ebb & flow

Is it too late to start again, do you think? Peel it all off and grow another skin? This one never...

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:05:37 -0300

Is it too late to start again, do you think?
Peel it all off and grow another skin?
This one never fits -
Too large at the waist,
Too tight at the hips.
And the holes
Where I tried to grow horns
And teeth.

An old rug,
Faded and fraying,
It recounts each tepid tale -
Coffee stains and grease spots,
Shoe prints and shiny patches
Where my grandmother’s dining suite
Used to be.

Could I trade it in, do you think?
Throw it out and get another?
Sleek and rippling,
Death glinting in its eyes,
Striped and shivering,
Cold and glittering.
It doesn’t matter which.
Anything is better than the skin I’m in.
Anything is better than this skin.

In praise of the belly

Tue, 08 May 2012 22:25:00 -0300

Feeling beautiful when you’re pregnant is no easy feat. Sure, there’s the glow. But next to swollen feet, that aching back, a belly that is fast becoming your one defining characteristic, and the twenty-something additional pounds … well, let’s just say glowing skin pales in comparison.

As usual, I find comfort in words. Here, Karen Durbin extols, in lyrical, vibrant prose, the virtues of a part of my anatomy that refuses to be ignored.

The Belly

A famous Richard Avedon poster from the early eighties still has the power to shock. It’s undeniably cheesy but erotic nonetheless, a long horizontal of the actress Nastassja Kinski stretched out on her side and wearing nothing but a really big snake. The semiotics here aren’t exactly subtle, but what transfixes the eye is: Kinski’s forward-tilting belly, set off by the python coiling tumescently around her crotch and the curve of her back. Just about every man I know has seen that poster, and they all mention the same thing—that impudent little tummy—with wistful delight.

Chaucer would empathize. In the Middle Ages, no poet could celebrate a woman’s beauty without a rapturous reference to “her small round belly.” It’s there in paintings of the time, pooching out suggestively on ladies high and low, including the Virgin herself. Medieval gowns made the most of it with softly fitted bodices that stroked the body like a lover’s hands and ended in a decorative, Y-shaped sash slung low around the hips and pointing discreetly downward to the source of life itself.

Five hundred years later, I look at pictures of models in the latest low-slung, hip-hugging styles, and what catches my eye is the forlorn concavity where a belly used to be, sunk between hip bones sharp enough to wound. This is that holy of holies, a flat stomach. Thanks to the culture’s runaway obsession with female thinness, women have simultaneously been thrown a curve and lost one. We wuz robbed: Healthy bellies are beautiful. (Ever see a skinny belly dancer? Who’d want to?) But there’s nothing delicate about them. They swell and cramp and make weird noises. They’re real and visceral and impossible to control, like life, which they teem with, especially for women. Touch a pregnant woman’s belly and feel the power—it’s as taut and unyielding as a medicine ball, protective housing for the occupied womb within.

Lately, I’ve become an unwilling player in the game of cholesterol roulette, and so, like most American women, I obsess about my weight. I want to lose some, my doctor wants me to lose some. But I’ll never want to lose what a friend once called my magic belly: emblem of fecundity and needful desire.

- Karen Durbin

I’m more than halfway through and I haven’t written...

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:05:15 -0300

I’m more than halfway through and I haven’t written a thing about my pregnancy on this blog. Can you believe it?

It’s the wonder of it, I think. Shouting it from the rooftops seems to take away some of the mystery. I mean, there’s a life growing inside me!

Sure, I can allude to it. I can even post pics of my expanding waistline (oh, if it were only my waistline) and ultrasounds. But to actually say the words? That’s a different thing altogether.

But the elephant in the room will no longer be ignored. If I can’t write about this, what’s the point of writing?

And there’s so much to write about: from the initial shock of it to the gradual realisation that this is an opportunity to love like never before.

So … here’s to change and the wonderful fact that sometimes one plus one makes three!

This is what vanilla coconut icecream on a sunny day sounds...

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:49:00 -0300

This is what vanilla coconut icecream on a sunny day sounds like … probably what it looks like too.

Inutil Paisagem - Esperanza Spalding and Gretchen Parlato from the album Chamber Music Society

"We have sold your words for wealth and power, Built our monuments and shrines. But in the heart of..."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:30:53 -0300

“We have sold your words for wealth and power,
Built our monuments and shrines.
But in the heart of the man who loves his brother,
They shine.
They shine.”

- Finally got the bridge for a song I started months ago. It gives focus to the rest of the lyrics, I think. Points directly to what I’m really trying to say. Is that what bridges do? I wonder.

"Martin: They’re trying to turn me into a fixed star, Father, but I’m a shifting planet."

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:38:55 -0300

“Martin: They’re trying to turn me into a fixed star, Father, but I’m a shifting planet.”

- From John Osborne’s play, Luther.

You know that feeling when something created decades ago by someone in a very different social context touches you in an intimate way? Well, I just felt it. Maybe that’s why they call it art.

