The Selva | Causa Efeito Festival
Festival Causa Efeito | June 30, 2023 | Text that includes real facts and a short story I wrote while listening to the concert | Photos by Nuno Martins
It is always intimate and wrapped in moments of redemption. Ricardo Jacinto, Nuno Morão and Gonçalo Almeida are three reference musicians in national improvisation. The Selva practice a complex and incredible exercise of restraint that dissolves over the course of a story that binds us to the concert. To the here and now.
It’s hard to stop the mind. They lead me to memories hidden between notes that insist on squeezing my chest. It’s really hard not to be absorbed by the magnitude of Ricardo Jacinto’s cello.
***
I try to stick to writing what I see and feel, but stories, ideas come to mind and the pen begins to slide uncontrollably across the paper. Here we go to the tale.
When I remember looking at the blank of a possible suicide note, I am sure that the decision I made was the right one. The emptiness of a pen without ink. Perhaps because I repeatedly and rhythmically made the same movement.
Lower your head. Slightly rotate it to the left side.
Lower your head. Slightly rotate it to the left side.
Even the exhaustion of the bow, the disobedience of the drumstick, the fatigue of someone strumming steel strings.
The emptiness of a suicide note.
***
I remain focused on Nuno Morão. Maybe because it brought me back to the ground floor.
***
After all, maybe you like to walk here. Between hot notes, despite the eagerness of other times. I like to torment myself with robust memories of lost hands on plump thighs.
***
The Selva’s crescendo of intensity is always delicious.
***
Wet lips in a glass of rum. Today, it’s actually tequila.
The emptiness of an unwritten suicide note. Have you ever read your suicide note? Laugh at what? Laugh because you didn’t make it. Sad what lives in the silence of unwritten letters, sentences that remain in suspense.
I suspend myself. I look at myself from the outside. What a sad figure.
***
Now I’m with Gonçalo Almeida. A heavier side, but full of subtlety.
***
Run over gravel before entering a long, unexpected tunnel. The suicide note remains in the void. Scream without much success. The neighbor hammers incessantly on the wall next to my bedroom wall.
Bastard. Postpone the suicide note for me. What a chasing bitch.
Ideas in a rush. And the note that doesn’t come out. You told me it would be easy, that you just wanted to. But what about the note that doesn’t come out.
I can only continue with my feet nailed in the gravel, inside the tunnel, in the emptiness of a possible suicide note. I have ink in the pen again. I ran out of paper.
The emptiness of wanting to write a suicide note.
This emptiness will never end. I got paper again. I ran out of ink in the pen.
Foto de Nuno Martins | The Selva | Festival Causa Efeito
