berger + music blog

i am having issues reading, lately. the most i get done, is standing in the kitchen, reading through the paper while coffee finishes up its delicious business inside the maker. i just haven't been paying attention- is it still 'percolating'? or is that a thing of the past. emulsifying? do coffee grounds really count as a liquid?

i am distracted, and staying out far too late. my roommate also happens to come home and, if i'm lucky, he gives me a handfull of minutes where he puts a meal together. as soon as he sits down, he turns on the tv. even if i'm using the tv to route my i-tunes through the speakers, etc. obnoxious? yeah, you bet it is. and distracting. if the tv is on, i'm not necessarily entertained, but i certainly don't get much work done. i usually just bury my face behind my laptop and squint for hours on end...

in light of eye-wrinkle concerns/graduation concerns/concerns about looking like an ass with my instructors... i dedicated my headachey morning to clearing out the studio and setting books on the corner of my desk so i can actually grab at them between silent bits... hide out in there to avoid the ongoing stream of crappy tv shows as is his preference.

anyhow.

so sometimes i just have warm little moments where reading something amazing suddenly springs up and runs extra mileage. two bits of information collide to form a happy well-faceted moment for me. as in the case of music review + john berger.

i browsed through this music blog amidst the usuals and stumbled on an entry which listed a song called Sodade

8. "Sodade" Cesario Evora
This is another heartbreaker written in a language I don't know. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to translate this one. It makes me feel an intense, but beautiful sadness. Though all the elements of the song obviously work together and depend on one another, my two favorite parts are the very soft sounding shakers present throughout the song, and (of course) Cesario Evora's voice. For some reason, this is a song I enjoy very much in summer.

... immediately i jump to one of my favourite excerpts from john berger's Here is Where We Meet.

Lisboetas often talk of a feeling, a mood, which they call saudade, usually translated as nostalgia, which is incorrect. Nostalgia implies a comfort, even an indolence such as Lisboa has never enjoyed. Vienna is the capital of nostalgia. This city is still, and has always been, buffeted by too many winds to be nostalgic.

Saudade, I decided as I drank my second coffee and watched a drunk's hands carefully arranging the accurate story he was telling as if it were a pile of envelopes, saudade was the feeling of fury at having to hear the words too late pronounced too calmly.

what to say, other than it's a rare and lovely experience when music and favourite books compliment each other so "directly". especially when it's berger... you know how i am about that man.