Meu melhor amigo é meu violão
Until recently, it’d had been about six years since I’d played a musical instrument and I’d completely forgotten how much I love to play music. Or, who knows, maybe I never did really love it. But I do now.
Whether it was wise to take up multiple instruments at once during my most stressful semester in recent memory remains to be seen. I’d planned on starting guitar in the fall, but talked myself out of it saying I should focus on berimbau first, and of course I didn’t end up doing either, though I played simple rhythms on the tambourine and the drum in class. So this semester, I bought my own berimbau and borrowed Joan’s guitar to take a group class at the union. They both sit in my living room and when I’m home “working” on my stuff, I inevitably pick up one or the other and later wonder where my time goes. I can easily entertain myself that way for hours, even with a considerably limited repertoire.
Last week after class one day, a few of us sat around playing samba rhythms for almost an hour, though we could have easily been there all night. Solomon and Emma on the drums, Roberto on the berimbau and Cortez and I switching between tambourine, agogô and a shaking-ish thingy... Bah, how to normal people have jobs all day?
Also, I love love love Cordel do Fogo Encantado. I have only heard four of their songs but I am in love with at least three - Chover, Alto do Cruzeiro and Foguete de Reis - and Sobre As Folhas is growing on me.
I’m also in love with: Lenine’s song Relampiano, Márcio Fanaco’s Ciranda (which I heard at Chipotle a few weeks ago, amazing!), Bebel Gilberto’s August Day Song, and what's-his-name's acoustic version of Mensagem de Amor.
Other than music and that one night I got to sleep thirteen feverish hours, this week was kind of awful. Besides usual worrying about my future and whether I'll actually graduate in May, being abandoned by my roommate (she's in San Francisco for the week), being stupid busy with group projects, substituting four classes, tutoring, writing exams, trying to finish my incomplete for real, etc, etc, being sick, worrying about my mom being sick, and missing capoeira three days in a row (it’s four, sometimes five days a week and since the beginning of the year until this week, I’d missed all of one day), I find out they’re changing the name of the Sears Tour?? What is the world coming to?
I was seriously considering going to capoeira today - I felt like I needed a good class and a good conversation with Solomon to make me feel better (I even miss Roberto!) - but my sinuses vetoed the idea after I tried doing a handstand. A needed a good class and I think instead, it would have been something of a fiasco. Even right side up, capoeira requires certain abilities that have temporarily abandoned me, including but not limited to singing, hearing, maintaining one’s balance, and breathing... details. Alternatively, I wanted to curl up in bed and watch Northern Exposure or Sjaj u ocima. Except, more details, I lent Sjaj u ocima to Suzanne a million years ago, I don’t have a DVD player, a computer with sound... or a bed.
So instead, I played the same two four-line songs on the guitar ad naseum and then napped on the couch, dreaming that I was repeatedly diving several hundred feet into freezing water to climb aboard a burning train full of children that had fallen into the water and was being pulled out by a tow truck. Terribly heroic. Never mind that for all that, I didn’t help the situation AT ALL. Typical.
Unrelated, apparently I’ve been biking for the past several months with my break permanently half on. That’s gotta be a metaphor for something. Here I was struggling up these Maryland hills and thinking, I could have sworn I was in better shape than this. I should probably do something about that. Not that I couldn’t use the extra exercise.
Hopefully this next week will be a bit better than the past one. All day Sunday and Thursday in buses with Joan, Monday in Rhode Island scoping out Brown, and Tuesday and Wednesday in Boston, doing who knows what besides taking two capoeira classes with Contra-Mestre Marquinho Coreba, who wrote most of my favorite capoeira songs. I mean, if I’m going to even consider spending God knows how many years in the area trying to get a PhD (haha), at the very least I need to check out the capoeira situation.
Then Friday, tutoring all day (=$200 :D) and then finally going back to Roda for the first time in almost two weeks. And Saturday and Sunday, Contra-Mestre Maxuel workshops! I’ve heard mixed reviews about Maxuel, but he was Roberto’s teacher for eight years, and if for nothing else, I want to meet him in the same way you want to meet crazy people’s parents to see if that explains anything...
