The Times They Are A-Changin', by Bob Dylan

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Porgy and Bess, Gershwin e Billie Holiday: you go to my head

Selo inspirado na ópera-jazz de 1935 "Porgy and Bess", the George Gershwin, sobre a vida nas favelas de Charleston, na Carolina do Norte. Ouça aqui a ária Summertime em versão de 1937 na voz de Billie Holiday.

livros e leitores no Brasil

Antes de se discutir as mazelas da literatura no Brasil, é preciso admitir a cruel realidade: mais de 50% da população adulta não têm estudos ou estudou no máximo sete anos. Apenas 4% estudaram 15 anos ou mais, ou 5.524.947, segundo o IBGE.

Apesar das dimensões atuais e da expansão do sistema educacional observada nas últimas três décadas, 1,2 milhão de crianças e adolescentes (3,95% da população de 7a 14 anos) ainda estavam fora da escola em 2000, e mais de 35,8 milhões de jovens e adultos (30% da população com 15 anos ou mais) possuíam menos de 4 anos de estudos1, encontrando-se possivelmente em situação de analfabetismo funcional.

Em 2006, foram publicados cerca de 40.000 títulos, totalizando mais de 350 milhões de livros por ano. É livro pra caramba.

Entretanto, pesquisadores da UFRJ1, apontando inúmeros problemas no setor, além do alto custo do livro no Brasil, citam queda de 51% nas aquisições do governo, no período de 1995 a 2004. Segundo dados da pesquisa, o governo compra menos e a preços menores: em 1995, comprou 130 milhões de livros, num total de R$ 1.261.000,00; em 2004, 135 milhões de livros e gastou 529.000,00. Em 1995, pagou R$ 9,70 o exemplar, em 2004, R$ 3,92.

Pode parecer muito, mas segundo a clássica pesquisa "Retrato do leitor do Brasil", de 2001, as "informações parecem configurar um ambiente em que a leitura não é socialmente valorizada, em que o livro não tem um lugar assegurado".

Os dados da pesquisa confirmam a necessária e estreita relação entre leitura e educação e, objetivamente, com a escola, primeira encarregada da alfabetização e do letramento. Esse vínculo natural torna-se imperativo num país com as desigualdades sociais nos níveis existentes em nosso país, onde a família não exerce o papel de primeira e mais importante definidora do valor da leitura.(SIC)


Mas há um dado interessante nessa pesquisa, também amparada no censo do IBGE em 2000. Cerca de 60 milhões (35%) declaram gostar de ler em seu tempo livre. Uns 38 milhões dizem fazer isso com freqüência. Levando-se em conta que a pesquisa envolve não apenas os adultos mas também os alunos da rede de ensino público, surge a imagem de um país com muitos jovens leitores, subsidiados pelo governo, que compra mais de 130 milhões de livros por ano. De vez em quando circula um mito de que só existem 30.000 leitores no Brasil ou coisa parecida. Existem muitos leitores por aí. O livro é que é caro, provavelmente por causa das pequenas tiragens. O problema não é ganância dos empresários do setor, pelo contrário, é até um pouco de covardia na hora de quebrar os dogmas do que é um livro no Brasil - formato, preço, logística de produção local em vez de centralizada. A distribuição é cara devido ao péssimo estado da infra-estrutura brasileira de transportes, portanto os buracos na estrada e o preço do óleo diesel comem boa parte do custo de um livro chegar a Salvador, por exemplo. Some a isso a concentração da indústria gráfica e da imprensa no Sudeste.

Precisa-se de uma política pública de incentivo à leitura, que envolva bibliotecas e escolas. A União e os governos estaduais têm que admitir que a realidade do gasto anual por aluno no sistema não corresponde ao que deveria ser. Boa educação cria leitores. Em vez de discutir os méritos da auto-promoção ou do uso da internet como veículo de divulgação da literatura, a intelectualidade brasileira deveria estar conduzindo debates muito mais profundos sobre os problemas do país e os meios de resolvê-los. É muita alienação, de ambos os lados. Fica configurado o mesmo vaidoso ciclo de embates entre as gerações literárias, um clima de ataques, cada um cumprindo seu respectivo papel na ordem das coisas - em eterno loop modernista, mas falta a desordem e o impulso de reagir dos pioneiros.

Boca do inferno (ou fogo que nunca apaga)

Do flog de John H. Bradley



In the heart of the Karakum desert of Turkmenistan the Darvaza Gas Crater or The Burning Gates give off a glow that can be seen from miles away during the dark night. The large crater is a result of a Soviet gas exploration accident in the 1950’s. It was created when a Soviet drilling rig was drilling for natural gas fell into an underground cavern resulting in a crater which today measures roughly 60 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep. The huge crater was set alight shortly after being discovered and has been burning ever sinse. The smell of burning sulfur can be detected from a distance and becomes quite strong as you near the hot edge of the crater.

Judicandus homo reus and Air (let's get classical)

Aria "Lacrimosa", do "Requiem" de Mozart.



"Air", de Bach
(do youtube)

The "Air on the G String" is an adaptation by August Wilhelmj of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Air". The air is usually played slowly and freely, and features an intertwining harmony and melody.

