Wimps

WARNING: Self-confidence book content. You might get bored. But this is an old one and  I need to write it out. And yeah, I’m not worried about making any sense.

On the beginning everything is nice and easy. You are almost always warm, make a small poo here and there and get some nice warm milk and a cuddle whenever you want. You don’t really need to be scared as you have people doing all that job for you.

As you grow up that changes. Kids bulling you at school, monsters in the wardrobe, the fat bearded man that lives around the corner. All legitimate life threatening situations and all you do is hide and run. Different tactics but, even then you have someone to really worry about the stuff to you. You carry on.

Without noticing you suddenly lose that. Scary stuff really became scary to you too and not only to people around you, even when you scared about them. You fell responsible for you girlfriend, you don’t want your parents to be disappointed with you and you want your boss to be happy with your work. But, most of all, you don’t want to do look silly and disrespectful for the people around you. That’s what makes them like you better, Nietzsche would point out with a sarcastic smile on his face.

Am I a person that scares easy? No, I’m not. As a big Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy fan I’ve learned with Ford Prefect not to panic. The thing is that, when I do, I also learned with Ford Prefect to fake it really well. And that, my friend, that’s the secret.

Lately I’ve been thinking what has scared the crap out of me during my life. Excluding those teenager days of crying insanely because my two week girlfriend broke up with me or that I dropped Coke on the big guy’s notebook and now I’m screwed. Like serious, adult stuff. Funnily enough, I couldn’t think of a moment that wasn’t already happening. Being scared, for me, always involved wanting something so hard, so strongly, achieving it and then being absolutely sure that I wouldn’t be able to manage it.

Moving countries and joining the jazz school are two big examples. The build up for those were tremendous, the possibilities and outcomes impossible to plan. They both brought me some instability – financial and psychological – and also a uncertainty about the future. I wanted to bail out, something inside me was telling me to quiet down and run away because life was good and I wouldn’t need change anything. Carrying on with normal activities, when confronted with ground shaking situations, always seemed to be the more appropriate thing to do. But, scared as hell, I went for them.

When summed up with other situations, I’ve been getting less and less scared when dealing with stuff I really dreamed about in my life. After all of these I realise that as soon as I made the jump and lived up to confront whatever happened, I was happier and more confident after it. Sometimes a visit to hell is necessary to jump higher in the sky.

Shifting is hard. Throwing everything you have away and starting from scratch even harder.  You might fell guilty, you might fell bad. You might regret it later. You might even hurt one or two loved ones along the way. You will also always have your bed to cry at night when you let despair take in for a while and drive some bad dreams. Luckily you will have a couple of good friends to listen to you and help you find your ground. But, a while later, the craziness was always totally worth for me.

Having said that, the hardest next thing is try and learn to step back when you scared. Specially if, by doing that, you will end up even more scared than you were in the first place.

It’s been aaaaages since I’ve been to the concert. Beginning of May to be exact. But I’m damn sure I’ll be able to talk about it as if it was just last night.

I couldn’t bear with the anticipation before the concert. I’ve known Regina work since her first album, in 2001. One of those albums that you hear in the car, while traveling, and can’t help but grin.

Probably the first thing you will notice when Regina gets on stage is that she is GORGEOUS. Absolutely gorgeous, with a smile that makes you want to jump around and scream crazily. It took me a while to actually realise she was playing – actually, until she started singing. Gosh. It started badly for me – I already didn’t want it to end.

Regina’s band is small, modest and unusual – violin, cello, drums and her on the piano. The three guys that follow her (from the band Jupiter One) are extremely talented and up for the task of playing with her.

Apart from being gorgeous (have I said that yet?) and having a voice that is eight thousand times prettier than it’s owner, Regina has a unique tone, a child-like sense of humour and behaviour, a perfect tune between her body movements, dynamics and facial expressions. She is extremely dynamic and original in the way she does things. She wobbles while walking along the stage and is shy when someone yells something at her from the crowd. And that is incredibly lovely.

The concert was truly an amazing experience. It’s been a long time since I got goose bumps like that in a music concert. Really, really. I usually give good reviews from the concerts I go to because I tend to analyse technical aspects and music junk. So I always manage to get something good out of them even though they are rubbish. But with Regina I couldn’t concentrate on that. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the music coming out of her. There was that magic, that something else about her which I couldn’t really understand what it was. And still, I was very touched by it. It’s one of the top 5 concerts of my life, for sure.

The drummer mentioned, while Jupiter One was opening the concert, that they went to Café Lido to watch some Jazz the night before the concert. And I almost went there that day, but decided to stay home instead. Gladly. If I met her there I would have made a fool of myself .

