The Contemplative Eye

It’s round about midnight. (Actually, it’s round about 10—plenty late to get old buzzards like me in the mood.) And the velvety, dandelion-wine voice of Brazil’s Paula Toller is shimmering in the autumn air.

Me, I’m sitting at my desk, sipping Jaegermeister from a preposterous little German glass that tradition assigns to this role, and slowly sliding down my wheelie chair.

Paula is singing “1800 Colinas” at half speed, miraculously transforming the rowdy ’70s Carnival samba into a ballad—with a melody so dreamy, ornate, and spaciously far-leaping that I can only barely sing along with her. And I’m a not-bad singer. (I seem to recall something similar occurring in The Music Man, but I’m too lazy just now to look it up).

Paula’s even, slightly narcotized voice and the throaty zhush of Brazilian Portuguese are perfect for the job, contributing nicely—along with the CD’s sweet, heavy synthesizers—to the general sentimentality of having Jaegermeister in one’s neocortex.

Paula informs us:

Subi mais de 1800 colinas
Não vi nem a sombra de quem
eu desejo encontrar.
Oh Deus, eu preciso encontrar meu amor
Prá matar a saudade que quer me matar.
Oh Deus, eu preciso encontrar meu amor
Prá matar a saudade.

Eu que queria dar sossego ao meu coração
Mas fui infeliz no amor
Fui gostar de quem não gosta de ninguém
E hoje só me resta a dor.
E hoje só me resta.

The auto-translation of these lyrics is pretty fritzy (see below). But the gist of it, plainly, was that the protagonist climbed 1,800 hills looking for his or her lover, and did not find her or him. Ah.

Why 1,800? Alas, I cannot say.

“Colinas” comes from the Latin collis, meaning hill, and is related to the English colliculus, a term from anatomy meaning a small protuberance.

I spotted Paula recently on YouTube in a Brazilian music video that can only be described as torpid. The poor dear was robbed—devoid of energy and charisma (though very pretty), and having trouble with her eyelids. She was in a black-light lunar landscape that featured fly-girls wearing their birthday suits and a tuxedoed chap who looked like Kermit the Frog in a fright wig. The tune was so unremarkable that I can’t remember it long enough to remark on it; I fear she wrote it.

Paula was born in 1962 and raised by her grandparents in the Copacabana section of Rio, in a house filled with classical music, dance, and English. Her grandfather was a retired surgeon and author. But eventually, of course, she heard James Brown. In 1982 she joined Kid Abelha (”Kid Bee”), which emerged as one of Brazil’s top bands and has continued to be a pop hit-maker ever since. She also sings German Lieder.

In my first job in Manhattan, in 1978, I worked for a trade journal in the international sugar industry. We published a monthly in English and Spanish, the chief languages of the sugar-growing world, and a quarterly in Portuguese, for Brazil. Ever since, like many people who’ve had even the slightest contact with Brazil, I’ve longed—and longed—to go there. I was sorry to hear recently that the streets really aren’t safe for visitors these days.

The trouble with these tiny glasses is that you have to keep refilling them.

[Above: The hills of Rio de Janeiro, from an image by rioholiday.com. Below: Another, more familiar view, from an image by tropicalisland.de.]

1800 hills went up more than
Not vi nor the shade of who
I desire to find
Oh God, I need to find my love
Prá to kill the homesickness that wants to kill me
I that I wanted to give calmness to my heart
But I was unhappy in the love
I was to like who does not like nobody
E today only remains me pain