Às vezes as pessoas têm de ir longe para entender o que se passa ao redor delas - ou dentro delas mesmas. O segredo é a perspectiva. Quanto a mim especificamente, estou indo ao local mais distante que posso ir sob este céu. Até logo. :) (G.P.)
domingo, 6 de junho de 2010
quinta-feira, 3 de junho de 2010
Life is a Cherry Flower
Myazaki Fuyumi, gorgeous as the last snowflake of a winter night and elegant as a fox, watched alone the fall of the petals of a cherry tree. Many thoughts were crossing her mind, most of them ephemeral as the flowers themselves, but the most significant one was the reflection regarding the simplicity of the existence of a cherry flower: all it had to do was jump off the twig, deliver itself to the wills of the wind and fall to the soil in a silent trajectory. In a certain way, Fuyumi was jealous about the abscence of intentions, goals, protocols to fulfill, passions and quandaries in the existence of a cherry flower. Everything would be simpler if people were as pink flowers falling from a tree after the winter, allowing themselves to be led by the breeze and nothing else.
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- Originally published in the Cow Creek Review 2009/2010, the Pittsburg State University's Literary Magazine, p. 128 (Kansas, United States).
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- Originally published in the Cow Creek Review 2009/2010, the Pittsburg State University's Literary Magazine, p. 128 (Kansas, United States).
sexta-feira, 21 de maio de 2010
Thousand Petals
The sky is a violet painting
and the sun is a red brush.
Along the river, bamboos whisper,
maybe wishing to remaining stars.
And on the bridge, no one stands
to glance at white and red carps;
they swim over pebbles of granite
in cold water made of crystal.
Here comes the first breeze of the day
greeting the queen of the cherry trees.
Over the hill, she wonders about nothing
and each one of her thousand petals
is a piece of a broken heart.
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- Originally published in the Cow Creek Review 2009/2010, the Pittsburg State University's Literary Magazine, p. 241 (Kansas, United States).
Marcadores:
Cow Creek Review,
poesia,
poetry,
Thousand Petals
quinta-feira, 20 de maio de 2010
♫ Pipes of Peace
Esta é uma canção que me lembra minha infância. Eu a ouvi pela primeira vez quando criança com meu pai, mas o tempo passou e tudo o que restou dela em minha memória foi a melodia e alguns fragmentos da letra. Então, um dia eu procurei por ela novamente e aí está: Pipes of Peace, de Paul McCartney.
É uma canção sobre o mundo que será deixado às nossas crianças. O vídeo é particularmente bom, mostrando soldados dos dois lados da mesma guerra com as fotos de suas respectivas mulheres, cada um com suas próprias esperanças particulares.
A mensagem é bela: os problemas desaparecem com o amor.
Mas não deixa de ser uma utopia.
No entanto, não deixa de ser algo em que se pensar.
I light a candle to our love,
In love our problems disappear.
But all in all we soon discover
That one and one is all we long to hear.
All 'round the world,
Little children being born to the world.
Got to give them all we can 'til the war is won,
Then will the work be done.
Help them to learn (help them to learn)
Songs of joy instead of burn, baby, burn.
Let us show them how to play
The pipes of peace,
Play the pipes of peace.
Help me to learn
Songs of joy instead of burn, baby, burn,
Won't you show me to play (how to play)
The pipes of peace, (pipes of peace)
Play the pipes of peace
What do you say? (what do you say?)
Will the human race be run in a day? (in a day?)
Or will someone save this planet we're playing on?
Is it the only one?
What are we gonna do?
Help them to see (help them to see)
That the people here are like you and me. (like you and me)
Let us show them how to play (how to play)
The pipes of peace, (pipes of peace)
Play the pipes of peace.
I light a candle to our love,
In love our problems disappear.
But all in all we soon discover
That one and one is all we long to hear.
É uma canção sobre o mundo que será deixado às nossas crianças. O vídeo é particularmente bom, mostrando soldados dos dois lados da mesma guerra com as fotos de suas respectivas mulheres, cada um com suas próprias esperanças particulares.
A mensagem é bela: os problemas desaparecem com o amor.
Mas não deixa de ser uma utopia.
No entanto, não deixa de ser algo em que se pensar.
I light a candle to our love,
In love our problems disappear.
But all in all we soon discover
That one and one is all we long to hear.
All 'round the world,
Little children being born to the world.
Got to give them all we can 'til the war is won,
Then will the work be done.
Help them to learn (help them to learn)
Songs of joy instead of burn, baby, burn.
Let us show them how to play
The pipes of peace,
Play the pipes of peace.
Help me to learn
Songs of joy instead of burn, baby, burn,
Won't you show me to play (how to play)
The pipes of peace, (pipes of peace)
Play the pipes of peace
What do you say? (what do you say?)
Will the human race be run in a day? (in a day?)
Or will someone save this planet we're playing on?
Is it the only one?
What are we gonna do?
