even those who do may return to belief, in one form or another, in later life.

There remains what the atheist philosopher AC Grayling calls “the lingering splinter in the mind . . . a sense of yearning for the absolute”. There is a profound longing for something that will stimulate and satisfy emotionally and spiritually.

Grayling and other atheists understand that longing perfectly well, but what puzzles them is why it cannot be satisfied by pottering about in the garden, a walk in the hills, watching a sunset, listening to a piece of great music. Yet that misses the point.

Believers may very well find comfort and solace in all those things but where atheists are wrong is in failing to recognise and understand that most believers want something else as well. It is hard to talk to Christians about religion without them eventually using the word “love”.
Grayling co-wrote the play On Religion in which a lead character is loosely based on Giles Fraser. One of his main scenes is taken from Fraser’s own life.

He told me about it: “The night before I got married my brother sat me down in an Indian restaurant and (too many beers) got me to make a list on a napkin of why this girl was the right person for me to marry. One side of the napkin had all the pros and the other side the cons.
“What was fascinating about the list was that nothing I could write down – kind, pretty, warm, sexy, etc – could ever add up to “I love her”. To marry and make the love commitment is the nearest thing to faith I know because it is something done with the same degree of risk.
“Would a person who needed everything fully evidenced and rationally demonstrated ever be in a position to say, ‘I love you’? Couldn’t a Dawkins-type figure make a case for love being a fiction, a function of human need, a function of biology and selfish genes? He may have many useful and persuasive things to say but there is something deeply mistaken about thinking love is simply reducible to the chemistry of the brain.

“Love, like faith, is to make more of a commitment than one can prove. But there is a truth to it that I won’t – indeed can’t – back away from. Of course, there is much to say about all of this and I can think of a dozen reasons why faith and love might look different. But the truth of both is, for me, found in the poetry, not in the science.”

Militant atheists seem to have enormous difficulty in understanding why so many people – many of them just as clever as they are – manage to live by their beliefs. Here’s what Dawkins told Laurie Taylor in New Humanist magazine: “I don’t know what it would mean to say that we live by faith in our daily life. There is, I suppose, a sense that we are sometimes too busy to reason everything out, but otherwise I don’t know what it means.”

It seems to me that he misses the point entirely. It’s not necessarily that people are too busy to reason things out. It’s more that they don’t want to. They want to believe. In spite of the terrible things that have been done in the name of God over the millennia, religious belief brings immeasurable comfort.

Personally, I do not accept the divinity of Jesus. I do not believe that his mother was made pregnant by the Holy Ghost, that he was resurrected after his death on the cross, or that he physically ascended to heaven. But that belief enriches the lives of many.

It does not make them stupid, let alone deluded. It makes them human. Their faith gives them a context into which they can fit their lives and a hope of better things to come – if not in this world, then the next. And if the next world turns out not to exist . . . well, they’ll never know, will they? I HAVE talked to many people about God – eminent theologians, historians, scientists, clerics – but let me finish with a woman called Mrs Buchanan. You’ll never have heard of her and I can’t give you her first name because I knew her in the days when children did not call adults by their first names. Even my mother called her Mrs Buchanan or Mrs B. Her life, I now realise, was sad. The one thing she and her husband wanted above everything else was children, and that was not to be. There was no IVF in the 1950s.

My own mother had five children. There was often very little money and sometimes she struggled to cope. Mrs B was always there to help. She was a stalwart of the Mothers’ Union at our local church and she regarded it as her duty. Monday was washing day, and every Monday afternoon she would turn up – her hat pinned firmly to her hair – to help with the ironing. The hat stayed on. Outside her own home I never saw her without it.

Mr and Mrs Buchanan were an unremarkable couple – quiet, honest, decent, God-fearing. They worked hard – I have his old teak toolbox beside the desk in my office to this day – and made no demands of anyone. The church was an important part of their lives, not that you would ever hear them talking about their belief. It was simply there and they were glad of it. It provided structure and, I think, some meaning to their lives.

What have the Buchanans and the millions like them to do with the militant atheists and their supercharged campaign against religion? The latter will say it is irrelevant. They will probably accuse me of viewing the world through the rose-tinted spectacles of half a century ago when society was altogether less cynical and world-weary. They will say that people like the Buchanans – if they still exist – would be better off if only they could see religion and the church for the nonsense that it is. And they’d be wrong. For them, what matters is what can be proved to be true. That’s it. But in the real world, outside the walls of their intellectual ivory towers, that’s not it.

This is not an intellectual game. Even if we know what is true – and we don’t – you cannot reduce life to a set of provable realities. Humanity is too complex for that. In the end, it comes down to whether the world would be a better place without religion; and that is a matter of judgment, not certainty.

Yes, we loathe and fear the fanaticism that leads to a man strapping a bomb to his body and blowing up other human beings. But we should also fear a world in which the predominant values are materialism and consumerism, and the greatest aspiration of too many children is to become a “celebrity”. The existence of religion can offer some balance in a society obsessed with image, which turns vacuity into virtue.

As I write these last few sentences I look out from my office onto the tennis court facing my house. It is a hot, muggy day and a group of young women are playing. They are clothed from head to toe in black, their jeans poking out from beneath the chadors. They look peculiarly ungainly and they must be stifling. As a nonMuslim it seems a bit odd and a bit alien to me, but so does a lot of other things – such as the fashionably dressed young people who get so drunk on Friday and Saturday nights you have to think twice about venturing into the town centre. We each make our own choices.

One choice is to accept the conclusion reached by Jean-Paul Sartre in The Age of Reason: “There is no purpose to existence, only nothingness.”

That is a perfectly rational conclusion if, like me, you cannot accept that we exist in order to worship God. It is very hard to see any purpose in a world where an accident of birth determines whether a child leads a long and healthy life or dies an early death in grinding poverty; a world of hunger and war and disease; a world that we may be destroying through our own greed and stupidity. But however much he may appeal to our reason, Sartre’s conclusion is too bleak for me.

Trite it may be, but most of us can see the beauty as well as the horrors of the world and, sometimes, humanity at its most noble. We sense a spiritual element in that nobility and, in the miracle of unselfish love and sacrifice, something beyond our conscious understanding. You don’t need to be an eastern mystic or a devout religious believer to feel that. We should not – we must not – be browbeaten by arrogant atheists and meekly accept their “deluded” label. They are no more capable of understanding this most profound mystery than a small child making his first awe-inspiring discoveries.

As for the fanatics – religious or secular – history suggests they succeed only to the extent that we allow ourselves to be defeated by our own irrational fear. For every fanatic there are countless ordinary, decent people who believe in their own version of a benevolent God and wish no harm to anyone. Many of them regard it as their duty to try to make the world a better place. It is too easy to blame the evils of the world on belief in God. In the end, if we make a mess of things, we shall have ourselves to blame – not religion and not God. After all, he doesn’t exist. Does he?

© John Humphrys 2007

Extracted from In God We Doubt by John Humphrys to be published by Hodder & Stoughton on Thursday at £18.99. It is available for £17.09 including postage from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585

Paint me blue

2007-09-07T15:30:00.000-03:00

Mumbai, India: a dock worker’s hands stained with chemicals

Photograph: Arko Datta/Reuters

Rebel Warrior

2007-08-19T01:42:00.001-03:00

Written by: Das, Savale, Pandit

Ami Bidrohi!
I the Rebel Warrior
I have risen alone
With my head held high
I will only rest
when the cries of the oppressed
no longer reach the sky
When the sound of the sword of the oppressor
no longer rings in battle
Hear my war cry!

I'm here to teach you a lesson
I'm here to torture your soul
I'm the itch in your side That's got out of control
'Gonna prey on your conscience
You'll be praying for forgiveness
Seen all the evidence
No longer need a witness
So take my word man
Here's my sentence
One hundred thousand years of repentance.

Check my anger, it's real
Ain't no token
I'll be satisfied only when your back's been broken
It's my burning ambition to burn down your empire
Man I'll be building you a funeral pyre
The fire in my eyes
If looks coulda kill
I won't be satisfied until I've had my fill.
Check my anger, it's real
Ain't no token
I'll be satisfied only when your back's been broken

Ami Bidrohi!
I the Rebel Warrior
I have risen alone With my head held high
I will only rest
when the cries of the oppressed
no longer reach the sky
When the sound of the sword of the oppressor
no longer rings in battle
Hear my war cry!

Repetitive beats beating against your skull
I'll be striking you down
to the sounds of the wardrum
The doum!
The doum of the dhol
taking its toll
Null and void is what you've become
An underground army with my brothers and sisters
Hand to hand fighting
building up a resistance
Repetitive beats beating against your skull
Null and void is what you've become

Ami Bidrohi!
I the Rebel Warrior
I have risen alone With my head held high
I will only rest
when the cries of the oppressed
no longer reach the sky
When the sound of the sword of the oppressor
no longer rings in battle
Hear my warcry!

I read the commitments
Strange alliance
The siren and the flute in unison
'Cos it's a part of my mission
to break down division
Mental compartments
In political prisons.

I'll be sowing the seeds of community
Accommodating every color every need
So listen to my message and heed my warning
I'm telling you know
how a new age is dawning

Ami Bidrohi!
I the Rebel Warrior
I have risen alone With my head held high
I will only rest
when the cries of the oppressed
no longer reach the sky
When the sound of the sword of the oppressor
no longer rings in battle
Hear my warcry!

Ami Bidrohi! Ami Bidrohi!
Yes the unity of the Hindu and the Muslim
will end your tyranny
Ami Bidrohi! Ami Bidrohi!

Esse foi comentário que publiquei num blog amigo...

2007-08-16T23:29:00.000-03:00

Olá,

Minha preparação ao CACD ao longo de três árduos anos jamais se deu desassociada de no mínimo 24 horas de trabalho semanais como médico urgentista no SIATE-SAMU em Goiânia e como médico clíncio no PS do Hospital Regional de Taguatinga, por alguns meses chegando 36 horas.

Quem quer nem sempre consegue. Qundo consegue, é porque investiu, mesmo que em condições extremamente anormais de temperatura e pressão.

Tá aí a minha receita para o CACD:

1) Forme-se em Medicina, porque deve ser o curso que tem menos a ver com o CACD. Isso te permitirá ser uma tábula rasa quando começar sua preparação. Convenhamos, há uma certa graça e estilo em ser tábula rasa!

2) Trabalhe como médico durante seus estudos para o CACD, por vezes em missões de resgate de acidentes indescritíveis com dezenas de vítimas graves. Outras vezes você preferirá o ambiente de emergências hospitalares, onde por um ano trabalhei manejando infartos, ave's, insuficiências respiratórias mil, sepses, insuficiências renais, hepatites, cirroses hepáticas, e, é lógico, muita intoxicação alcóolica. Depois, é só chegar em casa, ligar algo no último volume, livrar-se das assombrações que te pertubam e abraçar seus livros.

3) Arranje férias mandraques no serviço público médico (trocas de plantão aqui e acolá e, de repente, vc poderá ter um mês participando de seminários, treinamentos e aperfeiçoando seu Inglês na Europa). Faça isso religiosamente, todo ano. É como um terço, vc tem que rezar com regularidade: na preparacão ao CACD, vc tem que viajar com disciplina, para uma realidade completamente da sua, seja Botswana ou Estocolmo, a fim de acrescentar estímulos auditivos, visuais e sonoros às suas sinapses.

3) Nunca desistir. Jamais. Pronto, simples assim.

--------------------------------------------------

Lions for Lambs

2007-08-13T22:21:00.000-03:00

If you don't stand for something,
you might fall for anything.

Extreme Ways (Moby's song for Bourne series)

2007-08-06T01:20:00.001-03:00

Série "Músicas a inserir furtivamente nos mp3players dos homens públicos"

2007-08-05T05:29:00.001-03:00

Artist: Orishas
Album: El Kilo
Year: 2005
Title: El Kilo

A mi estilo te canto mi negro
A mi estilo voy

Mentira no, tíralo, pásalo písalo, asereo
Se te olvido, que el kilo no tiene
Vuelto no, asereo

Entro mi flow, entro mi clan
Mi voz como Jackie Chan
Que es lo que dan, mil cuentos mil
Promesas que enganchan
Yo sí, yo fui lo que te digo pipo
El dinerito es el gobierno
Quien lo raba chico
Habla tu habla como si yo te fuera ajeno
Habla tu, habla política cochina vemos
Pero porque tu esperas
Si el que espera, desesperas veras
Así que juega por la acera verdadera

Estribillo

Es invento es la bala trazante
Que utilizan todos los cuenteros
Los que dicen verdad no son tantos

Dime cuantos y donde los veo
Dime cuanto les costo llegar
Y si son buenos
No es por nada pero no dan ya nervios ni miedo
La mentira puede correr años tiene
Genios eso no lo niego
Recordando los tiempos de ataño
Solo puedo quitarme el sombrero
Lo que tengo es musicalidad viene de lejos
No es robado, ni copiado es más
Es heredado, es otra edad

Estribillo

Te lo advertí más de una vez
Que yo no entro en el juego
De pendencieros mentirosos
Y embusteros viejos
Para el que se atreve
Esta poniendo en juego su pellejo
Tremendo bla, bla, bla, tremendo guaguanco,
Rumberito recoge al Viejo que su tiempo
Ya ha pasado
Y ahora camina de lado embustero

A mi estilo te canto mi negro

La mentira no pasa, si no esperas
Desesperas y que
Ya te paso una vez, son dos
Si no lo ves

Estribillo

Should I carry an air mask... perhaps breath slower?

2007-08-03T02:12:00.001-03:00

Why is it that whenever I travel, no matter the country, be it among the highly or the poorly intellectually-gifted, the disenfranchised or the better-off, am I upset by the thick air of ennui, or sometimes unconcerned flurry, that youth in general seem to inhale and exhale?
_________________________________________

Why I write (by George Orwell)

2007-08-03T02:05:00.001-03:00

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious — i.e. seriously intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ — a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's ‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.

However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed — at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week — and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’, etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.

When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost —

So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.

which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.

I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature — taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult — I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:

A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;

But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.

And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.

All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.

But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.

It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.

I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;

And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.

It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.

In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

George Orwell: ‘Why I Write’
First published: Gangrel. — GB, London. — summer 1946.

___________________________________________________

"Actual patriotism has to do with loving a place enough to try and improve it"

2007-08-03T01:45:00.000-03:00

Win Butler of Arcade Fire
Interviewed by Josh Modell
March 14th, 2007

The biggest little band in indie-dom, Arcade Fire went from unknown to ubiquitous shortly after releasing its first album, Funeral, in 2004. From small clubs to huge festivals, the Canadian band—led by American expatriate Win Butler and his wife, Regine Chassagne—delivered exhilarating, breathless performances. In 2006, they retreated from the spotlight—which included opening for U2, befriending David Bowie, and stealing Lollapalooza—to devise Funeral's follow-up. Recorded in a Canadian church that the band bought and rehabbed, Neon Bible takes a dark turn into the worlds of religion and pop culture, which clearly wasn't the simplest route for a band potentially on the edge of superstardom. Though more challenging than its predecessor, the album pays off brilliantly, with incisive words and triumphant melodies. The day Neon Bible was released, Win Butler—on the phone from Dublin—spoke to The A.V. Club about the band, its new album, fame… oh, and "evil and death and love."

