Just a tender love song

John Martyn, Couldn't Love You More

Regina Spektor's What We Saw From the Cheap Seats

Isn't she pretty?

Regina Spektor is one of my favourite musicians/ singers/songwriters. Her lyrics are very literary and take on a huge variety of different topics (seriously, you would say Regina has lived a thousand lives...) in a vivid and sensitive way; her voice is really rich in emotion and, due to her accent, quite distinctive; and her combination of classical piano with contemporary beats really sets her apart. I like the way her music can be both playful and tragic, often almost at the same time - it really rings true to life (at least, to my perception of it).

I like the album cover: simple, in red and black
(a colour combination I like), and Regina wearing
 a silly/awesome cap.

Her new album What We Saw From the Cheap Seats has just come out and it has been colouring my studying/daydreaming (two activities which mix so well that I am unable to say where one begins and the other starts!). Compared to her early albums, it is much softer around the edges, with a clean, luscious production, no strange yelps or unpredictable vocal twists, and no macabre lyrics, but it is still a very lovely and personal output with that blend of upbeat mood and melancholy which her music encapsulates and reflects my own emotional outlook. 

Four of the songs (Small Town Moon, Don't Leave Me, Patron Saint, and Open) are studio versions of songs she had already played live, the rest are new material. Right now, my favourites are:

Small Town Moon 

very close to how I feel about my future at the moment, now that I am waiting to start anew. Giddy excitement and fear and apprehension live close together.

How can I leave without hurting every one who made me? 

All the Rowboats 

a song about museum pieces being locked away forever and trying to escape; it can be read as criticism to our obsession with conserving the past, or to the way we desire to reach eternity, which is cold and lifeless. I like its eeriness.

On the other hand, I really dislike Ballad of a Politician - it sounds very unpleasant to me, even though its criticism of political power and how it is reached is spot on. Maybe it will eventually grow on me, though - it has happened before (I disliked Dance Anthem of the 80's when I first listened to to it, but it grew to become very relevant to my own experiences and I eventually listened to it countless times). The rest of the songs are quite good, and I suppose I will go through phases of listening over and over to at least some of them depending on what's happening in my life. 

Overall, it is definitely worth a listen. I am really glad to have some new songs by Regina to explore: getting to know their textures is a joy to me, and listening to them is like having a cool friend - both wise and fun - speak to you of her life experiences. 

Great journalism - Amelia Gentleman

I usually read the news on-line at the Guardian website. I like reading what is going on in the world from the perspective(s) of the left, and I appreciate the range of opinions you can find in that spectrum and the balanced, fair way in which issues are presented. Their in-depth articles are often illuminating, and contribute to an increase in social consciousness. In particular, I have recently been reading a series of articles on the fringes of society by Amelia Gentleman, winner of the 2012 Orwell Journalism Prize.

These are truly brilliant pieces of writing, with an enviable clarity of presentation and humanity in the treatment of difficult subjects. She never takes the easy, sensationalist approach; instead, she allows the reader to form his or her own judgement of the situations described and to understand the reality of people living in social exclusion. They make for an engrossing, often challenging, trip to the dark corners of capitalism, and they are a refreshing antidote to the (deeply wrong) majority view that the people who inhabit them are sub-human. I whole-heartedly recommend reading them thoroughly!

England riots: the personal cost 
Life in a Young Offenders' Institution
Behind the Scenes at a School for Troubled Youngsters
Benefit Fraud: spies in the welfare war
Disability Benefits: why the new tests are failing
Caring for the Elderly: a day in the rounds

On the Road

I have recently read On the Road and it left an impression on me. It has a high power to transport you to its inside - 1950's Beat America - and therefore creates a complete setting inside your mind, where you are free to wander. 

With any narrative, you will eventually forget the story's flesh, no matter how much its details moved or amused you while reading; the book will only subsist in your spirit when it corresponds to a particular mental landscape. Only then does the book become yours, a mental window into another world you would never get to experience otherwise. Actually, the window analogy is imperfect in this case - the book's impression on the reader depends both on the author's construction and on the reader's effort to connect, which hangs on past experiences, an open mental state and that non-defined constant we call "personality". When this connection is forged, I believe it is lasting: the mere idea of a book can bring you physical and emotional sensations and a specific, though most often not verbalised, intellectual outlook on life.

On the Road. Isn't it an evocative set of words? To me, it now brings: a winding road in the middle of nowhere, the taste of dust and the dry softness it sets on your skin, the thick smell of tar, the exhilaration of movement on, the sense of possibility of looking at the stars when you might just go anywhere, the burning ache to feel everything at once. 

Kerouac's musical prose, filled with a weary but unstoppable enthusiasm for life, echoes the melancholy freedom of jazz music. The way the narrative is built resembles an impressionist painting in its vast, seemingly aimless scope of events and characters that, once you step back one step to look at it, are what gives the image meaning. His writing's brilliance, however, never feels like a prim stylistic touch. It is a genuine expression of a way of life, which is probably why this book is the icon of a particular generation's search for happiness.