Help them to see (help them to see)
That the people here are like you and me. (like you and me)
Let us show them how to play (how to play)
The pipes of peace, (pipes of peace)
Play the pipes of peace.
I light a candle to our love,
In love our problems disappear.
But all in all we soon discover
That one and one is all we long to hear.
terça-feira, 18 de maio de 2010
♫ Into the West
Into the West (da trilha sonora de O Senhor dos Anéis: O Retorno do Rei), de Annie Lennox e Howard Shore, é, na minha opinião, uma canção sobre o final das coisas: aquele momento em que as pessoas percebem que tudo acabou, e passam pela breve transição entre o medo e a aceitação. Trata-se também de quando você luta tanto por um ideal que, quando finalmente o alcança, percebe que o ato de lutar fez com que você mudasse os seus conceitos, e então seus ideais deixam de servir a você.
Eu gosto particularmente do trecho "You and I will meet again/ And you'll be here in my arms/ Just sleeping". Simples, concreto, nostálgico. Talvez verdadeiro, talvez não.
E, é claro, gosto de imaginar que, um dia, tudo se tornará vidro prateado.
Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You’ve come to journey's end
Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore
Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping
What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home
And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
All souls pass
Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time
Don't say we have come now to the end
White shores are calling
You and I will meet again
And you'll be here in my arms
Just sleeping
What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home
And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
Grey ships pass
Into the West
Eu gosto particularmente do trecho "You and I will meet again/ And you'll be here in my arms/ Just sleeping". Simples, concreto, nostálgico. Talvez verdadeiro, talvez não.
E, é claro, gosto de imaginar que, um dia, tudo se tornará vidro prateado.
Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You’ve come to journey's end
Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore
Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping
What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home
And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
All souls pass
Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time
Don't say we have come now to the end
White shores are calling
You and I will meet again
And you'll be here in my arms
Just sleeping
What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home
And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
Grey ships pass
Into the West
sábado, 15 de maio de 2010
About disappointments
You will always get disappointed. Frustration is part of life, and – let’s face it sincerely – there’s no happy ending. It’s hard for one to go through life without suffering. You will also have moments of joy. Both of them will vanish away, which is frustrating and cheering at the same time.
Making choices would be easier if you could know what’s gonna happen next, but you don’t know. No one knows. Sometimes, you will make the right decision, sometimes you won’t. There are situations when mistakes lead to right decisions, and others when mistakes are nothing but mistakes. Get used to the fact that you are rolling dice against chaos.
Everybody wants different things, but no one will get everything that he or she always wanted.
People are not perfect, and the decisions that they make are based on their particular quandaries. They are not characters from a novel, whose actions will lead to a planned end. They make mistakes, and, eventually, someone will disappoint you.
You are the character. However, one day you will no longer be the character of the history of your life, and you will become only a reader. On this day, everything will be a plot, and, after the heat of each moment, all that will last is a collection of meaningful moments. The doubts and the bitterness will be lost in the middle. Maybe things will make sense at this point, but maybe there’s no sense at all. And then, you will look back, and see what you did, and what you could have done.
Anyway, the end is not planned. (G.P.)
Making choices would be easier if you could know what’s gonna happen next, but you don’t know. No one knows. Sometimes, you will make the right decision, sometimes you won’t. There are situations when mistakes lead to right decisions, and others when mistakes are nothing but mistakes. Get used to the fact that you are rolling dice against chaos.
Everybody wants different things, but no one will get everything that he or she always wanted.
People are not perfect, and the decisions that they make are based on their particular quandaries. They are not characters from a novel, whose actions will lead to a planned end. They make mistakes, and, eventually, someone will disappoint you.
You are the character. However, one day you will no longer be the character of the history of your life, and you will become only a reader. On this day, everything will be a plot, and, after the heat of each moment, all that will last is a collection of meaningful moments. The doubts and the bitterness will be lost in the middle. Maybe things will make sense at this point, but maybe there’s no sense at all. And then, you will look back, and see what you did, and what you could have done.
Anyway, the end is not planned. (G.P.)
Sobre desapontamentos
Você sempre irá se desapontar. A frustração faz parte da vida, e – vamos encarar com sinceridade – nenhum final é feliz. Dificilmente você passará pela vida sem sofrer. Você também terá momentos de alegria. Ambos irão passar, o que é, ao mesmo tempo, frustrante e animador.
Fazer escolhas seria mais fácil se você soubesse o que irá acontecer em seguida, mas você não sabe. Ninguém sabe. Às vezes, você irá acertar, às vezes não. Há situações em que erros levam a acertos, e outras em que erros são apenas erros. Acostume-se com o fato de que você está jogando dados contra o caos.
Todos querem coisas diferentes, mas ninguém conseguirá tudo o que sempre quis.
As pessoas não são perfeitas e as decisões que elas tomam são baseadas em seus dilemas particulares. Elas não são personagens de um romance, cujas ações culminam num final planejado. Elas cometem erros e, eventualmente, alguém irá desapontá-lo.
