Cheers

“I’m looking for a question,” a delicate one

once said, and got no answer.

Perhaps she forgot the question mark

to get silence drunk. 

 

Another friend had a voice unmatched

up with her intellect; an ardent voice

that spoke frozen wine—

whilst my cellars are chaos of moist.

 

Should we drink to warm up or to melt?

 

 

Notes in between quotes

“Knowledge is not intelligence.” — Heraclitus of Ephesos

“Information is not knowledge.” — Albert Einstein

“(…) the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.” — Umberto Eco

*

An old man shouts, “HO!” while fighting with the electronic doors to get into the tram when he just had to push button. There’s a war against technology raging on out there. — Lisboa, Cais do Sodré, 2008-03-28

*

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthur C. Clarke

“Magical thinking is a fundamental dimension of a child's thinking.” — Zusne and Jones

“The vast majority of the world's peoples (…) believe that there are real connections between the symbol and its referent, and that some real and potentially measurable power flows between them.” — Phillips Stevens Jr.

*

Two teen couples are hiding under a public playground equipment. They’re playing the true hide and seek. And I’m sure they possess cell-phones, some real and potentially measurable power flowing between them. — Lisboa, Belém,  2008-03-27

*

“So it will make sense to have a degree of magical thinking just to be able to deal with these devices.” — Erik Davis

Music and Sex

Excerpt of Colin McGinn’s NYRB book review “The Musical Mystery”

 

 

«Although Sacks [Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain] endorses the notion of a music instinct, he says little about why such an instinct might have arisen; but Levitin [Daniel J. Levitin’s This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession] devotes an entire chapter to the subject. The answer he proposes, adapted from Darwin, is that musical performance works as a courtship display, thus falling into the category of Darwinian sexual selection (as distinct from natural selection). Musical ability is like the peacock's tail: a trait that advertises fitness and health, without directly aiding in the serious business of survival—a luxury that only the most vital can afford to possess.

 

The ability to sing and dance well, in particular, serves to attract mates, because it signals intelligence, agility, and emotional quality—though it may not always go with a propensity to long-term child-rearing commitment. Levitin conjectures that this is why male rock stars and their music are so erotically appealing, despite the poor prospects of such performers as dedicated husbands: they are tapping into the primordial power of sexual selection through musical display.

 

From this point of view, unusual musical ability looks like an evolutionary advantage, despite its oddity when considered purely as an adaptation to the environment. The reason we are a musical species is that our success in the mating game depends upon it. In that respect, we are not so different from birds. The erotic power of music, so tentatively alluded to by Sacks, is therefore central to its prevalence in the human species. Why, after all, is the love song the most popular form of music in the world? Because love songs are about the very thing that the music instinct is designed for—the selection of mates.»

 

 

 

Full article: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21059

 

 

Disclaimer: The inclusion of this article here doesn't necessarily mean that I subscribe to its content, just like I don't subscribe to the contents of my own brain. 

Speak your mind out

As you probably know, the studies of Noam Chomsky on linguistics have brought out many new ideas. One of them is that we possess innate fundamentals of grammar. Some languages (or  grammars) are thus considered to possess a null-noun while others require it – much like 0 and 1 in binary code.

 

Examples of noun languages:

 

English

it rains

I adore you

they adore clouds

 

French

il pleut

je t' adore

ils/elles adorent des nuages

 

And of null-noun languages:

 

Spanish

[el] llove

[yo] te adoro

[ellos/ellas] adoran nubes

 

Portuguese

[ele] chove

[eu] adoro-te

[eles/elas] adoram nuvens

 

That is, in null-noun languages the verbs contain information about the grammatical number and person of the noun and therefore there is no need to use it when producing a sentence, even though that same noun can be used anytime: for emphatic purposes, as one example. This also means, generally speaking, that learning the verbs of noun languages is easier (which is the case of English) for we can use the same verb form for different grammatical persons and numbers: “I can, he can, we all can”. Contemporary French however is more complex, as the conjugation of verbs preserved plenty of traces typical of a null-noun language…

 

Sometimes and also recently, I’m using English (or Antonish, if you prefer, or as I prefer) for a long period of time. And that means that after a while I get tired of using (pro)nouns such as "I this", "I that", "I" ,"I"… and "you" too. From time to time. In comparison with my null-noun native language, it feels as if I'm always talking about myself, even if I’m really doing so. It feels as if I'm being more selfish.

