first voices

there’s no better excuse or motivation to start these things but to randomly and carelessly jot some disparate words about the voice of god. not the voice of a god that tyranises us and creates havoc inside and outside ourselves / oneself, but a different god, consequently an utter diverse voice. La voce humana – vox humana – human voice, our voice desingaged from superstitions and faiths but that is my, or our, real voice. one voice that can be mad, but ours, a lyric (ununderstandable, nevertheless!) with poems and odes, sounds and emergencies. there are different kind of voices, and i am not allowed to comment on them, for lack of academic education, and on them, varied and determined by our own taste, i found several that accompany me throughout my brief existence. the voice of mother amelia singing lullabies in the orchard or while washing clothes in winter in a tank of almost frozen water. the voice of my father rapping while playing the cavaquinho (original portuguese ukelele) with his own improvised rhymes in real time, and in competition with one or various other men, and always with a smelly rolled cigarette on the corner of his lips. the eternal voice of a true goddess bathed in melancholy and destiny, tears made of the salt of the portuguese sea, the voice of amalia coming from scratchy vynil 7 inches or hissing old analogue tapes through the mornings of winter mist, a greyness and joy in her voice that echoes until today, amalia rodrigues, the soul of the portuguese heart. the plangent singing voices of women harvesting in the green fields, challenging each other, answering each other with traditional songs of ancient memories. all voices of my god, my heritage, my culture. voices i could dedicate to a god, if there was one around. because the idea of a designer god is utterly irrational, so like our ancestors, i invented one god: the human voice, my first poetry.

voice and poetry are not explainable, and i think i even not there going there. they have, though, many things in common and complement each other. like me, many people become writers and in poetry they find a genuine teacher. they aspire to a certain kind of enlightenment. such determination has continued throughout the centuries because the unreceptive truth writing is. The majority of writers do not, ever, perceive that if they cease thought and forget cognition, poetry will spontaneously appear. that behaviour of rationalise doesn’t exist in the many voices i admire, because they do not need analysing or dissecation. think of diamanda galas with her apparent diabolical tirades and demonic rants, listen to meredith monk and her ability to transform the human voice in something more than an instrument to become a fierce telluric gesture like greek oracles.

being i a self-aware peasant, i found solace and peace in all kinds of music, investigating on my own and without much money, ears glued to the wireless listening to fantastic sounds and voices. maria joão mauperrin, antónio sérgio, jorge lima barreto et al, through the night teaching me how to not think. through them i embarqued on an adventure that is still going on: dead can dance (lisa gerrard), cocteau twins (elisabeth fraser), laurie anderson with her old fashion storytelling of united states I-IV imbued with irony and immerse in contemporary invented instruments and electronica, né ladeiras (alhures), manuela moura guedes, the utter beauty of the bulgarian voices...

the oldest memory of this god of mine, from my grey and depressed teen years, is the delicate and oniric voice of elizabeth fraser from the supremo independent label 4AD and her band, cocteau twins. memory revived by her first interview to the london ‘the guardian’ since 1998. cocteau twins were (and are) still very important because the mystery still remains. because of the guitars and strange and astonishing melodies, but above all because of elizabeth fraser’s voice. when i heard them for the first time i was writing poems and inventing neologisms and strange words, i was deeply interested in hyerogliphs and arcaic forms of writing and trying to invent a language of my own. obviously when i told this to people they told me i was mad (they were not wrong, let’s say it!) so, alone in my bed in the long hours, came these melodies and this voice uttering an uncomprehensible language (i thought it was celtic or gaelic!) and, due to my fervent imagination and curiosity, i had to buy their music and, you guessed it, i was singing with miss fraser (in our own language, indeed.) we were living in our own heads, separate universes colliding. so, yesterday, i read her words: i live here (in my head), and it is difficult. i drift with every sensation. at times i’m ok, and at other times i’m such a rubout. my mind just whirrs or stops. there’s no middle ground. when you need things measured and it’s not happening, it can make you quite mad. (...) periodically, my mind is blown, and i’m swamped in feelings i can’t deny. [the guardian, 27th november 2009]

i make her words, once again, mine. feel like sharing this little thoughts; a voice that is not your voice comes through. the words are not your words. these are maps of psychic areas, that is to say they have a definite position. the artist is a map maker and his work is valid in so far as his maps are accurate. poetry is a place. [william s. burroughs]

then why search out
false systems of false philosophies,
religions, sects (voice of the thinkers)
if error is the condition of our life.
the only certainty of existence?

                                                              fernando pessoa, faust

first voices: strategies against gravity: dreams of reason produce monsters, they so often say, cliché, common place. dreams of solitude creates raw material, risible and indestructible logic, bric-a-brac of illusions and certainties. just like a diary or biographies, both kind of dreams [or nightmares as it may happen to be as well] are easy, false and fake. as louis kabarrett de nerval often said, too many facts in one’s life is a lie, inventions to camouflage one’s emptiness, a devil’s scissors cut-up. true or false, the above is the product of a blank dream, it’s morning, the fog’s a fog as it happens too often in london, a rock’s a rock, a dream’s a dream, a morning’s a morning and i do invent the fable of this. the morning, the dream i can’t remember, an easy biography, kind of ruin, a sea, again…