I just visited my xanga with the hopes of archiving it finally and putting the page to rest, maybe. However, I still get footprints on my page. The same person goes to this one entry, which I do like very much (maybe they're stealing the story idea, I don't know), so I decided to post it here to. The entry is pretty much self-explanatory. I'll give it with the date.
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Sunday, 13 December 2009
On my "Aguas de Março" (Elis Regina) station on Pandora, there's a live version of "Agua de Beber" by Antonio Carlos (Tom) Jobim. At the end of the song, after applause from the audience, he speaks into the microphone, "Vou ficar famoso com isso (I'm going to get famous off of this)."
The audience laughs, of course, because Tom Jobim the world-renowned father of Bossa Nova, already famous, so the statement was very tongue in cheek. Then he continues into what would be a segue into the next song of the set, probably "Luiza." He says, "Luiza, eu vou ficar famoso e casar com você no Carnaval (Luiza, I'm going to get famous and marry you during Carnaval)."
Luiza is a very pretty song about the subject's love for this woman named Luiza. My host mom in Brazil, Pilar, has a granddaughter named Luiza, I think after the Luiza of that song.
But I just thought that transition was so poetic. It captures the love of an idealistic boy who finds himself having feelings for this girl, Luiza, probably a balance between lust and love, or at least what he believes love to be, and what he believes to be the natural progression of things. And in that sentence is his ideal, his plan, and it shows how young he is. His life would be made, he thinks, if he could get famous, thus impressing Luiza and defining his own personal success. And the perfect place to marry would be Carnaval, a reflection of his perception of love, highly carnal, highly fanciful, a veritable fantasy of costume, color and dance.
He likes a girl, he believes he loves her, and his dreams would come true if he could become famous and then marry her during Carnaval. With that one image, I see an entire story: a skinny boy of 18 or 19 with a violão (Brazilian guitar) composing a few songs in his room after work each day, sitting out on the ledge of his window. He's written his best songs for Luiza, the neighbor, the little girl he's seen blossum into a woman as she walks to school, who for years shot him furtive glances but he's just now noticing, and he's not the only one. But Luiza only has eyes for him, as he accosts her in her path with his violão, singing for her silly samba tunes that he's made up on the spot, that make her laugh, though she tries to hide her amusement, as she tries to hide her admiration of him. She giggles to her friends as he passes. He only sings her the silly songs, and keeps the more serious ones to himself.
A dreamer, he lives away from home to avoid the disapproval of his father, who thinks he should be more serious about his work and give the violão a rest, that music would not feed him well. So he lives in what is barely a flat in Rio with some of his coworkers, former school mates of a similar age. They tease him about his music, but he has a dream. He's one day going to be discovered, his music is going to make it. He's going to make records, he's going to play in concerts, on the radio, maybe even on television. He's going to be famous, and if Luiza is impressed with his little sambas, she would be floored by his fame then. Then she'll for sure say yes to marry him. And it will be perfect. He'll marry Luiza during Carnaval, and what an ecstasy that would be.
And at the end of this story, I don't imagine this boy marrying Luiza. It takes him time, but his goal is to become famous, and he works hard and while he doesn't become famous in the way that he aspired to be, he finds himself in the music industry, he finds himself doing something that is fulfilling to him, and it all starts with a song that he writes for Luiza. Years pass, he moves about, and his goal is to go back to Rio and find Luiza and propose to her marriage, Luiza existing only as an idea at this point and him losing track of time and not realizing that Luiza may no longer be in school, that Luiza herself may no longer be there. And in the course of all of this, he moves forward in his career, finds satisfaction beyond fame. In his path of songwriting he meets a singer who he befriends, but it doesn't go further because she perceives that there is someone else on his mind.
He eventually sees Luiza again. She lived in the same neighborhood she grew up in, and is walking the same path she walked many days to school with her child, who she's named after the boy with the violão. He is amazed that when he first sees her, though he recognized her, he forgot that he was supposed to have loved her. He is happy to see her, and is suprised as she introduces him to her son, his namesake.
She'll tell him that he was the most beautiful person that she's ever known in life, and that she was so in love with him as he danced around her with his violão. She liked their furtive glances, their flirtation, the brief interactions, and always imagined that they'd end up together. He moved away, promised he'd return, but she reflected on how young she was. Things had happened in the meantime, and now she found herself a single mother and had a son. She thought it only appropriate to name him after the love of her life, so that maybe with his name he would grow up to do great things, to dream big, as did the boy with the violão.
The boy, now a man, will see her cry and feel like crying to, for saudades, out of being overwhelmed for the nature of life. "Luiza, eu queria casar com você, sabia?" (Luiza, I wanted to marry you, did you know that?) he would tell her. "Sim, queria casar comigo no Carnaval, como sempre disse." (Yes, you wanted to marry me during Carnaval, like you always said.)
He'll then say, should I marry you now? Be a father to your son, my namesake? And she'll say no, I'm not the same Luiza that you fell in love with. And he'll ask if it matters, and she'll say, yes, it does. She loves that she ran into him, she says, but she wants to keep the image of him that she once had. Their story goes no further, she says. She lives that moment and wants it to stay...[him] as the young boy with the violão dancing circles around her and her friends, singing silly sambas just to make her smile. What we had was innocent, she says, and that's where our love best exists...in innocence. He gazes at her and agrees. Their love is best in innocence, the fascination with the carnal without the realization of it, the cusp of all of those feelings that they have both since realized.
He kisses his namesake on the forehead and the boy smiles. He says goodbye to Luiza and somehow he knows that he'll never see her again. He comes back and the singer, now his bandmate, sips on water and gives him a knowing look. I saw Luiza, he'll tell her. She nods. I'll always love her, you know, in that moment in time. And she sighs, admitting that this was the stuff of life, to love many in time and recall their past essence with affection and amazement of the false reality of time, the experience of life, the [elusive] nature of the Divine.
He perks up, as he thinks of the singers sentence and comes up with an idea for a song. They sit in the studio and begin working on the song, writing the song togther, using her vocal talents as inspiration.
And there the story ends.
There's a reason why I wrote this, thought all of this out. I'll share later.
To be continued...
Wasalaam.
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