The A.V. Club: Do you feel like you've been under a microscope these past two months?

Win Butler: Aside from being sick the past couple of months, it's been a little less chaotic than last time. Last time, we didn't really know what was happening; we just had a cell phone in the van and it was ringing and ringing. This time, we knew what we were getting into.

AVC: Why did you smash your guitar on Saturday Night Live?

WB: It was kind of in the moment, but it kind of fit with the song ["Intervention"], too. About halfway through the song, my string broke, and I was cutting my finger. At one show in London, a couple of strings broke, and the last half of the song, I was kind of miming playing the guitar. I thought it was a cool image with the song, like an emperor's-new-clothes thing—this obviously destroyed guitar and me still strumming along. I hated that guitar, to be honest. It was time for that guitar to leave this world, and what better way to go?

AVC: Have you considered the possibility that Neon Bible might be a number-one or at least a top-five record?

WB: It definitely doesn't consume my thoughts, but that possibility had occurred to me. It's pretty wild. It's pretty amazing for a band like us to be in that position. It's funny in kind of a satisfying way.

AVC: The pre-release publicity stuff—the toll-free number touting the album, the viral-video infomercial—seemed in that spirit, not too serious.

WB: We spent so long on the record, and it's all so meticulous—it's good to be able to do stuff that's really half-assed and off-the-cuff, from a creative standpoint. When we did that YouTube video, we had a rehearsal at my house, and we were going to release the track list, and I had Jeremy [Gara, drummer] do a little montage of some of the songs, and when we heard it, it sounded like one of those Greatest Hits Of The '70s compilations, so we thought we should make a fake Hits Of The '70s thing for it. I had a new laptop with the camera built in, so we learned how to use iMovie on the fly. It's fun to do something that half-assed and send it out into the world and have 50,000 people see it.

AVC: Your music is often dark, especially on the new album, but is that sense of humor in there somewhere, too?

WB: That's part of the visual side, an opportunity to bring in different ideas. Brazil is my favorite movie of all time; I really relate to stuff that's funny but also pretty serious. Funny songs aren't usually that good. [Laughs.] Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.

AVC: How long did it take you to fix up the church you bought and recorded in?

WB: The whole process was really long. We bought it in October or November [of 2005] and did a couple of demos in December, but it was really bare-bones. Then over about a six-month period, while we were starting to record, we were building bedrooms in the basement and getting new equipment. By three-quarters through the record, it was pretty set up.

AVC: Presumably you had more time, money, and experience this time around. What were you able to do in the studio that you couldn't before?

WB: Even though we hadn't played live for a year or so, we were way better at playing together than we were before. There are certain songs on the record, like "Antichrist Television Blues," where everything was recorded live off the floor, which wouldn't really have been possible to do on the last record. We did a bunch of location recording, like the pipe organ. We went into this other little church and recorded "My Body Is A Cage" and "Intervention," and the beds of those were live. Our goal was to take the core of a weird little live thing and do whatever we wanted with it afterward. The last record, we were playing live a lot while we were recording, so I feel like the arrangements had a lot of time to develop, and we wanted to be able to do that with this record, so we'd work for two weeks, then take two weeks off and just go home and play and think about it, kind of allow the songs to evolve.

AVC: Are you a religious person? You studied religion, right?

WB: I studied scriptural interpretation, which is more about how people get meaning out of texts, looking at stuff in the Old Testament—Muslims, Christians, Jews, different interpretations of the same texts…

AVC: Did that inform the lyrics?

WB: A bit. I think there's some pretty amazing language in the Bible. The thing that's always been interesting to me about religion is that compared to the more modern spirituality, the West Coast pseudo-Buddhist thing that people go for these days, actual Buddhism and Islam have been looking at these philosophical questions, at really hard questions, for a long time. There's a lot of stuff that philosophy doesn't talk about, and in the secular world, a lot of times, people don't talk about these ideas, and that was always really interesting for me.

AVC: What things in particular?

WB: The idea of evil and death and love. There's not really any scientific way to talk about it. Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically… I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.

AVC: So are your songs more about searching, or more about offering those tools to people? Or neither?

WB: I think hope only means anything if it's in something real; otherwise, it's just kind of a dream. A lot of stuff is dark in a way, but unless you're really looking at a situation for what it actually is, it's hard to be hopeful—or meaningless to be hopeful about it unless it's actually based in a real possibility. I just saw this thing on Martin Luther King, and before he gave the "I have a dream" speech, he gave a lot of speeches that were about a more negative dream—that you had to face your broken dreams. He spoke about that a lot, the broken American Dream, seeing it for what it really is, the positive and negative. Sometimes religious thinkers can take that on in a different way.

AVC: You modernize it a little, though, don't you? Is it true that "Antichrist Television Blues" was originally called "Joe Simpson"?

WB: No comment. [Laughs.]

AVC: The lyric actually seems somewhat sympathetic to that type of horrible stage-dad figure, whoever he may be.

WB: It's sympathetic to the extent that it's thinking about something that maybe doesn't merit a lot of thought. I find that that aspect of the American dream—the American Idol world—actually takes up a huge part of American culture right now. I feel like a lot of people really relate to that way of thinking, so I thought it was worth thinking about for a minute.

AVC: It's insanely pervasive, even in the "respectable" media.

WB: There's this idea, particularly in pop music and a lot of these pop father/manager types, that you're selling the person instead of the song. You basically want to create something that the fans relate to because it's exactly like them. So there's a lot of art that's made to be in the image of the audience, but then the audience is imitating this version of themselves. It's a really weird cultural feedback loop, and it's kind of strange to watch. It's a new thing since I was a kid, really a different thing.

AVC: Where do you think it's leading?

WB: The whole Ultimate Fighting, WWE reality side of things—I totally get why people are into it. I find myself sucked into it; it's not going away. There's something about human nature that really sucks you in. It's the same thing with celebrity-gossip shows—there's something really powerful about it for people. I think it'll go as far as the law will let it go. I don't think there's any limit. The culture's definitely moving into that violent-porn direction. The most conservative countries always have the weirdest shit going on.

AVC: Is it that pervasive in Canada, or is it much worse in America?

WB: It's definitely its own thing, but it's in the same boat. I feel like Canada, the States, and England are partners in a sense, heading in a similar direction even though there are pretty significant political differences. Quebec is pretty different from the rest of Canada.

AVC: You mention MTV in "Windowsill"—"MTV, what have you done to me?"

WB: I haven't really watched MTV in a long time, since it kind of stopped relating to music. I feel in a way that it's kind of sold out a generation of kids. It's really powerful to youth culture. I found out a lot of stuff through MTV, and I didn't even have cable, I just saw it at friends' houses. But my culture in junior high was totally influenced by it. The thing that's a little depressing to me are these reality shows, like Laguna Beach. I think they're supposed to be kind of tongue-in-cheek, like "laugh at the rich people" shows. But I think the effect that it actually has is that kids emulate it. I don't think they're necessarily getting the ironic level, it's just "I want that, too." It's not that I'm like Tipper Gore, that I want to outlaw stuff. It's just a little sad to watch, because it's so easy for 90 percent of your brain to be filled with things that have absolutely no meaning. If you don't shake out of it, it's just a sad scene.

AVC: My Super Sweet 16 may be the purest expression of evil.

WB: It's insane. I get that it's a joke, but kids really eat that shit up, like, "I want Jay-Z at my birthday party! Fuck you, mom!" [Laughs.] It's pretty dark. We never really license anything for TV, and my joke is that any show that wants to play "Antichrist Television Blues," I will license it to, because I think it'd be so funny to hear in that context. As a performance-art thing.

AVC: Is it true that you refused to license a song for NBC's The Black Donnellys even though Crash director Paul Haggis asked you personally?

WB: That was actually a tough decision, because that's a pretty good show, compared to most of the crap on TV. We watched the pilot, and for primetime TV, it's actually quite good. The whole conclusion was completely built around "Rebellion," and I was like, "Oh no, you guys are fucked! What are you gonna do now?" Every cut was lyrically tied. The whole premise of the show gets revealed in the last four minutes to "Rebellion." We all kind of liked the show, but at the same time, it's still our song, and the song doesn't have anything to do with that. It'd be kind of depressing to have one of my favorite songs of ours be associated with this thing it's completely unrelated to. It's more about the context. This show was like a really good TV version of Goodfellas. If it was actually Goodfellas and that hadn't come out yet, I might've said yes. If it was the fucking Godfather, the best film I've ever seen, of course they could use our song.

AVC: The album isn't named after John Kennedy Toole's novel, right?

WB: No. It's kind of a coincidence, but I have read the book.

AVC: Why did you choose the title, then? What's the significance?

WB: I just jotted it down in my notebook and kept coming back to it. The song was very much off-the-cuff, written in one night and recorded the next day. Lyrically, there's a lot of stuff dealing with religion and culture, which I'm really interested in. It's an image that I kept coming back to that really felt like it was the title of the record. And everyone else in the band agreed. I loved A Confederacy Of Dunces.

AVC: Toole's The Neon Bible is always referred to as a lesser work that wasn't really intended for publication.

WB: I could see that. It's more inspiring that he wrote it when he was 16 than the book itself. I don't think I could've done that when I was 16.

AVC: But you were pretty young when you wrote the bulk of the songs on Funeral? Like, 20 or so?

WB: Something like that. But 16! That's when all the bullshit that ends up consuming most people's lives—that's when they start laying it on heavy. I remember having to buy Nikes, or else my life would be a living hell. I had these shoes called Turntecs, like no-name brand Wal-Mart shoes, and every day it was like [mocking voice]: "Turntec, Turntec!" I still remember thinking, in like fifth or sixth grade, that this was going to consume half my life. Like, I was going to cry at Christmas if I didn't get the right brand of jeans. It can take up a lot of mental space for kids. Kids are brutal.

AVC: It's strange that it can seem so funny now.

WB: It's so funny, and I felt so passionately about it. And not because I cared about it, because initially I was like, "Fuck that!" But kids would get tormented. There's a great story about Tim [Kingsbury, multi-instrumentalist]: His mom finally let him buy an Ocean Pacific shirt, because he always had these no-name clothes. He was so proud, and he went to school, and the asshole in school came over and pulled up the tag and said, "It's a fake!" [Laughs.]

AVC: It's got to be 10 times more intense now.

WB: Now it's taken on this Christina Aguilera porn edge, like super-sexualized. It's pretty extreme. I don't envy the junior-high kids.

AVC: Did it make you cynical at all?

WB: It's hard not to be cynical about certain things. I just finished reading this George Orwell book, Why I Write, and he's talking about England during World War II, the political culture. There are some criticisms he had of the left that hit me pretty hard. Not that I really consider myself left or right or whatever, but he was criticizing people who put down bravery. It really made a lot of sense to me. There's this negative approach to the world, and I definitely find myself falling into that at times. He was just saying that patriotism and intelligence need to coexist, or else the world really goes to shit. I thought that was a powerful idea. Actual patriotism has to do with loving a place enough to try and improve it.

AVC: Is there part of you that thinks we might be past the point of no return?

WB: All the time. I've seen Barack Obama speak a couple of times, and I really like him. There's something going on behind his eyes, and I think he's really intelligent. But part of me just knows it's going to be Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, which really bums me out. But part of me wants to believe that it could be Barack Obama and John McCain, and there'd be an actual debate. The country needs a real debate so badly. A lot of times, politicians try to overwhelm the general public with how complex an issue is. In a way, I think that's why the anti-war movement in the States isn't as big as it should be. People are overwhelmed by the complexity of the situation, but I don't think a 16-year-old should have to know how to solve the problems in the Middle East to be like, "Fuck, we should not be in this war." But there's this idea that you have to know how to solve the world's problems in order to feel that something is morally wrong. I'm always back and forth between optimism and depression about the situation.

AVC: It's an interesting time to be in a band that brings joy to people, but in a time where it's almost impossible to ignore the dark side.

WB: It's crazy reading this Orwell stuff, because it could be today. When you read Martin Luther King's speeches about Vietnam, it could be today. Just change the word, and you're talking about the exact same situation. We're basically causing spiritual death in our country by doing what we're doing. At a certain point, you become morally unable to do good in the world, because the country gets so cynical and depressed, there isn't the force of will to try and change things. I definitely feel that in my generation, this kind of fatigue. And I feel that myself. You've got to fight it.

25-year-old 3-colored tie

2007-08-01T23:39:00.000-03:00

Música para cortar o cérebro

2007-08-01T03:27:00.000-03:00

The Vineyard (clique para videoclip)

The golden sun is ever gentle in the Valley of Making,
Where it's the middle of the Autumn when it isn't high Spring,
There are men of many colors and women of all races
wearing white, white linen and smiles on their faces -

Blue rose...

There are roses round the edges of the grand property,
The words "Labor, Ardor, Langor" are its lovely trinity,
And when you see just how they dress and how they speak and act too,
Well all you'll want to do is dress up in their white linen too

- Blue rose and drew the curtain back on the morning...

And you said holly-hey, and with a teary tilt for you were rudely made, and shoddy built,
Between the thumb and the forefinger,
Barefoot pressed, he hoists his trouser leg,
She lifts her dress.

O these men of many colors in their creamy white suits,
With their different colored hands dig in the soil for the roots
of the dreamy conversation that the slender women make
as they sip from slender glasses by the vineyard lake -

Blue rose and drew the curtain back on the morning,
Blue rose and every little thing was gilt and suffering no more...

If you could see the people laughing and not hear the sound it makes
then you could keep the good opinion that the tone of voice takes,
If you could see the people laughing and not hear the sound it makes
-it goes...

There's a woman there among them who with red, red eyes
Says you haven't been a'working hard enough on your lies,
The golden sun is ever gentle and one lie follows another in,
The only way to get there is by singing brother, singing,
There are women of all races, men in white, white linen
and the only way to get there is to sing sister, sing sister, sing -

and draw the curtain back on the morning,
Blue rose and every little thing was gilt and suffering no more,
Blue rose and drew the curtain back on the morning...

Where the wars were not for wearing, the ghettoes never got,
To each lonely, lonely person their own shovel, their own plot.
Have you ever heard a rattle way on down when people sigh,
Way on down the silly rattle says you're happy when you die.

