Gotham City Soul

The truly perfect film Black Orpehus is 50 years old this year and it is still fascinating me. I've been to Brazil since the first time I saw the movie at least 20 years ago, and darned if the energy and music and beauty in Salvador da Bahia in 2005 wasn't like that in Rio in 1959. A synopsis from Gene Seymour in an article for the Fall 2005 issue of American Legacy "The ill-starred ancient Greek romance of Eurydice (played by the luminous Marpessa Dawn) and Orpheus (Breno Mello) takes place in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval, with an all-black, mostly Brazilian cast, and evocative samba soundtrack by Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Carlos Jobim. With the success of this film, its director Marcel Camus and screenwriter Vinicius de Moraes broadened the global perspective on black cultures and helped ignite the bossa nova movement that would seduce music lovers in both hemi spheres" The film won the Palm D'or at Cannes in 1959, and the Oscar and Golden Globe for best foreign ...

So the other day someone engaged me in a conversation full of information I’d rather not have had. It was not useful, positive, enlightening, or nurturing in any way. What the individual had to say was born of an ignorance of the big picture—this person had no idea what they were talking about (I incorrectly use the plural rather than singular here to mask gender) when it came to the subject at hand, which included me and someone close to me. It might not have been so unpleasant had it not been practically the first words out of the person’s mouth. This took place in a setting where I had expected to relax and enjoy a peaceful afternoon, not get blindsided by spiritually draining gossip. The way the individual began speaking before they even said hello, it was almost as if they couldn't wait to tell me this bit of upsetting news. I choose to believe that it was thoughtless, not deliberate. It happens to us all. I had a conversation with one of the subjects of the gossip, who told m...