Astrud Gilberto was born in Bahai, Brasil to a Brasilian mother and (curiously) a German father. I say curiously because it is widely known that many escaped Nazis landed in this part of the world after the Second World War. And while nothing could erase the damage they did to the world, the horror and sheer misery they created, we can take as an act of contrition the fact that because of them there are insanely attractive Latin women walking around the beaches of South America with blue eyes and jet black hair. If you mention Brasil to any American man that is without question the first thing he will think of and rightly so. Preconceived notions and stereotypes exist for a reason and I can tell the men out there that everything they are thinking is true. Everything.
But Rio is so much more than that and I loved every second I spent there. Whether it was eating dinner along the glorious pool at the Copacabana Palace sipping Caipirinhas between bites of steak wrestled by gauchos while ten foot swells crashed on the beach or walking along Rua Maria Quiteria under the cool shade of tree lined streets dodging eleven year old boys pick pocket attempts the city is entrancing. In The River of January you will find awe inspiring views both natural and man made, it houses amazing examples of modernist architecture including one of my favorite buildings in the world, The Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum.
The building like everything else in Rio is a complete fantasy, a structure from another world inhabited by creatures alien to my own eyes. In the favelas frightfully cruel, poor, violent creatures killing each other for fractions of Reals while a mile away six foot bodies, tanned and toned, glisten on the beach with a stitch of clothes on; the women also wear very little and are in great physical condition. The sea rivals in ferocity any break in the world including Hawaii and Northern California, Ipanema literally meaning bad water in Portuguese.
While laying on the western side of Rua Farme in Leblon everyday I contemplated the surreal quality of such mellow bossa nova music in a land of constant turmoil. In the states such music is usually confined to elevators and cheezy middle aged men's bachelor pads, a terrible disservice for these grooves. For all the good in the world us Americans provide we have a penchant for taking constructs of beauty and turning them into our own proverbial strip malls and Branson Missouri-s.
When I want to truly chill and feel the sun from the little latitudes on my skin, the gentle caress of a fragile hand running over my speedos and aquamarine rollers crashing into white froth on the beach I can always count on Astrud putting me in the proper frame of mind, in particular this song. I don't speak Portuguese and without looking up the lyrics I have no idea what the hell she is truly singing about. Just to be sure she wasn't crooning about mass castration of all males named John I looked it up.
AGUA DE BEBER (DRINKING WATER)
Your love is rain, my heart the flower.
I need your love or I will die.
My very life is in your power,
will I wither and fade or blossom in the sky.
Drinking Water,
give the flower water to drink.
Drinking Water,
give the flower water to drink.
The rain can fall on distant deserts,
the rain can fall upon the sea.
The rain can fall upon the flowers.
Since the rain has to fall, let it fall on me.
Drinking Water
Drinking Water
Drinking Water
Drinking Water
I'll never see another springtime,
I'll never feel the summer sun
unless you're there to share that springtime
and like the rain and the flower our hearts are one.
Drinking Water
give the flower water to drink.
Drinking Water
give the flower water to drink.
His love is drinking water, the sun is drinking water and those seventh and extended chords in a medium tempo provide me with all the tabular hydration I could ever need. It is an oil change for the soul, the sludge drained out and resupplied with clear liquors leave my mind in waves like the art deco sidewalks that run along the ocean. Laying at the roof pool of the Caesar Park Hotel for the first time I heard this song piped in through the speakers while I drank pure sugar Coca-Cola and watched a woman slowly climb out of the pool against a light azure sky and reach for one of their purple and orange towels.
I still use one of their towels every time I trek down to the beach and I still have the picture in my mind of a severely browned woman laying next to me on it talking in a language I could barely understand with Astrud smoothly slinking through the ether off in the background. Sadly, I am always awakened on that very same towel by the screeching Northeast accent of some white trash extra from The Jersey Shore yelling at her juiced up boyfriend who by the way is wearing eyeliner and is fresh from a wax with every piece of Ed Hardy apparel known to man in his possession, the lifeguards are whistling at someone who is up to his waist in water while a hyper blond teenager is breaking my balls because she can't see my beach badge until I look to my left and see a three hundred pound woman in jeans and sneakers hacking down a butt and stubbing it out in the sand. In such instances the iPod comes out and I am thrown back to a world that could never be imagined inside an elevator nor manufactured in China and sold in a strip mall. I am back in Brasil where all my fantasies came true, more so those that were not carnal in nature, for those are terribly fleeting in comparison to all the other senses heightened in that resplendent land.