 

I’m wondering if this constant use of the personal pronoun is not helping in some way to shape up a more distant frame of mind from the concept of “I” in relation to those of “you” or “they” or even “this” or “that.” If it does help to create such a frame of mind, then the simple use of the English language could lead the native speaker to have a conceptual feeling of being more distant and isolated from the other, from the world, than a null-noun language speaker. The Ego could be thus more self-aware, introspective, self-centered and alone.

 

It could be one more case of language sculpturing a different concept of the self.

 

 

image: http://www.bloodforoil.org

I have a fear

I was watching a film magazine on TV, and The Mist, based on a Stephen King’s novel, was mentioned. I was an excited consumer of horror movies during my teens and even later in life, and suddenly I became puzzled because of the why. All my answers might lay on some psychological study that I hadn't the chance to read yet, but here are some questionings based on my experience.

Going back in time, the most ancient frightening memories I can recollect right now are those of my grandfather's nigthtime stories, narrated around the fireplace. Those involved the fantastic but also fear, normally in the form of a devilish creature, as my grandfather was raised within a Catholic culture. There was awe while listening to those stories, and also the uneasiness of fear – as if suddenly any of the things that were being told could materialize on the spot. Especially the nasty ones. I’m sure you’ve similar stories to tell, and I’ll gladly read about them.

Lullabies in the majority of countries also have a fear charge in them: "There’s something nasty out there and I’m here to protect you." Or, "Fear nothing," – what was there to fear in the first place? – "I’m here to protect you and take care of you; you’re a wonderful kid", and a long list of praising the child’s attributes, that will probably create an addiction to such praising in the child.

Was that frightening story in the end telling me who was part of my family's unit, who would protect me from the monsters? From the other? From the otherness?

Sometimes I try to put myself in the shoes – or rather, "animalskinfeet," as my tribe calls them – of an ancient historical self. We're sitting around the blazing fire in the middle of our tribe’s tents, and the Shaman is telling us the fantastic and fearful stories of the world out there. Because humans are story consumers by excellence, most likely since a given language allowed its production.

What could be the purpose (conscious or most probably not) of these fear based stories? Could those same stories fortify the ties within the tribe? “Those are the bad things out there, we’re the good ones who protect you from them. Those other tribes have strange customs and you need us not to be hurt by them, for they’re evil, stupid, lazy; we’re good, clever, hard-working.” That produces a community and sets its boundaries, not to say borders.

Tribes after all don’t work only on kinship. Even countries seem to need their own myths and biased historical accounts to keep their people together as a unit and apart from the rest. It’s not just the language. Common rooted and similar languages begin to diverge with time once the border lines are set, as it’s the case of all the Romance language countries. And mere geographical distance in the same country produces different dialects. The tribe or country thus needs a greater bond.

“The Land of Freedom” and “The American Dream” are two of one of the most recent countries's own myths. And they're myths because Denmark is the country where the people are the most content. (Saw that on CBS’s 60 Minutes show, I confess.)

After a horror movie maybe we can tell in a perceptively clearer way who are the ones there for us.

Easter in Lisboa - The story of a loud invasion during peaceful times

The town is full of Spaniards, as it seems to be a custom now during Easter holydays.

One notices it even with one’s eyes closed, for these neighbours of mine have developed the habit of talking loud, particularly when they are in groups. I’m unsure if it's a natural way of expressing their happiness for being alive, venting their pride in being Spanish, or if it’s their way to draw attention onto themselves. The latter option would be nonsensical, as we know that by increasing the music volume slowly and progressively in a room full of people and then turning it off abruptly results in everybody being shouting at each other.

Now I’m whispering:

My other option is that they developed a genetic hearing imperfection because of the explosions during the Spanish Civil War.

Yes, that was a political, biological and anthropological incorrect remark. But, mind you, I like my neighbours a lot. And visit their lands whenever I get the chance. And revel with the beauty of their language and of their countr... ies. I love their culture with a few exceptions, like that habit of watching dubbed movies: the most serious of foreign movies becomes a comedy.

They are so much clever than my countrymen and I that we finally lost a battle to them. They won it by recurring to modern infiltration tactics: economical dependency. By force they never achieved it. And I think this military failure of theirs might have had something to do with generals shouting orders as loud as sergeants and as loud as soldiers talking among themselves, and all of them doing it at the same time. 

