Parallels, paradoxes and peace

The legendary conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim will be performing in the end of January/beginning of February 2010 in the Royal Festival Hall, in London. I was meant to get tickets to see him conducting the Berlin Staatskapelle through Beethoven and Schoenberg masterpieces, but too late... The cheapest tickets had already been sold out!
I first heard of Barenboim not through music, but through literature. He wrote with the late critic Edward W. Said "Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society". I got the Portuguese version a long time ago in Brazil (Companhia das Letras, 2002) and it has been one of my favourite books since then, those ones you take wherever you go and which comforts your soul.
Close friends, Barenboim (1945), a Jewish Israeli-Argentinian, and Said (1935-2003) , a Christian Palestine, created in 1999 the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to bring together young musicians from Israel and the Middle East, to provide them with a space to share skills about music and to encourage dialogue and appreciation among people whose countries have been torn apart by an endless war. The Barenboim-Said Foundation has been developing remarkable initiatives in terms of music education, such as the production of the first Palestinian opera and a music kindergarten in Ramallah.
Music helps to build mutual understanding because it touches universal emotions. It sees no boundaries, frontiers, colours or shapes, political or religious differences and stimulate you to look beyond the visible and foreseeable. As the title of a film made to register the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra suggests, knowledge is the beginning to create a world with more peace and respect to others.
Because of the orchestra, young people from countries which had experienced war in the past (or present) had to sit down and work together. It led to memorable situations, as Barenboim describes in "Parallels and Paradoxes". "A Syrian boy told me he had never met a Israeli boy and that the word Israeli meant everything negative that you could imagine to happen to your country and to the Arab world. But after a while both had to share the same music stand. They were trying to play the same note, play with the same dynamics, the same arch movement, the same sound, the same expression. They were trying to do something together. Simple like that. They were trying to do something together, something they both liked, something they were passionate about. Well, after they had managed to play the same note together, they could not look at each other on the same way as before, because they had shared a common experience (...)". (note: free translation from the Portuguese translation)
Barenboim is considered to be the first person to hold both Israeli and Palestinian passports, a fact that irritated many people. When he was granted the Palestinian citizenship, two years ago, Barenboim told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he had accepted the new status "(...) because I believe that the destinies of...the Israeli people and the Palestinian are inextricably linked. We are blessed - or cursed - to live with each other. And I prefer the first".

Me too.

New York

In the book "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", by Mohsin Hamid, the narrator meets a young American tourist in a café in Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan. Well educated and articulated, he describes the impact of urbanization in the districts of Lahore, but refers to the old parts of the city, particularly to the one where they are staying, as "more democratically urban". That is when the American asks him if the Pakistani would compare it with Manhattan:
"(...) Yes, precisely! And that was one of the reasons why for me moving to New York felt - so unexpectedly - like coming home. But there were other reasons as well: the fact that Urdu was spoken by taxi-cab drivers; the presence, only two blocks from my East Village apartment, of a samosa- and channa-serving establishment called the Pak-Punjab Deli; the coincidence of crossing Fifth Avenue during a parade and hearing, from loudspeakers mounted on the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Association float, a song to which I had danced at my cousin´s wedding.
In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker. What? My voice is rising? You are right; I tend to become sentimental when I think of that city. It still occupies a place of great fondness in my heart, which is quite something, I must say, given the circumstances under which, after only eight months of residence, I would later depart."

Books

This blog has been taking a different path in the last few weeks or months. Inspired by the books I have been reading in the last year, I started to post excerpts that spoke to my heart, words that reminded me of situations lived in the past. Books also lead us to cities. And, of course, there are the unforgettable ones: the cities that made us whom we are today.

Spring

"Spring´s pardon comes, a sweetening of the air,

the light made fairer by an hour, time

as forgiveness, granted in the murmured colouring

of flowers, rain´s mantra of reprieve, reprieve, reprieve.

The lovers waking in the lightening rooms believe

that something holds them, as they hold themselves,

within a kind of grace, a soft embrace, an absolution

from their stolen hours, their necessary lies. And this is wise:

to know that music's gold is carried in the frayed purse

of a bird, to pick affection´s herb, to see the sun and moon

half-rhyme their light across the vacant, papery sky.

Trees, in their blossoms, young queens, flounce for clemency"

(by Carol Ann Duffy, in the book Rapture, 2005, Picador)

Peace

Moville, Co. Donegal, Ireland

by the shores of the Lough Foyle, overlooking Northern Ireland

May 10th, 2009

Pensata

Belfast, Ireland

Tuesday afternoon

May 12th, 2009

Que alívio!

Estava escrevendo há pouco uma nota de repúdio contra a visita que o presidente do Irã Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faria ao Brasil nesta quarta-feira. E me chega, agora, a notícia de que o Itamaraty confirmou o cancelamento da viagem. O pedido partiu do próprio governo iraniano. Viva!

May

May has been more generous to us than wrote the poet Wendy Cope in "English Weather". Today is the 2nd of May and we have already had two days of sunshine:

January's grey and slushy,
February's chill and drear,
March is wild and wet and windy,
April seldom brings much cheer.
In May, a day or two of sunshine,
Three or four in June, perhaps.
July is usually filthy,
August skies are open taps.
In September things start dying,
Then comes cold October mist.
November we make plans to spend
The best part of December pissed.

Conversation

'Well', said Lydia. 'I became very tired of the view from my window. Every day, summer and winter, I looked out at the school yard and the high fence and the apartment block beyond, and I began to imagine I would die seeing these things, and I didn´t want this. I expect you understand what I mean?'

(Lydia to Lev, explaining why she left her teaching job in Eastern Europe, on a coach to London. "The Road Home", by Rose Treman, Vintage, 2008)

Em Luanda

Finalmente, depois de anos de espera, cheguei a Angola. Solo abençoado, este africano. Bem hajas!

Assim começa mais uma história em África...

"O avô Bento, em noites de cacimbo à volta da fogueira, nos contou, fumando o seu cachimbo que ele próprio esculpiu em pau especial. Dizia a estória se passou aqui mesmo, nas serras ao lado, mas pode ser que fosse trazida de qualquer parte da África. Até mesmo do Oriente, onde dizem também há água lilás.
Se virmos bem, em muitos lados pode ter uma montanha semelhante. Eu só escrevi aquilo que o avô nos contou, não inventei nada."

Pepetela, em "A Montanha da Água Lilas"

London Today

"... da janela lateral, do quarto de dormir..."

Snow and China in London

A rare thing to see: it snows in London. The weather forecast was predicting icy blasts to hit the UK on the weekend. I look back at the window. The snow has stopped. Indeed, a rare moment in Westminster. But unlike last Sunday, the sky is bright, calm and inviting for a stroll. Today is the highlight of the celebrations of the Chinese New Year in London, with street performances, fireworks, cultural and food stalls. I am heading to Chinatown and Trafalgar Square. Happy New Year of the Ox!