Whether it was wise to take up multiple instruments at once during my most stressful semester in recent memory remains to be seen. I’d planned on starting guitar in the fall, but talked myself out of it saying I should focus on berimbau first, and of course I didn’t end up doing either, though I played simple rhythms on the tambourine and the drum in class. So this semester, I bought my own berimbau and borrowed Joan’s guitar to take a group class at the union. They both sit in my living room and when I’m home “working” on my stuff, I inevitably pick up one or the other and later wonder where my time goes. I can easily entertain myself that way for hours, even with a considerably limited repertoire.
Last week after class one day, a few of us sat around playing samba rhythms for almost an hour, though we could have easily been there all night. Solomon and Emma on the drums, Roberto on the berimbau and Cortez and I switching between tambourine, agogô and a shaking-ish thingy... Bah, how to normal people have jobs all day?
Also, I love love love Cordel do Fogo Encantado. I have only heard four of their songs but I am in love with at least three - Chover, Alto do Cruzeiro and Foguete de Reis - and Sobre As Folhas is growing on me.
I’m also in love with: Lenine’s song Relampiano, Márcio Fanaco’s Ciranda (which I heard at Chipotle a few weeks ago, amazing!), Bebel Gilberto’s August Day Song, and what's-his-name's acoustic version of Mensagem de Amor.
Other than music and that one night I got to sleep thirteen feverish hours, this week was kind of awful. Besides usual worrying about my future and whether I'll actually graduate in May, being abandoned by my roommate (she's in San Francisco for the week), being stupid busy with group projects, substituting four classes, tutoring, writing exams, trying to finish my incomplete for real, etc, etc, being sick, worrying about my mom being sick, and missing capoeira three days in a row (it’s four, sometimes five days a week and since the beginning of the year until this week, I’d missed all of one day), I find out they’re changing the name of the Sears Tour?? What is the world coming to?
I was seriously considering going to capoeira today - I felt like I needed a good class and a good conversation with Solomon to make me feel better (I even miss Roberto!) - but my sinuses vetoed the idea after I tried doing a handstand. A needed a good class and I think instead, it would have been something of a fiasco. Even right side up, capoeira requires certain abilities that have temporarily abandoned me, including but not limited to singing, hearing, maintaining one’s balance, and breathing... details. Alternatively, I wanted to curl up in bed and watch Northern Exposure or Sjaj u ocima. Except, more details, I lent Sjaj u ocima to Suzanne a million years ago, I don’t have a DVD player, a computer with sound... or a bed.
So instead, I played the same two four-line songs on the guitar ad naseum and then napped on the couch, dreaming that I was repeatedly diving several hundred feet into freezing water to climb aboard a burning train full of children that had fallen into the water and was being pulled out by a tow truck. Terribly heroic. Never mind that for all that, I didn’t help the situation AT ALL. Typical.
Unrelated, apparently I’ve been biking for the past several months with my break permanently half on. That’s gotta be a metaphor for something. Here I was struggling up these Maryland hills and thinking, I could have sworn I was in better shape than this. I should probably do something about that. Not that I couldn’t use the extra exercise.
Hopefully this next week will be a bit better than the past one. All day Sunday and Thursday in buses with Joan, Monday in Rhode Island scoping out Brown, and Tuesday and Wednesday in Boston, doing who knows what besides taking two capoeira classes with Contra-Mestre Marquinho Coreba, who wrote most of my favorite capoeira songs. I mean, if I’m going to even consider spending God knows how many years in the area trying to get a PhD (haha), at the very least I need to check out the capoeira situation.
Then Friday, tutoring all day (=$200 :D) and then finally going back to Roda for the first time in almost two weeks. And Saturday and Sunday, Contra-Mestre Maxuel workshops! I’ve heard mixed reviews about Maxuel, but he was Roberto’s teacher for eight years, and if for nothing else, I want to meet him in the same way you want to meet crazy people’s parents to see if that explains anything...