And to end with, let me tell you a secret. Now whispering at your ear. If I’m writing something less than five pages long it's because it is not serious. Tell no one.

The last first time

In thankfulness of Balázs Rauznitz’s generosity,

under the spell of a first experience of Béla Bartók’s Cantata Profana

 

  

I want it all as for the first time,

as if it was a synonym of to last,

to forgive and forget in one word,

to see again the Atlantic sliding in

and pouring down my eye-Falls,

up into my private attic.

 

I’ve no memory of the day when I forgot

how the visible ocean looks like.

 

When the first times sound profane and profound,

I’m the perfect Alzheimer’s patient—

lost and past lives bore me.

 

 

 

Thoughts for an unexistent diary

 

and while I’m translating Kaplinski into Portuguese, I realize that Estonian is closer to Portuguese (therefore to Latin) than to English. For many times when the Portuguese sentence comes to me, Kaplinski’s playfulness while shaping his verses becomes much more evident. Maybe contemporary Estonian is not much different from Latin yet spoken with a foreign grammar and lexicon. Which is the same as saying that it has nothing to do with it.

 

*

 

Meeting an old relationship reminded me of the feeling that I cannot catch up her frame of mind: forever a boy teasing a grownup, following one step behind. Maybe I’ll outlive her. Have no idea what I’ll get out of it.

 

*

 

When two person-worlds of equal mass and equal speed collide, there will be a bang and a rebound. If both have elasticity, the effects will be almost only at the nucleus level. Without a protective layer, there will be plenty of dust floating on the space in between their growing distance. I call it memories. Experimentation with worlds of different sizes and speeds will beget moons, one-sided dust particles. Sometimes even meteorites. 

 

*

 

Today I’m willing to believe in past lives, if we are talking of information passed through by both sperm and egg.

 

*

 

As all things don’t end, so they end with an and.

 

 

 

Pumping up the brain

This is the result of three different articles on the brain that I read recently:

 

1. Workout. The brain is like the heart, it needs a good blood flux. Cognitive training is less effective than physical one on getting good results in brain testing. A balanced physical and cognitive training is even better, but that we know since we read Aristotle. Keep that blood pumping.
2. The ability to enjoy or produce music is one of the last things that will go out of our minds. Pump up that volume.
3. The brain handles numbers 1, 2, 3... sometimes 4, in a different manner than it does to the rest of numbers. Joseph Stalin was right when he said, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” For us to grasp what a million deaths represents, we might need to do some hard sums: 3 dead people, plus 3 dead people, plus 3 dead people, and keep on pumping those numbers until we get to one million.   

 

 

Fado Magyar

Madgolna Ruzsa is a new star in the Hungarian singer's universe and my new friend Tünde shared with me the experience, which in turn I'm sharing with you.

O fado de ser fadista                                 The fate of being a fado singer 

Artur Ribeiro                                                 by Artur Ribeiro

 

Fado é destino marcado                                Fado is a set destiny

Fado é perdão ou castigo                              Fado is forgiveness or punishment

A própria vida é um Fado                              Life itself is a Fado

Que o coração traz consigo                           Which the heart carries around

 

Seja canção fatalista                                      Be it a fatalist song

Ou prece de quem sofreu                              Or a prayer of whom who suffered

O Fado de ser fadista                                   The fate of being a Fado singer

É sina que deus me deu.                                Is my God given fate.

 

Fado é ternura                                               Fado is tenderness

Fado é dor                                                    Fado is pain

Fado é tristeza                                               Fado is sadness

Fado é como que uma reza                            Fado is like a prayer

De quem sofre ou é feliz                                 Of one who suffers or is happy

 

Fado é loucura                                              Fado is madness

É saudade                                                     Longing

É incerteza                                                    Uncertainty

É bem a mais portuguesa                               It’s the most Portuguese

Das canções do meu país.                             Of my country’s songs.

 

Fado é tudo o que acontece                           Fado is everything that happens

Quando se ri ou se chora                               When one laughs or cries

Quando se lembra ou se esquece                   When one remembers or forgets

Quando se odeia ou se adora                         When one hates or worships

 

É ter um jeito de artista                                   It’s to have a certain artist’s gift

P'ra moldar ao fado a voz                               To mold one’s voice into Fado

E o Fado de ser fadista                                  And the fate of being a Fado singer

A morar dentro de nós.                                  Living well inside us.