By Augie March - www.augiemarch.com

The desperate and the beautiful

2007-08-01T02:30:00.000-03:00

From a vacuous Italy to swinging London, Antonioni's studies of modern alienation gave cinema some of its greatest moments. David Thomson mourns a master
David Thomson
Wednesday August 1, 2007
Guardian

On the radio yesterday in the US, someone asked me, "So who is left? Is there anyone else like Ingmar Bergman?" Of course, there is never anyone like anyone else, not in that way, so I knew how stupid I was being in saying, "Antonioni is still alive ... older, in fact, than Ingmar Bergman." They were alike only in being contemporaries and in doing what they did with the utmost seriousness. And I suspect that if you had reproached them both with, "Not too many jokes, Ingo? Mikey?" they would have sighed and agreed and said, "Not yet. But suppose we exit at the same moment. The obituarists may hear us laughing."

Antonioni came of age as a would-be film-maker in the time of Italian neorealism, except that Antonioni regarded those films (from Open City to Bicycle Thieves) as unduly simple, if not simple-minded. He was of a mind that said a poor worker whose bicycle has been stolen may still be entranced by the silences in Mahler.

Antonioni was literary, in that he began to investigate love stories in terms of how their failure represented the political nullity of the lovers and their society and their perplexity when confronted by the great spaces of the world. That may sound pretentious and arty - and Antonioni was never too far from either - but no one better than him could put the post-1945 disquiet on film simply by showing the gaps between people. Being with someone but not looking at them was nearly invented by Antonioni, and on film it is like a mortal sin. He advanced in the 1950s in a series of films (Il Cronaca di un Amore, La Signora Senza Camelie, Le Amiche, Il Grido) increasingly despairing, ever more beautiful. By 1959, he was a small master.

And then something happened: he found Monica Vitti (never a great actress, but a spiritual presence on screen), he turned ironic and yielded to time and space - if they were his subjects, so be it, he wasn't going to evade it. In the years 1960-62, he delivered a trilogy - L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse - that may be the enduring masterpieces of even those crowded years. In L'Avventura, a party of bored, rich people go to an island for the day. One of them vanishes. The film was booed at Cannes because the idiots thought one couldn't do that on film: just take a character away. Of course, Hitchcock did a similar thing in the same year with Janet Leigh in Psycho, and Antonioni wanted to see how other characters filled the gap.

In L'Eclisse (The Eclipse), Vitti tries to stay in love with a flamboyant finance expert played by Alain Delon. They are on and off, but they agree to meet the next day. The film ends with the intersection of their rendezvous. They do not show, but that is not quite the same as their not being there. People separate in our world. They go their own ways until coincidence leads them back. But they do not forget. They are not absent. Loneliness crowds in.

Then Antonioni drew breath - the trilogy had been made as if it was all one film, arguably the most beautiful black and white the cinema would ever offer. He then moved to colour, and he seemed to recognise that the world had become insane or absurd. The next trilogy was drawn out over years and different countries, but the films benefit from being seen as a unit - Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point, The Passenger. The black-and-white films are tragic: they trace the defeat of love. But in these colour films, the world no longer deserves tragedy. Farce is a more likely destiny, or fatalism. And love is an attitude that has gone out of style.

Blow-Up is swinging London and a dead-eyed star photographer (David Hemmings) who may or may not have snapped the outline of a murder in the most beautiful park in the movies. Vanessa Redgrave is part of it. She demands his film. You can't just photograph people - but in truth it's all he can do. He reconstructs the moment through the pictures, then they vanish. Is he going mad or is he just going to have to live with its tidal measure?

For Zabriskie Point, MGM hired Antonioni (Blow-Up had been a suave hit) to go to Los Angeles and "do" student protest. He filmed in CinemaScope and he planned to show the physical destruction of the new American west - and of a monstrous piece of modern architecture in the desert. The film is lugubrious. Sex has atrophied. Despite the presence of Sam Shepard, we can believe that Antonioni could hardly speak or direct a word of English. But baby, when he blows the house up, you get the message. The film was a commercial disaster that began the ruin of MGM - truly, art is a wonderful thing.

The coming and going of things, the way they are there one minute and gone the next is beautifully dramatised in The Passenger. Jack Nicholson plays a roving journalist in a small hotel in north Africa, bored with his job and his life. An acquaintance in the next room dies, and Jack reckons he'll vanish and take on the other man's life. He determines to make the appointments in the dead man's diary. In fact, his London wife smells a rat and goes after him, and the new life (even with Maria Schneider as an observer) is pretty scary. Indeed, I begin to see how in its poker-faced way The Passenger is not just his last great film but his first comedy.

Antonioni worked on - cool, elegant, interesting. But he had a stroke and even with Wim Wenders helping him, the rest were open-ended. I think the process was bad for Wenders and irrelevant to Antonioni. Now he's dead in his 90s. There's no point in comparing Antonioni and Bergman. There's every reason to wonder whether the climate and culture of film - I mean the extent to which we and film-makers need it, desperately - is likely to go on producing masterpieces. In any comparison between film and the novel, Antonioni may have made films as subtle, as nuanced, as filled with doubt and certainty as the best modern writing. In 1960, or so, I think there's no doubt that the world craved such work, even if they booed it when they saw it. Now? I'm not so sure. When was the last time you met an audience that cared enough to boo a film?

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Currently thinking about...

2007-07-31T05:23:00.000-03:00

"In tolerance . . . there is not only the recognition of a fact but of a right, and this recognition can become an act of guarantee. This should lead us to perceive (and this is paramount) that tolerance is ultimately the negation of a negation, a counter-intolerance; it seems difficult for tolerance to be manifested before intolerance; tolerance is not primitive; it is to action what reflection is to thought. . . . The more it is tied to a state of weakness, the less it is itself, the less it is tolerance."
Gabriel Marcel, in "Creative Fidelity".

Sternenfall

2007-07-31T04:42:00.000-03:00

"Sternenfall" (Falling Stars), Anselm Kiefer, 1995

Boas vindas a novos mundos

2007-07-30T03:51:00.000-03:00

Hoje joguei tanta coisa fora
Vi o meu passado passar por mim
Cartas e fotografias gente que foi embora.
A casa fica bem melhor assim

O céu de Ícaro tem mais poesia que o de Galileu
E lendo teus bilhetes, eu penso no que fiz
Querendo ver o mais distante e sem saber voar
Desprezando as asas que você me deu

Tendo a lua aquela gravidade aonde o homem flutua
Merecia a visita não de militares,
mas de bailarinos
e de você e eu.

Hoje joguei tanta coisa fora
E lendo teus bilhetes, eu penso no que fiz
Cartas e fotografias gente que foi embora.
A casa fica bem melhor assim

Tendo a lua aquela gravidade aonde o homem flutua
Merecia a visita não de militares,
mas de bailarinos
e de você e eu.

"Tendo a Lua". Os Paralamas do Sucesso. Tetê Tillett, Herbert Vianna.

Saneamento Básico - O Filme

2007-07-29T01:36:00.001-03:00

A comunidade da Linha Cristal, uma pequena vila de descendentes de colonos italianos na serra gaúcha, reúne-se para tomar providências sobre a construção de uma fossa para o tratamento do esgoto. Uma comissão é escolhida para pleitear a obra junto à sub-prefeitura.

Após ouvir a reivindicação, a secretária da prefeitura reconhece a legitimidade da solicitação, mas afirma que não dispõe de verbas para obras de saneamento básico até o final do ano. No entanto, a prefeitura tem quase dez mil em verbas para a produção de um vídeo. A verba veio do governo federal e, se não for gasta, terá que ser devolvida.

A comunidade decide então fazer um vídeo sobre a obra. A prefeitura apóia a idéia da realização do vídeo e da utilização da verba para a obra, que seria um absurdo devolver, mas esclarece que, para requerer a verba, a comunidade deve apresentar um roteiro e um projeto do vídeo, e que a verba era necessariamente para obras de ficção.

Os moradores da Linha Cristal passam então a fazer um vídeo de ficção que, segundo interpretações, é um filme de monstro, ambientado nas obras de construção de uma fossa, com o único objetivo de usar a verba para as obras. O que eles não esperavam é que a produção do vídeo fosse se tornando cada vez mais complexa e interessante.

Informações técnicas

Título: Saneamento básico, o filme
Longa-metragem de ficção
Gênero: Comédia
Filmado em: Super 16 mm
Montado em: Final Cut Pro
Intermediação digital
Cópia final: 35 mm
Cor: Eastmancolor
Som analógico: Dolby Stereo
Som digital: Dolby 5.1
Proporção de tela: 1.85
Duração: 112 min
Metragem: 3.060 m / 10.030 pés
Número de rolos: 6
Locações: Município de Bento Gonçalves, RS,
de 11 de julho a 13 de agosto de 2006
País: Brasil
Ano: 2007
www.saneamentobasicoofilme.com.br/

Volleyball adored!

2007-07-29T01:05:00.000-03:00

Volleyball adored in country where soccer rules
The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil:

While soccer is Brazil's most popular sport and that won't change anytime soon, Brazilians also love their volleyball, a sport that has given local fans a lot to celebrate of late.

Volleyball attracts passionate fans in South America's largest country, and that has been the case again at the Pan American Games in Rio.

The fans packed the 12,000-capacity Maracanazinho stadium in nearly all matches of the women's team — including in the heartbreaking final loss to Cuba — and several of the men's team's matches were sold out days before the competition began Monday.

"This is volleyball country too," said 19-year-old Marina Cabreira da Luz. "We love the sport here. Every time they play somewhere here in Brazil, the stadiums are crowded, it happens all the time. We just love the excitement of the game."

It also helps that Brazil has been dominant in the sport, maybe even more than in soccer recently.

The men's team is the reigning Olympic champion, and earlier this month it won its fifth straight World League title — and seventh overall. Only Italy has more, with eight. Brazil also won the last two world championships.

The women's team is just as impressive. It won the last three Grand Prixs — the equivalent of the World League — and was runner-up to Russia in last year's world championship. It was fourth at the Athens Olympics in 2004, but only after blowing seven match points in a semifinal against the Russians.

"Every time they play, they win," said 38-year-old Cristiane Barbosa de Souza. "That's fun. We keep coming back for more."

It wasn't fun, however, when the Brazilian women were upset by rival Cuba in a thrilling final at the Pan Ams last Thursday. Brazil was favored to win the gold, but missed six match points — including two in the tiebreaker — in the heartbreaking loss.

"Yeah, it's frustrating, but this team has won enough recently to keep fans proud for a long time," Brazil women's coach Jose Roberto Guimaraes said. "We hadn't lost to the Cubans in almost two years, and they are our biggest rivals. That shows you."

Some fans couldn't hold back tears after the match was over, and the disappointing loss made the front pages of nearly all newspapers the next day.

The men's team will begin their quest for gold at the Pan Ams with a three-set victory against Canada on Monday. The team was third in 2003 at the Dominican Republic after a surprising loss to Venezuela in the semifinals.

But no matter the results on the court, volleyball crowds usually put on a show in Brazil, with young fans — mostly dressed in the green and yellow of the nation's flag — chanting incessantly to support their players.

The men's matches are full of teenage girls trying to get a closer glimpse of their idols.

It's certainly a different atmosphere than the one seen in soccer matches here, where the majority of fans are adult men.

"There's a lot of entertainment in volleyball games," said 57-year-old Lelis Nobre. "It's a lot of fun."

The hype about Brazilian volleyball began in 1992, when the men's team won the nation's first ever team Olympic gold medal in Barcelona — a feat Brazilian soccer is yet to match to this day.
Players from that volleyball team — which included Carlao, Mauricio, Marcelo Negrao and Tande — received a huge ovation last week when they helped carry the Pan Am torch at the games' opening ceremonies.

The success of the volleyball at the this year's Pan Ams was likely to provide an even bigger boost to the sport.

"It's going to be huge, I have no doubt," said Brazilian women's player Fabiana Oliveira. "People will be upbeat after seeing the wonderful crowds here. It's definitely bringing more attention to the sport."

Fans are already loving it.

"I've seen other Pan American Games events, but so far volleyball is the most fun to watch. I'm glad I'm having this chance," said 19-year-old Michelle Guyt.

Beach volleyball also got a lot of attention from local fans, many of them who play the sport themselves on weekends at the Rio beaches.

Brazil has some of the best duos in the world and easily won both gold medals in Rio.

Ricardo Santos and Emanuel Rego won the men's event and Juliana Silva and Larissa Franca the women's.

"Thank God we have volleyball here," Cabreira da Luz said. "It gives us a good break from soccer once in a while."

[Note from WIDEINTERVENTION: The picture above shows the Brazilian team in the night of 28 July celebrating the gold medal won over USA at the final match of the Panamerican Games.]

Tripping - Part 2

2007-07-28T14:47:00.000-03:00

Tripping - Part 1

2007-07-28T14:32:00.000-03:00

The shambolic writing on the wall (in fact, on the basis...), Bremen

Week of Action on Trade, 14-21 October 2007

2007-07-28T01:03:00.000-03:00

The Trade Week of Action from 14 - 21 October (Sunday to Sunday) is an important moment to call for trade justice and to be in solidarity with millions of other people who are taking action that week.

Join us in a host of actions calling for just trading relations - from fasts and agape meals, church services and hunger tribunals to petitions, street theatre, marches, exhibitions and displays and many other creative and colorful ways of getting our messages heard and seen.

The main website for the Trade Week of Action is:

www.tradeweek.org

There you will find:

more about the week
useful resources on the issues
stories of people impacted by unjust trade
campaign tools such as posters, banners, t-shirt designs, bulletin covers and logos
photo gallery
national contact people who can help you get involved in what is going on

and much more. Closer to the week there will be a calendar of events around the world during the Week of Action. You can download the EAA's resource guide for the week or order printed copies.

The week of 14-21 October is a key time because:

16 October is World Food Day
17 October is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, a Stand Up Against Poverty day
19-21 October are the joint annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
Jubilee campaigns are joining in a Global Week of Action against Debt

The Trade Week of Action on 14-21 October 2007 is a chance to tell the world that enforced free trade is inflicting misery on millions of poor people, and that there are alternatives.

Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance - www.eaa.org

Birds on my last trip: central-west Brazil

2007-07-27T02:59:00.000-03:00

Allegro

2007-07-03T02:21:00.000-03:00

Família Santos Barbosa, Goiânia, Junho 2007

Global? For sure. Fair and bright? Up to us.

2007-07-02T23:57:00.000-03:00

Meteoro, Palácio Itamaraty, Brasília, Brasil

Sexta-feira, 29 de junho de 2007, dia (no meu calendário) de comemorar a aprovação no concurso de admissão à carreira diplomática.

Alimento para o corpo. Bons arranjos gastronômicos!

Relaxamento para a alma. Gargalhadas entre amigos.

Calorias para a mente. Reflexões paternais e maternais.