Photo

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:13:35 -0300

Most days I love life - the way it unfurls, a seedling reaching...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 18:38:00 -0300

Most days I love life - the way it unfurls, a seedling reaching for the sun… the way it embraces, a vast and intimate sea…

But there are times when I feel like a shipwrecked sailor, sucked dry of hope and promise.

I abandoned the map in hopes of discovering uncharted territory and new treasure. Now both dinghy and dignity are struggling to stay afloat, my throat is parched, and there is no land in sight.

It’s not the monsters I’m afraid of. Fighting the Kraken is as good a way to die as any. I’m afraid that I’ve gone too far. I’m afraid that I won’t find myself waiting beyond the horizon.

Estrella Morente

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:08:00 -0300

Estrella Morente:

Rooted in tradition… backed by centuries of living and loving and dying … standing on the shoulders of those who went before. Can you hear it?

Renowned Spanish filmmaker, Fernando Trueba, describes her:

“She has one foot in the 19th century and the other in the 21st century; she doesn’t belong to the 20th century. She’s so deep and ancient and, at the same time, so modern.”

When will we get it?

Click on the image to see one of her performances.

Taken from royalreportmag.com

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:34:00 -0300

Taken from royalreportmag.com

"Life was alone, no name, no memory. It had hands, but no one to touch. It had a tongue, but no one..."

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:12:00 -0300

“

Life was alone, no name, no memory. It had hands, but no one to touch. It had a tongue, but no one to talk to. Life was one, and one was none.

Then desire drew his bow. The arrow of desire split life down the middle, and life was two.

When they caught sight of each other, they laughed. When they touched each other, they laughed again.

”

- Eduardo Galeano, ‘Mirrors: Stories of almost everyone’

"A tiger doesn’t proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey."

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:15:12 -0300

“A tiger doesn’t proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey.”

- Wole Soyinka

Bahia - Angelique Kidjo

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:09:49 -0300

Bahia - Angelique Kidjo

Haiti, we're sorry ... or are we?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:26:05 -0300

Haiti, we're sorry ... or are we?:

It’s not about voodoo or ‘devil worship’. It’s about maintaining the balance of power and hindering the development of the nation that brought a European power to its knees. Wake up people!

"It doesn’t interest me if there is one God Or many gods. I want to know if you belong —..."

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:59:57 -0300

“It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong — or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying “this is where I stand.”
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.”

- Self Portrait by David Whyte

Makes my heart hurt (in a good way) …

Just had to share this … the end chorus of the song I...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:38:42 -0300

Just had to share this … the end chorus of the song I finished writing yesterday (No instruments yet).

You Move Me - Ruth Osman

You move me oh …

You move me oh … deep inside

You move me oh …

You make me feel like a child.

You move me oh …

You move me oh … deep inside

You move me oh …

You make me feel so alive.

You move me …

Run and hide,

Laugh and cry,

Live and die

For love.

Wo(a)nderings ... 1

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:01:00 -0300

Deep in the earth,

A seed sings its birthsong,

Soft and terrible.

______________________

The ground above

Bears the imprint

Of your hand.

"The artist is seeking something. He is an instrument, the very personage of longing, seeking,..."

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 07:41:26 -0300

“The artist is seeking something. He is an instrument, the very personage of longing, seeking, desiring, bringing forth that which is not readily seen.”

- LeRoy Clarke. July 26, 2011

In defence of longing

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 22:55:00 -0300

Shhh … don’t tell anybody. But I have the sneaking suspicion that compared to this side of the river, the afterlife (at least the one where we’re all happy and well-fed) will be a bit of an anticlimax.

Longing, you see, makes the world go ‘round. It provides the impetus for human endeavour and the inspiration for great art.

We’ve all heard it - the lone violin at the bus station , the woman sobbing behind the closed door. We all long for the other, that thing or person that will complete us. Or is it that we long for ourselves, the ones we were meant to be, those who, we hope, will open the final door and with a smile, invite us in?

Leonard Cohen longs to believe that a lifetime of longing is worth something, that it makes a difference. Poet that he is, he speaks for us all:

The Book of Longing

I can’t make the hills
The system is shot
I’m living on pills
For which I thank G-d
I followed the course
From chaos to art
Desire the horse
Depression the cart
I sailed like a swan
I sank like a rock
But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn’t write
What the night pencilled in
My animal howls
My angel’s upset
But I’m not allowed
A trace of regret
For someone will use
What I couldn’t be
My heart will be hers
Impersonally
She’ll step on the path
She’ll see what I mean
My will cut in half
And freedom between
For less than a second
Our lives will collide
The endless suspended
The door open wide
Then she will be born
To someone like you
What no one has done
She’ll continue to do
I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book

Cohen also wrote ‘Hallelujah’, an ode to longing if there ever was one. For more of his work, click here.

Imany - You Will Never Know Beautiful imagery, hypnotic voice...

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 11:27:05 -0300

Imany - You Will Never Know

Beautiful imagery, hypnotic voice … and the video seems to ask as many questions as it answers.

I’d never heard of her before but I’m intrigued …