Você é o personagem. Todavia, um dia você deixará de ser o personagem da história da sua vida e se tornará apenas um leitor. Nesse dia, tudo será apenas um enredo e, passado o calor de cada momento, só sobrará uma coleção de acontecimentos importantes. As dúvidas e amarguras ficarão perdidas no meio. Talvez as coisas façam sentido nesse ponto, mas talvez simplesmente não haja nenhum. E, então, você olhará para trás e verá o que você fez e o que poderia ter feito.
De qualquer forma, o final não está planejado. (G.P.)
Fazer escolhas seria mais fácil se você soubesse o que irá acontecer em seguida, mas você não sabe. Ninguém sabe. Às vezes, você irá acertar, às vezes não. Há situações em que erros levam a acertos, e outras em que erros são apenas erros. Acostume-se com o fato de que você está jogando dados contra o caos.
Todos querem coisas diferentes, mas ninguém conseguirá tudo o que sempre quis.
As pessoas não são perfeitas e as decisões que elas tomam são baseadas em seus dilemas particulares. Elas não são personagens de um romance, cujas ações culminam num final planejado. Elas cometem erros e, eventualmente, alguém irá desapontá-lo.
Você é o personagem. Todavia, um dia você deixará de ser o personagem da história da sua vida e se tornará apenas um leitor. Nesse dia, tudo será apenas um enredo e, passado o calor de cada momento, só sobrará uma coleção de acontecimentos importantes. As dúvidas e amarguras ficarão perdidas no meio. Talvez as coisas façam sentido nesse ponto, mas talvez simplesmente não haja nenhum. E, então, você olhará para trás e verá o que você fez e o que poderia ter feito.
De qualquer forma, o final não está planejado. (G.P.)
quarta-feira, 5 de maio de 2010
Sobre o momento certo
A linha do Equador tem quarenta mil quilômetros de comprimento.
Você pode viver muito, mas não passará de cem anos.
Durante a sua vida, você piscará algumas centenas de milhões de vezes.
São mais de seis bilhões de pessoas para ver entre uma e outra piscada. (G.P.)
Você pode viver muito, mas não passará de cem anos.
Durante a sua vida, você piscará algumas centenas de milhões de vezes.
São mais de seis bilhões de pessoas para ver entre uma e outra piscada. (G.P.)
segunda-feira, 3 de maio de 2010
The Station
There are many people who arrive at the station. And they’re all alone. Sometimes they arrive in pairs, sets of ten, dozens… Millions every day. But they are all alone. The solitude follows them closely, gazing from the shadows. And so the feeling of missing… It’s the most delicate of the human feelings, but one of the most painful. And here, in the station, it’s more present, getting heavier over every shoulder like one ton of lead, like one of that very salty tears. Sometimes, the feeling of missing is the solitude, sometimes the solitude is the feeling of missing.
The people who arrive at the station are of many ages. Most of them bring the wrinkles like trophies, deep furrows of wisdom that time engraved like a craftsman engraving wood. But there are the ones who arrive young. Some are children in tender ages, that could bring over their backs the wings of angels – and who knows if they won’t? There are also the ones who are carrying warm kisses of love, and these are the saddest of all.
The people who arrive at the station have many faces. Some of them arrive sad. Others, curious. Many of them make prayers, the last hopes of the human kind. In the station, everyone is safe, but there are still the ones who look scared. There are even the resolute, the only ones who bought tickets, which carry the sad suicidal decisions. And there are the serious and wistful ones, who keep thinking about the meaning of everything. But some of them – few, actually – smile from the depths of their hearts, maybe because they understood the truth that they had always looked for, or because they just discovered that, at the end, it was all a big and funny joke.
Not one of the many people that arrive at the station carries heavy luggage or suitcases. They don’t carry anything, actually. But, at the same time, they carry everything. They carry themselves, which is everything they have now and everything they always had. None of them knows where are they carrying it to, but some of them keep trying to guess during the interval of one prayer or another.
There are many people of many colors, races and social classes, many speakers of many languages, many believers of many religions. At the station, they are all the same. They always were, but just now they realized it. People say that you just see what’s important when it’s too late.
When it’s time, all of them enter the train.
It’s the last metaphor. It’s the last euphemism. (G.P)
The people who arrive at the station are of many ages. Most of them bring the wrinkles like trophies, deep furrows of wisdom that time engraved like a craftsman engraving wood. But there are the ones who arrive young. Some are children in tender ages, that could bring over their backs the wings of angels – and who knows if they won’t? There are also the ones who are carrying warm kisses of love, and these are the saddest of all.
The people who arrive at the station have many faces. Some of them arrive sad. Others, curious. Many of them make prayers, the last hopes of the human kind. In the station, everyone is safe, but there are still the ones who look scared. There are even the resolute, the only ones who bought tickets, which carry the sad suicidal decisions. And there are the serious and wistful ones, who keep thinking about the meaning of everything. But some of them – few, actually – smile from the depths of their hearts, maybe because they understood the truth that they had always looked for, or because they just discovered that, at the end, it was all a big and funny joke.
