19.10.13

variações


"He's different. That's a given. He forces the calmest into a reaction. Good or bad. He likes the daytime because it makes difference evident. Absolutely evident. In his expressions, he carries the trace of a challenge, of the play of images, of simultaneous attraction and repulsion. It is a right to difference which is felt more than it is stated, lived more than it is wanted. He is António Variações: singer, barber, almost a character. Between Minho and New York, with Lisbon and Amália in his chest and a "Guardian Angel" [Anjo da Guarda] in which he doesn't believe because he doesn't need one. He lost his age halfway through his life, kept the name António Joaquim Rodrigues Ribeiro, shortened it to António Variações. One of these nights, in the "free and real" Bairro Alto, he accepted the challenge of references. And he won...

The music started with the scissor, the working instrument for cutting hair, which allowed him to say: "I am a barber." Meanwhile, the dream of other, higher places followed him, teased him, seduced him. Until the day when he walked right into the record label to deliver a cassette with his songs. He immediately signed a contract. But he waited for five years before he could say: "I am a singer." When he did, loudly and clearly, he had Amália on one side ("Povo que Lavas no Rio") and the "Beyond" [Além] on the other. Opinions divided despite one unanimous conclusion: he was different. And now, a year later, here he is affirming his originality once again - a strange, mysterious, provocative "Guardian Angel". (...)

- Hair...
- It's very important. Abundant and beautiful, as long as it doesn't cast shadow on the brain.
- Body...
- As important as the spirit.
- Dance...
- An act of freedom.
- Stage...
- It's my fascination and horror. I've always dreamt of it. Only now am I trying to stand on it.
- Claps...
- It's good to hear them. My father didn't have any, and he deserved them.
- Daytime...
- I like it a lot, because I come out. Daytime is truth.
- Nighttime...
- More of a liar. There are those who hide in it...
- Light...
- Is Amália.
- Aesthetics...
- Are Amália.
- Colours...
- My favourite are the really garrish and flaming ones.

Life from the balcony, fear of blindness

(Other directions, more arrows in the search for the man. António Variações shifts in his chair and stares at the reporter defiantly. The game is taken up.)

- Underground...
- That's me.
- The Beyond...
- I always want to find it out. It's my permanent dissatisfaction.
- Death...
- May it come when I am ejaculating.
(...)
- Sex...
- Health, life. If I don't have sex, I become neurotic.
- Homosexuality...
- Is just a sexual option. It should be affirmed by those who practice it and respected by everyone else.
- Dream...
- All the other ones I would like to be.
- Future...
- The future is now.
- Life...
- (silence)... Is what I see from the balcony.
- Courage...
- I don't have any.
- Fear...
- (long silence)... A fear of becoming blind, yes.
- Scissors...
- I like a gardner's scissors.

More animal than rational

(The big finish, the end. António Variações is the gap between his replies and his silences, between what he says and what goes unsaid. This is the interview which is possible. And still, it's nothing but a glimpse.)

- António Joaquim Rodrigues Ribeiro...
- Is a provincial man who is more animal than he is rational, an anarchist, pacifist, curious, restless, who feels the right to exist because he respects the existence of others.
- António Variações...
- Likes to make people sing, would like to be more than just a spectator. And he wants to be part of History, even if only the history of a wall."

-- revista SE7E, Março de 1983




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