 

The Milky Way

     That immense polished gemstone of a sky, the lazy flux of a breeze. The contrasting moist of the green green lawn, the warm breath of the earth. The sleepy shade of the pinetrees, the rustling of eucalypt leaves. The birds’ chirping, the mechanical business of insects, the odour of flowers having sex. Her early adolescence slow moving time. All this moved her into action, to appease a new itchy world of sensations, of which she was both a pioneer and a native.

     Two younger cousins were playing on the sunlit porch. She brought an old bedsheet out of her aunt’s thick wooden trunk, rolled herself in it, and got rid of her one-piece summer dress. ‘Come here, you two,’ she lured them in.

    They went in vivaciously, just as innocence goes everywhere. It was a new kind of play. They were told to kiss her slopped ground, twin promontories covered in sunburnt grass that swayed by force of electrical winds. The summits were suddenly rugged, as if to guide blind babies to the wells. It was enjoyable even for the cousins's asexual lips, like recovering a lost pleasure, like an old family’s portrait.

     The afternoon trickled down the horizon. Grandmother’s voice called from afar.  

Time and attention (cont.)

One possible consequence of these accelerated times might be the stubbornly undying need for religion. Any given religion is the fastest way for one to obtain an explanation of the world and tranquilize the restless human minds, while our top brains keep on enquiring what the heck this world is all about, dying with probably more doubts than when they first started their investigations.

 

The New Age religions seem to have found some ground, a niche, in these speedy times to progress, while also using crumbling older religions as fertilizer. The fields to be planted are wide, open and hungry, long rows of vegetables practising their divine given ability to vegetate. The need for reassurance about the purpose of life, or about the superiority in comparison to other living forms, or for a nurturing figure akin to a make-believe friend that can be carried on to adulthood, are some of the things a good religion knows how to explore.

 

Everything is much faster and now one, after a fast training, can send cosmic energy and instantly revive or cure someone who can even be one's antipode. No need to travel many miles and spend time taking care of that person anymore, thank God! And this is quite an unbelievable economy of time and resources.

 

I'm also in the profound belief that these new energy emitters are the ones truly responsible for global climate change after all, with their energy disturbing Earth's precarious balance, heating up the atmosphere, only that such evidence has been neglected by researchers. Maybe they're even the true reason behind a new change of the magnetic flux.

 

It seems to be much faster and easier to believe than to keep on doubting, according to the economics of the brain.

 

Another and darker consequence is the resort to drugs as an instant way of obtaining satisfaction and illumination. No wonder the number of these converts is 25 million nowadays, according to the UN cabinet against drugs and crime. Unfortunately this divine method is only available to those who have endless financial resources or endless financial victims. Thus five or six more times people have to rely on pink elephants to solve their existential problems. The rest of drug addicts are just like myself, and keep on waiting for a revelation during or after each cigarette, our incense sticks, ignoring our own Bible’s quotes on each pack of nails for our final cross, and true illumination coming only in the form of a lighter.     

 

 

Time and attention

    During one of those moments of zapping, I got to listen to two psychologists exchanging their views on modernity, complaining of the effects of time on personal relationships. I was either in a rush to do something or they were talking too slowly, for I didn't get to listen to much more than that.

      One of the psychologists is a famous TV personality on account of these relaxed talk-shows mainly about sex. His posture on the chair is the one of a person who is going to fall asleep anytime. The pace of his thoughts doesn’t help a faster type of audience to remain awaken either. But he’s a good bloke to have around when you cannot summarize a life experience in a few lines.  

     So I caught myself thinking of time in the modern age as well. It’s not a recent idea that as people get older and hopefully more experienced they tend to use their current judgement mental equipment on the younger ones, most of the times as if they were never young themselves. ‘Ah, things nowadays are not like they used to be anymore,’ is one of the commonest expressions I’ve heard. If we ever catch ourselves formulating such an expression that might mean we’re depassé already, soon to be dead, metaphorically, inside our brains.

      Also, if I think of my nephews and their friends, the older of which is now 18, they talk on MSN with multiple people while I’m trying to give attention to only one of them, and sometimes finding it hard to keep up with even that. In comparison, I’m chat-depassé at the very least (and if I’m not italicising “chat” also it is because I’m a dog owner/owned). They are really fast buggers, these kids, they are.