Not one of the many people that arrive at the station carries heavy luggage or suitcases. They don’t carry anything, actually. But, at the same time, they carry everything. They carry themselves, which is everything they have now and everything they always had. None of them knows where are they carrying it to, but some of them keep trying to guess during the interval of one prayer or another.
There are many people of many colors, races and social classes, many speakers of many languages, many believers of many religions. At the station, they are all the same. They always were, but just now they realized it. People say that you just see what’s important when it’s too late.
When it’s time, all of them enter the train.
It’s the last metaphor. It’s the last euphemism. (G.P)
A Estação
São muitos os que chegam à estação. E todos estão sozinhos. Às vezes chegam em pares, em dezenas, dúzias, grosas... Milhões todos os dias. Mas todos estão sozinhos. A solidão os acompanha de perto, fitando-os nas sombras. E também a saudade... É a mais sutil das particularidades humanas, mas uma das mais dolorosas. E aqui, na estação, ela se faz mais presente, pesando em cada ombro como uma tonelada de chumbo, como uma lágrima daquelas bem salgadas. Às vezes a saudade é a solidão, às vezes a solidão é a saudade.
São muitas as idades dos muitos que chegam à estação. A maioria traz consigo as rugas como troféus, profundos sulcos de sabedoria que o tempo talhou como um artesão molda sua madeira. Mas há aqueles que chegam jovens. Alguns são crianças em tenra idade, que poderiam muito bem levar nas costas as asas dos anjos – e quem sabe não levarão? Há também aqueles que carregam beijos de amor ainda mornos, e esses são de todos os mais tristes.
São muitos os rostos dos muitos que chegam à estação. Alguns chegam tristonhos. Alguns, curiosos. Muitos entoam preces, as últimas esperanças do ser humano. Apesar de na estação estarem todos incólumes, muitos parecem amedrontados. Há também aqueles resolutos, os únicos que compraram tickets, que carregam a triste obstinação dos suicidas. Há os desesperados e aqueles que parecem nem perceber o que aconteceu. E há os taciturnos, pensativos, que filosofam sobre o sentido de todas as coisas. Mas alguns – poucos, é verdade – sorriem do fundo do coração, talvez porque tenham finalmente entendido a verdade que sempre buscaram, ou descoberto que, no final das contas, tudo não passou de uma grande e divertida piada.
Nenhum dos muitos que chegam à estação traz malas pesadas. Nem mesmo bagagem de mão eles levam. Nada, na verdade. Mas, ao mesmo tempo, levam tudo. Levam eles mesmos, que é tudo o que têm agora e tudo o que sempre tiveram. Nenhum deles sabe para onde estão levando, apesar de alguns continuarem conjecturando em meio a uma e outra prece.
Há muitos de muitas cores, muitos de muitas raças, muitos de muitas classes sociais, muitos falantes de muitas línguas, muitos crentes de muitas religiões. Na estação, são todos iguais. Eles sempre foram, mas talvez só agora se dêem conta. Realmente dizem que as pessoas só entendem essas coisas quando é tarde demais.
Quando chega a hora, todos sobem no trem.
É a última metáfora. É o último eufemismo. (G.P.)
São muitas as idades dos muitos que chegam à estação. A maioria traz consigo as rugas como troféus, profundos sulcos de sabedoria que o tempo talhou como um artesão molda sua madeira. Mas há aqueles que chegam jovens. Alguns são crianças em tenra idade, que poderiam muito bem levar nas costas as asas dos anjos – e quem sabe não levarão? Há também aqueles que carregam beijos de amor ainda mornos, e esses são de todos os mais tristes.
São muitos os rostos dos muitos que chegam à estação. Alguns chegam tristonhos. Alguns, curiosos. Muitos entoam preces, as últimas esperanças do ser humano. Apesar de na estação estarem todos incólumes, muitos parecem amedrontados. Há também aqueles resolutos, os únicos que compraram tickets, que carregam a triste obstinação dos suicidas. Há os desesperados e aqueles que parecem nem perceber o que aconteceu. E há os taciturnos, pensativos, que filosofam sobre o sentido de todas as coisas. Mas alguns – poucos, é verdade – sorriem do fundo do coração, talvez porque tenham finalmente entendido a verdade que sempre buscaram, ou descoberto que, no final das contas, tudo não passou de uma grande e divertida piada.
Nenhum dos muitos que chegam à estação traz malas pesadas. Nem mesmo bagagem de mão eles levam. Nada, na verdade. Mas, ao mesmo tempo, levam tudo. Levam eles mesmos, que é tudo o que têm agora e tudo o que sempre tiveram. Nenhum deles sabe para onde estão levando, apesar de alguns continuarem conjecturando em meio a uma e outra prece.