Livros inspiradores, palavras motivadoras e abraços de regozijo.

O alegre sinal da missão cumprida que se manifesta na lágrima que sorri.

Alípio, Ariane, Carmelita, Cyrillo, Dayse, Davi, Ellen, Érica, Ivanice, Josué, Leonardo, Lídia, Marcinho, Raquel, Roberta, Rodrigo, Roni, Washington: - Presentes!

Os demais que não estiveram no dia mas enviaram congratulações: - Também presentes!

Além do necessário agradecimento "a todo mundo que eu encontrei na vida", vale dar nome a alguns bois e seus mugidos:

- Papai Washington, mamãe Dayse e minha irmã Ellen - pela mentoria;

- Tio Edinho, vovô Isaías e tio Wellington - pela crença obstinada no sucesso;

- Rede FALE e seu barulho construtivo (MV e Caio - vcs são nota dez!);

- Professores do Curso JB e do Curso Clio;

- Timóteo e casal Fatturi, no período de incertezas gaúchas;

- Nick, Carluci, Alexandre, Subtil, Ziel e suas cartas;

- Elaine e o incentivo nas primeiras duas tentativas;

- Tia Isabel e Marcella Campos, pelo apoio em Brasília;

- Vários colegas de trabalho nesses 5 anos e meio de atividades médicas pós-UFG, com destaque para Fabrício, Prof. Bezerril, Sérgio Scallia e Prof. Fabiano;

- Turma do caminho do bem em Goiânia: casais MM e MM, Roni e Jr.;

- Luciano e Lara, pela porta aberta nos trânsitos por Sampa;

- Acknowledgement to writers whose work built up my knowledge and gave me wisdom to move on at different crossings of life: Paul Tillich, Miroslav Volf, Henri Nouwen, Rubem Alves and Jürgen Moltmann.

- Organizações LICC, EYCE, WCC, AGAPE e SPEAK na Europa, por possibilitarem contatos e experiências que abriram minha mente a novas possibilidades (20 semanas não-consecutivas, entre 2004 e 2006).

It's not hard to foresee that the future is going to be more and more global. I wish it is also going to be brighter and fairer for every country, Brazil included.

Elter Nehemias Barbosa, junho-julho de 2007.
elternehemias@gmail.com

Peixes e tubarões

2007-06-14T20:58:00.000-03:00

Estive no último fim de semana na cidade de Colônia, participando do Kirchentag, o festival bianual das igrejas protestantes da Alemanha. Colônia é uma cidade bela, repicada por intervencoes arquitetonicas de vanguarda, a exemplo do contraste entre a Catedral de aspecto gótico sóbrio e a Sala de Concertos azul neon, lado a lado. Uma das principais pontes, de arcos, foi decorada em vermelho dando a idéia do peixe, símbolo do cristianismo primitivo.

Sob o tema "viva, eficaz e penetrante", o Kirchentag atraiu centenas de organizacoes eclesiasticas, agencias de desenvolvimento, entidades ecumenicas e partidos políticos. A Visao Mundial estava lá, assim como a ABU da Alemanha (SMD, que parece diferir do movimento estudantil brasileiro no que tange à horizontalidade da fé ). Os partidos de Gerard Schröder (Social Democrata), o de Angela Merkel (Democracia Crista) e o Die Linke (turma mais à esquerda) marcaram presenca também. Ao longo dos quatro dias de programacao, cerca de um milhao de pessoas passaram pelas igrejas, palcos nas ruas, estádios e centro de convencoes da cidade.

Este que escreve gastou boa parte do tempo vendendo café "fairtrade" no stand de uma organizacao alema que apóia agricultores nicaraguenses. Como aprendi na ABU, participar é sempre melhor do que só assistir (principalmente se vc toda hora errar a medida do pó de café e fizer a bebida mais forte do festival!!). Por falar em bebida, no país da cerveja, houve lei seca no ajuntamento protestante. Impossivel achar álcool - talvez apenas numa ou outra das várias ceias que aconteceram.

Foi uma mega-feira também no sentido litúrgico, sendo possível encontrar de tudo um pouco, desde os estilos monásticos contemplativos até os mega-louvores, da música africana de coral até o jazz e o ska. No ponto de vista da discussao teologica, dificil intepretar algo quando nao se entende patavina do idioma local, mas uma providencial traducao simultanea informal foi de muito auxilio para entender o que gente de alto calibre do mundo politico, cultural, intelectual e eclesiastico estava fazendo ali.

Ponto importante foi o desafio lancado pelas igrejas alemas ao G-8, demandando dos países mais poderosos medidas eficazes de auxilio ao desenvolvimento economico internacional e de protecao ambiental e climática. O G-8 se reunia no mesmo dia em Heiligendam, norte da Alemanha, e foram o alvo do clamor de ativistas, líderes cristaos, artistas e do publico pacífico e ordeiro numa bela noite ao lado dda catedral. Desmond Tutu clamou por dignidade para a África: "Eu sou um africano, eu amo meus netos, eu sou um ser humano, templo do Espírito Santo, amado por Deus e redimido pelo sangue de Cristo". Muito respeito, meu irmao, muito respeito.

Parti de Colônia com a cabeça quase atordoada pelas opções e pela grande diversidade apresentada no Kirchentag. Tem muita bobagem no comércio eclesiástico, muito excesso, tanto no Brasil quanto na Europa. Tem muito radicalismo também, vertical e horizontalmente. Tem muita gente que nem sabe o que é ser cristão, não consegue definir conceitos de deidade e vive a realidade do ser protestante como um resquício, algo acrescentado ao DNA pelas gerações anteriores.

Por outro lado, viajei também com o coração regozijante (minha irmã falou que isso é palavra que só cristão usa...) por ter percebido uma certa preocupação de vários grupos cristãos com temas da agenda política, social e econômica internacional. A igreja deve ficar restrita ao íntimo da religiosidade individual num mundo pós-cristão como o europeu e de muitas cidades pós-urbanas no Brasil? Essa pergunta perpassou vários dos painéis e debates que ocorreram no Kirchentag.

Saí de Colônia reafirmando aquilo em que já cria: que cristão relevante pode estar mais para a figura do tubarão do que do mero peixinho de aquário. Como fazer isso? É só acrescentar uma barbatana ao desenho da ponte mostrada na foto acima. Um mero risco para cima e para baixo - simples, mas faz uma diferença enorme.

Elter Nehemias Barbosa, Junho 2007

G-8, atos públicos e bebês de colo

2007-06-04T08:42:00.000-03:00

Estive no último sábado 02/06/07 em Rostock, na costa alema do Mar
Báltico, observando as demonstracoes realizadas por ocasiao da reuniao
dos líderes do G-8 em Heiligendamm (o G8 é integrado por Estados
Unidos, Japão, Alemanha, França, Reino Unido, Itália, Canadá e Rússia.
A reunião deste fim de semana conta também com a participação de
cinco países emergentes: Brasil, China, México, Índia e África do
Sul).

Foi uma grande passeata durante o dia, sob chuva leve e vento frio de
cortar o osso, que envolveu 50 mil pessoas (média entre estimativa da
polícia e dos organizadores). Várias correntes de pensamento se
reuniram para mais uma acao de massa em prol, grosso modo, da
globalizacao justa e inclusiva.

No amplo espectro de opinioes representadas, houve lugar para povos
sem direito a territorio, movimentos ambientalistas, organizacoes de
auxilio em situacoes de emergencia, entidades de protecao a migrantes,
associacoes de apoio social de cunho religioso, cantores indie e
grupos politicos diversos, alem dos simpatizantes de baixa
especificidade (no puro estilo "Ich bin dagegen", "sou contra").

Vez por outra, alguns oportunistas se fizeram perceber, trazendo
tensao a atos publicos que seriam de outra forma completamente
pacíficos. Presenca da polizei alema no local dos protestos foi
intensa, com pessoal preparado em diferentes niveis para controle de
disturbios. Se por um lado era nítida a tendencia confrontadora de
alguns manifestantes, por outro lado a própria ostensividade do
aparato policial pode ter contribuído para estimular a agressividade
de alguns, gerando, ao final, feridos e danos materiais de baixa monta.

Numa nota lúdica, foi agradável ouvir um grupo de samba tocado por
alemaes (ritmo certo, movimento corporal ausente) e, impressionante,
ver várias famílias conduzindo bebes de colo na manifestacao. Ativista
bom é ativista que comeca cedo? De qualquer forma, contribuiu para dar
tom pacífico a setores da passeata.

As atividades do encontro alternativo ao G-8 continuam nessa semana, e
devem incluir uma tentativa (autorizada pelo poder público, por sinal)
de bloqueio ao aeroporto local, além de acoes menores contra a militarizacao
e a guerra, em prol de agricultores e em favor de migrantes.

A atmosfera foi mais ou menos a mesma de uma passeata de abertura do
Fórum Social Mundial em Porto Alegre, por exemplo. Como em toda
manifestacao publica internacional, é dificil diferenciar A de B,
saber quais as solucoes propostas por C ou D e entender os passos de E ou F.
Como em todo ato cívico de massa, a base motivadora é que algum barulho precisa
ser feito por A+B+C+D+E+F para estimular reflexoes posteriores na
sociedade em geral e no segmento político em particular.

Honra se lava com (o próprio) sangue

2007-05-29T10:46:00.000-03:00

CLÓVIS ROSSI
Uma questão de honra
FSP, 29/05/07

PARIS - Toshikatsu Matsuoka, ministro da Agricultura do Japão, enforcou-se ontem em sua casa depois de ser acusado de envolvimento em concorrências suspeitas e de ver contestada a declaração de gastos de seu escritório. Ele negou qualquer irregularidade. As acusações ainda não foram comprovadas.

Odilio Balbinotti, deputado federal e grande plantador de soja, foi também quase ministro da Agricultura do governo Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, mas perdeu o emprego antes mesmo de tomar posse, sob acusação de envolvimento em uma porção de irregularidades. Balbinotti também nega as acusações, que, como no caso Matsuoka, ainda estão sendo investigadas. Mas o deputado brasileiro nem se suicidou nem renunciou ao mandato. Apenas voltou de quase-ministro à irrelevância.

Renan Calheiros, presidente do Senado, é igualmente acusado de beneficiário de pagamentos suspeitos à mulher com a qual teve um filho, pagamentos feitos por funcionário de uma empreiteira, que teria praticado atos similares aos de que foi acusado Matsuoka. As acusações contra Renan Calheiros não foram ainda comprovadas, como no caso Matsuoka. O senador brasileiro não se enforcou nem renunciou nem se licenciou para se defender. Ao contrário, preferiu falar de sua cátedra.

O suicídio de Matsuoka é atribuído à crença (no Japão, bem entendido) de que perder a honra é perder tudo. Logo, melhor suicidar-se do que viver sem honra. Matsuoka ainda não havia perdido a honra. Havia apenas a suspeição de que a perdera, mas o peso moral de tal acusação contra um homem público foi tamanho que preferiu matar-se.

O Japão saiu da guerra, há quase 60 anos, como uma coleção de escombros. Hoje, é o 7º colocado no ranking de desenvolvimento humano. O Brasil não enfrentou guerras. É o 69º no mesmo índice.

crossi@uol.com.br

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!

2007-05-22T19:55:00.005-03:00

Sounds for the liquid soul

2007-05-22T19:55:00.003-03:00

It was many years ago that I heard about this guy Derek Trucks, who was then a teen, just like I was, but had a rather different skill with the guitar : )
Now, I've come across once again with the inspiring slides of the Trucks and his band in the DVD "Songlines". I recommend.

Missão Integral – a desnecessidade do nome e a necessidade do conceito

2007-05-16T04:03:00.000-03:00

Missão Integral – a desnecessidade do nome e a necessidade do conceito

Marcus Vinicius Matos*

C.S. Lewis dizia que a humanidade só anda pra frente quando uma geração compreende a geração imediatamente anterior a ela. Desafiados a pensar sobre a Teologia da Missão Integral, somos levados a crer que, graças a Deus, seu conceito influencia, hoje, toda uma geração de jovens comprometidos com o Evangelho de Jesus.

Todavia, isso leva a uma nova crise. Afinal, será que mais alguma coisa precisa ser dita sobre o tema? O que já não foi dito sobre Missão integral? Em um artigo publicado em 1994, Robson Cavalcanti atentava para o fato de que a Teologia da Missão Integral ficava “por fora” das igrejas, atingindo apenas os movimentos “paraeclesiásticos”. Perguntamos: será que isso mudou? Por outro lado, já ouvimos dizer que hoje a missão integral é feita em todo canto, mesmo por quem não sabe o que é a Teologia da Missão Integral. A prova disso seria o fato de que é praticamente impossível ver uma igreja evangélica na qual não exista pelo menos um trabalho de ação social.

Seja como for, de todas as aplicações possíveis da integralidade da missão, um assunto deveras sensível e de significativas diferenças entre as gerações que iniciaram a caminhada da Missão Integral em Lausanne e a geração de hoje, que pega o bastão, é a questão política. Mas não só a questão política eleitoral: nessa, os evangélicos já estão integrados, desde a ditadura. Trata-se da política que se faz também no Poder Judiciário; nas escolas e universidades; nas políticas coorporativas das empresas; e, sobretudo, no dia-a-dia comum do cidadão ordinário. E nisso, perguntamos: qual nossa capacidade de mobilização para lutar por direitos? Para promover a Justiça? Talvez não tenhamos explorado ao máximo o conceito de Missão Integral em sua relação com a política.

Como boa parte dos textos sobre Missão Integral foram escritos no contexto da Guerra Fria, era muito fácil perceber neles os embates ideológicos entre os conceitos clássicos de Esquerda e Direita. Hoje, no entanto, esses embates ainda existem, porém, com novos entornos. Não se trata mais de opor um comunismo despótico a um capitalismo ditatorial; trata-se de opor um “novo socialismo”, ou uma social democracia, a um neoliberalismo e a um governo de empresas multinacionais.

A Globalização parece ter gerado uma crise da qual o Estado-nação não conseguirá sair ileso. Ela não se restringe ao Estado: a crise global atinge também as estruturas culturais, políticas e sociais como um todo. Vivemos, nas palavras de Anthony Giddens, num “mundo em descontrole”, no qual o sistema político comum – com partidos políticos, fronteiras estatais e sentimento nacional – já não faz mais sentido. A grande oposição teórica que surge disso, segundo ele, seria entre um cosmopolitanismo e as diversas formas de fundamentalismo - no caso, cultural. Todavia, é necessário pensar de que forma essa oposição na cultura pode se refletir no contexto teológico.

