For those of you who are unfamiliar with Brazilian Carnival or “Carnaval”, you can read about HERE.

Here are a few photos of last year’s parade:

The Paderia

God is in the details…

Carnaval vendor…

I remember all the bad times with the Crack Monster. I remember all the weird deadly moments of toxic lust and destruction and terror. What I don’t remember so well are all the years of my own drug addiction. Not without a conscious effort to do so. Maybe that’s why Divine Providence sent Narcisa to stand right in the middle of my happy, sober life path. To remind me on a daily basis that there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Now it’s Carnaval, day 3 and the whole city seems to be possessed by spirits of random futility and senseless debauchery. I feel disconnected and lost. Not with it, not of it. Not in it. Narcisa’s on her own solitary path of spiritual awakening now. Six months out of the hole and desperately seeking Redemption, and for that much I am grateful. Good to remember that we’re only here today by Divine Grace.

But this Carnaval is turning out to be a lonely and depressing business. I’m neither here nor there, neither fish nor fowl today… Night is falling and I’m going out into the streets on another observation mission. Now I sit at my old post by the waves at the end of Copacabana and watch the grim, listless procession of wandering sheeplike revelers. They’re all out tonight, dull humanity in all their sordid downtrodden glory. How much more before the fall? It seems senseless and grey. Not like the old dreamlike Carnavals of glittering illusion and gay carefree abandon of my youthful earthly memory. Not even the anything-goes wild times of more recent days before the specter of 2012…

More like a devious parade of lost souls stumbling through the darkness now, looking for a chink in the fortress walls of their own mental prisons, clamoring for some sign of light. The sand is littered with them, while many more clutter the sidewalk. Aimless, bored, lost. Drunk. Dangerous. Tonight there will be more of the same silly partying and drunken stumbling, more ugliness, more canned joy and stifled emotion, more searching. More disappointment, disillusion, poverty, hypocrisy and slow death. The best I can do is sit and be here with it all, neither fish nor foul. At the end of the day I’m here to give the whole big screaming seven billion headed beast of humanity one more long, hard searching and fearless look in the eye tonight before they all throw up on my tired old head again.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.

Left to right: Theo Castilho, Jonathan Shaw, Manu

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. “ - Leonard Cohen

Without ceremony, Mimo and the other two who’d come with him quickly unpacked their instruments and dove right into the impromptu jam session and it was on… Dolo was laughing as he fiddled away furiously, leading the groove as usual. His bow tore at the violin with such fury I expected the thing to start smoking any minute. Pretty soon the other violinist from Para was trading riffs with Dolo. It was as if the two of them were having an inspired conversation in some advanced alien language that only they could speak. As the music picked up speed and momentum and levitated into that crazy communal magical gypsy telepathy that always happens whenever more than two Roma get together for song, everybody was “getting in” now, one, then another taking incredible individual instrumental solos, while miraculously never straying a note from the big thundering whole.

The accordion player from Para was like an unstoppable machine. The intensity of joy and pure intuitive improvisation was contagious, moving around the room as the waves of sound continued to mount and grow and the wine flowed… The laughter and shouting rose with each new verse and solo flying out of Dolo’s inexhaustible energy field like the dramatic streaks of lightining racing across the sky outside the big wood and glass balcony doors. It was a mystical and transcendent orgy of unrelenting sound and energy. Pure magic.

Hours went by like that. The music never stopped, but there were little breaks for individual players. Mostly in order for them to keep eating and drinking. Whenever one put his instrument down to go for a piss or light a smoke or drink or eat something off the big table piled with food and wine bottles, another one immediately jumped it and kept going in an endless tag team stream that kept the music itself going and going like some big unstoppable steam engine barreling down the tracks… Suddenly it was four in the morning and the party showed no sign of slowing down. I’d already pretty much talked and hung out a bit with just about everyone there over the course of the night- including my esteemed benifactor, Dolo, who seemed especially happy to see me still alive and looking ‘well fed’. Thank God he hadn’t noticed any strange smells in his beautiful house.

The rain had finally stopped and the dawn was looming. Narcisa hadn’t called. That was good. But I still had to be up to take her back to the nut house in just a few hours. During another break from playing, Mimo saw me looking at my watch and gracefully offered me a ride down the hill. I took him up on it and off we went with shouts of ‘de vlessa’ all around.

Home again, I let myself into the dark, silent apartment. Narcisa was out cold. Of course. I thanked God for the evening and, with all the musical fire and fury of my gypsy brethren still ringing in my ears, I set the alarm, crawled up the little ladder to my loft bed, and immediately passed out.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.

Dolo’s cousin Dimitri was standing on the street waiting for us with a big black umbrella at the gate to the big house. Mimo parked the taxi and we unloaded the instruments and ran up to the the path in the rain under Dimitri’s umbrella. As we approached, I could hear the unmistakable mad bee sound of Dolo’s violin cutting through the mix of singing and seven string guitar playing. The party was in full swing in the big living room.
“Eiiiii, Nachinho… Sar san, prala!” Dolo shouted to me as we piled into a warm jumble of greetings, hugs, kisses and backslaps. Several round, smiling gypsy women in long, colorful silk skirts with lots of gold coin necklesses and jingling gold bracelets were singing and dancing around as their men played their respective instruments. I knew most of the people there. Those I hadn’t met before greeted me warmly and gestured wildly for me to “get in”… A distinguished older Frenchman, a gadjo was introduced to me as the big music producer Mimo had told me about. Like everybody else he seemed to be having a good time. No wonder he wanted to produce this crazy gypsy music. The good Roma spirits were rolling high and as always immediately infectious.
There where about twenty people hanging around, mostly gypsies. Those without instruments were singing along, shouting, clapping, tapping, beating, banging away with forks and spoons on table tops, joining in any way they could to reinforce that crazy kinetic gypsy rhythm with matchboxes, ashtrays, wine bottles, plates and every other available improvised percussion instrument in the room… I picked up an unclaimed brass tray and a wooden spoon off the table and “got in” as the others hooted their approval. With gypsy music, “more is better” seems to be the rule. Just like old times…

to be continued…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.