Asakiyume mita

"Pra não dizer que não falei das flores" is the name of a Brazilian song. It means "So it can't be said that I didn't speak of flowers." It's also known as "Caminhando" (Walking). I came across it originally as part of a medley of songs sung by Chico César, a Brazilian reggae singer. (The whole medley is just wonderful and I listen to it all the time.)

When he segued over to "Pra não dizer que não falei das flores," my heart was grabbed by the lyrics:

Caminhando e cantando e seguindo a canção
Somos todos iguais, braços dados ou não
Nas escolas, nas ruas, campos, construções
Aprendendo e ensinando uma nova lição

(Walking and singing and continuing the song
We are all equal, arms linked or not
In the schools, the streets, fields, buildings
Learning and teaching a new lesson)

Especially that last part: learning and teaching a new lesson.

Then it got to the chorus, and he just pointed to the audience, and they sang the whole things without him. They'd done that earlier with his song "Mama Africa," but only after he'd sung it through once. Here he just turned it over to the audience, and they belted it out. (If you start here, you can hear that.)

It was clear they knew it *so well.*

So I got curious about the song. And it turns out it has an amazing story behind it. Wikipedia tells me that it was composed by Geraldo Vandré, who sang it at the Festival Internacional da Canção in 1968, where it was "the most applauded song of the night"--but only came in second place, because the army felt it was too critical of the government (at that time Brazil was under a military dictatorship). The next day, playing the song was banned, and all recordings of Vandré's performance at the festival were destroyed. Vandré himself had to go into exile.

Geraldo Vandré, as drawn by Jeferson Nepomuceno


Wikipedia says (though it's marked as "citation needed"), "'Walking' is regarded by many as the true Brazilian national hymn" and that it is "sung emotionally and in a spontaneous way by a large number of people."

That chorus, by the way:

Vem, vamos embora, que esperar não é saber
Quem sabe faz a hora, não espera acontecer

(Come, let’s go, for waiting is not knowing
The one who knows makes the time and doesn’t wait for it to happen)

(Here's a 1968 recording of the audience joining in with Vandré singing--I've set it to where the audience joins in.)

It really does seem to have anthemic stature. Here's a link to the whole song, sung by Vandré (not live).

Here's an image that's used on Youtube for a remix of a version of the song as sung by Simone, a well-known Brazilian singer who was--so Wikipedia tells me--the first to record it after censorship was lifted.



I think it's a cool image... and/but also, as someone who writes about a country that honors Abstractions, it's interesting to me that Order and Progress are what made it to the national flag ... they seem ominously predictive of the struggles Brazil has had. ... Not that "Liberty and Justice for all" as a slogan guarantees that anything like that will be what the population actually gets, but...

... okay, gonna just drift off now.

If you're coming to the reading and want to have a text to follow along with, I've made a PDF of just the readings, and I believe--I hope and think--that you can download it *here*. (If not just let me know and I'll email the PDF to you.)

Today is Lagoonfire's release date, so if you preordered a physical copy, it should be winging its way toward you, and if you preordered an electronic copy, it should have been beamed to your Device. I have posted the cover here plenty, so enjoy instead Flickr user Stephen Bird's lovely photo of mangroves at twilight, a story-relevant image.



Here is the link for signing up for the reading on Saturday, if you're free at 7 pm EDT!

The first chapter-equivalent of Lagoonfire is posted at the publisher's website! I've already posted the first two paragraphs here on DW, but the longer excerpt will introduce you to all the retired Sweet Harbor gods:

(Click through to read.)

And I know the release date--March 3! So if you preordered, your copies should arrive then or shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, enjoy some bioluminescence. Here, with mangroves, in Florida...


(Source)

And here, in Mexico

(Source)

Melanie Nelson, my publisher at Annorlunda, is looking for advance readers for LAGOONFIRE, people who will post an honest review on their blog or other site in return for a copy of the book. If you'd like to do that--or if you know someone who might--here is where you can sign up, or you can email info(at)annorlundaenterprises.com and ask for a copy.

The mail brought a welcome item--my uncorrected proof for LAGOONFIRE!



I must go through it carefully and root out typos! The Polity approves of rooting out errors.

Last book featured a deity who wasn't ready to be retired. This one features a bunch of retired gods. How do they spend their time? How does the Polity treat them? You can learn a lot about a government by how it treats its decommissioned deities.

I've been spending too much time just working, but when I'm not, I step outside to enjoy the cosmos ... by which I mean the flower called cosmos, but hey, it's part of the bigger cosmos, so both things, actually.



Seems like each blossom held its own bee:


By the time I got those photos, late-ish today, the bees all seemed to be sleeping, but this morning they were active, flying blossom to blossom, but always politely socially distancing when they saw a blossom was already occupied.

It's past 5 pm, local time. Have an autumn brew.

This morning, since I have a dearth of paid work, and since the topic is tangentially related to something I'm writing, I watched a simply fabulous 47-minute video on Singapore's transshipment port.

I've always been fascinated by ports--or as fascinated as a person can be who's never actually hung out at any. They're such complex systems, and so important! So much going on. And the port in Singapore is especially so--the video claims it's the world's busiest.

