The Farewell

“Ich sehne mich, o Freund, an deiner Seite
Die Schönheit dieses Abends zu genießen.
Wo bleibst du? Du läßt mich lang allein!
Ich wandle auf und nieder mit meiner Laute
Auf Wegen, die vom weichen Grase schwellen.
(…) Wohin ich geh’? Ich geh’, ich wand’re in die Berge.
Ich suche Ruhe für mein einsam Herz.
Ich wandle nach der Heimat! Meiner Stätte.
(…) Still ist mein Herz und harret seiner Stunde!”

(“Der Abschied”, written by Wang Wei, translated by Hans Bethges, adapted by Gustav Mahler)

Last Sunday I gave my official farewell to São Paulo, the city I’ve lived in for the past two years. I decided I’d take the opportunity of my last public ritual here, Autumn Equinox, to do my thing: sing a song and tell a story. I wrote a story myself this time, an allegory of my current moment. In the story—which, modesty aside, ended up literally fabulous!—a storyteller falls in love with an enchanted prince from a far away kingdom, and to be with his beloved again he must accomplish tasks, face challenges and overcome fears. I also sung the ancient Irish lament ‘Suil a Grá’ while accompanying myself on my mini-harp. After the story was over, I picked up my fiddle to play a jig set I made up from two Irish dance tunes, ‘The Far Away Wedding’ and ‘Apples in Winter’, which I baptized as ‘Transequatorian Wedding Jig set’, alluding to the fact that what should be my Winter Solstice this calendar-year, will be Summer! But alas, the anxiety and the grandiose of the moment overwhelmed me, and despite wonderful encouragement shouts from the audience, my stiff neck and my shaking hand were not able to play the jigs.

(On Tuesday, however, I gathered a small group of friends in my flat to celebrate my 27th birthday, and I managed to play the jig set with no slips—ha!)

This morning, I morning paged extensively on the meaning of these past two years here in São Paulo, and all the marvels I experienced here. A powerful wave of gratitude took me over, as I acknowledged the unique opportunities I had to re-align myself, to gain financial, emotional and intellectual independence, to discover myself and thus discover the world with brand new eyes and in free spirit, to give meaning to my life the way I wanted. I thanked for the painful loneliness that in the beginning used to make me weep every night in the room I rented in a filthy hive, fraught with drug-dealers, prostitutes and more lonely souls. I thanked for the silence, the noise, the destitution, the deprivation, the workshops, the experimental classes, the recitals, the public rituals, the private conversations. And for all those blessings that nobody will ever take from me.

Now, for my last season under the Equator, I retreat. I sever the bonds that hold me back; bonds of fear, of attachment, of unfinished business. And as the Chinese poet singing to Mahler’s heavenly music, I bid farewell to the most beautiful part of my life, thank for the crops and the hardness as well, and in stillness, I must learn to wait for my heart’s hour.

I hope you all had a beautiful Equinox, wherever you are in relation to the Equator.

See the photos of my Farewell recital at http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/theoriginalspiceboy/slideshow?.dir=/87bbre2&.src=ph

March 20th, 2007

I turn 27. Share your birthday wishes for me below:

(i.e., leave a comment)

The Day of the Dreamer Has Come

"They are architects of greatness, their vision lies within their souls, they peer beyond the veils and mists of doubt and pierce the walls of unborn Time. The belted wheel, the trail of steel, the churning screw, are shuttles in the loom on which they weave their magic tapestries. Makers of Empire, they have fought for bigger things than crowns and higher seats than thrones. Your homes are set upon the land a dreamer found. The pictures on its walls are visions of a dreamer's soul.

"They are the chosen few, the blazers of the way. Walls crumble and Empires fall, the tidal wave sweeps from the sea and tears a fortress from its rocks. The rotting nations drop off from Time's bough, and only the things the dreamers make live on."

(Herbert Kaufman)

On the Bleep

After publicly gone manic over 'the Secret' and assuming to All My Relations that I watch that documentary everyday consciously seeking reprogramming and brainwash, I think I can safely state, also publicly, that the other documentary on the current 'thoughts-become-things' craze I take part in, 'What the Bleep Do We Know', just plainly sucks.

