Rio de Janeiro is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen, and the trip from Sao Paulo to Rio on a clear, cloudless day is without a doubt my most beautiful flight. In Rio, you get dramatic mountains, perfect beaches, the ocean and an urban environment all in one glance. In every glance, actually. And often enough Jesus.
Rio is also the only city I visited where natives, when you tell them you’re staying in one of two of the most touristy areas possible, reply: “oh, good” and look relieved. No one has suggested that I venture out to find the “real” or “authentic” Rio. When I checked in at the hotel, I received information about when breakfast was served, the password for wi-fi and advice on how to avoid getting robbed.
It’s also over a hundred days since Marielle Franco was killed in an execution-style murder, and no suspected has yet been arrested.
Going from Santos to Sao Paulo you drive steadily upwards, surrounded on both sides by beautiful hills and valleys. I guess technically the road goes up a mountain, but it feels more like driving through them. It’s not one of those winding small roads that cling to the side of a mountain, which in my view makes it even better. I love a good highway, and especially a high way going through the hills and mountain tops. Eventually you’ll find yourself looking down at the fog, which feels very much like looking down on clouds when you fly.
The road back was even more beautiful. It was dark by then, so the only thing visible was the lights from Santos in the distance, and darkness that I knew were either mountains or ocean. In the car, Ana and Zé were talking about Coehlo, and I was listening to Eilen Jewell singing Worried mind, and I thought about all the strange roads and decisions and co-incidences and luck that led me to this point in time, enjoying a Brazilian highway together with a bookseller from Santos and a Portuguese writer and a brave and faithful guide.
There are so many lives to live out there, so many stories you’ll never tell and language you’ll never learn how to speak, people you haven’t met yet and perhaps never will, and right then that thought was inspiring instead of depressing. But it’s also a mystery, that I’ve stayed in the same city in the same country all these years, when there are so many great adventures out there yet to be experienced.
Sao Paulo: please forgive all the bad things I’ve ever thought about you! I take it back! You’re amazing!
And I have to admit, I did think bad things about the city. In my defense, I only saw it on my way from the airport, when I was tired after a ten hours flight, but the entire city seemed to consist of high risers, and the only colours were off white, beige and sand. I didn’t get any sense of an actualy city centre, which probably was because there isn’t one. “People always ask me where the city centre is”, said Matthew Shirts, formerly of National Geographic in Brazil, who’s lived in Sao Paulo for twenty years. “And I always tell them that there isn’t one centre, there’s many. It’s a city of twelve million people.”
Matthew used to write a column about daily life in Vila Madalena, and probably single handledly turned it into the charming bohemian quarter it is today. It’s an abslutely lovely area: the houses are small and individuals, painted yellow or pink or clear blue or covered with street art. There’s art galleries, small shows, and bars. Plenty of bars. And a coffee shop named the Coffee Lab, so you see what kind of area it is. Unlike Santos, Sao Paulo are built mostly of hills, so the steep streets remind me of San Francisco. The area reminds me of San Francisco before the tech guys. I was there for an event in a great bookshop, and afterwards we walked slowly to a restaurant a block or so away, where a jazz band was playing inside and people were having dinner or a few beer with friends. When we left them at midnight the band was still playing and people were still hanging around.
I’ve been traveling for almost four weeks now, and I have worked. But it’s a funny thing about traveling: I’m often better at finding new ideas than working on the book I should be focusing on. It’s something with being surrounded by all these stories that exists everywhere, and being open to them. In DC I eveasdropped on conversations at bars, thought about what their lives looked like, listed what characterized people in DC, took notes on what people did for a living, and tried to describe all the different places and streets and people I saw. I was completely uninterested in the small English village that just a short time ago seemed so fascinating to me, and thought instead about what would make people in DC kill each other (not politics, much too obvious) and what situations a visiting writer might find herself in.
But Brazil was different. In Santos I could suddenly think about the old idea again. I revisited my English village in my head, and reconnected with the people there that I left behind when I was in DC. I think it’s because I was no longer surrounded by any stories that I could understand. Partly from a strictly linguistic point of view: I write better when I don’t speak the language around me. It’s probably caused by a longing to use more words than “hello” and “thank you” (I also write longer Facebook messages to all my friends). But I think it’s also partly because the environment and culture was so new and foreign to me that I couldn’t grasp any of the stories around me. I knew they existed, I just couldn’t access them. Everything was strange to me: the rythm, architecture, coffee, body language. I could listen to the three old men sitting at the table next to me over three empty small cups of espresso, but I could weave no stories around them. What did they do for a living? Where did they live? Where they friends, collegues, old enemies? Who knows?
But after five days here I have started to find stories again. I’m suddenly alive to the possibilities of it all. Oh, I don’t understand Brazil of course. It’s not a country you understand, even if you’ve lived there for twenty years or, I suspect, your entire life. But I’m beginning to see pontential characters in everyone I meet, and professions, and how people talk to each other, and suddenly I find myself abandoning my English village again and thinking instead of how my determined, settled and effevtive writer would cope here, and who would end up getting killed.
“No one buys books in Brazil anymore”, someone said and shook his head. “The only time someone ever buys books are at event”, someone else added.
Ask anyone that’s ever been involved in the publishing industry – publishers, editors, booksellers, writers – in any country and they will all tell you how difficult the times are nowadays. This has held true in every country and city I’ve ever been to, including Hay-on-wye, where a lady in a bookshop shook her head sadly and said there used to be many more bookshop there. But not anyway. She didn’t think there were more than 25 now.
There’s not quite 25 bookshops in the area close to the hotel, but it’s not that far off. I’ve counted some five just in the immediate area around it. Most of them are part of chains, of course: “There used to be many more independent bookshops, but they are all closing nowaday”, said a third person.
No bookshop in Santos can compete with The Bookseller’s. This Saturday he had organized a little celebration at the bookshop after the events of the day had ended. The doors were open towards the warm evening outside, people were having a beer out on the streets, and a man with a guitar and a woman with a violin were playing inside. And everyone was of course surrounded by books. I even got to go backstage. I miss being allowed into storerooms now that I no longer work in a bookshop. Isn’t it an amazing view?