      One analogy that comes to mind is that of computer users. When one buys a brand new computer, it apparently performs faster than the previous one. It’s probably truer if one is using the exact same software to run it. The computer runs great. Until one’s mind catches its pace. Soon one is able to use the computer to the point where it seems it is running slower than before. But if all of a sudden one would have to use again the first computer ever, that very same one which performed so great by its own time, its speed would seem to be quite close to a three-finned turtle trying to get back into the sea while negotiating a beach of volcanic boulders and after laying an immense quantity of eggs for hours under the frying sun.

     Going back to those psychologists, listening to them reminded me of a sweet confession by a 10 year old cool guy. He told me, ‘I like to talk because I like to listen to myself.’ He was part of a very talkative family, so he couldn’t escape developing his oratory skills if he ever wanted to be noticed among a troup of babblers, and getting some attention is a human need.

     Then what this amounts to? Nothing. But relax, old people: the younger ones will slow down also, even if only relatively to their pace of living, and will stop to think the exact same things you’re thinking now, but probably in a much more faster way.

 

 

 

 

Letter from Yin to Yang

We’re in bed,

its shape akin to squaring the circle.

You on your left side, me on mine.

The morning comes.

It’s your high tide.

I’ve you in my mind, a hole I cannot close.

While you rise, I stare at your eye

staring at me black from high above.

The time comes and you’re ready to go.

I’m set to wait,

always right behind these clouds,

fog or mist,

protecting you of your own glow.

We are fated to movement,

looking for a kind of vestal's vestige,

sniffing after the faint scent

to ascertain where it is, where it went.

To my question, ‘What is that it?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ you reply.

*

The afternoon is at its fullest.

I try to breathe in and notice

you’ve burnt all oxygen in your search.

I go outside for air,

leaving footprints in water and earth,

my playground's mud.

Strange jobs we have.

I investigate the light in beauty,

you search for the dark in crime.

I can't tell the toil of courage

from that of camouflage.

  

**

Evening comes.

You chase me around;

to chase you I’m bound.

We have supper.

You grew some food for my hunger  

in my very soil.

  

***

The night sets in; my tide’s turn.

You sit by my side.

We cannot stop so we touch.

We touch, yet we don’t mingle,

humanly alone and single.

You talk,

I open my mind to let your thoughts penetrate.

Feel,

your body opens to my penetrating blood.

I’m in.

You, hang on.

Noli turbare circulos meos.

Climate change – Also a sexual disorder

Dear friends,

Of all the reports I read or watched about climate change, none focused on the influence it might exert in our sexual lives. That, though, doesn’t mean that such work was not published already. But indulge me if you please; the thought just crossed my mind.

After a week or so of sunny days and a couple of rainy ones, the fair and warm spring-like weather returned. Real spring is not far. As probably all living creatures that people dry land, we’re biologically responsive to these sorts of changes.

Climate change, in the future, might be responsible for worldwide sexual frenzy, or for colder inter-personal relationships, of course, with the obvious exception of those in the post or pre-era of their reproductive instincts.

Another reason found to reduce our CO2 emissions, I believe.

And maybe it’s better to end with a more adequate text:

For many years, always in March,

I’ve felt sorry for these quiet

days and cloudy skies. The arrival

of the real spring has something

frightening in it. Everything

is suddenly new and strange: the doormat, unwashed windows,

willow buds, tufts of grass sticking up through the snow,

the starlings and the moon above the floodplain.

Everything is like a call, everything’s tempting and luring you

out of the room, out of home, out of yourself, out of mind;

to flow over land and water, to go somewhere else,

to be somewhere else, somebody else;

and if you cannot then at least

to shout, to dance, to write,

to sing stupid spring songs

in order to soothe this urge.

I can’t understand whether it’s in the blood or the mind

or somewhere else. Maybe it’s the cellular memory

of my ancestors – fish, birds or peasants –

the memory of previous lives awakening in me

an urge to swim to flooded meadows to spawn

to look for a partner and a nesting place

to feel with a hand whether the soil is warm enough;

or something even more mysterious and archaic:

the understanding of a seed that it’s time to sprout,

the thrill and fear of yet another death and birth.

in Jaan Kaplinski’s Evening Brings Everything Back, Bloodaxe Books, 2004.