With a college minor in Cinema, I could discourse extensively on how the actors suck (except for the basketball kid—the ONLY non-WASPH human being in the WHOLE feature!!), the settings are artificial, the brilliant interviews become total underachievements amidst the meaningless flashing animations and irritating sound FX, they have caricatures instead of characters, the music is obvious, the sound is a real series of unfortunate cuts, or the soap opera of a woman with a sad love story in her resume makes my stomach roll over. And really, Mexicans have been doing better than that, scriptwise. But that's not my point. What I really want to get out to the world is that 'What the Bleep' makes me feel BAD for who I am, what I feel, and my habits so far.

I totally understand they wanted to make something for the masses, it's their job and their bizz anyway, but why the bleep did they have to make the distracting soap opera heterosexist, all-white, and just offensive to my intelligence? One example is when the world of cells and chemical reactions is being explained. In the typical much-package-little-contents fashion, the animation shows cells as all male and female. And for the first time since the microscope was invented, cells become heterosexual in their lust. From that moment on, all we see is males attracted to females and vice-versa. Besides being all heterosexual, everybody is obviously all white and Xtian. I'm not there. Are you??

The main character of the soap opera is a deaf girl. Naturally, she speaks and 'lip-reads' English as good as any one of us who can hear—she talks on the mobile, flirts, hears a presentation on the metro station, remembers in words—not to mention she does all of that lip-reading without even looking at the lips of the person. She spends about two-thirds of the soap opera rolling eyes. I figure she maybe reads the lips through the waves in the Quantum Field? Get real—that's not the world of an actually hearing-challenged person, but why would they show in a movie of WASPHs an actual person that has other limitations (and therefore POSSIBILITIES!) than the WASPH standard??

The poor girl of our semi-Mexican soap opera achieves illumination after experiencing a Catholic heterosexual wedding fraught with heterosexual cells firing bunny action. Did you think she'd get enlightened in a pagan bonfire?? Or feeling attracted to a black guy? No chance—it's George Bush's America we're talking about here.

Go see that movie again—I did that twice. Show me ONE blonde woman in that unfortunate soap-opera that is not an idiot, a slut who hits on married guys, or a pain in somebody's ass. A WASPH's ass, by the way, because I think for the producers of 'What the Bleep', the Law of Attraction works only for the White, the Anglo-Saxon, the Xtians and the Heterosexuals. With no bleached hair. Based on that movie, the Quantum Field probably hates diversity.

But all the anger that's risen in me can be summed up in the cheap doctrination that 'What the Bleep' really is. Having an all-interview feature is a great, rich possibility, and my beloved 'The Secret' has done that in a brilliant way, that makes me crave for more. Having a single story, well told in a sensitive way, is the greatest treasure in the Universe, because it is not just a possibility, but it also opens up a great world of options and possibilities like Guillermo del Toro's recent masterpiece, 'El Laberinto del Fauno', which instantly became one my favourite films ever the first time I watched it, merely because it revealed to me the Beauty and the Divine Diversity that surrounds my daily life, mirrored in the disparate interpretations of the absolutely same telling. But now, having a cheap story, explained by title-holders, or having title-holders impose their truth and offend my intelligence by illustrating it with a dull soap opera is really something that gets heavily on my nerves. Choose one, and you have a miracle. Shove both down my throat and you are not cross-roading, but crossing a line.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm totally enthusiastic about the Law of Attraction, or 'The Secret' as some call it, these days and I've become a passionate advocate, celebrator and messenger of it. But the second time I watched 'What the Bleep' I hated it even more than the first. That's why I know this is not resistance. But really, just as I think Jack Canfield did a disservice by reducing the whole Miracle Machine that is this life we are living to a stupid US$ 4,5 million dollar mansion, that soap opera is very possibly a real disaster to a person having that as a first-time contact with the real meaning of our lives—which is simply giving meaning to it, regardless of gender, race, hair dye, sexual orientation or impairedness.

The Miracle thrives in choice-making and POSSIBILITY!