The African project ...

I am particularly touched by the fact that a number of  new people have decided to join me in wanting to provide some of the children from Calheta a few moments of happiness by sending them some gifts, clothes and story books together with some money for the school needs of those who attend school.

Not only have these people selected six children who have never had anything but also five whom some friends and I provided for last time and two whose "godparents" have stepped out.

Despite the fact that the initial teaching project which I haven't been able to carry out but for about four years was "abandoned" because of burocratic events I have grown fond of the village children and particularly the ones who were part of the project. Playing the role of a sort of "Santa"once a year doesn't diminish my feeling of wanting to give the village children some good moments to "hold onto" and eventually make them want to dream.

I shall be travelling with a French friend whom I shared the last Cape Verdian experience with and who has also fallen in love with the village. I don't know how we'll be able to carry the amount of wheight we already have but one thing I am sure of is that we won't regret having to carry part of it "on our backs" as we did last time for the sake of seing the children happy.

May we keep on having the stamina to do it for a long time because these Cape Verde experiences are emotionally fulfilling and worth fighting for.

Stevan Riley's documentary ...

Devising material for my English class gatherings implies hard work and is never easy because not only do I have to meticulously watch all the polemic films and documentaries I bring into the classroom but also organize the whole thing in terms of vocabulary and sentence structures as well as "extracts" from the film I feel should be thoroughly looked at together with  potential questions and issues I feel should be further discussed.

I have recently come across a Stevan Riley's documentary on Marlon Brando I am tempted to use in those gatherings. It is more than a moving meditation on the personal and acting life of Marlon Brando because it inevitable forces the viewers to "recalibrate" our feelings about him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost narrated by the actor himself  using extracts of  Marlon Brando's 300 hundred  hour self-made hypnosis cassettes Stevan Riley created a mesmerising collage of poetic illumination using film clips and archival footage from Brando as well. 

I must confess I had no idea who the real Marlon was behind the acting and maybe I never tried to find out because the image I had created  in my mind was the one conveyed by the media and I believed it couldn't surely be much different. I have been proved wrong.  

  

 

 

 

"Autobiographical in nature, unconventional in structure, this is the story of Marlon Brando not as the world saw him but as he saw himself (...) it reveals Brando to be almost painfully sensitive and self-aware, a man with questioning intelligence who could be piercingly candid about his life and work (...) it is a revelatory, strikingly emotional look at a complex, troubled and enormously gifted man." - Keneth Turan

 

 

 

 

 

 

The latest book I have read ...

I have read the four hundred and so pages (almost five hundred) of the first  book of a six volume literary epic written by the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard on him and his family in an almost unstoppable way.

 

 

 

What mostly fascinated me throughout the whole reading of My Struggle: 1 - A death in the family were his writing artistry, at times raw and almost  painfully harsh  and yet highly philosophical in their approach other times, the meticulous details of daily life made noticeable and special and above all the need to write down about his childhood, teenage years and early adulthood with honesty, painful as it would for those mentioned in its gathering of written memoirs.

 

 

 

Some of his feelings and aspirations as an adolescent resonated with several of mine (... possibly with most adolescents) and I coudn't help copying down two of them ...






"(...) I saw time as a stretch of terrain that had to be covered, with the future as a distant prospect, hopefully a bright one, and never boring at any rate (...)"



"I have always had a great need for solitude. I require huge swathes of loneliness, and when I do not have it (...) my frustration can sometimes become almost panicked, or aggressive."







Despite the extreme opinions on the part of the critics and readers, I feel it's really worth reading.




"A masterpiece ... Meticulously detailed, harrowing, oddly beautiful, its depiction of a family's disintregation is one of the most powerful pieces of writing I've read in years." - Observer

"Karl Ove Knausgaard's six volume autobiographical novel My struggle is one of the most absorbing literary projects of recent times, one that has seen the Norwegian writer dubbed the Scandinavian Proust." Spectator

"A national obsession in Norway, this autobiographical epic is somewhat indigestible." - Michel Faber










 

The latest film I have seen ...

I had been looking forward to seing The Danish Girl mostly because it is based on a true story involving a couple of Danish painters, one of the main characters being one my favourite acting performers of last year and furthermore what several critics have been writing on it. 

The rather "exquisite" life of  a couple of  early 20th century Danish painters Einar Wegener and his wife Gerda is approached in a very intelligent  and beautifully intimate way by Tom Hooper, in as much as it is not shocking despite the fact that it revolves around Einar's feelings  towards wanting to become Lili Elbe and the impact this "changing" process will have in the life of the couple and society, bearing in mind the fact that it is set in 1926 and Lili is saidd to have been one of the first people to undergo sex assignment surgery.

The real Einar Wegener and the Lili Elbe he turned into  (left). Eddie Redmayne personification of Lili Elbe (right).

"There's depth to be had if you're looking for it and tellingly unfaithful reflections of people, landscapes, intentions are everywhere." - Robin Collin

Portrait of  Lili Elbe,  former Einar Wegener, painted by  his wife Gerda Weneger (left).

"What Hooper has crafted is a work of probing intelligence and passionate heart." - Peter Travers.

It is worth being seen, if for nothing at least for Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander"s interpretations, which are second to none.

Photos of Einar Wegener (alias Lili Elbe).

New Year' s resolutions ...

I have never made any New Year's resolutions maybe because I have always felt things should flow the way they would and I'd go along with them in the most natural way, always trying to give my best whichever the situation ...

I somehow feel the need  (and why not choose the New Year) to slightly change, ponder on and stop investing much of my time on situations that no longer serve me or people, who I feel for yet, haven't got my best interest at heart ... "arid " and sporadic friendships (or maybe I should call them close acquaintances) which drain me ... people who don't bring anything into my life ...  

I feel I'll start looking forward rather than feel tempted to look forward with an eye on the past ... and re-invent myself ... Someone once said to me that one only gives what one feels like giving ... and unexpectedly  (against all odds, I'd say) I feel like being more "sellective"  ... and giving myself more ...

Touched by Aretha Franklin ...

I don't suppose President Obama was the only one to feel touched by Aretha Franklin's majestic interpretation of Carol King' s " You make me feel like a natural woman" at the Kennedy Centre Honours 2015.  Most people' s facial expressions, Carole King's among those, denoted the awe at the interpretation of such an iconic song, that seems to have marked  more than my generation. 

Carole King's Tapestry was actually the first album I bought solely on the money I earned at the time of its release by giving private lessons of Portuguese to a German lady, as I attended University. My musical choices then were based almost exclusively on the lyrics and despite Joan Baez and Bob Dylan being my favourite troubadours at the time, James Tailor and Carole King had unexpectedly begun to make their way into that circle.

It would take quite a while before I grasped the real meaning of feeling like a "natural woman", though it would be short lived. The fact that I don't think anyone has ever been able to get deeply enough into my "womanhood", the words resonate as being what I'd want to feel like, even if it meant just once ...

My Liverpool trip - Day 4 (early morning) - Liverpool-Lisbon flight - final approach to Lisbon airport - The 29th of November 2015

I did leave Liverpool  airport very early in the morning after a short yet sound sleep at a four star hotel., I had not envisaged I'd stay at.

As we were flying over Caparica on our final approach to Lisbon airport I took some incredible photos with my mobile phone and that's when I realised I was happy to be getting closer to home.

The bright sky and the apparent good weather awaiting me at home brought out the good spirits in me.