Would I live like they did? Were they courageous or senseless? From a rational perspective, one would have to admit their behaviour was reckless and destructive and that they often treated others, particularly women, as objects. But it somehow doesn't see fair to judge the Beats from a fixed rational point of view, which they so strongly rejected. Instead, while reading, I tried to erase myself into the characters, in other words, to feel their experiences and not to analyse them. There's freedom in escaping from yourself as far as possible, which is why books like this one are tools of liberty for people who, on the outside, live quietly.

A film adaptation is coming out later this year. Though I think that the director Walter Salles is perfect for the source material, it would truly be a masterful achievement if he manages to convey that same sense of emotional freedom - sensuous and destructive, appealing and repulsive at the same time -through film.

In the Backseat

I like spending days travelling.

Inside the van, there open up gaps in everyday reality and you get fleeting glimpses at a different life, one in which time is unified and space itself - in the form of a changing landscape, with the light growing and then decaying into milky darkness - flows by you outside. Stories are told, stories big and tragic like the stuff of fiction but taken out of the fabric of reality. Revelations are made without even flinching - there can be no secrets in this movable world. In some intuitive way, we all notice that life is a blink of an eye, and there is an urgency to share all those experiences we feel as uniquely ours, those which we feel contain the core clues to the mystery of our own identity.

The backseat is a parenthesis.

And outside the landscape flows. The most beautiful moments are sunrise and sunset, when it somehow seems that the world might turn out a million different ways. The dawn is grey: before the sun rises, objects seem translucent. Then, colour blooms into the world and fleshes itself out throughout the day, ever-changing. The outside scenery suggests indefinite memories of things that don't belong to you but to the universe of human experience: longing and loss are contained in the van's unstoppable motion forward, a reminder of the constant mutability of our lives.

A sense of possibility, above all, awaits you at the backseat, when you're exhausted and hungry and your body is broken but you carry on speaking and looking people in the eyes as if that was moving the van, and, in that way, moving the whole world.

One!

This is my first blog post, so I suppose I should introduce myself. I am a 17-year-old girl from Lisbon, Portugal, though I'm moving to Oxford in a few months to start an undergraduate degree in Maths and Philosophy there (why did I have to say this straight away? I'm just too damn excited, that's why :) ). I started this blog because I felt an indefinite yearning to communicate and think more/in a more structured way. Basically, I want to write about things I find interesting and share them with whoever cares to read my ramblings. Comments are more than welcome! :)

Amongst the things I like and hope to post about here are:

Books

I have always loved books. As you can see from the picture on the left, I have plenty of them (you can also see I'm not the neatest person on the planet). Even before I knew how to read, I remember spending quite a lot of time listening to my parents reading to me, puzzling over the meaning of words (which were, of course, just strange marks on paper: isn't it amazing how we are able to assign meaning to sounds and graphical marks?) and inventing my own stories based on the pictures. Then, when I already knew how to read, I stumbled upon the Harry Potter books and fell for that whole imaginary universe (like so many other people). This obsession spread to reading in general - so much that I was once in a while forbidden to read! (How geeky is that?)

I try to read all sorts of books: classic and contemporary romances and novels, short stories, fantasy, poetry, pop science, biographies, memoirs, history, comics, children and young adult novels... You'll get to know my tastes in detail, because I'll definitely write quite a bit about books.

Music

Just like (almost) everyone, listening to music is very important for me to keep my mental stability and to feel connected to others - there's always a song for the way I feel. The name of this blog is a play on the title of Nick Drake's second album, and I chose it both because he's one of my favourite artists and because I just really like the sound of  the words - ethereal and filled with longing, just like Nick's music. This is his song Riverman - isn't it just beautiful?

Cinema

When I was 12 or so, I had a blog where I posted film reviews, though I eventually grew tired of it. I have to say I'm not nearly as much of a cinephile as I used to be back then, when I even entertained the fantasy of becoming a film director, but I still like watching films and find myself challenged to perceive the world in new ways and to connect more deeply with other people's experiences through cinema.

A screenshot from Splendor in the Grass,
just because I like it.

Philosophy/Maths/Science

After writing about my more or less socially acceptable interests, I have to mention that I really enjoy learning mathematics, thinking about philosophical problems and engaging with scientific ideas, particularly in the areas of physics and neuroscience, though I have to admit I know much less than I would like to. Nevertheless, I would say that the type of thinking involved in these areas is at the core of how I interpret the world (I hope that doesn't sound pretentious or too much like a personal statement). 

Politics and Society

Be warned: I'm a liberal on the red side of the political spectrum. I enjoy discussing politics and social issues, particularly related to education, which I believe (like so many others...) to be very important if we want to build a different society, one where there actually is equality between people, and therefore all are granted freedom to fulfill themselves personally and as members of humanity. I hope to be able to participate in the project of building that world throughout my life.

Then, I have a bourgeois side: I like nice and pretty things (scenic views, good-looking people, clothes, cooking, etcetera). 

I hope to write often and about different things, and I also hope that you enjoy reading!

Xx