Ouvi dizer que a noite tudo lava Fiquei p'ra ver, mas eu cá não vi nada Fiquei até à madrugada Da noite passou p'ra dia e eu que tanto queria começar outra vez Já nem sei quem me dizia, mas sei que é mentira
Ouvi dizer que nada dura muito Quis ver p'ra crer não fosse ser injusto Quis ver até virar desgosto De dia passou a ano, eu virei oceano e deixei-me perder Já nem sei qual era o plano, mas sei que é insano
Ouvi dizer que a noite tudo lava Fiquei p'ra ver, mas eu cá não vi nada Fiquei até à madrugada
Oh, it's a mystery to me We have a greed, with which we have agreed And you think you have to want more than you need Until you have it all you won't be free
Society, you're a crazy breed I hope you're not lonely without me
When you want more than you have You think you need And when you think more than you want Your thoughts begin to bleed I think I need to find a bigger place 'Cause when you have more than you think You need more space
Society, you're a crazy breed I hope you're not lonely without me Society, crazy indeed I hope you're not lonely without me
There's those thinking, more or less, less is more But if less is more, how you keeping score? Means for every point you make, your level drops Kinda like you're starting from the top You can't do that
Society, you're a crazy breed I hope you're not lonely without me Society, crazy indeed I hope you're not lonely without me
Society, have mercy on me I hope you're not angry if I disagree Society, crazy indeed I hope you're not lonely Without me
I learned from my mother how to love the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole grieving household, to cube home-canned pears and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point. I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know the deceased, to press the moist hands of the living, to look in their eyes and offer sympathy, as though I understood loss even then. I learned that whatever we say means nothing, what anyone will remember is that we came. I learned to believe I had the power to ease awful pains materially like an angel. Like a doctor, I learned to create from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once you know how to do this, you can never refuse. To every house you enter, you must offer healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself, the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice De vinho tinto de sangue
Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice De vinho tinto de sangue
Como beber dessa bebida amarga? Tragar a dor, engolir a labuta? Mesmo calada a boca, resta o peito Silêncio na cidade não se escuta De que me vale ser filho da santa? Melhor seria ser filho da outra Outra realidade menos morta Tanta mentira, tanta força bruta
Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice De vinho tinto de sangue
Como é difícil acordar calado Se na calada da noite eu me dano Quero lançar um grito desumano Que é uma maneira de ser escutado Esse silêncio todo me atordoa Atordoado eu permaneço atento Na arquibancada pra a qualquer momento Ver emergir o monstro da lagoa
Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice De vinho tinto de sangue
De muito gorda a porca já não anda De muito usada a faca já não corta Como é difícil, pai, abrir a porta Essa palavra presa na garganta Esse pileque homérico no mundo De que adianta ter boa vontade? Mesmo calado o peito, resta a cuca Dos bêbados do centro da cidade
Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice Pai, afasta de mim esse cálice De vinho tinto de sangue
Talvez o mundo não seja pequeno Nem seja a vida um fato consumado Quero inventar o meu próprio pecado Quero morrer do meu próprio veneno Quero perder de vez tua cabeça Minha cabeça perder teu juízo Quero cheirar fumaça de óleo diesel Me embriagar até que alguém me esqueça
Tu és a estrela que guia o meu coração Tu és a estrela que iluminou meu chão És o sinal de que eu conduzo o destino Tu és a estrela e eu sou o peregrino
Até aqui foi uma escuridão tão Dessas que nos faz ser sábios do mundo Vivi desilusão tão desigual Que vim dar a minha infância num segundo
Nem sabes tu aquilo que fizeste Por mim, até por ti quando chegaste Só sei que ao te ver tu reergueste O que em mim era só cinza e desgaste
Tu és a estrela que guia o meu coração Tu és a estrela que iluminou meu chão És o sinal de que eu conduzo o destino Tu és a estrela e eu sou o peregrino
Bem mais feliz agora certamente Vou eu seguindo assim pela vida afora Não mais estarei sozinha, estou bem crente Que o teu feixe de luz própria me segue agora
Tu és a estrela que guia o meu coração Tu és a estrela que iluminou meu chão És o sinal de que eu conduzo o destino Tu és a estrela e eu sou o peregrino Tu és a estrela e eu sou o peregrino
I had only seen my parents kiss twice. The first time after my father’s ear surgery. I was seven or so, don’t recall the nature of the kiss but only that his hearing was bad from his youthful years of lifeguarding. Or was it after he tore the cartilage around his ribs from lifting heavy glass bottles of milk? I don’t recall.
The second time was after my mother’s mastectomy. They rolled her out of recovery. She looked sad without her glasses — eyes, small and watery. He bent over and touched his lips to hers then turned away and shook his head.
So that is it; that is all. Two small kisses for me to coast on like a wave.
