Sunday mood

My latest post before today was Horace's poem about seizing the moment without having plans or hopes for tomorrow. Uncertainty is hard to deal with if we already had the habit of planning anything
and of tracking our progress or if we had a magic feeling with paper agendas like I did and a  (previous) life full of deadlines.

Nevertheless, I decided to indulge in this dive into the present with no plans for tomorrow, no further than the next couple of surgeries and articles. And sometimes it leads to discovery... 

Yesterday I took a suggestion from a Facebook-friend and watched the documentary about Chavela Vargas. Tiff Unlimited is not available in France so instead I chose the UniversCiné platform that I really recommend for art or independent movies. 

I knew Chavela's music from Frida, the movie, but I knew nothing about her life.

There are so many things to reveal from her life story but, other than her avant-garde personality and the intensity of her sorrow, I cannot avoid thinking about a generational spirit and the influence of language.

Joaquim Sabina's lyrics have many innuendos to Chavela, he even said that "no one knows to laugh as beautifully as Chavela knows how to weep".  Pablo Almodovar not only used her music in his movies but also fought to promote her in a Europe that eventually received her with open arms (Spain and France). Sabina and Almodovar are both part of a "cross-sectional" story of freedom, rebellion, passion, controversy, drama and... freedom again. Freedom that we lack today, by the way...

There are moments in which I really treasure these wide windows to the world that are the languages. Navigating through the intimate comprehension of a foreign verse is leading to a journey full of new emotions. This is where Chavela leads me, where Sabina has repeatedly led me... and this is also true for the English, Romanian or French too.

Life is made of insolite emotions. What we experience today is part of it with all the phantoms lockdown generates: solitude, insecurity, incomprehension, anguish, sadness or... surprise. I realize that freedom is part of my tissue and that I miss it with every breath but this time with Sundays spent in my garden reading interviews, art books, novels, blogs and online press, playing whatever with my daughter and dressing up the table for "just" the three of us... is blessing for keeping up the honesty that will eventually lead back to freedom.





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