Un hombre de jazz

"(...) hay una especie de ritmo, que no tiene nada que ver con la rima y con las aliteraciones, no no no no no! Una especie de... de latido, no? De swing, como dicen los hombres de jazz, una especie de ritmo, que se no está en lo que yo hago es para mí la prueba de que no sirve y hay que tirarlo y volver, hasta finalmente conseguir... "

- Julio Cortázar, TVE, "A Fondo", 1977.

O Adorável da A-dor-ação

"Já não me lembro, não sei se foi

exatamente isso. Não consigo

imaginar com que palavras de

criança teria eu exposto um

sentimento simples mas que se

torna pensamento complicado."

("Os Desastres de Sofia", Clarice Lispector)

Envergonhada, ela chegou devagar. Achou que não fosse confrontadora o suficiente, mas algo nele a convidou. Ela simplesmente seguiu.

- ...Olá!

Houve pausa, ele sorriu. Que sorriso gentil!, ela pensou, as mãos suando frio, o peito ardendo por debaixo da roupa. Isso, porém, não foi preciso ver: as palavras saíam desajeitadas.

- Eu só queria te parabenizar. Me emocionei muito. Eu não esperava.. A maneira como você se exprimiu... E não foi só isso! É o seu jeito de falar, tão calmo, tão pausadamente, sem pressa alguma. É de uma sensibilidade, uma beleza... Só de te imaginar entre aquelas árvores, sozinho, pensando cada passo no silêncio... Eu só.. Eu adorei e fiquei muito emocionada. Mesmo!.. Obrigada.

E então a timidez se voltou para o outro. Era noite e a iluminação era fraca, mas ela percebeu: ele ficara sem graça. Perplexa, foi recomeçar, mas ele interrompeu:

- Nossa! ... Obrigado a você, por ter vindo aqui.. e me falado tudo isso!

De sopetão, meio sem jeito, os braços vieram ao redor dos dela e ele chegou bem perto. Pele-com-pele, os lábios tocaram. Isto é, somente os dele. As bochechas - as dela - ficaram mais rubras que antes; o sorriso, mais incisivo. Como é doce o que não se espera! Ela era só coração; e este, de tanto o ser, encolheu extasiado.

- Olha,.. eu não acredito muito nisso, mas será que você poderia...

E estendeu a ele um pedaço de papel e uma caneta, cuja tampa havia retirado com a boca. Ele aceitou com o olhar baixo.

- Eu também não, não estou acostumado..

Ela sentiu a necessidade de remendar, e acabou dizendo o que disse:

- É que eu queria materializar isso, esse encontro..!

Ao que ele respondeu rápida e encantadoramente:

- A materialização foi o beijo!

Epiphany

Yesterday I was taking the subway – where all the action takes place, apparently! – and I saw someone. Someone incredible! He was white, very white. And tall, too. He was bald, and I don’t mean balding, his head was completely naked. The only hair left was so fragile and scarce, almost transparent, that anyone who wasn’t paying attention wouldn’t notice. Behind the thick lenses, shaped by the square-like, old-styled frame, were these strangely tired eyes. Layers and layers of skin kept just pushing the eyelids down but the eyes themselves were very lively. Jumpy, even. The clothes looked like they came directly from a fifty-year-old’s wardrobe. And yet, despite all this, I think he was no more than twenty-five. I immediately thought of the movie Powder (by Victor Salva, 1995), that scene where Sean Patrick Flanery is talking to the girl and asks: “Do you think I'm ugly?” And she says: “I don't know what I think when I look at you. But sometimes I think you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”

I wanted to touch him.

It kept me thinking of how funny relating is. I’ve always believed liking as being coupled up with relating to things. After leaving him, discomposed, I reasoned with myself over what was it that drew me so much, so near. Nothing came to mind. But the thing is: I do know, you see, I do. I looked at him the way I look in the mirror. And here is what I saw: the skin had been pierced from the inside and the nature pushed out of that man. So defenseless and dull, every hint of it had detached itself from the core so I could see it, screaming in his face. Just like a cockroach that doesn’t move not to be noticed, that moment he stood very still. He was made of soul.

Photographic Reverie

A girl is in the subway. A car approaches and she goes in. The waggon isn't very crowded, not at all. She's well dressed, hair held up. She's got a camera. The first thought is: who, in her right mind, gets in the metro holding a professional camera in the hands for everyone to see? She moves to the end and sits quietly in front of a mother who's engaged in caressing her sleeping child. Everything is silent, calm. The noise of the moving car is all one hears. The scene is given. The thought is expected. The action, iminent. The girl slowly holds the camera up and captures the two. Click. No second thoughts. The mother immediately perceives what had just passed. She raises her eyes to the stranger and spits out the following words: "You ain't got your own fucking life?". Now, what seemed so harmless, so natural and ordinary is suddently seen through a different angle.

It all starts with a word. Capture. Light travels through a set of lenses and hits the grains, inscribing patterns into the negative and forming an image. The good and old silver-based photography way, at least. Portraits were the main theme among the first photographs ever taken. Walter Benjamin says that they were the last expressions of what he believed to be a photograph's authenticity, its aura, exactly because they showed human faces. He saw them as the last trench against the reproduction that came with the XIX century. The legitimacy is lost not only because you can print it as many times you want to, but because of the "magical" value, the breath of it, that goes away. Just like religious figures that were always depicted with a golden halo around their heads, photographs were the objects of cult - cult to the dead ones, to the ones we miss, to old lovers...

Theory aside, I say we're all just looking for authenticity and on being able to formally get it or not, I agree with one thing: there is nothing more unique than a human face. Isn't it strange that photographing it, which was once a demonstration of status, could have turned into something that's able to provoke a disapproving response? The face is a part of the body that is exposed to everyone and everything else at most times. You look at people all they long, at their eyes, their mouth, the hair, their nose, notice if they have any scars, marks, pimples, spots, bruises, etc. It is the one thing that shouldn't surprise (as opposed to men that dream about women's ankles because they're socially forbidden to see them!). But, when exposed to the camera, it is the one thing that can reveal most.

That is easily perceived when you look at some of Diane Arbus' work, for example. She specialized in the portraits of freaks, as they were called, people who were the "outcasts" of society: dwarfs, prostitutes, nudists, transvestites, twins, the deformed, the ugly, etc. or people in manners that brought out the weird, awkward in them. And she knew the exact moment it would happen. She was famous for the easiness with which she approached her objects. By that I mean managing to go into their homes (where the photos were usually taken), of people she had never met before and that were very much aware - as everyone who is different is - of their condition, something that is bound to cause uneasiness, and take these personal pictures with the utmost simplicity. She had this way with them, probably because she felt she was something of a freak herself, but that's another story. I never forget the twin girls (Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967). The more you look at them, the more different they turn out to be. The weirder you are, the more human you become when submitted to her lenses.

In a way, the woman in the subway was right: holding a camera gives you a certain power over people, the power to trap them in ways they don't want to be trapped, known, even by themselves. If the contrary, if they do cherish the position they're in, then it's only natural to want to keep it, for who else is gonna know the feeling behind that photo? People who go to an exhibition of it in an art gallery? A vernissage? How do they know what's gonna be preserved of themselves and what's not? Or could it be that what really matters is the universalizing quality of the picture, that it is supposed to be something greater than just a picture of them? And is that art? Can you capture anything or anyone in the name of it? Should every single object be consulted? I don't know, ethics and art.. don't wanna think about it.. and I'm sleepy. All I can think about is what I would look like in front of Arbus' camera.

By the way, the scene from the begining is in the movie Heights (2005), directed by Chris Terrio.