the "play of life" ...

"Because it has always already begun, representation therefore has no end. But one can conceive of the closure of that which is without end. Closure is the circular limit within which the repetition of difference infinitely repeats itself. That is to say, closure is its playing space. This movement is the movement of the world as play .... This play of life is artistic.

(Jacques Derrida, "The Theater of Cruelty." Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. p. 250)

sense

it all makes sense
if sense means
all that is sensible
so much sense
that it makes no sense
to be so sensitive
about such nonsense

- Rodrigo Garcia Lopes / gringocarioca


tudo tem sentido
se sentido for
tudo que sentimos
tudo tão sentido
que não tem sentido algum
ficar sentado aqui
mentindo

- Rodrigo Garcia Lopes

(no) solution …

"It is not the concern of an artist to propound solutions. It is enough, and quite a lot, I should say, to make an audience feel the need, the urgency, for them."

(Cesare Zavattini, "Some Ideas on the Cinema." Trans. Pier Luigi Lanza)

amor-te

Copyright © 2009 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

lost and found ...

"When you're lost, the smartest thing to do is stay put till you're found, hollering if necessary. But to holler guarantees humiliation as well as rescue; keeping silent permits some saving of face – you can act surprised at the fuss when your rescuers find you and swear you weren't lost, if they do. What's more you might find your own way yet, however belatedly."

(John Barth, "Lost in the Funhouse.")

as if

Copyright © 2009 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

The Hill from Ipanema

– Chico Buarque / gringocarioca

Two Brothers, in the dark of night
After setting down the instruments
How I learned to respect the sight
And suspect the marked silence

I think I hear the pulsing beat
Of echoes of another existence
It's as if the waves of the sea
Washed away the passing moments

It's as if the rhythm of nothing
Were every rhythm from within
Or else, an old song hovering
Still over a mountain in motion

Morro Dois Irmãos

– Chico Buarque

Dois Irmãos, quando vai alta a madrugada
E a teus pés vão-se encostar os instrumentos
Aprendi a respeitar tua prumada
E desconfiar do teu silêncio

Penso ouvir a pulsação atravessada
Do que foi e o que será noutra existência
É assim como se a rocha dilatada
Fosse uma concentração de tempos

É assim como se o ritmo do nada
Fosse, sim, todos os ritmos por dentro
Ou, então, como uma música parada
Sobre uma montanha em movimento

anti-

"Some people think they can explain rationally, by thought, what they think. But that is extremely relative. Psychoanalysis is a dangerous disease, it puts to sleep the antiobjective impulses of men and systematizes the bourgeoisie. There is no ultimate Truth. The dialectic is an amusing mechanism which guides us / in a banal kind of way / to the opinions we had in the first place. Does anyone think that, by a minute refinement of logic, he has demonstrated the truth and established the correctness of these opinions? Logic imprisoned by the senses is an organic disease. To this element philosophers always like to add: the power of observation. But actually this magnificent quality of the mind is the proof of its impotence. We observe, we regard from one or more points of view, we choose them among the millions that exist. Experience is also a product of chance and individual faculties. Science disgusts me as soon as it becomes a speculative system, loses its character of utility – that is so useless but is at least individual. I detest greasy objectivity, and harmony, the science that finds everything in order. Carry on, my children, humanity . . . Science says we are the servants of nature: everything is in order, make love and bash your brains in. Carry on, my children, humanity, kind bourgeois and journalist virgins . . . I am against systems, the most acceptable system is on principle to have none. To complete oneself, to perfect oneself in one's own littleness, to fill the vessel with one's individuality, to have the courage to fight for and against thought, the mystery of bread, the sudden burst of an infernal propeller into economic lilies...."

(Tristan Tzara, "Dada Manifesto" – 1918. Trans. Ralph Manheim)

CEP 20.000

fotografado: gringocarioca

fotógrafo: Ricardo Rodrigues

ESPAÇO CULTURAL SÉRGIO PORTO

rua humaitá, 163 (fundos / 2266 0896)

10 / 12, quinta feira

de 20 às 20:30 / 4 reais.