The original piece is part of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068, written for his patron Prince Leopold sometime between the years 1717 and 1723.

The title comes from violinist Wilhelmj's late 19th century arrangement of the piece for violin and piano. By transposing the key of the piece from its original D major to C major, Wilhelmj was able to play the piece on only one string of his violin, the G string.

Antidote for alienation

“Uncle Tom’s Children”: fast paced and powerful writing to help you with all the soul-searching going around

Saying you’re too tired to have a conscience is not a good excuse for avoiding “Uncle Tom’s Children”, the book that shot Richard Wright to fame in 1940. Is understandable if you say you don’t like violence or hate, but be aware: sometimes, people can manage to transmute these things into something beautiful and mind opening.

Wright was critical of this power after the book’s success, and tried to write something that would be truly provocative for its time. He complained about rich banker’s daughters reading it and relating to its suffering, and perhaps he was being too ambitious, but we can never condemn too much of the right kind of ambition in a writer: “Native Son”, his attempt at transgressive art, he even questioned the guilt of enlightened bourgeoisie and its true responsibility on oppression. He failed miserably, since the novel, his first, allowed him to become one of the most successful black writers of his era.

Is curious how the most solitary of all pursuits, at the same time, takes you somewhere you had never been, to meet a whole thicket of new people. Tonight, for it took me about six hours to crack Wright’s collection of five short stories, I met a southern pastor and politician, saw him wade into a swamp intimidation and social unrest; a lonely, tragic wife; a black boy who escapes miraculously and another who doesn’t; and many more so forth.

Wright is a fast guy with an aggressive sense of dialogue and scenes that will materialize easily in your imagination. He also bends the rules sometimes, as when he piles too many coincidences in the story of a certain Mr. Mann trying to save his family during a flood in New Orleans. Or when he drifts into a stream of consciousness by the cheating wife that barely helps us feel like the one struggling with an overwhelming baby and isolated emptiness. These are brilliant stories with minor flaws that only people who read too much will feel bothered about. I can’t guarantee you won’t be angered by Wright’s ideological and deterministic sprees, though.

But he will surely crack open your head with the story of Dan Taylor, a southern pastor divided between the politics of being powerful in a Dixie town during the Great Depression, and the needs of his hungry people. He has heat coming on from all sides: the powerful whites want him to calm the insurgency, first using political tactics and even torturing him later on to make their point, while the communists say that if the demonstration is too thin and fails to achieve its goal it will be the reverend’s fault.

Meanwhile, things are getting testy at the congregation, where the spiritual sub-leaders want Taylor to take responsibility for leadership and one of them is even challenging his power. In the end, the pastor finds the solution after trying to explain his son what has happened and the true meaning of it. He must teach him right, thinks Taylor. Then he summons up a brilliant lesson about religion and being powerful: the people. “Even the Reds cant do nothing ef yuh lose yo people”, says the pastor in delightful vernacular.

Read it, digest it, keep it or give it to someone else who you think might really like it. But don’t sit around not being aware of what has happened and share an hour of two with someone else’s creation. And think. That’s what it’s all about.

The complete stories, by Zora Neale Hurston (New York, HarperPerennial, 2008)

To read the edition of the complete short stories of Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1860) in chronological order is perhaps one the most enlightening aspects of this collection, because it gives us the opportunity to follow her evolution as a writer through the span of almost 40 years. She starts with stories that overflow with the lightness of fairy-tale but matures into the brutal social fabric of family and community life, artfully exercising a vernacular vocabulary that gives her work historical significance and a unique flavor.

The published stories also have a striking difference to the unpublished ones in terms of toning down the ebullient sexuality of her prose. There are some structurally complex stories, like “Spunk” and “The six-gilded bit” that evoke some of the main themes in Zora’s imaginary: love, justice and redemption for the oppressed. The small-town intrigues of “The Eatonville Anthology” reminded me of “Winnesburg, Ohio” (1919), by Sherwood Anderson, but expressed in a way that was particular to the culture from where it sprung. “High John the Conquer” is a symbol of peaceful resistance and a fantastical renovation of old slave myths – the slaves sing to make the work lighter but also to avoid bowing to the master and to maintain an integrity of the self.

The mystical church described in “Mother Catherine”, with its collage of religions and traditions, is a place of laughter and well-being that faithfully depicts the ambient one can find either in the Cuban Santeria or the Brazilian Camdomblé, where the spiritual leader is someone who is closer to the faithful and religious experience can be a naturally joyous endeavor. The structure that Hurston chose to frame the short story is also very elegant, bringing us into this world by bits and images. Only after she has immersed us in the sacred grounds is that she briefly introduces herself as the narrator. I thought that was an absolutely organic way of starting such a vivid portrait.

There’s only so much that someone can write about these short stories with too little time, but it has to be noted that some of the unpublished work in this collection do Ms. Hurston more justice as documents than literary works, being in a very incipient state – I’m talking about the last two stories, “The seventh veil” and “The woman in gaul”. They seemed more like fragments of a future romance than complete stories in themselves. Overall, the book presents a strong sense of Hurton’s modernistic experimentations and of her own fictional universe, while allowing us to glimpse her evolution as an artist and researcher.