decorating time

If everything passes, one could say that music is a photograph of the soul in time. Jean-Michel Basquiat, the famous painter, recognized this power when he said: “Art is how we decorate space. Music is how we decorate time.

Decorate. This word, at first glance, has the notion of adorning a given place, making it more beautiful.

And yes, music may make tiring ambients a little less tedious, such as it may be the spark to set ablaze an otherwise tepid party. Music can make an overcast sky reveal signs of a following storm, as well as the sun behind the clouds.

Music can be confirmation bias, because “how can that artist have written everything that I feel?” or it can show us questions that could only be explained after a million years (in a few seconds).

However, I’d like to emphasize a different meaning. To decorate — this I know by heart! I know how to memorize, but first and foremost, I learn things by heart.

To me, music means to resist time. It means to remember smells, emotions and, who knows, to verbalize it into feeling. Music is a place inside of us that we only access when we listen to it. And so out of nowhere it comes to be something more than what we saw in our daily lives. The “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dalí evokes the sensations of time passing: contemplating this painting, an interesting exercise for the imagination would be assigning musicians to the task of composing a song based on this concept.

Certainly a lot of different stories would be created, told or remembered from that starting point. Time was recognised as of relative magnitude, dependent on space. In poetic terms, there’s no time without space, neither space without time. So we, humans, beings who pass through life in between these gods, don’t go by unharmed. In this essay, I would like to praise five songs which prove that mere beings like us are capable of overcoming the eternal.

1. Ojos de Video Tape – Charly Garcia (1983)

Este mundo extrañará por siempre
La película que vi una vez
Y este mundo te dirá que siempre
Que es mejor mirar a la pared

Singauthor, multi-instrumentalist by absolute ear, Charly García is the most avant-garde figure of popular music from Latin America. Not that well known in Brazil, he’s a must listen for everyone. He’s the living proof of resistance against time, for even after so much abuse (once he jumped from a hotel balcony and triumphantly landed inside a pool only so he could ditch paparazzis), he lives on with an incomparable legacy.

In the context of memory, the finishing track of the masterpiece Clics Modernos (1983) is categorical in stating “¿No ves que espero resucitar […]?” [don’t you see I expect to be resurrected?], revealing a lyrical subject that refuses to stay inert in dark times. The strophe synthesizes the feeling of growing old watching the world be diverted to bleak, dictatorial directions (a while back, who could imagine that in 2026 we could perhaps be in the prelude of another Great War?). Art provides escapism and also means for those who dare to revolutionize society — maybe that’s why it’s often targeted by authoritarian regimes. Charly lived on through this, having survived the Argentine Civil-Military Dictatorship (1966-1973), that disappeared with its oppositors and persecuted artists. Who knows if perhaps this given song isn’t about someone who already sees themselves as a gone memory?

2. Abololo – Marisa Monte (2000)

Abololô, abolocô
E a saudade vem
Vem pra lhe dizer que no peito
Há vazio, há falta de alguém.

Marisa Monte sings of emptiness in one’s chest. “Abololô”, a neologism for saudade, or that feeling we associate with someone who’s no longer present. The record title is evermore fitting: Memórias, Crônicas e Declarações de Amor (2000), for “memories, short stories and love confessions”. “Vem pra qualquer um, qualquer hora” [it comes to anyone, anytime] for we’re all prone to miss an old relationship, a friend, a loving one. To me, Abololô is how much I miss Amora, my decade-long companion, whose departure to the great beyond is soon to complete one full year. Everytime I think of Amora, abololô. I abololo myself up. Some tightness in my chest, it thrashes me, but I don’t let myself be crushed. This song reaches depths into the senses, like a shore, swinging the body and swaying away.

The ephemerality of a recording never compares to the eternity of songs, always with us when we need them.

