June 14, 2012

Yes– blue skies! And from my window I can hear the happy sounds of children splashing in the water, shrieking with delight to be back on the beach. It’s still cold for Cariocas at night (mid-50s) but gets up into the 70s this afternoon. I am stuck in the piece of music I am now writing and pace through the streets humming and discarding melodic possibilities in rhythm with my footsteps, sometimes conducting unconsciously. Well, Rio is a city of music, and they certainly won’t think I’m a tourist (: just a beleza maluca musico. I am still tied to the US through my computer– arrangements that have to be made for events that continue to be planned for. It’s impossible to truly get away these days if one takes technology along. On the other hand I wouldn’t be going to Sao Paulo without a happy congruence of internet correspondences, so I have to put the bad in perspective with the good. At night I talk to my daughter on skype, who seems overwhelmed by the swirl of events in her world. I wish I could help with more than words, but even when I am at home we are so far apart. The ease of travel and relocation in our modern world, yet again, a bad-yet-good side of modernity that I am keenly aware of. Rio+20 events begin tomorrow and my landlady, an environmental activist, is all in a tizzy getting ready for it. “The UN Conference on Sustainable Development” will host leaders from all over the world– but nobody seems to know if Barak or Hilary will be here. Pictured right are the bikes by Praia Vermelha that my apartment-mate Ana has told me can be borrowed from the Itau bank, if one just signs up for the service. Although I’m tempted, I think I’ll try bike-riding with my new knee at home first, where the traffic isn’t so intense and unpredictable– yes, even including Boston drivers. At night I watch the tele-novela ‘Avenida Brasil” w/ Miriam’s son Sergio, paper and pencil in hand to list the names of the man characters (20 so far) who in the 3 episodes I have missed have managed 2 divorces and several reconciliations, real and fake. Well, it is good for my portugues.

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Written by mairmusic

June 15, 2012 at 10:27 am

Posted in June, Rio

4 Responses

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The only drivers I found to be worse than Boston drivers are those we have in SoCal…and bike riding here can be a real challenge. ;-)

slpmartin

June 15, 2012 at 10:55 am

Reply
- Commuting w/ body exposed requires more nerve than I’ve got.
  
  mairmusic
  
  June 15, 2012 at 7:39 pm
  
  Reply
bike riding is convenient but risky too. if you plan to ride one be cautious.

Sharmishtha Basu

June 17, 2012 at 8:19 am

Reply
- no, not here, not now– too risky far from home.
  
  mairmusic
  
  June 20, 2012 at 11:11 pm
  
  Reply

Who am I?

A mandolinist, a bandolimist, a writer, a photographer, a wannabe Brasileira. Check my webpage for information on my music and my sometimes life in Rio.

What is this?

I have made a plan for this year, beginning on my birthday- October 16, 2008 - to keep creativity in focus in my daily life, spontaneously, reflectively, and with intention, by setting in motion several series of small events. Every day I will take a photo and record a thought. Every week I will write a sonnet and photograph myself in the context of my life. And I will post it all here. Maybe not every day, but I will maintain the schedule of each series and post as often as I can. I think this will be fun, may be interesting, and will result in a considered year of small moments stolen from a busy life and strung together to make... who knows? At this point it's just a plan. Wish me luck~ here goes!

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“Year 2″ begins– so what’s changing?

I have completed a year of this blog-- amazing! And I've decided to continue on, because this document has become a treasured reflective spot in my life. There will be some changes for "Year 2," beginning on my birthday, October 16, 2009. I'll expand the options for my weekly poem beyond sonnet to add some other forms-- rondeau or triolet, possibly villanelle. I just added the decima in late January. And in August I am adding the pantoum. Definitions will appear below as the forms enter this page. I'll continue to post a photo daily, but I may post several pictures taken on one day over the course of a week if I have an interesting series. I may even post an old photo if I'm writing about something I'm thinking back to. I'll continue to have fun with this project & I hope you will too. Thanks for reading!

“Year 3″

For Year 3 I tried some changes, including other people in the self-portraits that accompany my poems, adding "Musical Sundays" to post mp3s of my music, but these petered out in a few months. This is simply a place for my daily thoughts & photos, and weekly poems in the forms I love. Onward...!

The material on these pages belongs to me

Everything published here was created especially for this project and is owned and copyright by me. When the project is complete I may do something concrete with some of it. So enjoy, but please, if you want to share more than a quote or two send people here, don't displace my work from its context or authorship.

What’s a sonnet?

A sonnet is a 14-line iambic pentameter poem with a unique and characteristic rhyme scheme. They have been written in Europe and England for centuries, and usually combine viewpoint and reflection in a personal yet universal way. I call mine blank-verse sonnets and try for a simple casual scan that observes yet obscures the form. Inspirations are the American sonnets of e. e. cummings and Edna "Vince" Millay.

What’s a villanelle?

A villanelle is an early French form with 19 lines using only 2 rhymes, traditionally broken into 6 verses. It's kind of obsessive, with lines 1 & 3 repeating alternately, the 4th time as lines 18 & 19. The lines can be any length, but don't seem to vary within a poem, and subjects include love, loss and challenge. Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath all wrote them, and from the minute I typed villanelle in "Year 2 begins" I was itching to try it out because I've never written one. My first appear in Weeks 53 & 56. I've run some verses together, as many modern writers have done, for continuity and a cleaner line.

What’s a rondeau?

A rondeau is a form of medieval poetry that pre-dates the villanelle and also uses only 2 rhymes. The earliest come from an 8-line song form with 2 lines of music that repeat-- line 1 as 4 & 7, and line 2 as 8, rhyming the rest in a characteristic pattern. The result is a sturdy little poem that makes its point thoughtfully, and less obsessively than the villanelle, perhaps because the generating couplet is unrhymed, and the lines don't need to be the same length, just able to be sung or spoken in the same amount of time. The first ones appear in weeks 55 & 57. Sometimes the poetic form, sans music, is called a triolet.

What’s a decima?

A decima is an early 10-line Spanish poetic form, with a distinct break after the first 4. It uses an 8-syllable line and has an unusual but characteristic rhyme scheme. It's also a 19th-century form of improvised Cuban song so I thought it would work well in this blog format. My first appear in weeks 66 & 69.

What’s a pantoum?

A Malaysian form from the 15th century-- how exotic! It's a series of quatrains, w/ lines 2 & 4 repeating as lines 1 & 3 in the next. The last quatrain also uses lines 1 & 3 from the first quatrain, with the first line ending the poem. So every line is used twice. My first one is week 95.

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