Oh man, the video was just so well done. It starts with the arrival of a megaship, a giant container ship, and periodically it comes back to that ship to check on how things are coming along, and even though that's artificial--the filming isn't happening in real time (and the ship is in port for close to 24 hours)--it gives you a sense for how long it takes to unload and then reload it. And meanwhile it's talking about things like the Vessel Traffic Information Service (like air traffic control, but for the ships), or how they use gamma rays to check for bombs and things, or the car jockeys who have to drive the cars on and off the ship, or how they deal with VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers)--or how they deal with pirates! And they have historical footage of the port in the 1970s, and lots of interviews with various people in various roles, and always with this narration that knows how to play things for drama, e.g.:

It’s a wonder this megastructure doesn’t fall apart. The secret is Big Brother: Computer Integrated Terminal Operation System, code name CITOS. And this is central command. CITOS is a supercomputer whose fiberoptic tendrils reach every corner of the port. It orders, it controls, and it’s always watching.

Or:

The megaship will guzzle in just one day enough fuel to run an economy car for more than 150 years ... The fuel runs the largest diesel engine in the world … with more power than 143 top-of-the-range Ferraris.

(You have to love the comparisons--the wackiest was this: "100,000 boxes are stacked in the yard on any given day. Over 10 years, that’s enough to build a container beanstalk to the moon.")

You can imagine how exciting things get when it's talking about pirates:

It was almost midnight. The men were creeping in with pistols and long knives ... There was one chance the ship could be saved--but there was not a moment to lose ... Both the captain and the pirates were now racing to the bridge--racing to seize control of the ship. At stake? The lives of his crew.

But honestly, it was just as fun to see the car jockeys parking the cars within a hand's width of each other, or seeing a crane operator talk about his son wanting to go up in the crane.

I was thinking I would happily, happily watch a long serial set in a port, with the port master and the captain in charge of maritime environment and hazardous cargo, and the ship masters, the CEO of port security, and the car jockeys, and of course the pirates. Or even better, could I secure some grant to go live there and interview people and shadow them at work and create the serial myself??

I don't imagine my gushing can induce you to settle in for a 47-minute documentary video unless, like me, you're already interested in the topic, but I can promise you that it's an excellent ride if you do watch!

The healing angel and I finished reading Hamlet aloud to each other today--we'd been working on it ever since I finished reading The Raven Tower and since I found out she never read it in high school. What a ripping good yarn, right? And so many good bits I'd forgotten, and over-the-top bits, and everything.

healing angel at the end: Wait, is Hamlet nominating Fortinbras to be the new king of Denmark?

me: Yup.

healing angel: What's wrong with Horatio?! How about a nice scholarly king... who's afraid of ghosts?

Other things that stuck out at me this time around: Shakespeare getting a dig in at classism by having the gravediggers observe that the only reason Ophelia is getting a Christian burial is because she's a noblewoman:
--Will you ha' the truth an't? If this had not been a
gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' Christian burial.

--Why, there thou say'st! And the more pity that great folk
should have count'nance in this world to drown or hang themselves
more than their even-Christian.

That, and Gertrude describing Hamlet as fat and out of breath in the fight with Laertes!

And speaking of breathless, the short story "John Simnel's First Goshawk," by Tegan Moore, knocked the wind right out of me with its beauty of language and theme and the controlled, powerful, graceful way it unfolded.

This is how you break a hawk: wait him out ... If the falconer sleeps, he simply begins the excruciating wait again the next day. If the hawk sleeps, however, then the bird has lost forever ...

And this is how you break a boy: tell him he is king ... You must crown him and put him at the front of an army. If you fail, there is always another handsome hazel-eyed boy somewhere in the world. Anyone might do.

And

If escaped, or even freed, is something tamed and trained in this way ever its own sovereign?

I have a draft of my Inconvenient God sequel, but it's still in isolation while I decide how contagious it is and if radical surgery or chemotherapy will be necessary. As I said to Wakanomori, it's exactly the story you could expect from someone who spent six months working in a jail and the rest of the time editing papers on how the Chinese government incentivizes local officials to enact the policies it wants to carry out ... while living in T*rump's America.

I think everyone who reads me here probably already reads sovay, but just in case not...

I was blown away by her review of An Inconvenient God.

sovay's reviews are as good as stories: when she reviews films, she captures the drama of them, and without spoiling them in the least, makes you feel, by the power of her writing, what makes them funny, poignant, terrifying, tragic--whatever. It's a huge honor to have that attention paid to my own work.

Today The Inconvenient God is available for purchase, from multiple sources and in multiple formats! Andrea Johnson, the Little Red Reviewer, gave it an excellent write-up

The Inconvenient God touches on lost history, colonialism, the best (and worst) ways to chat with divinities, culture clash, and how to enjoy the new without forgetting the old.

I love the chatty style of Andrea's reviews. This made me laugh:

To be honest, when I read the back cover copy, I thought this was going to be about an old sky beard who was a professor at a college, and the guy refused to retire even though he had dementia. Yeah, that is not at all what this story is about!!

To pique your curiosity further: there's an apple goddess in this story too. That fact makes its autumn release feel just right.

Don't forget that if you do buy the story and send proof of purchase to the publisher, you can get a coupon to receive the lovely story The Lilies of Dawn for just 99 cents. More on that promotion here.