Há muitos de muitas cores, muitos de muitas raças, muitos de muitas classes sociais, muitos falantes de muitas línguas, muitos crentes de muitas religiões. Na estação, são todos iguais. Eles sempre foram, mas talvez só agora se dêem conta. Realmente dizem que as pessoas só entendem essas coisas quando é tarde demais.
Quando chega a hora, todos sobem no trem.
É a última metáfora. É o último eufemismo. (G.P.)
domingo, 25 de abril de 2010
Crítica: Alice no País das Maravilhas
Se você não assistiu ao filme, esta crítica pode conter spoilers.
Lançado no Brasil quase dois meses depois de sua première, o filme Alice no País das Maravilhas, da Disney, é aquela história que todos conhecem: a garota cai no buraco do coelho e encontra um mundo completamente insano do outro lado. Parecia, portanto, um material compatível à insanidade genial do diretor Tim Burton.
Lançado no Brasil quase dois meses depois de sua première, o filme Alice no País das Maravilhas, da Disney, é aquela história que todos conhecem: a garota cai no buraco do coelho e encontra um mundo completamente insano do outro lado. Parecia, portanto, um material compatível à insanidade genial do diretor Tim Burton.
Balloon Boy, um dos personagens excêntricos criadospelo diretor Tim Burton, em exposição no MoMA
(Museum of Modern Art of New York)
Antes de qualquer coisa, Alice no País das Maravilhas trata da busca pela identidade, que é um tema recorrente nessa e em outras obras de Burton; a maiorias de seus personagens têm um quê de desajustados nos mundos em que vivem, seja o garoto com mãos de tesoura (Edward Scissorhands, 1990) ou o esqueleto que quer recriar o Natal (Nightmare before Christmas, 1993).
Porém, neste filme em particular, o conceito que mais chama a atenção é a busca por uma identidade em meio à hipocrisia da sociedade, e eu não estou falando apenas sobre Alice (interpretada por Mia Wasikowska). A cena em que o Chapeleiro Maluco (Johny Depp) desmascara a corte da Rainha Vermelha (Helena Bonham Carter), formada por impostores que encenam deformidades para fazer a cabeçorra da tirana parecer menos absurda, é uma afronta à hipocrisia. Todavia, a ironia é que a Rainha Branca (Anne Hathaway), ainda que admirada por todos, não é menos hipócrita. Ela passa boa parte das cenas em que aparece desfilando com os modismos de uma princesa e alardeando que não matará uma criatura sequer por ser uma atitude que vai contra seus princípios. Passar a tarefa a outra pessoa, porém, parece ser completamente aceitável para ela, uma vez que Alice é incumbida de matar o dragão. Ou seja, hipocrisia e demagogia. Isso faz a Rainha Branca mais humana do que os personagens supostamente insanos, como a Rainha Vermelha ou a Lebre de Março, mas, ao mesmo tempo, menos digna de apreço. O fato de ela ser assim representada pelo diretor talvez seja uma mensagem velada que Burton e a roteirista Linda Woolverton (surpreendentemente, a mesma de O Rei Leão e A Bela e a Fera) nos quiseram passar.
Alice, por sua vez, também é uma hipócrita que chega ao “País das Maravilhas” dizendo que “não mata”, mas acaba matando o dragão no final após ser manipulada pela Rainha Branca. Como recompensa, ela ganha o sangue da criatura que abateu, o que ao meu ver é uma metáfora muito clara da mancha que perdura sobre o algoz de qualquer ser vivente. A partir daquele momento, ela tem nas mãos o sangue de quem matou.
O Chapeleiro, por sua vez, é o único personagem que se mantém crível em sua loucura. Assim como o Gato Risonho (voz de Stephen Fry), é um dos poucos personagens que não se mostra hipócrita. Também é o único personagem com o qual realmente nos importamos como plateia. A cena em que ele pergunta a Alice se ele é real ou não, por exemplo, nos diz muito sobre sua personalidade e sobre a própria condição humana (assunto sobre o qual eu comentei em outro post): afinal o que é ser “de verdade”?
No caso de Alice, supõe-se que é no mundo surreal que ela vai encontrar sua identidade. Eu, particularmente, não acredito que seja isso o que acontece. Assim como a Wendy de Peter Pan, ela não pode viver sua fantasia para sempre. Em seu mundo imaginário, ela continuaria sendo uma deslocada. Porém, ao voltar ao mundo real e dizer as verdades cruéis que todos não gostariam de ouvir, ela torna-se sócia do ex-sócio de seu falecido pai e ambiciona expandir os negócios ao Oriente. Na época em que a história se passa, Hong Kong ainda está sob o comando da Inglaterra e a China apresenta-se como um novo mundo a ser explorado. Mais do que isso: é um mundo que está ao alcance de Alice. (G.P.)
