I
thumbed through a list of tunes this morning and came upon Milton Nascimento’s
album, “Milton.” I know the first
tune “Para Lennon and McCartney” well and figured that would suffice to move
reluctant legs. I can remember
hearing it for the first time here and playing it for a friend’s first time
driving around in Los Angeles. The
break is pregnant with expectation, phat, embraceable. I couldn’t place the
rest of the album in my mind and would have to just dig in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Nascimento
Recorded in 1970 around the same year the Beatles broke up,
I’ve been able to discern a few words here and there. I was determined to have a look and see precisely what it said. Having just done so my guess is that
this is one of those times when Google translate is just particularly
unsuccessful at capturing nuance.
That or the lyrics are a string of strong but ultimately
incomprehensible, 迷离徜恍[1] intimations.
Why do not you know the western
garbage?
not longer fear
not need the loneliness
Every day is a day to live
Why did you not see my west side?
not need to fear not
need no shyness
Every day is a day to live
I'm from America South
I know, you will not know
But now I'm cowboy
I am gold, I am you
I am in the world, Minas Gerais
am
Why do not you know the western
garbage?
not longer fear
not need the loneliness
Every day is a day to live
I'm from South America
I know, you will not know
But now I'm cowboy
I'm gold, I am you
“Western garbage?”
Their music? His
neighborhood? “My west side”? What did we miss? “Now I am cowboy”? Certainly something the Beatles never
claimed, nor, did I think the people of Minas Gerais. “I’m gold, I am you.”
That last bit is redeeming and ultimately comprehensible.
He has a remarkable falsetto and beautiful arrangements that move from reflective to infectious
with his steady, cubical acoustic guitar.
The background sounds always evoke something out there in the jungle as
if we’re heading out up the Amazon with Claude Lévi-Strauss, in “Tristes
Tropiques.” I’ve got the album on
before “Milton” which is simply titled “Milton Nascimento” where the production
is a bit more pared down, but his lovely voice carries through. Born in Minas Gerais in 1942 he remains
active at 71.
Fascinating collection of ten year-old ladies swarmed our
place last night. Two different schools were in attendance and there were South
Koreans, and Czechs and Canadians and Chinese and they made clothes and painted
on the wall and seemed to enjoy the various kids dishes I’d made for them. I
couldn’t have been happier and my younger one is going through a bit of
reengagement with the Beatles and she wanted to play Sgt Pepper and the sound
track from “Help!” Cooking, chopping, serving with “Fixing a Hole” or “You’re
Gonna Loose That Girl,” it may as well have been my birthday.
Fascinating article about Chinese touring in Paris this
morning in the New York Times.
It’s hard to imagine that people are so naïve as to assume that Paris is
just fairy tale shopping trip, but this seems to be the bubble that is rather
abruptly ruptured for plane loads of Chinese tourists who are arriving spending
and leaving disgruntled. The
article makes the point that where as Japanese tourists were somewhat reserved,
this lot is assertive and finding it rubs the wrong way with French
waiters. If anything this helps to
confirm form me that I will try to pick the worst, least populated season for a
visit so we don’t add to the gêne
combinée of an American,
Chinese family.
What a remarkable generation gap this crop of entitled
Chinese are going to have with their parents one of these days. The one doesn’t understand eating
bitterness and the other is eventually going to call them, on the imperfect
bargains with stability that they will hand off as an inheritance.
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