HOMENAGEM A MÁRIO BORTOLOTTO

com leitura e textos de / para mário por

rogério skylab, chacal, fausto fawcett,

carmen molinari, fabrício corsaletti, graça carpes, edu planchêz,

beto brown, pardal, ericson pires, fran fillon

e quem chegar

*******************************************************

art-action com

tavinho paes, arnaldo brandão, betina kopp

beatriz provasi, juju hollanda, marcela giannini,

layanna lossë

******************************************************

marco gringo carioca, daniel, zé urbano, gabriel,

ricardo rodrigues, microfone aberto

À SAÚDE E À RECUPERAÇÃO

DO GRANDE ARTISTA E IRMÃO

atire a primeira palavra

são os bandidos são os assaltantes são os traficantes são as facções rivais é o crime organizado é o tráfico de armas é o tráfico de drogas é o contrabando são os bandos de maconheiros e chincheiros é a crackolândia são os viciados são os usuários são os marginais é a contracultura é a esquerda é a direita é o poder é o sistema é o estado é o governo é a corrupção são os políticos são os ladrões são os caras sem vergonha na cara são os sem caráter é a impunidade é a injustiça é a polícia é a repressão é a proibição é a opressão é a guerra às drogas é a guerra às pessoas são as guerras em geral é o terrorismo são os estados unidos é o velho inimigo amigo tio sam é a nova ordem mundial é o imperialismo é o neoliberalismo é o neocolonialismo é a dominação é a exploração é o dinheiro é o mercado é a bolsa de valores é o capitalismo é o consumismo é o materialismo é o simulacra é a modernidade é o pós-moderno é o pós-humano são os homens são os ignorantes e arrogantes e mal-educados é a sociedade são as classes sociais é a pobreza é a miséria são as favelas é a exclusão é o racismo é o preconceito é a intolerância é a diferença é a alteridade é a subalternidade é o relativismo cultural é o discurso atual é o ceticismo é o cinismo é a mídia são as notícias e a propaganda são os jornais e as revistas é o rádio é a televisão é a internet é o mal do bom gosto é a opinião pública privada de bom senso são as marchas e protestos são a paz e o amor são os movimentos a favor e contra são os fanáticos é a hipocrisia são as ideologias são as diversas bandeiras é a desordem e o regresso é a desigualdade é a disparidade é o subdesenvolvimento é a falta de infraestrutura é a falta de recursos é a falta de vontade é a falta de solidaridade é o excesso de agressividade é o excesso de tudo é o excesso de todos é o luxo é o lixo são os shoppings são os ricos é a ambição é a ilusão é a decepção é a mediocridade é a banalidade é a burguesia é o conforto é o conformismo é a complacência é a cumplicidade é o status quo é o normal é o cotidiano são as festas são os festivais é o carnaval é a boemia são os artistas são os poetas são os críticos são os critérios são os demais ...

sou eu

sou eu que falo

sou eu que falo e não me calo

sou eu que falo e não me calo mas não faço

sou eu que falo e não me calo mas não faço nada

sou eu que falo e não me calo mas não faço nada e mais nada

Copyright © 2009 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

* * *

10/12/2009

CEP 20.000

Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto

Rio de Janeiro

samba da paixão

quando se acha que um amor não tem mais jeito 

dá uma dor, que bate lá no peito 

dá tanta vontade... 

dá tanta vontade... 

dá tanta vontade... 

de morrer 

há quanto tempo não aproveita o momento 

o cheiro da flor, o canto do vento 

dá tanta saudade... 

dá tanta saudade... 

dá tanta saudade... 

de viver 

deixar a vida levar 

deixar a morte chegar 

deixar a chama apagar 

não dá pra deixar... 

não! a paixão deve ser 

a solução, pode crer 

e vai ver o velho amor se renovar

 

Copyright © 2009 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

The Writer's Technique ...

"Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next."

"In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds."

"Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it."

"Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight."

"Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there. "

"Stages of composition: idea – style – writing…. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style."

"The work is the death mask of its conception."

(Walter Benjamin, “Post No Bills: The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses,” One-Way Street. Trans. Edmund Jephcott)

In Memoriam ...

"Although I am going to talk about what I have written, my books and papers and so on, unfortunately I forget what I have written practically as soon as it is finished. There is probably going to be some trouble about that. But nevertheless I think there is also something significant about it, in that I don't have the feeling that I write my books. I have the feeling that my books get written through me and that once they have got across me I feel empty and nothing is left."

(Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning.)

new logo ...

Copyright © 2009 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

On "Essences and the Signs of Art" ...

“But whatever the importance of this process of analogy in art, art does not find its profoundest formula here. As long as we discover a sign’s meaning in something else, matter still subsists, refractory to spirit. On the contrary, art gives us the true unity: unity of an immaterial sign and of an entirely spiritual meaning. The essence is precisely this unity of sign and meaning as it is revealed in the work of art.” (p. 40)

“Art therefore has an absolute privilege, which is expressed in several ways. In art, substances are spiritualized, media dematerialized. The work of art is therefore a world of signs, but they are immaterial and no longer have anything opaque about them, at least to the artist’s eye, the artist’s ear. In the second place, the meaning of these signs is an essence, an essence affirmed in all its power. In the third place, sign and meaning, essence and transmuted substance, are identified or united in a perfect adequation. Identity of a sign as style and of a meaning as essence: such is the character of the work of art.” (p. 50)


(Gilles Deleuze, Proust & Signs. Trans. Richard Howard)

olhar tudo

Copyright © 2009 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

the OTHER voice ...

“Between revolution and religion, poetry is the other voice. Its voice is other because it is the voice of the passions and of visions. It is other-worldly and this-worldly, of days long gone and of this very day, an antiquity without dates. Heretical and devout, innocent and perverted, limpid and murky, aerial and subterranean, of the hermitage and of the corner bar, within hand’s reach and always beyond. All poets in the moments, long or short, of poetry, if they are really poets, hear the other voice. It is their own, someone else’s, no one else’s, no one’s and everyone’s. Nothing distinguishes a poet from other men and women but those moments – rare yet frequent – in which, being themselves, they are other. The possession of strange forces and powers, the sudden emergence of a store of psychic knowledge buried in the most private depths of their being, or is it a singular ability to associate words, images, sounds, forms? It is not easy to answer such questions. But I do not believe that poetry is simply an ability. And even if it were, from where does it come? In sum, no matter what it may be, what is certain is that the great oddness of the poetic phenomenon suggests an ailment that still awaits a physician’s diagnosis. Ancient medicine – and ancient philosophy too, beginning with Plato – attributed the poetic faculty to a psychic disorder. A mania, in other words, a sacred fury, an enthusiasm, a transport. But mania is only one of the poles of the disorder; the other is absentia, inner emptiness, that ‘melancholy apathy’ that the poet speaks of. Fullness and emptiness, flight and fall, enthusiasm and melancholy: poetry.”

(Octavio Paz, “The Other Voice.” The Other Voice. Trans. Helen Lane. p. 151-152)

tia

para Suzana Guedes Bacellar da Silva (1934-2009)


tia, me dá um trocadinho, tia!
a gente tá com sede,
a gente tá com fome ...

tia, me dá uma moedinha, tia!
a gente tá sem cara,
a gente tá sem nome ...

tia, me dá uma comidinha, tia!
a gente já nem bebe,
a gente já nem come ...

tia, me dá um carinho, tia!
a gente já não acorda,
a gente já não dorme ...


Copyright © 2009 Marco Alexandre de Oliveira

"A fiction that by no means savours of barbarity"

“Come boldly, every one of you, and assemble together to dine off me, for you shall at the same time eat your fathers and grandfathers, whose flesh has served to feed and nourish this body. These muscles, this flesh and these veins are yours, poor fools that you are! can you not see that they still contain the substance of your ancestor’s limbs? Relish them well, you will find that they have the flavor of your own flesh.”

(Michel de Montaigne, “Of Cannibals.” Trans. E. J. Trechmann)

(k)no(w) (k)no(w) ...

“I would have every man write about what he knows, and no more than he knows, not only in this but on all other subjects. For a man may have some particular knowledge or experience of the nature of a river or a fountain, who otherwise knows no more than what everybody knows. Yet he will undertake, in order to circulate this little scrap of knowledge, to write a book on the whole science of physics. From this fault spring many great abuses.”

(Michel de Montaigne, “Of Cannibals.”)