Até mesmo o conceito tradicional de família foi abalado pela Globalização. Em recente estudo, um professor de sociologia francês alega que, na impossibilidade de definir um conceito de família na Europa contemporânea – devido a um número imenso de crianças que vivem em vários ambientes com pais divorciados, a casamentos entre pessoas do mesmo sexo, e ao surgimento de outras formas de família no estilo “friends” americano – define família pela “roupa suja”, ou seja, família seria aquilo que surge “quando duas pessoas compram uma máquina de lavar, ao invés de duas”. Isso é só pra ilustrar a gravidade do problema, e a necessidade de levar a sério a questão de “discernir os tempos” (I Crônicas 32:12), e ter uma pequena idéia de como o mundo mudou nos últimos 30 anos. É preciso compreender as mudanças para se posicionar diante delas.

No entanto, o que permanece inalterado? Certamente, a pobreza, a miséria e as - cada vez maiores - desigualdades entre os povos continuam presentes. Há quase 40 anos atrás, tratando de Missão Integral, Ronald Sider apontava para a necessidade de que cristãos ricos não se conformassem com os tempos de fome. Num capítulo que trata da questão do envolvimento político, ele aborda a importância de lutar contra a tirania das ditaduras marxistas e das empresas multinacionais, que ocorriam devido à concentração de poder econômico nos dois sistemas. Hoje, o professor Ulrich Beck, da universidade de Munique, depois de questionar a própria produção de estatísticas sobre o tema, conclui que o fluxo de renda dos países pobres para os países ricos aumentou; que o Globalismo Econômico tornou o mundo mais injusto do que era há alguns anos atrás.

Esse fato é um forte indício de que a Missão da Igreja continua a mesma. Apesar de mudanças políticas ocorrerem, a promessa de Jesus se cumpre a cada dia, e os pobres continuam entre nós. Contudo, há algo diferente: nossa responsabilidade aumentou na mesma proporção em aque se multiplicaram os pobres.

Nesse início de Século XXI, Esquerda e Direita não são mais sinônimos de partidos políticos ou de ideologias bem definidas, mas sim de posicionamentos diante de questões como Direitos Humanos, Comércio Justo e Ecologia. Nesses dias, quando as relações econômicas globalizadas produzem mais pobreza e desemprego do que políticas públicas de educação; onde o sistema promove morticínios estruturais de classe nos presídios em detrimento de oportunidades de desenvolvimento humano; quando se criminaliza os pobres e se atribui às favelas os crimes do Estado. É nesse mundo que precisamos saber onde afincar a bandeira da Missão Integral.

Porém, mais do que a bandeira, importa resgatar o conceito. Assim, é útil o exemplo de Abraham Kuyper que, antes da criação disso que hoje entendemos como Teologia da Missão Integral, combatia um Estado que “causava condições sociais tão anormais que boa parte da população mal conseguia sobreviver”, e defendia uma política profundamente comprometida com a proteção aos trabalhadores e aos pobres.

Para os próximos anos, nosso principal desafio é esse: promover, de modo integral, a transformação da nossa política, da economia e da sociedade a partir dos conceitos Bíblicos. O que temos que fazer? Temos que recomeçar, cultivar a semente e reviver o espírito de Lausanne na nossa cidade. E como podemos fazer? Dentro de um mundo onde há ONGs e Movimentos Sociais que representam mais indivíduos que partidos políticos, e enquanto houver espaço para a democracia, é possível que o engajamento da Igreja de Jesus Cristo na Defesa de Direitos, movida pelo Espírito Santo, produza aquilo que tanto buscamos: Justiça.

* O autor é estudante da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), onde desenvolve pesquisa em Teoria do Estado. É também coordenador de Campanha da Rede FALE (www.fale.org.br).

Bibliografia:

- SIDER, Ronald J. Cristãos Ricos em tempo de fome. São Leopoldo: Editora Sinodal, 1982

- STEUERNAGEL, Valdir Raul (org.). A missão da Igreja; uma visão panorâmica sobre os desafios e propostas da missão para a igreja na ante véspera do terceiro milênio. Belo Horizonte: Missão Editora, 1994

- CAVALCANTI, Robson. A missão da igreja e o envolvimento político dos Evangélicos – o caso brasileiro. In: A missão da Igreja; uma visão panorâmica sobre os desafios e propostas de missão para a igreja na ante véspera do terceiro milênio. Belo Horizonte: Missão Editora, 1994

- BECK, Ulrich. Liberdade ou capitalismo. São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2001

- BECK, Ulrich. Toward a New Critical Theory with a Cosmopolitan Intent. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing; Constellations, vol. 10, n.4, 2003.

- GIDDENS, Anthony. Mundo em descontrole – o que a Globalização está fazendo de nós. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2005

GIDDENS, Anthony; HUTINGTON, Samuel. Anthony Giddens refuta a tese do “choque de civilizações” de Samuel Hutington e defende que o principal conflito hoje é entre cosmopolitismo e fundamentalismo. Itália: Folha de São Paulo, 2003

- FERREIRA, Franklin. ABRAHAM KUYPER: “A minha glória não darei a outrem”. Disponível em: http://www.thirdmill.org/files/portuguese/85455~9_18_01_4-02-11_PM~ABRAHAM_KUYPER.html

- KUYPER, Abraham. Calvinismo. São Paulo: Editora Cultura Cristã, 2002

All is Full of Love

2007-05-13T21:35:00.001-03:00

you'll be given love
you'll be taken care of
you'll be given love
you have to trust it

maybe not from the sources
you have poured yours

maybe not from the directions
you are staring at

trust your head around
it's all around you
all is full of love
all around you

all is full of love :
you just ain't receiving
all is full of love :
your phone is off the hook
all is full of love :
your doors are all shut

all is full of love
-------------------
Bjork, Coachella Festival 2007

Empires with Expiration Date

2007-05-13T19:24:00.000-03:00

Wounded Iraqi children at a hospital in Baghdad.
Photograph: Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP, May 13th, 2007

Besides being shocked by the image, you might want to feed your brain with an explanation for what's happening in Iraq and its connection with the new rise of imperialism. Just read the comprehensive article "Empires with Expiration Date" by Niall Ferguson at the sept.-oct. 2006 issue of the respected magazine Foreign Policy.

Ferguson describes the constraints to U.S. expansion and closes with an alarming tone: "Empire today, it is true, is both unstated and unwanted. But history suggests that the calculus of power could swing back in its favor tomorrow."

Empires might not last as long as they did before, but it is clear that they will always exist. No reason for despair, though! For the time being, let's deal with the main powers-that-be by asking how many people will have to seek an E.R. in Baghdad before a consensus is reached.

The riots, by Charles Bukowski

2007-05-05T20:05:00.000-03:00

I've watched this city burn twice
in my lifetime
and the most notable thing
was the arrival of the
politicians in the
aftermath
proclaiming the wrongs of
the system
and demanding new
policies toward and for the
poor.

nothing was corrected last time.
nothing will be corrected this time.
the poor will remain poor.
the unemployed will remain
so.
the homeless will remain
homeless
and the politicians,
fat upon the land, will live
very well.

Modernist Romance

2007-05-01T00:01:00.000-03:00

As a Communist banned by McCarthy, Oscar Niemeyer never set foot in the house he built for a Hollywood movie producer. Forty years on, Gaby Wood visits the couple who rescued his vision from the bulldozers
Gaby Wood
Sunday April 29, 2007
Observer

In May 2002, the owner of a modernist house in Santa Monica sold the place that had been her home for the past 38 years to a man who planned to demolish it. The demolition, however, turned out to be tricky, since the new owner found he had a landmark on his hands: the only residence in North America designed by Oscar Niemeyer, a man regarded as the greatest living modernist architect.

'It was one of those terrible things,' say Michael and Gabrielle Boyd, who rescued the house in 2003 and spent the next two-and-a-half years restoring it. 'We were contacted about it, and we said: There is no Oscar Niemeyer house in Santa Monica, because if there was one, we would have heard of it!'

The irony was that Niemeyer himself had never seen it. The master architect of Brasilia, now in his 100th year, built very few homes; this one was designed for the film producer Joseph Strick in 1963, who had written to Niemeyer saying he was 'shocked and embarrassed' that the architect had not been allowed to enter the United States when he designed the United Nations building with Le Corbusier. Niemeyer was a Communist, and the decision to commission him for the house in Santa Monica was 'not only an aesthetic one', as Strick's wife Anne said many years later, 'but, in part, a way of thumbing our noses at the whole McCarthy era'. The final design, which was described by its architect as 'simple and constructive, economical and beautiful', was based on aerial photographs, topographical plans, soil tests and input from the family - and overseen by an architect Niemeyer had never met. Niemeyer wouldn't even accept a fee.

There is a kind of poetic justice in the Boyds' resurrection of the place: veteran restorers of seven modernist houses, they have filled the former Strick house with their extraordinary collection of 20th-century furniture - including, as a centrepiece, some leather and aluminium armchairs designed by Oscar Niemeyer for the Communist Party headquarters in Paris. Niemeyer, who lives in Brazil, has seen photos of the house now, and has sent word to the Boyds that he is thrilled.

The house, a sleek white brick and glass T-shape with metal beams jutting out across the roof and aluminium louvres protecting the windows, is surrounded by lush tropical landscaping for which the Boyds were inspired by Roberto Burle Marx, a frequent Niemeyer collaborator. Despite the discretion of the building itself, its effect is dramatic - because both northern and southern exposures are made of glass, you can see straight through it from the pavement, all the way out to the mountains on the other side. The view beyond the swimming pool at the back of the house is glorious, and the feeling within the main space - in which living room, dining room and kitchen are combined - is one of high ceilings and big volumes. It is, as Michael Boyd points out, 'very overscaled for a residence'.

Anne Strick, who lived in the house with her three children (she and Joseph split up just as work on it was completed), said it was 'as close to paradise as I ever expect to get on earth'. The Boyds have two sons aged 16 and 12, and Gabrielle now says she's 'so grateful that the house was designed for a family very much like our own. One reason the layout works so well is that everyone has their little private cocoon to retreat to, and yet we can all come together in the inner section, the hub. The flow of the house works well for a family. The kids utilise every bit of it.'

They are not overly delicate about their belongings - 'the preciousness comes from fragility: we don't have a hierarchy according to monetary value' - and they are on the edge of their seats to see how 'living in the modernist philosophy can permeate a child's view of the world'. One of the Strick children who grew up in the house is now the director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

Michael Boyd has been collecting modernism, or 'chasing modern', as he calls it - furniture, books, objects, art, homes - for the past 25 years. Since 1989, he and Gabrielle have been doing it together. It used to be a hobby, and now it's taken the place of their day jobs. For 15 years they composed music together for ads and TV shows (they dislike the word 'jingle') - their biggest clients included Coca-Cola, Nike and Levi's - and now they have a consultancy for collecting modernist furniture and restoring modernist buildings. If they need money, they'll sell objects, or even a building. Their collection - which has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and from which they have donated to various museums, including MoMA in New York - is always evolving. 'It's not a stagnant thing,' Gabrielle explains. 'For us, the fun part is finding stuff and saving it and publishing it. If something has found a place in the house, it's unlikely to end up at auction, but when you move from house to house, you use different things in different ways.' As she says, there is something ironic about having 'tons of minimalism'.

This is the Boyds' seventh modernist house. Bringing them to life, Gabrielle says, is like having an obsession with giant vintage cars. Before they moved back to California, where they both grew up, the Boyds bought a Paul Rudolph house on Beekman Place in New York, and spent years trying to guess how to restore it. The Rudolph house was a kind of 'architect's experimental lab', says Michael, 'and it never was a finished thing'. The Niemeyer house, by contrast, was a straightforward restoration. The only structural change they made was to remove a wall in what is now a double-height library (that space had been divided into two bedrooms and a basement two-car garage).

When they first saw it, the Strick decor was made up of gold and purple - gold ceilings, purple sofas. The Boyds' modus operandi was to strip the decoration back and only replace what could not be repaired - the pink marble bath in the master suite, for instance, is original, as is the kitchen. Other things are modernist, but not designed with the house - such as a Charlotte Perriand doorway, or a famous wall unit designed by Perriand with Jean Prouve and Sonia Delaunay for the Maison du Mexique in Paris.

The garden had been cleared of plants and trees (in preparation for demolition) by the time the Boyds bought the house. They restored the broken white travertine path, but felt an entirely new landscaping would be costly. Then one day, as they were driving in a remote part of California, they passed a mechanic's shop that for some reason had dozens of tropical trees around it. The owner had a lot-clearing business on the side and hadn't known what to do with these extraordinary mature palms. The Boyds bought the entire garden there and then.

The Boyds' library, which is reached through a doorway at the end of the living room, is lined with two storeys' worth of bookshelves, and is a stunning sanctuary of study and calm. 'People do just come over and park in the library and spend the day there,' Gabrielle says of their design-oriented guests. Part of the Boyds' intention is to educate others as they've educated themselves. 'The house is something that architects need to see,' Michael explains.

If the Boyds were to collect art seriously, they know what they would buy - Mondrian, Malevich, Yves Klein, El Lissitzky - but since money is some object, they prefer to focus on furniture, an area where they feel their collection can be more comprehensive. Still, they have favourites - Gabrielle's are the Pierre Chareau bar stools; Michael's is the Donald Judd galvanised steel chair. 'We got it directly from Judd the year before he died. He was such a grouch about it, but it's history, and there're only two. The reason he didn't want to make another one was that they were difficult to make in that material, and he owned the only other one. His assistant said, "Just keep bothering him." And finally he said, "If I make another one, will you stop bothering me?" We said, "Yes, immediately, we'll stop bothering you." So he made this one and the next year he passed away. It's funny that I'm such a champion of rationality and here I am saying this is my favourite piece because I'm sappy and sentimental.'

'You know,' he continues, 'if you really go behind a lot of these people - Niemeyer, Rietveld, Le Corbusier - behind that sobriety they're all romantics. Behind all of it is a passion - and a sermon. There is something very rapturous about it all. There's a lot of romance behind the mask of modernism.'

In an essay in the new book the Boyds have put together about the house, writer Michael Webb points out that one of the ironies of modernism is that its idealism has been lost even as its artefacts have increased in value. Once conceived as elements of a shared way of life for many, these objects have become status symbols available only to the wealthy few. But the Boyds have no truck with the idea that modernism is dead. 'The modernist idea can never be destroyed because it wasn't new,' says Michael. 'It was in traditional Japanese architecture, in temples from the 14th century that looked like Case Study Houses. People love to say: "Oh, it's going out..." No such luck! Not with people like us restoring houses!'

