Desarmamento e fraternidade no último sorriso de Francisco

I repeatedly fail. Even now, I failed in my intention to go to bed at 9:30 pm. For some reason akin to “what the hell! I don't sleep more than four hours anyway,” I surrendered to the drift of darkness. I fear a stern authority will weep to discipline me: “it’s not time to go to the bathroom.” Activities in general. The late-night chats have ended, covered in sand, disintegrated by a shock, incinerated. It’s a little sad. All that chaotic literature that brought me so many friends has gone mad, and speaks to itself in Mark's posts.

The book Maku sent me is well-written, of course, but it's read in super slow motion. The character begins to reveal herself through a desire to die. You don't find such honest people easily. Like toast with cream cheese and red fruit jam. It was the box, the jar. I switched to whipped cream. Whipped cream is foolproof.

This fractal, then: death and life explaining themselves poorly, speaking quickly and loudly, like Brazilian tourists with red lipstick and crossbody bags enchanting the world with smiling rudeness. My analysis, which follows, is sophisticated.

There are life’s discordances that are, it must be repeated, forces of nature. Discordances, in this text, are metaphorically Meryl Streep portraying Florence Foster Jenkins in the cinema, or any instrument that should vibrate a sublime "ooowooowooow," but ends up materializing Grandma Jephinha venturing off-key, without melody.

I like water because it doesn't waste time with stones or walls; it deviates, accepts a good tunnel, but, if necessary, breaks through everything. Water takes for itself lands that didn't even have a vocation for a swimming pool, resting there as a calamitous flood.

The regions of the world that are about to disappear need intellectual support to resolve issues of property, repatriation, and the return of predictable bureaucracies. You cannot erect an island on top of a two-story house; not even Japanese drainage cathedrals make a difference in the ocean. Such dangers equate our intelligence to nothing. Nature is one of the three notable sources of displeasure in Freudian psychoanalysis.

“And from all this out-of-tune instrument I was never an apprentice.” There's this verse in a Gabrielle Seraine lyric. And in her music too, when she sings “[out-of-]tune,” when she sings exactly “deceased,” the harmony shatters for a moment, like a little shit blowing a plastic flute. It's the valley before the peak, the “dark before the dawn.”

Flusser's Spirit

When the out-of-tune individual — the "medium" (of media, not of speaking to the dead) — emits noise, communication becomes clearer. Let's use the word "communication" as a future synonym for "spirit," a beautiful conception of Flusser's.

In the religions that deal with "spirits," note the similarity in the conduct of intentions: doors are opened and closed, people are stimulated to move their psyches, and even banal requests that are nothing more than predictable bureaucracies. One asks, promises, thanks, expels, infuses — all through the conjuring of human and intelligible words.

Accepting Jesus, renouncing Freemasonry, declaring victory, taking possession of the blessing, doing macumba for Dona Ida to die (children are very inventive) — all this requires speaking. From the spell of the Greek Father to the Seven Knocks on the Door of Grace prayer chain from Janine's people. Communication. Speech. Listening.

In some evangelical cults, faced with unsatisfactory communication, someone is likely to take on the role of the demoniac for the benefit of the group. The Catholic mass has so many communication resources that part of the sermon ends up being saved.

"Spirits" are an ancient, primitive subject. It was a way of keeping the dead nearby. Later, these dead became demons. History records in anthropological terms; I have here an original Frazer that I received from Luca. My point is: if spirits "are born" from domestic dead, it is natural that, before committing to events outside the home — speaking of spiritualist meetings, making wind — they are available in the family inventory.

Powerful but Foolish

There is power in psychoanalysis, in Transactional Analysis, in Narcotics Anonymous. But these endeavors require much more time, specialization, and opportunities for mistakes than can be achieved in a family, when a family is available. Family, of course, should be understood broadly.

A family that has understood the permanence of love, that has left the struggles for recognition for community practices, has a better chance of success in invoking powerful spirits.

The powerful spirit of the creator, for those who believe thus, has to make some difference. Is God dead? Don't be fooled. I write about communication. About conjuring, invoking, good communication. In the last line of the noise, "taking possession of the blessing," as well observed by Nina.

In Portuguese, "spirits" have been communication at least since 1976, when Cartola composed: "From each dead person, one will inherit only cynicism." From my tensioning, Flusser offers us a simplification: it's a lot of "spiritual battle" for little "talking like people."

Let's return. The relationship of the out-of-tune, the deceased — properly the word in question, noise, this thing that disturbs sleep — with clarity is not only poetry. The physics and computer engineering that support image generation proceed from the use of two very basic stages that do not harm each other.

To improve someone's skin in a photograph, you first need the caress of blurring, like a hyperope without glasses. Then, you have to add noise, something like an old TV without a signal. And then you can see better.

Thus, my suggestion for the group — laughter — is an appreciation of noise, along with a careful observation of the content of the disturbances. When this battery runs out, with more clarity, let us be arrogant in our pretensions of dignity.

Only I was going to write about something completely different. I'll make another post.

The air of novelty that a New Year brings seems akin to the effect of renewing vows. It is, let's say, an opportunity.  By analogy, a wedding ceremony itself is powerless to effect changes in a couple, in the sense of expanding trust and reciprocity, and the consequent happiness derived from these expansions. A ceremony in itself is nothing, but the couple's focus on achieving a better self-awareness is.  With the new year, it's very similar.

It is entirely understandable to disregard the commercial calendar's timekeeping when one's intention is a free and fruitful life. A personal history should not (but often is) subjected to the mechanics of exhausting work: vacations, recesses, and holidays. Things of this category are very welcome, of course, but almost always correspond to the logic of industry and consumption. Hence the proverb: "The more you have, the less you are."

In these contexts, buying a new outfit for New Year's Eve can be an ambivalent act. On one hand, there's the obligation of purchase, the competition established with other party guests. On the other, there's a legitimate inclination towards self-care, and for the outward appearance to match the novelty of the innermost self.

To change the year within oneself requires a certain degree of the ridiculous. That is, to cross the line of the ridiculous. Instead of a costume, to dress in what truly corresponds to who one is. It's not about *pretending* to be, it's about being in essence.  Something interesting is the fact that what one desires to be in the future can only be true if it is so right now. This is a very basic philosophical idea. It is also true that if something ceased to be, it is because it never truly was.

What I previously called ridiculous could also be called courage. To put on one's own shoes, to open one's chest: to think, speak, act, and celebrate from what one truly is, what always was, and will always be. But courage lies less in the behavioral aspect, which even a ham actor could interpret with utter cowardice, and much more in a permission for the individual spirit to communicate to the world what it came to do.