Olinda

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The beautiful one...
There is a place.. nestled by the sea, built on slopes overlooking the "ogre in a
dungeon" city - recife, her name is Olinda. Delapidated and faded, its rolling cobbled
streets are a sanctuary for those that stroll through . Fallen romantic portuguese
churches are the centrepieces with tall coconut trees dressing the view which is a
turquoise shark infested ocean.
Olindas historic unesco protected centre houses mainly gays, artists and tourists,
but a step or two outside and the landscape is a more familiar one of the poor north
east.. where prawns and Pitu (a toxic cachaca) are the staple diet. The days are
oppresively humid with a soak late afternoon while the early laser sun sends you
scampering for shade.
Once a year , brasil hosts carnival...its big, vulgar and exciting. The essence of
human folly is spilt on to the streets where people forget themselves on friday and
find themselves the following thursday... forget your morals, clothes and hygiene and
join in or run away fast.Samba, frevo, maracatu , afoxe, coco, ... Olinda hosts the
most diverse carnival in brasil where the sea of people mix seemlessly with the
majestic musicians and the shoal of dancers. Eyes goggle,bundas* ignite and tongues
meet. This is the currency of comunication. Its about as sensual as watching a hungry
lion eating a bambi, but as spectator sports go...its jaw dropping.
Just when you think the circus is over....another procession rocks the town back
into motion ...until the town can no more... it begins to rain and nature brings an end
to the interminable season and a welcome cleansing of the streets/souls . Grown men
weep, the town resonates an erry silence, and the locals get there treasure back.
I've been in this place too long. Yesterday american tourists photographed me
walking down a steep hill with a guitar in my hands. From the vagabonds/ street guitarists to
the barmen with the frustrated artists, a long weekend with a frevo dancers' family,
back to the gringo hostal, late nights in recifes dingy music houses with sao Paulo
hipsters. The speedy 4am taxi journeys returning home through the citie's highways..
lit up by sand football pitches where favela's finest play behind fences, grand private
hospitals flash like beacons, the smell of the river sewers,the wind blowing in my face
as I gawk out of the taxi are the tastes of pernambuco.. the ambadassor of the
Northeast.
From my medical bedroom listening to bossa nova, stan Getz playing Tom Jobims perfect
dissonant cadences, I am actually here..but its not the song I wrote , its more like a
stampede..or a war dance.. overdressed .., I take the next bus out to see the dolphins
away from the sharks of recife.

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