During one of my daily walks I was talking to myself out loud. At first I was speaking with my mom, thanking her for protecting my family and I, and for illuminating my journey. Then, I switched to the fact I was a little melancholic. I had sensed a defense wall created by someone I had interviewed and that brought me to a place of unbalance. Even tough my questions are always coming from my heart and that I’m not a professional journalist, that doesn’t mean someone will sense that, especially if you are not wired (at the moment) to expect good from other human beings. Anyway, here’s how I’ve started this “journalistic” experience.
In April I began going Live on Instagram to keep in touch with my friends. I wanted to learn a little bit more about them, and introduce them to other people. I can’t believe that “this Mo thru Fri habit” would open a desire to understand the reasons we do what we do. I think I’d be a good therapist!
For many years I’ve met lots of people in my artistic journey starting in Brasil and now in the US. With time I assumed people liked to be seen as busy bees, and because of that I went from rehearsal to gigs without getting the opportunity to have a deeper conversation with fellow artists besides making music together. Coming from a culture and a time in my life when we could just drop by a friend’s house for a talk over coffee, I assumed I could do the same here. Not really, I’ve learned. Connecting through performance became my only link to touch people’s heart. Maybe that’s why I created a newsletter called Brazilian Heart to share my thoughts with friends and fans and that led to The Brazilian Literary Lounge, Brazilian Heart Celebration Show, and now Brazilian Heart LIVE. You can say I have the desire to create and express my feelings endlessly, but what I think I’m trying to do is to touch your heart and bring forth emotions. I remember how live theater won my heart when I was a teenager and I still believe it can revolutionize someone’s life. For me memories trigger emotions and emotional memories bring us back to our first passions and decisions of what to do in life. I think that’s what I instinctively did when I began Brazilian Heart LIVE.
During BH LIVE, I found myself asking questions about their first memories of childhood: odors, imagery, audio, stories, books, first impressions. It’s beautiful to notice the “pause” as people remember, and how I connect to the joy of their “re discovering” of their earlier selves. I find these moments so poetic that now I ask them to introduce themselves in a poetic way right from the start. “Not your name, where you came from and what you do,” I explain. You know, poetry requires you to summarize, and I guess I’m asking too much to start with. Interesting (but not surprisingly,) I found women face that request more easily. The way our brains are wired? But definitely found out many men go with the flow, too. I feel some have the tendency to assume all interviews will be the same. If you’re an artist giving interviews can become very boring because you get to repeat yourself over and over. If they are pretty famous they’ve probably learned how to hide their family stories and in the process of doing that, many lost the opportunity to connect with the rest of humanity, which links us all together. To be “humane” is what connects us because it can brings us to the notion that we are perfect with our imperfections.
“I see myself in people’s life,” I say in a song I wrote playing ukulele (thank you, Marcele Berger for inspiring me).
So, here I am, celebrating my 80thinterview next week. Wow! It’s not about counting how many, it’s about listening and feeling what people went through in life. What a blessing to recognize myself in them and see beauty, and awe and realize it made a difference for both, the interviewer and the interviewee. And that during the “Inter- View,” we captured a view between us that was not recognizable before.
