So, I got back yesterday. I’m sad and happy to be back: I miss so much about Brazil, but I’m overjoyed at many of the things at home.
Not least among them the food; Brazil is not vegetarian-friendly. First meal: mammoth black bean & cheese burrito followed by strawberry shortcake. Second meal: masala dosa with sambar (a south Indian dish). I’ve regained five of the ten pounds I’d lost.
But I’d gladly trade them for some time at a Brazilian beach.
In 2001, a (then twenty year old) cousin of mine came to visit from India. One day, we decided to gorge ourselves on movies. I kept it light. We watched The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, and Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, I asked which was her favorite. When she said “Pearl Harbor,” I laughed and said, “Ok, well let’s leave out which movie had the best-looking actors.” She replied, “No, really, Pearl Harbor.” I was so irate I didn’t talk to her till the next morning.
A second example. Another cousin of mine lived with his brother when he arrived in the U.S. in 1994. Every time I’d visit, he’d be watching COPS. I hate that show. Hate it. I tried explaining that it was vile, racist, fear-mongering, etc. To no avail. I encouraged him to watch something better. Anything. No luck.
But I think I have some insight into these bizarre outpourings of bad taste. Because I have zero taste right now when it comes to Brazilian culture. I watch Brazil’s top-rated soap opera, Mulheres Apaixonadas (”Women in Love” – no discernible connection to D.H. Lawrence). When I tell most Brazilians that I enjoy brega, the most saccharine musical style imaginable (chorus from my favorite tune: “Come here, love, come kiss me. Come here, love, come embrace me. Come here, love, I need you”), there’s an embarassed silence while they reevaluate their estimate of my IQ. Then they change the subject as quickly as possible.
It’s hard to have sophisticated taste in a foreign country. Beyond linguistic barriers, most good popular art is rife with references to history, social behavior, culture, current events, etc. that are beyond the newcomer’s grasp. There’s no way to understand any of that as a beginner. When I watch Mulheres, I only understand about half the words. But the situations it depicts are universal, so that I can fill in the gaps pretty easily: this couple’s marriage is falling apart, she has a crush on him, but he loves another, etc. I don’t puke at the dialogue because it doesn’t yet seem insipid to me. Same thing with music. Robert Christgau once described Brazil’s pop music as the most highly aestheticized in the world. It’s incredibly nuanced and sophisticated, with dozens of genres and styles. I love the songs of Caetano Veloso, who occupies a place in the Brazilian musical pantheon akin to what some combination of Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney would in our own. But my appreciation is incredibly superficial. I don’t get why he’s considered a genius, anymore than one of my cousins would have understood “Highway 61 Revisited” when they arrived in the U.S.
I suppose it would be possible to get some sort of primer on Brazilian pop culture, and then watch some good films or listen to quality music, and really plumb the depths. But at the end of a day saturated with a new language and novel experiences, I just don’t have it in me. I recently went with some friends to a four-person musical play which combined elements of social satire and physical comedy. Simply trying to attach some meaning to it for the first half-hour was the most exhausting experience I’ve had all year. I literally passed out for fifteen minutes from fatigue in the middle of the show. But my friends loved it, and said it was a gem of Brazilian theater. They explained its layers of social critique: of class stratification in the city of Recife, of the pollution of Portuguese with English words. Great stuff in the recounting. But it may as well have been in sign language as far as my ability to understand most of it went.
I’ve read Pierre Bourdieu, and intellectually, I guess I understood that taste is socially constructed. But I don’t think I really believed it till now. Deep down, I thought if something was good, it’s quality would shine through, and vice-versa if it was poor. Apparently not.
Well, enough of this apologia for crappy taste. Hopefully, I’ll get better as I learn more about Brazil. Other stuff. My biggest frustration right now in Brazil is “troco” (change for money). The Brazilian currency is the real (pronounced “hey-aw”). ATMs generally dish out money in 50 real bills, which might seem reasonable given that 2.82 reais = 1 dollar. You’re getting something close to a $20 bill. But this is a developing country. Prices aren’t that hight, and lots of people work in the informal sector. Dropping a 50 real bill to pay for a bottle of water (price: 1 real) or a snack from a street vendor (2.5 reais) or even a cab ride (12 reais) is like handing over a $1000 bill at Taco Bell. They look at you like you’re insane. So I have to constantly be aware of when I’m transacting with the relatively-liquid formal sector – buying a book, eating at a nice restaurant – in order to break my 50’s. It’s a gigantic pain, and definitely – is this what an economist would say? – prevents welfare-enhancing transactions. As I write this, I only have two fifty real bills in my pocket. I’m dying of thirst. And I’m not going to be able to buy a bottle of water till lunch, unless I want to walk 15 minutes to the nearest big grocery store. Aaaaargh.
Laurel says the troco problem is yet another example of the disconnect between Brazil’s elites and its people. In the unlikely event that anyone with any power to change this ridiculous situation is reading this, please start stocking ATMs with only 10 and 20 real bills.
For Laurel’s birthday, her friends took us to Morro Branco and Praia das Fontes, two beaches about 50 miles from Fortaleza. They’d said we’d visit the beaches, and maybe ride around in a rented dune buggy for a while. It sounded nice, but nothing out of the ordinary. Which was the perfect expectation for what turned out to be a completely surprising day. Within a few square miles around these beaches was an unbelievable diversity of natural phenomena.
First, the sand. According to our guide, twelve different colors of sand naturally occur in the area. Of these, we saw red, black, orange, yellow, bluish grey, and traditional beige. Local artisans make incredibly detailed pictures in glass bottles out of these colors. Here’s how they dry the sand:
“Morro_Branco_Drying_Sand”
The contrast between the (predominantly red) sand and the (incredibly blue) water was stunning. My camera can’t do it justice:
“Morro_Branco_Contrast”
We hiked through the “labirinto,” a series of trails through a small natural canyon:
“Morro_Branco_Labirinto”
We then drove a couple of miles down the beaches in a dune buggy. There was a wall of sandscape that ran alongside us a few dozen meters from the water’s edge. The wall was dotted with grottos. You can see fresh water that flows through the grottos and runs out to the ocean:
“Fontes_Sandscape”
When we rounded the wall, we were in the dunes:
“Fontes_Dunes”
We clambered down a huge hill-sized sand dune. Some people rented wooden sleds and slid down. We closed out the drive at a small lake that emptied out into tiny rapids.
You have to understand that everything we saw took us completely by surprise. Outside of places like Yellowstone, I don’t think I’ve seen such a variety of natural phenomena in such a small area.