· Modernist Paradise by Michael Webb is published by Rizzoli at £25

Guardian Unlimited ; Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Si j'avais été candidat..., par Edgar Morin

2007-04-26T00:05:00.000-03:00

Point de vue

Si j'avais été candidat..., par Edgar Morin

LE MONDE | 24.04.07 | 14h26 • Mis à jour le 24.04.07 | 14h26

hères concitoyennes et chers concitoyens, je dois d'abord rappeler que la France ne vit ni en vase clos ni dans un monde immobile. Nous devons prendre conscience que nous vivons une communauté de destin planétaire, face aux menaces globales qu'apportent la prolifération des armes nucléaires, le déchaînement des conflits ethnico-religieux, la dégradation de la biosphère, le cours ambivalent d'une économie mondiale incontrôlée, la tyrannie de l'argent, l'union d'une barbarie venue du fond des âges et de la barbarie glacée du calcul technique et économique.

Le système planétaire est condamné à la mort ou à la transformation. Notre époque de changement est devenue un changement d'époque.

Je ne vous promets pas le salut, mais j'indiquerai la longue et difficile voie vers une Terre Patrie et une Société Monde, ce qui signifie d'abord la réforme de l'ONU pour dépasser les souverainetés absolues des Etats-nations tout en reconnaissant pleinement leur autorité pour les problèmes qui ne sont pas de vie/mort pour la planète.

Je ferai tout mon possible pour donner à l'Europe consistance et volonté en y instituant une autonomie politique et militaire. Je lui présenterai un grand dessein : réformer sa propre civilisation en y intégrant l'apport moral et spirituel d'autres civilisations ; contribuer à un nouveau type de développement dans les nations africaines ; instituer une régulation des prix pour les produits fabriqués à coût minime dans l'exploitation des travailleurs asiatiques ; élaborer une politique commune d'insertion des immigrés ; enfin et surtout en faire un foyer exemplaire de paix, compréhension et tolérance ; dans ce sens, intervenir au Darfour, en Tchétchénie, au Moyen-Orient et prévenir la guerre de civilisations.

En ce qui concerne la France. Je ne formulerai pas un programme, inopérant dans les situations changeantes ; je définirai une stratégie qui tienne compte des événements et des accidents. Pour l'immédiat je susciterai deux rencontres entre partenaires sociaux, l'une sur l'emploi et les salaires, l'autre sur les retraites.

Je constituerai deux comités permanents visant à réduire les ruptures sociales :

1) un comité permanent de lutte contre les inégalités, qui s'attaquera en premier lieu aux excès (de bénéfices et rémunérations au sommet) et aux insuffisances (de niveau et qualité de vie à la base) ;

2) un comité permanent chargé de renverser le déséquilibre accru depuis 1990 dans la relation capital-travail.

Etant donné l'intégration vitale d'une politique écologique, je constituerai un troisième comité permanent qui traitera des transformations sociales et humaines qui s'imposent.

J'indiquerai la voie d'une politique de civilisation qui ressusciterait les solidarités, ferait reculer l'égoïsme, et plus profondément reformerait la société et nos vies. De fait, notre civilisation est en crise. Là où il est arrivé, le bien-être matériel n'a pas nécessairement apporté le bien-être mental, ce dont témoignent les consommations effrénées de drogues, anxiolytiques, antidépresseurs, somnifères. Le développement économique n'a pas apporté le développement moral. L'application du calcul, de la chronométrie, de l'hyperspécialisation, de la compartimentation au travail, aux entreprises, aux administrations et finalement à nos vies a entraîné trop souvent la dégradation des solidarités, la bureaucratisation généralisée, la perte d'initiative, la peur de la responsabilité.

Aussi je réformerai les administrations publiques et inciterai à la réforme des administrations privées. La réforme vise à débureaucratiser, déscléroser, décompartimenter, et donner initiative et souplesse aux fonctionnaires ou employés, à offrir bienveillance pour tous ceux qui doivent affronter les bureaux. La réforme de l'Etat se ferait non par augmentation ou suppression d'emplois, mais par modification de la logique qui considère les humains comme objets soumis à quantification et non comme êtres dotés d'autonomie, d'intelligence et d'affectivité.

Je proposerai de revitaliser la fraternité, sous-développée dans la trilogie républicaine Liberté-Egalité-Fraternité. Tout d'abord, je susciterai la création de Maisons de la Fraternité dans les diverses villes et dans les quartiers des métropoles comme Paris.

Ces maisons regrouperaient toutes les institutions à caractère solidaire existant déjà (Secours populaire, Secours catholique, SOS Amitié, etc.) et comporteraient de nouveaux services voués à intervenir d'urgence auprès des détresses, morales ou matérielles, à sauver du naufrage les victimes d'overdose de drogue ou de chagrin. Ce seraient des lieux d'initiatives, de médiations, de secours, d'information, de bénévolat et de mobilisation permanente.

En même temps, il faudrait instituer un Service civique de la Fraternité qui, présent dans les Maisons de la Fraternité, se vouerait de plus aux désastres collectifs, inondations, canicules, sécheresses, etc., non seulement en France mais aussi en Europe et Méditerranée. Ainsi la fraternité serait profondément inscrite et vivante dans la société reformée que nous voulons.

Dans notre conception de la fraternité, les délinquants juvéniles sont non des individus abstraits à réprimer comme les adultes, mais des adolescents à l'âge plastique où il faut favoriser les possibilités de rédemption. Nous considérons les immigrés non comme des intrus à rejeter, mais comme des frères issus de la pire misère, celle qui a été créée à la fois par notre colonisation passée et par ce qu'a entraîné dans leurs pays l'introduction de notre économie en détruisant les polycultures de subsistance et en déportant les populations agraires dans le dénuement des bidonvilles urbains

Comme le cours actuel de notre civilisation privilégie la quantité, le calcul, l'avoir, je m'emploierai à une vaste politique de la qualité de la vie. Dans ce sens, je favoriserai tout ce qui combat les multiples dégradations de l'atmosphère, de la nourriture, de l'eau, de la santé. Toute économie d'énergie doit constituer un gain de santé et qualité de vie. Ainsi, la désintoxication automobile des centres-villes se traduira par la diminution des bronchites, asthmes et maladies psychosomatiques. La désintoxication des nappes phréatiques réduira l'agriculture et l'élevage industriels au profit d'une ruralité fermière, laquelle restaurera la qualité des aliments et la santé du consommateur.

La réduction des intoxications de civilisation - dont l'intoxication publicitaire, qui prétend offrir séduction et jouissance dans et par des produits superflus -, du gaspillage des objets jetables, des modes accélérées qui rendent obsolètes les produits en un an, tout cela doit nous conduire à renverser la course au plus au profit d'une marche vers le mieux, et s'inscrire dans une action continue en faveur de deux courants amorcés qu'il faut développer : la réhumanisation des villes et la revitalisation des campagnes. Cette dernière comporte la nécessité de réanimer les villages par l'installation du télétravail, le retour de la boulangerie et du bistro.

En matière d'emploi, j'instituerai des aides à la création et au développement de toute activité contribuant à la qualité de la vie. La politique des grands travaux que je proposerai pour développer le ferroutage, élargir et aménager les canaux et créer des ceintures de parkings autour des villes et autour des centres-villes permettra à la fois de créer des emplois et d'accroître la qualité de la vie. Les dépenses qu'elle nécessitera seront compensées en quelques années par la diminution des maladies socio-psycho-somatiques provoquées par stress, pollutions et intoxications.

En matière d'économie, j'agirai pour une économie plurielle, qui est en gestation sur la planète de façon dispersée, et dont les développements permettraient de surmonter la dictature du marché mondial. En France l'économie plurielle, qui comportera les grandes firmes mondialisées, développera les petites et moyennes entreprises, les coopératives et mutuelles de production et/ou consommation, les métiers de solidarité, le commerce équitable, l'éthique économique, le microcrédit, l'épargne solidaire qui finance des projets de proximité, créateurs d'emplois. Le développement d'une alimentation de proximité qui ne dépend plus des grands circuits intercontinentaux nous fournira des produits de qualité fermière et de plus nous préparera à affronter les éventuelles crises planétaires.

En ce qui concerne l'éducation, la mission première a été formulée par Jean- Jacques Rousseau dans l'Emile : "Je veux lui apprendre à vivre." Il s'agit de fournir les moyens d'affronter les problèmes fondamentaux et globaux qui sont ceux de chaque individu, de chaque société et de toute l'humanité.

Ces problèmes sont désintégrés dans et par les disciplines compartimentées. Ainsi, pour commencer, j'instituerai une année propédeutique pour toutes les universités sur : les risques d'erreur et d'illusion dans la connaissance ; les conditions d'une connaissance pertinente ; l'identité humaine ; l'ère planétaire que nous vivons ; l'affrontement des incertitudes, la compréhension d'autrui et enfin les problèmes de civilisation contemporaine.

L'élan pour la grande réforme surgira des profondeurs de notre pays quand il percevra qu'elle prend en charge ses besoins et ses aspirations. Car, sclérosé dans toutes ses structures, le pays est vivant à la base. Le changement individuel et le changement social seront inséparables, chacun seul étant insuffisant. La réforme de la politique, la réforme de la pensée, la réforme de la société, la réforme de la vie se conjugueront pour conduire à une métamorphose de société. Les futurs radieux sont morts, mais nous ouvrirons une voie pour un futur possible.

Cette voie, nous pouvons nous y avancer en France, espérer la faire adopter en Europe. Et, faisant de nouveau de la France un exemple, elle apportera l'espérance d'un salut planétaire.

Edgar Morin, sociologue, est directeur de recherche émérite au CNRS, président de l'Agence européenne pour la culture (Unesco).

Article paru dans l'édition du 25.04.07

"Somewhere Between Waking And Sleeping"

2007-04-23T00:01:00.000-03:00

Without blindness, there is no sight
You'd see further if you'd only close your eyes
In unconsciousness I can find peace
Inside prison walls I can find release
There is a place that I have seen

Somewhere between waking and sleeping
Down at the water's edge
Somebody waits for me
Is it too late for me
It's never too late, he says

Without blindness, there is no sight
You'd see further if you'd close your eyes
Unblock the failure

Without blindness, there is failure
People gather by the river
They were talking

There is a place that I have seen
Somewhere between waking and sleeping
Leaning over the side
Trailing my fingertips
Feeling the water slip
Into the quiet night

Viewed from the wrong end of a telescope
I see myself, so far below
Still and silent, rest in peace
The thread unravels
Merciful release

There is a place that I have seen
Somewhere between waking and sleeping
Now I can almost see
Figures upon the shore
He's gathering in the oars
Where are you taking me

---------------------------
Air, Pocket Simphony, 2007

SPEAK OUT AGAINST INJUSTICE

2007-04-21T03:27:00.000-03:00

Jarvis Cocker live in Stockholm - Running the world

2007-04-19T01:38:00.001-03:00

Well did you hear, there’s a natural order.
Those most deserving will end up with the most.
That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top,
Well I say: Shit floats.
If you thought things had changed,
Friend you’d better think again,
Bluntly put in the fewest of words,
C**** are still running the world,
C**** are still running the world.

Now the working classes are obsolete,
They are surplus to societies needs,
So let ‘em all kill each other,
And get it made overseas.
That’s the word don’t you know,
From the guys thats running the show,
Lets be perfectly clear boys and girls,
C**** are still running the world,
C**** are still running the world.

Oh feed your children on Cray fish and Lobster tails,
Find a school near the top of the league,
In theory I respect your right to exist,
I will kill ya if you move in next to me,
Ah it stinks, it sucks, it’s anthropologically unjust,
But the takings are up by a third, Oh So
C**** are still running the world,
C**** are still running the world.

Your free market is perfectly natural,
Or do you think that I’m some kind of dummy,
It’s the ideal way to order the world,
Fuck the morals, does it make any money?
And if you don’t like it? Then leave.
Or use your right to protest on the street,
Yeah, use your rights but don’t imagine that it’s heard, Oh no no,
C**** are still running the world,
C**** are still running the world

Opinião de Ruy Castro na FSP, 17/04/07

2007-04-18T22:38:00.000-03:00

O que o mestre mandar
RUY CASTRO

Durante quase um século, eles nos ensinaram que fumar era bacana, adulto e moderno. Para isso, tinham professores fascinantes: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall. Podia-se fumar cantando, como Sinatra; dançando, como Fred Astaire; beijando, como Lana Turner. Fumava-se à vontade em elevadores, igrejas e hospitais. Nós e o mundo fizemos o mesmo.

Mas, então, eles descobriram que fumar não fazia bem, e a ordem foi banir o cigarro dos filmes, restaurantes, escritórios, fábricas, shoppings, bares e até boates. Nós e o mundo fizemos o mesmo.

No mesmo período, eles nos ensinaram que a comida ideal era aquela carne moída, tipo pré-digerida, ou uma salsicha de recheio incerto, servida entre dois pães e pingando, para ser devorada em pé, na rua, com as mãos. Era a fast food. E, para isso, também tinham um elenco de garotos-propaganda: do Wimpy, louco por hambúrgueres, ao gordo Bolinha e ao palhaço do McDonald's. Nós e o mundo aderimos com gula e sofreguidão.

Mas, há pouco, eles descobriram que a fast food contém gorduras letais, provoca obesidade e pode levar a doenças horríveis. Nasceu uma campanha contra ela, exortando os americanos a evitá-la. E nós e o mundo, em que ficamos?

Por fim, e por igual período, eles nos ensinaram a admirar os pistoleiros Jesse James, Billy the Kid e Wyatt Earp. Ficamos íntimos da Magnum 44, do Colt 45, da Winchester 73 e de outras ferramentas da civilização americana. Tanto que nos dedicamos furiosamente a usá-las uns contra os outros, entre nós mesmos.

Às vezes, como anteontem, eles descobrem que ferramentas análogas, nas mãos de um animal doente e agressivo, como o ser humano, costumam ser mortíferas. Alguns até já cogitam proibi-las. Pode ser que, lá, nos EUA, eles consigam.

_______________________________________________

50 anos ABUB

2007-04-18T21:56:00.000-03:00

Life is a jump

2007-04-10T20:57:00.000-03:00

Are you ready to live?

Los lunes ao sol

2007-04-06T20:25:00.000-03:00

Assisti a esse filme anos atrás, no antigo cinema do Shopping Bouganville, em Goiânia. Cineminha de péssima acústica, mas ótima seleção de obras. Não sei por que raios, veio-me à mente o enredo outro dia. Recomendo a todos os portadores de almas masculinas.

Between the click of the light and the start of the dream

2007-04-01T02:36:00.000-03:00

It's just been a long, good day. That's about it.

Arbre III

2007-03-27T09:29:00.000-03:00

Arbre III

"Enough is enough, Zvakwana, Sokwanele !"

2007-03-24T16:31:00.000-03:00

From: WIDEINTERVENTION
To: Mr. Robert Mugabe, President of the Republic of Zimbabwe.
Date: April, 24th, 2006

Sir,

I would like to express my deep concern for Zimbabwe's current human rights, political, and economic situation. The suffering of all the people who've been amidst such a grave instability in Southern Africa must not last any longer.

