20 anos de Kazoo, um cd que tenho desde 1997 e que me deixa feliz sempre que regresso a ele. Coincidências felizes: este verão tive uma necessidade súbita de voltar a ouvir aquela versão da I'm free, que já tinha ouvido ao vivo num espetáculo único dos Clã no TNSJ, talvez em 2008. Essa música vem sempre a saber a novidade: uma sensação de liberdade inconsequente sempre que a ouço, que só cabia no "teen spirit" do final dos anos 90, herdeiros da libertação dos anos 60.
E no final, os Clã, já sem canções do Kazoo para tocar, deram-nos duas covers de originais de 1997, uma em parceria com a banda que abriu o concerto (os estetas Best Youth) cantada a duas vozes: No surprises; e outra apresentada pela Manuela Azevedo como a canção número 2, que terminou o concerto com aquela descarga de energia elétrica dos Blur.
Filipa invited me over, luring me with sourdough bread. Having grown in the 90's, and having eaten monstrous amount of Panrico sandwiches (the spanish version of the joyless Wonderbread), sourdough presents itself as the grown up version of bread. It is the parallel situation to that of appreciating wine and cheese-based suppers as soon as you hit adulthood. And, as for the invitation, I said yes. Yes to sourdough!
This was not a simple, 2 hours visit: I was there from 3pm to 7pm on a Saturday, and 9am to 4pm on a Sunday. We surely had a lot to talk about, and lots of sticky dough to babysit, but no doubt sourdough requires dedication. Eventually, we started calling it "the baby".
She started making bread about two years ago, and it was a rocky road until the beautiful crusty bread we ate; "the first ones looked like pancakes!". She introduced me to all the elements involved in the soon to be delicious bread - flours (wheat and rye), the starter (a smelly, living thing), water and salt. Looks easy, right? No. It's not.
Filipa had been feeding the starter since Wednesday. She was explaining me how much of a labor it is to make sourdough bread. When she started, mistakes occurred - feeding the starter too much, or too late, not leavening the dough sufficiently. The scheduling has to be precise and that's why, every two weeks, she takes a whole weekend for baking loaves. Most of us would complain but she loves the ritual, it feels relaxing to her. Once you get to know Filipa, you start piecing things together - her dedication to knitting and sewing, a deep interest in past portuguese traditions, and her love for cooking and baking - there's a inherent domestic, cozy quality to all of it. You instantly feel serene around her, and I believe that is the main reason I spend so many hours at her place.
Once the bread was cold enough, we feasted, eating it along with Queijo da Ilha (a type of cheese from Azores). She roasted vegetables and toped them with puff pastry, resembling something like a pot pie. Cozyness was there once again, this time at our plate.
And there you go, the climax of this post: a beautiful, crusty sourdough bread.
Uma reportagem com muita amizade e muita curiosidade em conhecer o outro, só podia ter este resultado bonito e honesto: fotografias simples, muito bonitas, que mostram aquilo que gosto de fazer em casa no tempo que tenho para mim.
"Só a atenção profunda refreia a "inconstância dos olhos" e gera a concentração capaz de fazer "cruzar as mãos errantes da natureza". Sem esta concentração contemplativa, o olhar vagueia errante sem ser capaz de expressar coisa alguma. A arte é, porém, um "ato de expressão". Até Nietzsche, que substituiu o Ser pela Vontade, sabia que toda a vida humana terminaria numa hiperatividade fatídica, se fosse despojada de todo o seu lado contemplativo (...)"