I couldn’t find a video from her that I could embed here on the blog (due to copyright restrictions). So here goes a trailer of one of my favourite movies ever ever, that has a lot of Regina’s songs on its soundtrack. Anyway, I really encourage you to check ALL Regina Spektor’s videos on YouTube.

On a crazy party I find myself chatting with four good friends. Amongst a fuzzy drink (for me) and some beers (for them) we occasionally mention one or another random at the party. It’s the kind of party organized by and for random people, so the conversation has enough material to keep working.

Apparently our table has the only ash tray on a ten mile radius. Therefore some of the randoms keep coming and going, just to leave their dust around. And that’s when it all began.

She came on a way I couldn’t notice. All I could see was her back going away for a while, but somehow it all stopped until she stopped a couple of meters away. She turned around with her eyes fixed on mine and just stared at me in the same way I couldn’t stop staring at her. After a moment or too to find my breath, my toes curled and I jumped out of the chair rushing on her direction.

Our conversation couldn’t be briefer. Her best friend, the talkative one type, kept breaking into us both. We couldn’t chat really. At least not with the words. Which was good because I couldn’t make much sense of my words for real. And when it looked like could be a good moment, my friends and her friends made sure we would be as physically far as possible for the most of the night.

When saying goodbye all I’ve got was a “It’s such a shame I don’t live here. I really would like to get to know you better”. Followed by a smile that made me black out for a second.

But before going home I got to talk a lot about Dave Matthews Band and codfish dishes with the guy with the awesome accent. It helped a bit.

Quando a gente lê da música pela música, a gente se depara com coisas assim:

Trecho de Música, Cérebro e Êxtase, por Robert Jourdain

“[...] Uma idéia familiar do tempo está na ponta da nossas línguas: uma única dimensão que se estende para a frente e para trás, até a eternidade, sendo cada instante um ponto de duração infinitamente curta. Imprensado entre o passado e o futuro está algo chamado ‘o presente’, onde ocorre a experiência, inclusive a de ouvir música. Embora nossa vida inteira seja no presente (porque até as lembranças e expectativas são aí experimentadas), não podemos realmente pôr o dedo nesse momento que chamamos de ‘agora’. Afinal, não temos sensores para o tempo, como temos para a luz ou para o som. Não há, aí, nada de sentir. A experiência psicológica do tempo surge, em vez disso, da percepção que o sistema nervoso tem de suas próprias interações com o mundo. O tempo psicológico é a experiência de ter experiência.

Enquanto filósofos e físicos discutem interminvelmente a natureza absoluta do tempo, os neuropsicólogos assumem uma visão mais pragmática. Para eles, é tolice falar de um presente infinitesimal, de um presente que, na verdade, nao está absolutamente aí. Trabalho de laboratório mostra que, quando os acontecimentos se dão de forma extremamente rápida, ou extremamente lenta, o sistema nervoso deixa de senti-los. Sejam quais forem as verdades que oes instrumentos do físico ou as deduções do filósofo possam trazer, o ‘presente’, para o psicólogo, tem um extensão finita, que se pode medir. É o minimo tempo que se leva pra sentir, perceber e categorizar, e é ditado pela velocidade de estimulação dos neurônicos. [...]”

Photo by Sarah Hellas on Flickr

This blog could use some weeding. Will work on that ASAP.

Tive uma das piores noites de pesadelos essa noite. Acidente de carro com meus flatmates, florestas pegando fogo, casas destruídas, amigos brigando comigo por coisa sem sentido, entre outros. Acordei gritando no meio da noite duas vezes e sinto uma pedra em cada um dos meus ombro resultado de uma noite tensa.

Eu não costumo mais analizar sonhos. Mesmo porque motivos pra isso eu não tenho. Mas eu sempre tenho um relativo controle sobre os meus sonhos. Aliás, não controle, mas tenho consciência de que estou sonhando – os tais sonhos lúcidos – quase sempre e vira e mexe uso esse fato pra mudar meu sonho. O negócio é que quando eu não consigo e tudo continua dando errado é frustrante.

Ver um monte de coisa ruim sem nenhum sentido ou lógica talvez seja a pior coisa. Outro fato é ver quem você gosta se machucando ou morrendo e cruzar pelo corredor com essa pessoa te dando bom dia na manhã seguinte. Bom e estranho ao mesmo tempo. Fora o tanto de gente que você está morrendo de saudade e que quando te ver diz as piores coisas, quissá tenta te bater.

Eu acho que vou ter um dia chato hoje.

Isso também acho que é sinônimo da falta de vontade de ler. Tem sido difícil me focar pra estudar e isso é estranho. Sinto falta mas a coisa não anda. Todo dia uma desculpa nova e isso tem me deixado de mau humor na hora de dormir e, consequentemente, durmo mal.