Oi, Mareeza

After my last entry, “Tita Says Who’s your Girl,” I was inspired to expand on the female singers who I consider to be “my girl”. I started putting together a collage on Paintshop, googling images of the 18 “girls” that came to mind and shrinking their picture to more of a thumbnail size so that they all could fit in together. I thought that I could post it up here. Well, this was my first time using Paintshop in this way and our desktop at home wasn't working well; the 5, 6, and hyphen keys stopped working and the i only worked if you pressed really hard. Then my son spilled water on the keyboard so now it doesn’t work at all.

The first images I chose were Billie and Ella. I was able to reduce (or skew) the size but I wasn’t able to do it with some of the others. Some of the bigger ones weren’t as much “my girl” so it came off a little misrepresented, looking as though I ranked Dana Fuchs over Ella Fitzgerald or Laura Nyro. So now I’m thinking; the ones whom I could do a full blown essay on in terms of how they’ve affected my life/soul would probably be Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Laura Nyro, Janis Joplin, and Marisa Monte. I’ve written a bit about Ella Fitzgerald before in ‘08 with something called, “Ella’s Blues in D.R. and Rome”. Monte happens to be the only one still alive out of these five, so just for the sake of that sole distinction, let me focus on her here.  Alongside Ella Fitzgerald, she is my favorite female vocalist.

Marisa Monte is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her last name is pronounced “Monchi” not the way I automatically want to pronounce it, since saying it correctly makes me think of the Monchhichi commercials I used to see as a little girl. She studied opera in Italy for a while but returned to Brazil. My dear friend Rodrigo, whom I was intermittently involved with, tells me it’s because she missed Brazil too much. He’s the one who first introduced me to her. We were at his friend Sylvester’s house when I first heard her soft, gentle voice and I just had to know who she was. He made me a copy of her 1994 album mistakenly labeling it, “Bread and Charcoal”. It’s really called, “Verde, anil, amarelo, cor de rosa e carvão” (“Green, indigo, yellow, pink and charcoal”) or “Rose and Charcoal” for short. We went to one of her concerts in 2006 when she was in New York. There was a Brazilian guy sitting a few seats to our left crying at the saudade of it all. We also went to Brazil a couple years earlier mainly to see my old high school friend, Juliana- who’s from Belo Horizonte (pronounced ‘Orizonchi’, like ‘Monchi’). I played my “Rose and Charcoal” CD a few times in the plane during the nine hour flight. I cried when we landed as if it were my long lost homeland, as if it were “Mi Tierra”, even though it never was (as far as I’m existentially aware!) 

I didn’t really know what Marisa (and that’s pronounced more like Mareeza) looked like yet but while we were there, people would say that I looked like her- though she is a little thinner, a lot taller, and our noses are different. Our birthdays are 1 month (and ten years) apart- she’s July 1, 1967 and I’m June 1, 1977.

“Mom, why does she looks so much like you?” my son asked as we were watching her fantastic ‘96 “Barulhinho Bom- Uma Viagem Musical” concert film. That made me laugh.

I lent this film to his father Agustin, the year we met. When I lent it to him, I described it as something that it is very much like how I am. I couldn’t explain what I meant exactly, but I felt it captured/conveyed/portrayed a part of me, in essence. Blown away after seeing it, he returned it asking, “Which part is ‘like you’? There’s so much going on- I saw romanticism, adventure, music, travel...” I smiled and agreed. For my 29th birthday he searched high and low to get me both of her new CDs at the time, ‘Universo Meu Redor’ and ‘Infinito Particular’. He liked her too and wondered where she’d been all his life, and how come he never heard of her before. Before all that, when he and I were first talking, I had a hard time keeping up my end of our conversation in Spanish (he’s Dominican).

This kind of thing happens to me all the time; my flow will be ok for a while but then I'll start stammering, forgetting a word, a proper conjugation, or a phrase. I'll fall into this downward spiral that forces me to revert and switch back into English. I compare my ease with these two languages with shoes. With Spanish, it feels like I have on red, fancy, high heels. They stand out and they’re gorgeous, but after a while they pinch and it’s not long before I start to wobble. I definitely can’t run in them. English on the other hand is like slipping into some old, comfortable sneakers. Not as attractive, but super comfy and more flexible/agreeable with my lifestyle. I can run, jump, skip, and zip down the stairs with those babies on. Not that I'm flawless in English, I'm just a lot more agile. But with Agustin, I really wanted to keep my end up Spanish-wise and do my best- and I couldn’t. I was failing. And “choking”. And just plain nervous and kind of falling in love. Typical.

The song she does with Paulinho da Viola, “Para Ver As Meninas” has the line, “Não diga nada sobre meus defeitos”- she elongates the word “defeeeiitos” (defects/flaws) which of course, makes me think of my “defeitos”. “Eu não me lembro mais/quem me deixou assim” “I do not remember anymore/Who left me like this?” Exactly- who the hell left me like this, besides me?

My mother spoke perfect English and Spanish. She was the ideal, elegant bilingual who really could’ve interpreted for the United Nations if she wanted to- but she felt like it was such a chore to even translate for her mother and so she didn’t enjoy things like that. She married my dad and we all spoke English at home since that’s the language he’s most comfortable with. Nevertheless, I’d always hear Spanish around me growing up, when other family spoke, gossiped and joked around, ubiquitous Sabado Gigante and noticias my maternal grandparents tuned into, and commercials with the grandiose, fast-paced voice overs. Those are all are etched in my mind without fully comprehending everything. “Para Ver As Meninas” probably had nothing at all to do with what I was thinking and feeling. In fact I think it was more having to do with divorce, but it cut right through and brought me to tears.

I guess it’s because I’ve always been chasing and struggling with Spanish, and probably always will be, Sisyphus style.

When we were in Brazil, it felt like I was back in the Dominican Republic in some ways. I also realized something about my experience with learning Brazilian Portuguese and told Rodrigo and Juliana. I said that this is my less stressful, “familiar foreign language”. Briefly learning Japanese through Rosetta Stone had the same “no pressure, just fun” feel to it, but Portuguese is way more similar to Spanish, so I feel a closeness with it- but without the emotional baggage. When I mess up, I don’t feel that shame or embarrassment. For me, Marisa was the extraordinary singer who guided and transported me to this more content state of mind. Her voice opened a door for me, a new way of feeling and experiencing another Romance language and all my words of praise here don’t take the place of listening to her sing.

June 30, 2018

Tomorrow's her birthday and I happened to find this online- Marisa facts :) https://connectbrazil.com/marisa-monte-10-top-songs-and-stories-about-brazils-mpb-star/