3. Seus lindos olhos – Hermeto Pascoal & Grupo (2024)

Será que apenas os hermetismos pascoais
Os tons, os mil tons, seus sons e seus dons geniais
Nos salvam, nos salvarão dessas trevas
E nada mais?
(Podres Poderes, Caetano Veloso)

Timeless Hermeto Pascoal. Music truly is salvation and Caetano knows that well. As for our wizard [Hermeto, known as Bruxo dos Sons or Wizard of Sounds], before he passed on casting musical spells in paradise, he left us a piece as farewell. A homage to his eternal lover. In Para Você, Ilza (2024), meaning “for you, Ilza”, each composition is dedicated to Ilza Souza Silva, who was his wife for more than 40 years. Here follows Hermeto’s words on the record:

“[In] everything I’ve done, everything I do, everything I keep on doing, Miss Ilza is present, wonderfully present. Because on time she’s always — all of the time, Miss Ilza, she’s always been there for me, to help me in each and every way. How wonderful and thank god that I am here. And she is over there wherever God took her. But no one dies, the body dies. Our love, our spirit, our soul goes on together. Everyone goes on, falling apart. I wanna say that this recording, this record was a gift, as always, a godsend. When I got to the studio, done, everything opened up for me to start with my music. I witnessed heaven on earth doing this work. It’s a work that is a gift for all of you, from all of us here. This was a gift of ours. To anyone who wants it and to the eternal missus, Miss Ilza.” (PASCOAL, 2024, our translation).

4. Saudade dos Aviões da Panair – Milton Nascimento (1975)

Cerveja que tomo hoje é apenas em memória
Dos tempos da Panair

A primeira Coca-Cola foi, me lembro bem agora
Nas asas da Panair

A maior das maravilhas foi voando sobre o mundo
Nas asas da Panair

Childhood: who hasn’t ever missed those days? When colors were new. Different shades of blue, different greens and yellows. The first coming and going, first stumbles, things that are part of who we’ll become years from now (or of who we are today). To inattentive listeners, it may seem merely nostalgic, however, Saudades dos Aviões da Panair (for “missing the Panair planes”) has a hidden meaning that shows itself through Brazilian history.

Panair do Brasil S.A. was one of the very first airlines in the country, being the leading one in the field between the years of 1930s and 1950s, known as “Soberana do Atlântico Sul”, meaning South Atlantic Sovereign. However, in 1965, one year after the 1964 military coup d’etat in Brazil, the company was forced, by the government, to end its operations. As time went on, the reason made itself known: the persecution of its owners.

“O medo em minha vida nasceu muito depois / Descobri que a minha arma é o que a memória guarda”.

Released precisely during the military dictatorship, the lyrics express a feeling of saudade [to miss someone] that is not only affectionate but also historical. The feeling of loss isn’t simply about the innocence of childhood. Actually, the emotion comes within the disillusionment from a country that urges for sovereignty, but finds itself subjected under the power of few.

5. Heroes – David Bowie (1977)

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes, just for one day

Timeless. This song, among many others, is one that comes to mind when I think of overcoming time. For the last recommendation, I’d like a famous song that could very well fit as a soundtrack for the end of the world. Not the end of the world in a catastrophic way. An end of the world Heroes, David Bowie.

Imagine, midway through 1977, a recording studio with a view to the Berlin Wall, a great symbol of the separation that the world suffered from. The wall signified the battle between peoples, that of the Cold War, whose persistence could break up once and for all with the history of humanity. The wall was there to remind citizens from both East and West Germany that their lives were at stake.

Now, imagine a couple, broken apart by this border, urging to live their love even as they were stopped by this geographical separation. That is until a cloudy evening, when, at the reach of the much feared wall, the lovers meet in between kissing and caressing, denying to fear any danger.

It was about this remarkable memory that David Bowie composed one of his most famous songs. Heroes was already the theme song for movies, season finales and for a million lives all around the world (mine included).

This song fills me with hope for change, but also with memento mori: I am mortal and there’s nothing I’m able to do against that. However, even if for an instant, I can break that barrier. Yes, we can be heroes – (even if) just for one day.