quinta-feira, 22 de abril de 2010
Sobre o amor
O amor é algo difícil de descrever. Muitos já tentaram ao longo da história e não há uma literatura em todo o mundo que não tenha o amor como assunto central em milhares de suas obras. Poetas de todos os continentes gastaram suas noites e suas penas tentando resumi-lo, ora em algumas linhas, ora em centenas de páginas. Porque o amor é algo que nós buscamos incessantemente. E nós ainda o buscamos, mesmo sabendo que mais cedo ou mais tarde iremos acabar sofrendo – afinal, mesmo que o amor seja infinito, a vida não é. Porém, pode uma vida ser completa sem alguém para dividi-la? No final das contas, é por isso que vale a pena. Pois os inevitáveis momentos ruins são apenas sombras se comparados aos momentos em que nos sentimos completos: dois corpos que se tornam um, duas energias que fluem na mesma direção; não porque precisam, mas porque é tudo o que querem. (G.P.)
quinta-feira, 15 de abril de 2010
Sobre sonhos que as pessoas têm
Eu estava conversando esses dias com um amigo dos Estados Unidos... Pinóquio queria ser um menino. Esse meu amigo quer ser um soldado. Ambos querem ser de verdade, seja lá o que isso signifique. É difícil dizer. “Infelizmente, parece que ouvir o zumbido das balas e o rugido dos canhões é menos aterrorizante do que viver mais 50 anos neste mundo incerto”, disse esse meu amigo. Também é difícil dizer o que é mais aterrorizante.
Todos querem ser alguma coisa. É tudo uma questão de ir do ponto x ao ponto y, e a vida é aquilo que acontece no meio. Às vezes – geralmente sempre – não é possível saber o que vai acontecer quando se chega lá. “Então, qual é a razão de tudo isso?”, perguntou meu amigo.
Eu, particularmente, gosto de pensar que deve ser engraçado quando nós chegamos ao final e olhamos para trás. Mesmo que não faça sentido, deve ser uma grande piada. “E quem está rindo?”, perguntou meu amigo que quer ser um soldado de verdade.
É difícil dizer. (G.P.)
Todos querem ser alguma coisa. É tudo uma questão de ir do ponto x ao ponto y, e a vida é aquilo que acontece no meio. Às vezes – geralmente sempre – não é possível saber o que vai acontecer quando se chega lá. “Então, qual é a razão de tudo isso?”, perguntou meu amigo.
Eu, particularmente, gosto de pensar que deve ser engraçado quando nós chegamos ao final e olhamos para trás. Mesmo que não faça sentido, deve ser uma grande piada. “E quem está rindo?”, perguntou meu amigo que quer ser um soldado de verdade.
É difícil dizer. (G.P.)
quarta-feira, 7 de abril de 2010
Sobre Comunicação Internacional / About International Communication
Continuando a discussão que iniciei com meu post #1 (Sobre certo e errado), posto hoje um artigo sobre o desafio de se entender a diversidade. Enjoy!
The Challenge of Understanding Diversity:
Noise in Communication between Nations and Cultures
It is undeniable that the 21st century is the age of information, which means that communication was never so agile and so important as it is now. It is also undeniable that today it is so much easier to cross long distances than it was before. With the facilities of fast travel methods, someone can easily arrive from any point of the world to any other point after just a few hours. This is a process that has been developed since the first navigator started to explore the oceans in order to find new worlds. As it was cited by Conrad Phillip Kottak in his book Cultural Anthropology:
...in the 15th century, Europe established regular contact with Asia, Africa, and eventually the New World (the Caribbean and the Americas). Christopper Columbus's first voyage from Spain to the Bahamas and the Caribbean in 1492 was soon followed by additional voyages. These journeys opened the way for a major exchange of people, resources, diseases, and ideas, as the Old and New Worlds were forever linked.
Since that time, and even more with the advent of globalization, these cultural connections became more frequent, congregating in common spaces people who come from different places and -- more important than that -- different cultures. Regarding communication, we can wonder what kind of difficulties these people can face throughout this process and how these difficulties can be avoided.
An emblematic example of problems unchained by international/intercultural communication was the publication of charges of Mohammed, the founder of the islamic religion, and the waves of wrath that they caused against some European countries. This fact happened 4 years ago, initially when the danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published twelve charges of the prophet Mohammed, including one where he appears using a turban with the shape of a bomb. After that, the polemic images were also published in Norway and France, causing a huge international conflict, especially because, according to the foundations of the islamic religion, any visual representation of Mohammed is forbidden. However, according to the freedom of press -- which is a strong principle of democratic nations --, anyone is passible of being criticized, and it doesn't exclude religious characters.
To clarify why this kind of things happen, it is important to understand how communication works. The most known model of communication always includes a transmitter sending a codified message through a channel to a receiver. If some anomaly happens in this process, noise can occur, and by noise we can understand everything that can confuse or disable the functioning of the communication process. After the reception of the message, the receiver decodes and interprets it. This basic model of communication was designed by the engineers Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in order to increase the efficiency of communication through telephone cables, which means that it is technical-oriented. In the telephone example, the channel would be the cable, and the noise would be just the crackling produced by the wire.