I am aware your nation has been subdued by the exploitation of different parties, both international and national, most of which did not serve in the interest of the nation's development and self-determination. Such history of wrongdoing, alongside the latest events in Zimbabwe, tells me that no authoritarian rule succeeds to bring a turmoiled society out of its plight.

I have heard through reliable human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that your government violates the rights to shelter, food, freedom of movement and residence, freedom of assembly and the protection of law. I am particularly shocked at the recent assaults on the media, the political opposition, civil society activists, and human rights defenders.

There is a time to fight, there is a time to settle and let both justice and the will of the people take its course by means of non-violent action. Please, Mr. Mugabe, bring all opposition parties into open talk, do all that is in your hands to avoid bloodshed, and give Zimbabwe a chance to peacefully transit to democracy.

Enough is enough. Zvakwana. Sokwanele.

Sincerely,

WIDEINTERVENTION

__________________

Sokwanele - Civil Action Support Group

Zimbabwe Vigil Coalition

__________________

Mugabe thugs out to cripple all opposition

The Telegraph, UK

By Peta Thornycroft, Zimbabwe Correspondent

Last Updated: 1:23am GMT 24/03/2007

President Robert Mugabe's security forces and youth militia are
inflicting unprecedented violence on Zimbabwe's civilians.

The orgy of violence has seen attacks on opposition activists in every
township around the capital, Harare, since the latest crisis erupted almost
a fortnight ago.

The technique used by the ruling Zanu-PF party's thugs and security
forces is to beat the feet and legs of their targets until they are unable
to walk. After carrying out brutal attacks on the opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai and other senior officials, the squads have been turning their
attention to political organisers.

Doctors, who must operate "underground" when treating members of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change, revealed the scale of the
beatings.

One said they had helped to treat more than 100 activists in a two-day
period last week.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/petathornycroft/
_________________________________________________

"Le Loup et le Renard"

2007-03-23T21:54:00.000-03:00

Mais d’où vient qu’au renard Esope accorde un point,
C’est d’exceller en tours pleins de matoiserie ?
J’en cherche la raison, et ne la trouve point.
Quand le loup a besoin de défendre sa vie,

Ou d’attaquer celle d’autrui,
N’en sait-il pas autant que lui ?

Je crois qu’il en sait plus, et j’oserois peut-être
Avec quelque raison contredire mon maître.
Voici pourtant un cas où tout l’honneur échut
A l’hôte des terriers. Un soir il aperçut

La Lune au fond d’un puits : l’orbiculaire image
Lui parut un ample fromage.

Deux seaux alternativement
Puisoient le liquide élément :

Notre renard, pressé par une faim canine,
S’accommode en celui qu’au haut de la machine
L’autre seau tenoit suspendu.
Voilà l’animal descendu,
Tiré d’erreur, mais fort en peine,
Et voyant sa perte prochaine :

Car comment remonter, si quelque autre affamé,
De la même image charmé,
Et succédant à sa misère,
Par le même chemin ne le tiroit d’affaire ?

Deux jours s’étoient passés sans qu’aucun vînt au puits.
Le temps, qui toujours marche, avoit pendant deux nuits

Echancré, selon l’ordinaire,
De l’astre au front d’argent la face circulaire.

Sire renard étoit désespéré.
Compère loup, le gosier altéré,
Passe par là. L’autre dit : Camarade,
Je vous veux régaler : voyez-vous cet objet ?
C’est un fromage exquis. Le dieu Faune l’a fait :
La vache Io donna le lait.
Jupiter, s’il étoit malade,
Reprendroit l’appétit en tâtant d’un tel mets.

J’en ai mangé cette échancrure ;
Le reste vous sera suffisante pâture.
Descendez dans un seau que j’ai mis là exprès.
Bien qu’au moins mal qu’il pût il ajustât l’histoire,
Le loup fut un sot de le croire :

Il descend ; et son poids, emportant l’autre part,
Reguinde (1) en haut maître renard.

Ne nous en moquons point : nous nous laissons séduire
Sur aussi peu de fondement ;
Et chacun croit fort aisément
Ce qu’il craint et ce qu’il désire.

_______________________
(1) Elève. Terme de fauconnerie.

Fable: "Le Loup et le Renard"
Dans: Livre XVII, Fable VI
Par: Jean de la Fontaine
_______________________

Cornel West on "What It Means to Be a Leftist in the 21st Century"

2007-03-22T04:00:00.000-03:00

Professor, culture critic, and social justice advocate Cornel West addressed a panel at the 2007 Left Forum in New York last weekend.

West is a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University and has been described as one of America's most vital and eloquent public intellectuals.

He has written and co-authored numerous books on philosophy, race and sociology. His most recent book is "Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism."

For the video, click the post title above. Full transcript HERE.

O retorno dos pregadores maníacos

2007-03-20T22:20:00.000-03:00

Siga o link para assistir ao excelente vídeo de "Your love alone is not enough", a nova gritaria poderosa dos Manic Street Preachers, com participação de Nina Persson (Cardigans). O álbum "Send away the tigers" será lançado nos próximos meses.

MSP é coisa de galês que gosta de brincar com espíritos primais anti-status quo. Vide (melhor, ouça no podcast de WIDEINTERVENTION) a balada "If you tolerate this your children will be next" - um sublime soco no epigástrio.

====================================

"Intervention", by Canadian band Arcade Fire

2007-03-20T16:34:00.000-03:00

The keys taken back I throw
The useless seed was sown
When they say they're cutting off the phone
Then tell 'em you're not home

Jogo as chaves que peguei de volta
A semente inútil foi semeada
Quando disserem que vão cortar sua linha telefônica
Diga apenas que você não está em casa

No place to hide
You'll find there's a soldier on their side
You're still a soldier in your mind
But nothing's on the line

Sem lugar para se esconder
Você perceberá que há um soldado ao seu lado
Na sua imaginação, você ainda é um soldado
Mas nada parece estar perfilado

You say it's money that we need
As if we're the only mouths to feed
I know that no matter what you say
There are some debts we never pay

Você diz que é dinheiro o que precisamos
como se fôssemos os únicos que clamamos
Eu sei que não importa o que você falar
Há algumas dívidas que nunca iremos pagar

Working for the church while your family dies
You take what they give you
You keep it inside
Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan all quiet and alone

Trabalhando para a igreja enquando sua família morre
Você pega o que te dão
Você segura firme
Cada sinal de amizade e amor vai morrer sem lar
Ouça o soldado sozinho e em silêncio a murmurar

I can taste the fear
Lift me up and take me out of here
Don't want to fight, don't want to die
Just want to hear you cry

Eu sinto o sabor do medo
Pegue minha mão e me tire daqui
Não quero morrer, não quero lutar,
Só quero ouvir você chorar

Who's gonna throw the very first stone
Oh, who's gonna re-set the bone
Walking with your hand in a sling
Wanna hear the soldier sing

A primeira pedra, quem vai atirar?
A fratura óssea, quem vai consertar?
Com sua mão algemada a caminhar
Quero ouvir o soldado cantar

Working for the church while my family dies
You're little baby sister's gonna lose her mind
Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan all quiet and alone

Trabalhando para a igreja enquanto sua família se acaba
Sua irmãzinha vai pirar
Cada sinal de amizade e amor vai morrer sem lar
Ouça o soldado sozinho e em silêncio a murmurar

I can taste your fear
It's gonna lift you up and take you out of here
If the bone shot never heals
I cannot make him yield

Percebo que você sente medo
Mas é isso que vai te levantar e te tirar daqui
Mesmo o tiro no osso nunca cicatrizando
Eu não consigo fazê-lo render-se

You can't find me now
They're gonna get their money back somehow
And when you finally disappear
They're gonna say you were never here

Agora você não consegue me achar
De algum jeito o dinheiro de volta eles vão pegar
E quando finalmente você desaparecer
"Nunca o vi por aqui" - é o que vão dizer

Been working for the church while your life falls apart
They're singing hallelujah when defeating your heart
Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan all quiet and alone
Hear the soldier groan all quiet and alone

Você trabalha para a igreja enquanto sua vida vai ao chão
Cantam aleluia ao acabarem com seu coração
Cada sinal de amizade e amor vai morrer sem lar
Ouça o soldado solitário em silêncio a murmurar
Ouça o soldado solitário em silêncio a murmurar

"Intervention", by Arcade Fire, in "Neon Bible", 2007
Clique para download (site externo)

====================================

A meio caminho das estrelas

2007-03-13T10:30:00.000-03:00

Halfway to the Stars, by Denis Peterson

www.denispeterson.com

No loopholes

2007-03-10T01:17:00.000-03:00

Let's face it - I have to study Economics.
Therefore, no posts today... because blogs should not be seen as loopholes.
Hey! I've just found a loophole!
Loophole - A technicality that allows a person or business to avoid the scope of a law without directly violating the law.

Phil Keaggy - Salvation Army Band

2007-03-09T03:00:00.001-03:00

Uma soberba execução por Phil Keaggy de uma de suas obras seminais, Salvation Army Band, está disponível em http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDPM4-YIF9c

À boca pequena, corre que Jimi Hendrix uma vez apontou Keaggy como alguém que o superava na arte da guitarra. Abaixo, segue artigo recente sobre seu estilo de tocar com loopings.

Essa postagem é uma homenagem ao amigo Renato Fontes, de BH, que me incentivou ao conhecimento Keaggyano anos atrás.

________________________

Soulful 6-String Excursions
Phil Keaggy
By Barry Cleveland October 2006 http://www.guitarplayer.com/story.asp?storycode=15473

Phil Keaggy had already achieved recognition as a gifted guitarist while he was still in high school, and his band, Glass Harp, inked a deal with Decca Records when he was only 19 years old. That same year, Keaggy embraced Christianity, a decision that affected his guitar playing along with his life’s course.

“I began to become more of a melodic guitar player around 1970, whereas before that I was trying to be fancy,” he explains. “When peace and sanity finally came into my life, I learned how to connect the dots musically a little bit more.”

Glass Harp released three albums of music with progressive and psychedelic leanings between 1970 and 1972, after which Keaggy left to pursue a solo career within the burgeoning Christian music industry. By the late ’80s, however, Keaggy’s association with that industry was problematic.

“I got squeezed out along with a lot of the other original artists, because they were just out to sell records, and I didn’t really fit the image,” he relates. “I was too religious for the world, and too worldly for the religious. But I am living proof that there is life after being with a record company.”

Indeed. Over the course of his career, the ultra-prolific Keaggy has released nearly 50 recordings—featuring both acoustic and electric guitar—covering genres ranging from rock to new acoustic to new age jazz. His two latest releases indicate the breadth of his stylistic diversity. Jammed! [TAG] is a collection of mostly electric jam sessions that took place throughout the past 35 years, providing insights into how his playing has evolved during that time. The songs on Roundabout [Strobie] were compiled from looped acoustic guitar improvisations recorded during recent tours.

Keaggy’s playing skillfully blends elements from just about every imaginable style, as well as incorporating volume-knob swells, slapped harmonics, dramatic glissandos, tasty bends, and various textural tricks. His looping abilities—as showcased on Roundabout—rival those of anyone.

“After 45 years of playing, I have developed a signature style,” he says. “But I’m also a constellation of all my influences. There are things that were inspired by Michael Hedges, George Harrison, Allan Holdsworth, and Pat Metheny, to name a few. I love all guitarists that play well, and there are many.”

What is the origin of the looped pieces on Roundabout?
They began with me messing around at my soundchecks before the audience came in. I’d typically just come from taking a nap at a hotel, so my mind would be fresh, and I’d improvise loops that would be recorded by my soundman, Brian Persall. The loops have rhythm, lead, bass, and even percussion parts [Keaggy uses the internal microphone in his guitar to record shakers, finger cymbals, etc.], along with textures created using an EBow and placing plastic between the strings, which creates koto, banjo, and steel drum-type sounds.
After I returned home, I imported all of the loops into Pro Tools and edited some sections, but no overdubs were added either after the initial recording or while in the studio. If a song was too long, I might edit some measures or repeated sections to make it a little less repetitious, or maybe move some bits around. For example, there are moments on “Skippin Stones” and “South of the Boredom” where I repeated a phrase or inserted it again at the end, and on “Blue Moon,” I moved the sections around a bit to create more dynamics. “Blue Moon” is actually the only unoriginal piece, and that melody just came to me, because, you know, the solo that Clapton does in “Sunshine of Your Love” is really “Blue Moon.”

What signal chain do you use for looping?
I run my guitar through a Boss volume pedal into a Visual Sound Route 66 compressor/overdrive; Boss tremolo, Dimension C, and Octave pedals; and a Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler, and then into channel one of a Peavey Deltafex set for chorus. I send the chorused signal to a Lexicon Jam Man, and route its output into channel two of the Deltafex for reverb, then out to the P.A. mixer. Between the Jam Man’s 32 seconds of memory, and the DL4’s looping setting, I can get some nice-sounding loops.

What advice would you give to the novice loopist?
Get a looper that is simple, intuitive, and responds easily to your foot and the way your mind works. Then, go easy with it until you are comfortable putting down a rhythm thing and settling into it. Guitar players have a tendency to rush and get above or ahead of the beat, and what’s great about looping devices is that they really help you lock in and get a good sense of rhythm and timing. Also, don’t be afraid to experiment—especially when you’re alone. Take chances, and eventually you will get confident with it.

What was the impetus behind Jammed!?
I released a two-CD set called Premium Jams back in 1995 that was available only through my fan club. My record distributor thought it would be great to give my fans something electric again, and as those recordings were never released commercially, he recommended we put together a collection of about 12 pieces. He even suggested which ones should be included. I edited them in Pro Tools, and added a few unreleased tracks—such as the Beethoven-derived “Joyphil,” a raucous little number called “Phlagan’s Flow,” and “Prehistrobie K-18,” which was recorded in my bedroom when I was barely out of high school.

“Prehistrobie” is very interesting. Can you describe what you did there?
That’s actually a short excerpt from a composition called “Experimental Music 1970” that’s about 15 minutes long. I had a Sony TC 630 reel-to-reel, and I just connected it to the external speaker jack on my Fender Twin Reverb with the speakers unplugged [Ed. Note: This is not recommended, as it can damage the amplifier and the recorder] because I didn’t have a microphone. You could record sound-on-sound, change the tape speed, turn up the onboard echo for regeneration, and turn the tape over to do backwards stuff. I had been playing Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Jeff Beck tunes, but during the winter of 1969/70 I would just sit in my room, searching my heart, and trying to find a voice with my guitar. I’m playing my old flame-top Les Paul, and doing the pinkie volume swells that eventually became kind of a trademark for me in Glass Harp. The piece is titled “Prehistrobie” because my dad used to call my playing “strobie” when I was little.

