Curtain call

It's really nice to live right next to a theater.

You can listen to all kinds of music. It's there, invading the apartment through the windows, floating around you. You can just sit (or not!), listen and dream.

There's classical music, of course, and, depending on the program, you can go ballet-ing around the rooms, re-living the curtain calls of your life.

There's rock, and you can sing along "Have you ever seen the rain..." or "Hurt so good / Come on baby, make it hurt so good / Sometimes love don't feel like it should / You make it... hurt so good" in honor of the good ol' Tulha times.

There's MPB, and then you pray that nobody has the "brilliant" idea of resuscitating Te Devoro (Djavan), be it in its original version or - even worse! - in some new pagode recording.

There's "gauchesca", and for some unknown reason you get touched by verses like "Ouve o canto gauchesco e brasileiro / Desta trerra que eu amei desde guri" or "É o meu Rio Grande do Sul, céu, sol, sul, terra e cor...".

There's jazz and Gershwin and Cole Porter and Glenn Miller for you to wonder why the hell there's no time machine to transport you to that time when people really DANCED, cheek to cheek, heart to heart, swirling around ballrooms.

There's tango, and Al Pacinos and Richard Geres and Antonios Banderas to sweep you off your feet in some passionate imaginary pas-de-deux.

It's there, music, always.

You simply open the window of the laundry room, sit in the kitchen with a glass of ice cold champagne (or wine, whatever you feel like having) in your hand, look out at the full moon in the sky and listen to the score of Fascínio - Todo Tango (which you've watched half a dozen times but never get tired of) being played, feeling as if you were in there. (picture above. Courtesy: Rebeca Recuero)

Anf if it's a play and there's no music, it doesn't matter:

You go to bed, rest your weary head on your pillow and in the end you'll have it anyway, your curtain call, your round of applause to send shivers down your spine. And then once more you'll feel like Elis Regina described in the last sentence of her last concert, Trem Azul:

"Agora eu sou uma estrela".