Somewhere between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. 1999, photographed by a family member
The word serra is pronounced in Portuguese like a slow and smooth breath out of the mouth:
seh-HA
sierra, in English.
The sound of the word matches the space it describes quite well. When I think of the 6-hour car rides with my family between Rio and São Paulo, I remember these rugged hills way more than the pit stops for lunch or the backseat arguments. It’s a South American Windows XP desktop background in an endless forward motion. Not the most exciting view to sit with when you’re five years old. My small child body would fidget the whole ride long as we swerved through the roads. I was a city girl with no appreciation for nature, even as the sun would set and the purple sky made the serra look like heaven. Looking out the car window, I’d imagine my fingers were legs running across the hills as we sped on by. In my head, I was the one wandering off freely into nowhere and nothing.
“The Sound of Music”, opening scene. 1965
A few weeks back, I found a photograph of the serra at home here in New York. It was buried deep in a pile of photo albums from my earliest trips to Brazil: a homecoming or a departure depending on who you ask. Had I not found this photograph, I would have kept thinking that the landscape was something my younger self had dreamt of. It’s been years since I’ve been back. As I’ve grown older, my mother claims that I might love Brazil even more than she does-- a common trait of first generation children who’ve been pulled away from the parent country too soon. We fill in the gaps with the knowledge we have.
I recently tried to pull up the most probable highway route we would have taken through the serra on Google Maps. If my retracing is correct, this area has been named Serra dos Orgãos (sierra of the organs). Several minutes or hours nearby, an odd shaped mountain called the Finger of God sticks out awkwardly from the land. Looking at the roads on Google Maps, the same emotions of overwhelming restlessness came back.
Somewhere between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Present day, Google Maps Street View.
I am constantly inside when in São Paulo. My ability to momentarily exist outside is veiled by the fact that most spaces I inhabit there are constructed for the safety and peace of mind of the white middle class. Wandering is a privilege but it also comes with highly enforced space restrictions in order to avoid the crossing of clearly stated social delineations. They shift upon me and then onto the next person:
Out the pool, up the elevator, into the shower, out to the terrace, down to the garage, in the back of a car, up the ramp, through the gate, down the highway, into the mall, back in the car, up a new ramp, into the bakery, over the bridge, through the service entrance, into the kitchen, arriving at the table for a hora do café. Inside, everyone on TV looks like me, or perhaps I’m the one who looks like everyone. Outside, I am the screen through which to stare.
Repeat in a new order the next weekend.
Thinking about
Lygia Clark and the will to bend or transform with ease. Are you aware of what your body has done today?
Planes on Modulated Surface, 1957
Moses Sumney’s latest album, græ: There are so few albums that have fully immersed me in the way this one has. I find it hard to do anything else but listen and be still. Rejecting binaries is an act of resistance, and this assertion echoes across the hour-log project:
“I insist upon my right to be multiple, even more so
I insist upon the recognition of my multiplicity”I especially enjoyed the performance her gave in this video of his song “Cut Me”.
Happy Gemini season ~