Speaking of pinkie-volume swells, I understand that you have your guitars fitted with custom volume pots.
Yes. Some pots increase the volume real gradually, and then bark at the end, while others cut the level dramatically within the first 20 percent or so of their travel. I like pots that fade the volume down evenly.

How did losing a finger as a child affect your playing?
I lost my middle finger before I began playing guitar in fourth grade, so I never missed it, because it wasn’t there. I could still hold a plectrum. The only thing I had to get over was the embarrassment of playing in front of people, because, as a kid, you’re self-conscious of things like that. But I began to accept who I was as a person, and, in 1970, I became a Christian, and God helped me see that it’s okay to be me. That’s when I accepted who I am, and I found total joy in playing in front of people and just being myself. The only thing I can’t do is that wonderful flamenco tremolo stuff, but I’ve found ways to compensate. By the way, I lost my finger in a water-pump accident. I might as well get the story straight, because there are some wild stories out there.

Yeah, I read somewhere that you lost it in a cutting match with Hendrix.
That’s one of the stories! Glass Harp recorded in his studio two weeks after he died, but I never met him, and I don’t think he ever heard my music. But I sure did admire him.
Would you say that you gravitate more toward Hendrix or Michael Bloomfield?
Bloomfield. I got a chance to open for him in 1971, when Glass Harp played at KSAN radio in San Francisco. I was all excited. I’d bought a Les Paul because of him, and I played along with his records, and learned as many riffs and solos as I could. I felt that both Bloomfield and Hendrix were soulful players beyond me, but Bloomfield’s solo on “Another Country” by Electric Flag—where he really swings into it—was awesome.
The promoter of that gig asked Bloomfield if he wanted to jam with me, but he wasn’t feeling well at the time, and he wasn’t playing like the Bloomfield I had been studying. He had a stereo Gibson guitar instead of his Les Paul, and he didn’t have his usual band. But when I ran into him at Criterion Studios in Miami three years later, I introduced myself as the guy whose band opened up for him in San Francisco, and he said, “I remember you. You’re that little guy who played his ass off.” And it was like a confirmation that he was really listening. I smiled, and he grinned at me. That really meant a lot.

Phil’s Gang:
Guitars: Olson SJ Cutaway, Del Langejans BRGC-6 Grand Concert, McPherson MG 4.5 (all equipped with L.R. Baggs Micro Duet pickup systems), custom Zion, Parker Fly, ’71 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe (modified with PAF and hand-wired PRS pickups), ’63 Fender Stratocaster, ’59 Gretsch Anniversary.Amplifiers: Modified late-’60s Fender Deluxe, mid-’60s Vox AC30, Yamaha DG Stomp, Line 6 POD and PODxt.FX: Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler, Lexicon Jam Man (controlled with an RFX MIDI Wizard), Peavey Deltafex, Visual Sound Route 66, Heet Sound EBow, Boss FV-60 Volume, CH-1 Super Chorus, TR-2 Tremolo, DC-2 Dimension C, and OC-2 Octave.Strings: GHS or Elixer, .011, .016, .026, .036, .046, .056 (acoustics) and .009-.042 or .010-.046 (electrics).

Phil Keaggy - County Down

2007-03-09T02:56:00.001-03:00

Phil Keaggy em uma de suas melhores músicas instrumentais. A forma despojada de se relacionar com o violão faz a gente transcender. Para uma audição geral de sua obra, recomendo "Time" (vol. 1 e vol. 2).

Getcho Soul Togetha

2007-03-08T01:30:00.003-03:00

É hora de dançar ao som de Breakestra, um "grupinho" californiano de soul, hip-hop e funk composto por 10 integrantes!
Segmentos do álbum "Hit the Floor" estão disponíveis no site da banda: www.breakestra.com
Música para chacoalhar os neurônios!

Hino Nacional, por Carlos Drummond de Andrade

2007-03-08T01:00:00.000-03:00

Precisamos descobrir o Brasil!
Escondido atrás das florestas,
com a água dos rios no meio,
o Brasil está dormindo, coitado.
Precisamos colonizar o Brasil.
O que faremos importando francesas
muito louras, de pele macia,
alemãs gordas, russas nostálgicas para
garçonnettes dos restaurantes noturnos.
E virão sírias fidelíssimas.
Não convém desprezar as japonesas.
Precisamos educar o Brasil.
Compraremos professores e livros,
assimilaremos finas culturas,
abriremos dancings e subvencionaremos as elites.
Cada brasileiro terá sua casa
com fogão e aquecedor elétricos, piscina,
salão para conferências científicas.
E cuidaremos do Estado Técnico.
Precisamos louvar o Brasil.
Não é só um país sem igual.
Nossas revoluções são bem maiores
do que quaisquer outras; nossos erros também.
E nossas virtudes? A terra das sublimes paixões...
os Amazonas inenarráveis... os incríveis João-Pessoas...
Precisamos adorar o Brasil.
Se bem que seja difícil caber tanto oceano e tanta solidão
no pobre coração já cheio de compromissos...
se bem que seja difícil compreender o que querem esses homens,
por que motivo eles se ajuntaram e qual a razão de seus sofrimentos.
Precisamos, precisamos esquecer o Brasil!
Tão majestoso, tão sem limites, tão despropositado,
ele quer repousar de nossos terríveis carinhos.
O Brasil não nos quer! Está farto de nós!
Nosso Brasil é no outro mundo. Este não é o Brasil.
Nenhum Brasil existe. E acaso existirão os brasileiros?

[Para melhor compreensão, ler novamente ouvindo "Black Rain"]

Please, kiss complication good-bye!

2007-03-06T03:58:00.000-03:00

Deparei com as "leis da simplicidade" dias atrás. Elas representam o óbvio tão ululante quanto pouco praticado por aí a fora (inclusive pelo autor deste blog).

Os links te levarão ao detalhamento de cada lei feito por John Maeda, professor de design do MIT e autor do livro "As Leis da Simplicidade" (Novo Conceito, 2006, ISBN: 8599560093).

Law 1: Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

Law 2: Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

Law 3: Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity.

Law 4: Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler.

Law 5: Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Law 6: Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is deﬁnitely not peripheral.

Law 7: Emotion
More emotions are better than less.

Law 8: Trust
In simplicity we trust.

Law 9: Failure
Some things can never be made simple.

Law 10: The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

Caso o tema "simplicidade" esteja na sua agenda para os próximos tempos, recomendo que você procure conteúdo mais consistente do que as meras leis acima. WIDEINTERVENTION indica os livros do sacerdote católico holandês Henri Nouwen, dos quais alguns excertos estão disponíveis em www.henrinouwen.org

Se, entretanto, você estiver numa correria tremenda e fast food for o possível para o momento, siga com Maeda mesmo. Pode ser o primeiro passo rumo à constatação de que as complicações tornam a vida, digamos, muito complicada!

WIDEINTERVENTION dá um empurrãozinho em direção à simplicidade ao indicar a contemplação da obra "O Filho Pródigo", de Rembrandt.

Em tempo: com todo o respeito, "kiss", no título do post, é o acrônimo para "keep it simple, stupid". Sacou?

Zhat is zhe beauty of fashion...

2007-03-05T06:53:00.001-03:00

Osama Bin Laden is very fashionable, fashion saves a lot more lives than doctors, it is heavy and so light...

Antropofagia do bem

2007-03-05T05:08:00.000-03:00

Estudar para um concurso de área diferente da sua formação, pagando cursinho por vários meses e gastando tempo numa biblioteca sombria: CUSTA MUITO CARO.

Passar na primeira fase do mesmo concurso, responder a prova de segunda fase mais desastradamente que a intervenção dos EUA no Iraque (e, aliás, em qualquer lugar), dar plantão médico noturno em seguida e, ao chegar ao lar na manhã seguinte, ouvir Numb (Encore) no último volume, explodindo o headphone de tanto bass e pouco se lixando para o resultado:
NÃO TEM PREÇO.
...

A verdade é ácida e o kibe é cru. Portanto, siga este conselho, meu filho, que, guardadas as devidas proporções, vale por um "Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment - Edition 2007": TOME RANITIDINA e ENGULA A VIDA.

E atenção, o Ministério da Saúde NÃO adverte.

...

Por enquanto, férias para o paralelismo e o convencionalismo dos aruás. Sopra, meu filho, sopra o teu metal!

Campanha publicitária do Ministério do Turismo do Afeganistão

2007-02-27T23:22:00.000-03:00

Nota do blog:
WIDEINTERVENTION não se responsabiliza por eventuais danos físicos, morais, espirituais, políticos e psíquicos causados àqueles que aproveitarem as ofertas promocionais de viagens patrocinadas pelos governos dos EUA e do Reino Unido.
WIDEINTERVENTION apóia o turismo justo e consciente.

Propaganda

2007-02-22T01:29:00.000-02:00

Time for an advertisement... Useful one, by the way.

Miroslav Volf has just released his new book "Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace". I look forward to reading it. In the meantime, it was worth watching the webcast of a lecture he gave on the theme at Harvard Divinity School some time ago.

Read:
http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin_mag/articles/34-1_volf.html

Watch:
http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/events_online/dudleian_2005.html

Memory, Salvation, and Perdition - To Recover from Suffering, How Should We Remember?

by Miroslav Volf

"We remember Auschwitz and all that it symbolizes because we believe that, in spite of the past and its horrors, the world is worthy of salvation; and salvation, like redemption, can be found only in memory."¹Elie Wiesel spoke these words at the German Reichstag in an address delivered on November 10, 1987, 50 years after the infamous Kristallnacht, in which mobs went through the streets of Nazi Germany destroying Jewish property and helping to set in motion the horrors of the Holocaust. The words sum up a theme that runs like a red thread through Wiesel's work: the saving power of remembering wrongs that we have perpetrated or suffered. As he himself put it, faith in memory's saving power, faith that it will heal individuals concerned and help rid the world of violence, is his central obsession.

Among our contemporaries, Wiesel may be the one most obsessed with memory of wrongs and pain. But belief in the redemptive power of such memory is widespread today. Psychologists and novelists, historians and philosophers, cultural critics and politicians are repeating the injunction "Remember!" like a reassuring drumbeat. For many, the injunction to remember has the same foundational status as the call "Believe!" has had for Protestant Christians since Martin Luther famously declared, "If you believe, you shall have all things."² If you believe in Christ, you will be justified before God, insisted Luther; if you remember wrongs and sufferings they caused, you'll find salvation in history, urges Wiesel, along with many of our contemporaries. It is almost as if for many today "memory" has taken the place once occupied by religion.

But is memory such an unambiguous good? How strong is the link between memory and salvation? Isn't the memory of wrongs suffused with pain and suffering? Hasn't it sometimes pushed those who remember to inflict pain and suffering upon others? Doesn't it then have a link to perdition and not just to salvation? And if memory is integral to salvation but can also lead to perdition, how should we remember for memory to be truly saving?

In unfolding the relations between memory, salvation, and perdition, I will mainly consider the memory of wrongs committed or suffered. In addition to remembering wrongs and sufferings, we remember many other things as well—stories from our childhood, adolescent dreams and disappointments, successes and failures in our work, history of our people, religious instruction. Although all such memories are central to who we are and how we live, I will not address them here. My theme is not memory in general, but memory of wrongs and sufferings. Moreover, I will examine here only the question whether such memory is in some significant way saving. There may be other reasons to remember wrongs irrespective of whether our remembering is "saving" or not—say, out of sheer duty toward sufferers, because of unyielding demands of justice, or simply because to be a human being means to remember such things. I will leave here these reasons for remembering aside. Here my topic is memory and salvation.

There are two ways to understand the link between memory and salvation. We can consider memory as the content of salvation (as when we think that without memories of wrongs we have suffered we would have a gaping hole in our identity). And we can consider memory as a means to salvation (as when we think that the memory of violence committed protects people from becoming victims in future). I will explore these two ways of linking memory and salvation in turn.

...

De dos XVIII

2007-02-21T23:19:00.000-02:00

"De dos XVIII", Jacques Bodin, 2006

__________________________________________________________________

Taking on Dawkins

2007-02-21T17:36:00.000-02:00

A thought stirring review on Richard Dawkins's last book "The God Delusion".
It is in The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 1, January 2007
What follows below is only an excerpt. You can read the full review at
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19775

--------------------------------------------

A Mission to Convert
By H. Allen Orr

The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins
Houghton Mifflin, 406 pp., $27.00

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief
by Lewis Wolpert
Norton, 243 pp., $25.95

Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist
by Joan Roughgarden
Island, 151 pp., $14.95

Scientists' interest in religion seems to come in waves. One arrived after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. Another followed in the 1930s and 1940s, inspired by surprising revelations from quantum mechanics, which suggested the insufficiency of conventional physical theories of the universe. And now scientists are once again writing about religion, apparently provoked this time by the controversy surrounding intelligent design.
During the last year, a number of popular books on religion by scientists or philosophers of science have appeared. Daniel Dennett kicked things off with his Breaking the Spell (2006), an investigation into the possibility of a science of religion. Reviewing evolutionary, psychological, and economic theories of the origin and spread of belief, Dennett covered much ground but reached few conclusions. In the last few months, three prominent scientists—all biologists—have published their own books on belief. Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, has given us The God Delusion, an extended polemic against faith, which will be considered at length below.
Lewis Wolpert, an eminent developmental biologist at University College London, has just published Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a pleasant, though rambling, look at the biological basis of belief. While the book focuses on our ability to form causal beliefs about everyday matters (the wind moved the trees, for example), it spends considerable time on the origins of religious and moral beliefs. Wolpert defends the unusual idea that causal thinking is an adaptation required for tool-making. Religious beliefs can thus be seen as an odd extension of causal thinking about technology to more mysterious matters. Only a species that can reason causally could assert that "this storm was sent by God because we sinned." While Wolpert's attitude toward religion is tolerant, he's an atheist who seems to find religion more puzzling than absorbing.

Joan Roughgarden, on the other hand, is sold on religion. An evolutionary biologist at Stanford University and a recent convert to Christianity, she attempts in Evolution and Christian Faith both to explain evolutionary biology to fellow believers—laying out what is known, what is speculative, and what is unknown—and to discuss what the Bible has to say on matters relevant to evolution. These are ambitious aims, particularly for so brief a book, and Roughgarden's own views—that, as she writes, "what evolutionary biologists are finding through their research and thinking actually promotes a Christian view of nature"—are not supported by sufficiently detailed arguments.

1.
Among these books, Dawkins's The God Delusion stands out for two reasons. First, it's by far the most ambitious. While Wolpert and Roughgarden preach to the choir—each has his or her own audience, rationalist and religious, respectively—Dawkins is on a mission to convert. He is an enemy of religion, wants to explain why, and hopes thereby to drive the beast to extinction. Second, Dawkins has succeeded in grabbing the public's attention in a way that other writers can only dream of. His book is on the New York Times best-seller list and he's just been featured on the cover of Time magazine.

...