When this model is applied on human communication, the transmitter and the receiver can be individuals or groups of people, as nations or representants of different cultures, for example. The code is the language, and it is determinative to both the communication agents to be familiar with the same idiom. As it was written by Kottak, "speakers of particular languages use sets of terms to organize, or categorize, their experiences and perceptions. (...) Ethnosemantics studies such classification systems in various languages." But that's not all, since the language is not the only factor that contributes to the perception of the receiver. As Kottak afirms, "no language is a uniform system in which everyone talks just like everyone else. Linguistics performance (what people actually say) is the concern of sociolinguistics." Sociolinguistic amplifies the study of communication, adding the social context to the mix (Eckert). In other words, when this model is applied on human communication, there is one more important aspect that can create noise between the decodification and the interpretation. This aspect is the repertory of the receiver, which is the package of previous information that he or she had before receiving the message.
The repertory is an important part of the process, because it works like a filter to the content of the message. It means that two receivers with different repertories can interpret the same message in two different ways. When the communication process happens between transmitters and receivers with different cultural repertories, the possibility of noise during the communication process is increased, because the social context, the protocols, the expectations, and the standards are different. As it was explained by the British anthropologist Edward Tylor, "culture (...) includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society," and all these factors are included in the respective repertories of the transmitter and the receiver. Consequently, if the repertories are too divergent, the communication becomes a strong colision of points of view and a source of misunderstandings.
In order to avoid that, the best solution is, at first, being aware of the existence of diversity, and also about the epistemological phenomena that makes diversity possible to happen. Epistemology (also known as Theory of Knowledge) is a field of study that belongs to philosophy, which is concerned to answer how and why people know what they know. If we apply epistemology to the cultural diversity, especially to understand the differences between the repertories of different communication agents, we will conclude that people have different standards because their knowledge comes from different sources. This is possible because of a process called enculturation. According to the author of Cultural Anthropology, "enculturation is the process by which a child learn his or her culture." It is a process that happens exclusively in groups, and, as the author explains, it is learned "by observing, listening, talking, and interacting with many other people."
As it was explained by Crichton in his novel The Lost World, which uses fiction to discuss evolutionism, educating children is the primary reason of the existence of a civilization. According to the author, this happens because, in order to have a bigger brain, the human infants must get out of the female bodies while the rest of their bodies is still fragile. So, unable to defend themselves, the human infants need their parents and a whole network of adults to protect and teach them. It is at this point that the enculturation process begins, and Kottak goes on, entering in the field of Semiotics: "Only humans have cultural learning, which depends on symbols. Symbols have a particular meaning and value for people who share the same culture." So, what happens is that different children who were born in different cultures will assimilate different cultural standards and develop different repertories throughout their lives. If they are aware of that, they can contribute to a smoother communication process when they become transmitters or receivers in an environment of intercultural communication.
According to Deborah Tannen (author of the book The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue, and many other books about gender issues and discourse), no one can deny that balance, debate and the act of listening to the both sides are, as she calls, "noble American traditions." However, she afirms that "yet today, these principles have been distorted." From this affirmation, she defines the argument culture as the United States' communication standard. The argument culture, as Tannen explains it, "urges us to approach the world, and the people in it, in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done." Therefore, if the senders and receivers assume an ofensive or defensive position during the process, which is the most probable hypothesis if they face communication as opposition, the possibility of dialogue is decreased.
After all, the solution for this kind of conflict is the spread of the concept of diversity and acceptance. People must understand that once we consider one's beliefs better than others', this is a new kind of Crusade. Although everyone's beliefs may differ, their values have the same weight than everyone else’s, and that is what equality is about: people do not have to be the same; they just have to be worth the same.
Works Cited
- Crichton, Michael. The Lost World. Ballantine Books, 1996.
- Eckert, P., and J. R. Rickford, eds. Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Kottak, Conrad Phillip. Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
- Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.
- Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958.
Noise in Communication between Nations and Cultures
By Guilherme Profeta
It is undeniable that the 21st century is the age of information, which means that communication was never so agile and so important as it is now. It is also undeniable that today it is so much easier to cross long distances than it was before. With the facilities of fast travel methods, someone can easily arrive from any point of the world to any other point after just a few hours. This is a process that has been developed since the first navigator started to explore the oceans in order to find new worlds. As it was cited by Conrad Phillip Kottak in his book Cultural Anthropology:
...in the 15th century, Europe established regular contact with Asia, Africa, and eventually the New World (the Caribbean and the Americas). Christopper Columbus's first voyage from Spain to the Bahamas and the Caribbean in 1492 was soon followed by additional voyages. These journeys opened the way for a major exchange of people, resources, diseases, and ideas, as the Old and New Worlds were forever linked.
Since that time, and even more with the advent of globalization, these cultural connections became more frequent, congregating in common spaces people who come from different places and -- more important than that -- different cultures. Regarding communication, we can wonder what kind of difficulties these people can face throughout this process and how these difficulties can be avoided.