By the time I was six months old, she knew something was wrong with me. I got looks on my face she had not seen on any child in the family, or the extended family, or the neighborhood. My mother took me in to the pediatrician with the kind hands, a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel: Hub Long. My mom did not tell him what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed. It was just these strange looks on my face— he held me, and conversed with me chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother said, She’s doing it now! Look! She’s doing it now! and the doctor said, What your daughter has is called a sense of humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me back to the house where that sense would be tested and found to be incurable.
Omara Portuondo, de 92 anos, cancelou dois dos três concertos que daria em Portugal na sua tour de despedida, nos coliseus do Porto e Lisboa a 8 e 14 de Julho, respectivamente. O único concerto não cancelado foi em Castelo Branco dia 1 de Julho... uma oportunidade!
Bruce Springsteen has been giving concerts since February, but the London shows on the 6th and 8th of July finally made it to The Economist. Below is the unedited article but the bolds are the passages I find more poignant).
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Bruce Springsteen turns back the clock—and stops it
On his epic tour, the Boss pulls off one of music’s best tricks: to meddle with time
image: epa
Jul 11th 2023
Just a “one, two, three, four” and he was off, barely pausing for breath and gathering energy over the three electric hours of his show. On stage in Hyde Park in London on July 6th, Bruce Springsteen tossed guitars to roadies, traded licks with members of his E Street Band, ripped open his shirt and bestowed plectrums and selfies on ecstatic fans. Or he stood still, his Fender dangling at his back, a pose that is a sort of benign American cousin to a gunslinger’s silhouette.
Mr Springsteen is 73. Yet halfway through a ten-month tour of Europe and North America, he is still performing as if his life depended on it—just as it did when, as a teenage frontman in the late 1960s, he eked out a living in the bars of the New Jersey shore. The fight against time, and its remorselessness, are among the main themes of his songs. The ability of music to twist and resist time may be their deepest meaning.
His first number on this tour is “No Surrender”. “I’m alive!” he chants in the refrain of the second, “Ghosts”. Next comes “Prove It All Night” (he does). His show is part knee-slide in the face of old age, part séance for lost friends—both parts rocking to the drumbeat of mortality. Recent lyrics are crowded with the shades of dead bandmates: “You count the names of the missing as you count off time,” Mr Springsteen sings in “Last Man Standing”. Images of departed musicians loom on the screens behind him.
The genius of many of these songs, though, is that they were born old. The friendship and ambitions commemorated in “Backstreets” have long since withered (“And after all this time”, laments the most poignant line, “to find we’re just like all the rest”). In the story told in “Bobby Jean” it is too late even to say goodbye. In “The River”, which these days Mr Springsteen concludes in an eerie falsetto, the high-school infatuation, shotgun marriage and thwarted dreams are all ancient history.
The wellspring of poetry, thought William Wordsworth, is “emotion recollected in tranquillity”. The same goes for lots of these songs: they are about the aftermath rather than the action, the memory of youth, harrowing or consoling, rather than the thing itself. This soulful past tense helps explain the appeal of Mr Springsteen’s hymns to small-town America, threnodies for midwestern deindustrialisation and ballads of blue-collar longing to his fans in London or Barcelona. They may never have navigated the swamps of Jersey, driven 800 miles to Darlington County or worked at the rug mill across the railroad tracks. But they have all looked back with fondness or regret. They have all grown up.
It also helps explain why his hits, many of them written in the 1970s, endure as they do. Since their major key is eulogy, they never go out of date. The older the singer, the songs and his audience, the more moving they become.
These tunes pull off one of music’s most precious tricks: they meddle with time. More powerfully than any madeleine, music can open a portal to bygone gigs or evenings spent listening to cassettes or lps. “Tonight”, Mr Springsteen sings, “I’m ready to grow young again,” and the greying devotees in t-shirts from tours of yore feel the same way. More than that, music can set its own time, seeming to speed up the clock prestissimo or slow it down in a serenade—even, sometimes, seeming to stop it.
Mr Springsteen’s is an art of opposites, which, as he put it in a memoir of 2016, has “one foot in the light, one foot in the darkness”. Youth is an idyll and a prison, America an open road and a broken promise, hope a lie and all you have. Home is a town full of losers that you yearn to leave but never will entirely. Likewise, even as they mourn the passage of time, his songs seize a present moment and stretch it out, rapturously, as the best music somehow can.
“Born to Run” and “Thunder Road” are poised for eternity on the threshold of escape, vowing that, at least until the final chord, you can live with the sadness and find magic in the night. “Kitty’s Back” and “Mary’s Place” invite you to a party rather than a wake. The fearful authenticity that Mr Springsteen projects can be transfixing on its own. On their podcast “Renegades”, he told Barack Obama that all his work was inspired by his troubled father, and it still shows.
“Death is not the end,” he sings at the close, alone on stage with guitar and harmonica. On this tour he revives the past, eyeballs the certain future and—like a rock‘n‘roll Sisyphus bestriding a mountaintop—glories in the urgent instant between them.