An emblematic example of problems unchained by international/intercultural communication was the publication of charges of Mohammed, the founder of the islamic religion, and the waves of wrath that they caused against some European countries. This fact happened 4 years ago, initially when the danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published twelve charges of the prophet Mohammed, including one where he appears using a turban with the shape of a bomb. After that, the polemic images were also published in Norway and France, causing a huge international conflict, especially because, according to the foundations of the islamic religion, any visual representation of Mohammed is forbidden. However, according to the freedom of press -- which is a strong principle of democratic nations --, anyone is passible of being criticized, and it doesn't exclude religious characters.
To clarify why this kind of things happen, it is important to understand how communication works. The most known model of communication always includes a transmitter sending a codified message through a channel to a receiver. If some anomaly happens in this process, noise can occur, and by noise we can understand everything that can confuse or disable the functioning of the communication process. After the reception of the message, the receiver decodes and interprets it. This basic model of communication was designed by the engineers Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in order to increase the efficiency of communication through telephone cables, which means that it is technical-oriented. In the telephone example, the channel would be the cable, and the noise would be just the crackling produced by the wire.
When this model is applied on human communication, the transmitter and the receiver can be individuals or groups of people, as nations or representants of different cultures, for example. The code is the language, and it is determinative to both the communication agents to be familiar with the same idiom. As it was written by Kottak, "speakers of particular languages use sets of terms to organize, or categorize, their experiences and perceptions. (...) Ethnosemantics studies such classification systems in various languages." But that's not all, since the language is not the only factor that contributes to the perception of the receiver. As Kottak afirms, "no language is a uniform system in which everyone talks just like everyone else. Linguistics performance (what people actually say) is the concern of sociolinguistics." Sociolinguistic amplifies the study of communication, adding the social context to the mix (Eckert). In other words, when this model is applied on human communication, there is one more important aspect that can create noise between the decodification and the interpretation. This aspect is the repertory of the receiver, which is the package of previous information that he or she had before receiving the message.
The repertory is an important part of the process, because it works like a filter to the content of the message. It means that two receivers with different repertories can interpret the same message in two different ways. When the communication process happens between transmitters and receivers with different cultural repertories, the possibility of noise during the communication process is increased, because the social context, the protocols, the expectations, and the standards are different. As it was explained by the British anthropologist Edward Tylor, "culture (...) includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society," and all these factors are included in the respective repertories of the transmitter and the receiver. Consequently, if the repertories are too divergent, the communication becomes a strong colision of points of view and a source of misunderstandings.
In order to avoid that, the best solution is, at first, being aware of the existence of diversity, and also about the epistemological phenomena that makes diversity possible to happen. Epistemology (also known as Theory of Knowledge) is a field of study that belongs to philosophy, which is concerned to answer how and why people know what they know. If we apply epistemology to the cultural diversity, especially to understand the differences between the repertories of different communication agents, we will conclude that people have different standards because their knowledge comes from different sources. This is possible because of a process called enculturation. According to the author of Cultural Anthropology, "enculturation is the process by which a child learn his or her culture." It is a process that happens exclusively in groups, and, as the author explains, it is learned "by observing, listening, talking, and interacting with many other people."
As it was explained by Crichton in his novel The Lost World, which uses fiction to discuss evolutionism, educating children is the primary reason of the existence of a civilization. According to the author, this happens because, in order to have a bigger brain, the human infants must get out of the female bodies while the rest of their bodies is still fragile. So, unable to defend themselves, the human infants need their parents and a whole network of adults to protect and teach them. It is at this point that the enculturation process begins, and Kottak goes on, entering in the field of Semiotics: "Only humans have cultural learning, which depends on symbols. Symbols have a particular meaning and value for people who share the same culture." So, what happens is that different children who were born in different cultures will assimilate different cultural standards and develop different repertories throughout their lives. If they are aware of that, they can contribute to a smoother communication process when they become transmitters or receivers in an environment of intercultural communication.
According to Deborah Tannen (author of the book The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue, and many other books about gender issues and discourse), no one can deny that balance, debate and the act of listening to the both sides are, as she calls, "noble American traditions." However, she afirms that "yet today, these principles have been distorted." From this affirmation, she defines the argument culture as the United States' communication standard. The argument culture, as Tannen explains it, "urges us to approach the world, and the people in it, in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done." Therefore, if the senders and receivers assume an ofensive or defensive position during the process, which is the most probable hypothesis if they face communication as opposition, the possibility of dialogue is decreased.
After all, the solution for this kind of conflict is the spread of the concept of diversity and acceptance. People must understand that once we consider one's beliefs better than others', this is a new kind of Crusade. Although everyone's beliefs may differ, their values have the same weight than everyone else’s, and that is what equality is about: people do not have to be the same; they just have to be worth the same.
Works Cited
- Crichton, Michael. The Lost World. Ballantine Books, 1996.
- Eckert, P., and J. R. Rickford, eds. Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Kottak, Conrad Phillip. Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
- Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.
- Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958.
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