There Should be a Word

There should be a word

That describes the sadness you feel

When a vacation ends

But

You want it

To last 

Forever.

Obrigado, Brasil.

Vaults

The apartments and homes 

In the cities of

Brazil

Are vaults. 

The gates are 

High.

Windows barred.

Doormen watch.

Floors above the city

The beautiful people relax

In bars and restaurants

Watching the 

Sparkling streets

Below.

 

Copacabana at night

TSwift x2 , Suck It Scalpers! and the Screecher

Claire-Adele and I saw Taylor Swift twice in Brazil. We bought one set of tickets planning for the trip and a second set while we were here. The cost of the Saturday show dropped to $90 for floor seats, far below the Brazilian face value of the tickets. When Claire-Adele asked if we should go, I said of course. 

Taylor’s initially scheduled two shows in Rio, and added a third based on demand, which is great, but how can the people scheduling concerts know the true demand of the robot scalpers and buying so many tickets hoping to profit? It would be crazy. 

I hope we bought these tickets from a robot scalper  and they had to take a loss on the whole show.

At the second show, a screecher stood behind us. Everyone in the stadium was singing along, but this chick was screaming or yelling the lyrics, completely out of tune. She was sobbing and shouting the lyrics to “You Belong with Me” and “Love Story.” My head was about to explode. I had a few choices:

1. I could continue to stand next to her and resent that she was ruining the concert.
2. I could use my translation app and tell her to shut the fuck up, which would not have represented Americans well.
3. I could passive-aggressively dance in her face and get her to move.
4. I could move.

I could Option 4. I have her the space in front of me so I won’t have her voice blasting in my right ear, and Claire-Adele and I moved three spots to the left. Win-win.

Claire-Adele said there has been a big brouhaha on the internet about Gen Zer’s screaming at concerts. I guess a woman at a U.S. show paid $3k for a seat next to screecher. I was lucky I could move whereas the woman in the US could not. Even though it is a joyful and exciting concert, you can do whatever the fuck your want. Suppose I started singing the Star Spangler Banner in the middle of “Lover” because I was inspired. People would have every right to drag me out of there.

Ditto to the screechers. Back in the day, I remember attending the Steppenwolf theater in Chicago and they posted theater going etiquette in the program. Rick concerts have fewer rules, but there are still some.

The Eras Tour Rio and the Perfect Storm — General Admission, Water, and Safety & Security

Note: Sorry for the seriously clunky title.

As the entire world knows, a young woman, Ana Clara Benevides Machado, died from dehydration from the heat prior to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert last Friday in Rio. My daughter—who is the same age as the woman who died—and I attended the Sunday and Monday Rio concerts. What would have been a simply joyful event became marked with a difficult set of complex thoughts and feelings. I planned this trip with my daughter so I could bounce back from a rough year that included my mother’s death, the finalization of a heartbreaking divorce, and a surgery that had me laid up for six weeks. And now the concert that was to bring joy to thousands was marked by tragedy.

I don’t know the specific details about the Benevides death, but here are some things that I imagine might have contributed to the perfect storm.

The shows here are General Admission (GA) by section. The floor doesn’t have chairs (unlike U.S. shows), so it is just a mob of people. To get a good spot, people arrive early. My daughter and I met a guy on the train home after Sunday’s show who also had tickets for the Saturday show that was postponed. He told showed up at ten a.m. on Saturday to get a good place in line and was in the stadium when the show was canceled. He thought it was a good decision to postpone the show: he thought more people would have died.

I imagine Benevides didn’t have any water all day, not just during the show. Imagine sitting outside since ten a.m. in 100 degree heat with no water bottle waiting to get into the show you’ve dreamed of for months. You are thrilled and full of anticipation. Once you get a good spot in the crowd, you don’t want to leave because you won’t get your spot back. Also, you don’t want to be chugging too much water because you have to pee and then you’d also lose your spot to see a performer whose music has changed your life. Couple this with an otherwise healthy young person who thinks they will never die, and you have a perfect storm for some to die of heat and dehydration.

What changed? 

After the young woman’s death, the best thing that happened was the stadium changed the policy to allow people to bring in factory sealed bottles of plastic water and snacks. I can see why they don’t want metal water bottles in the show for security, but that doesn’t mean they need to exclude all water. Safety and security are not the same. Letting people bring water into the show keeps them safe. Making sure people don’t get beaten on the head with a full Hydroflask is security. 

Do I think the Brazilians should get rid of General Admission? That is up to them to decide, not me. Not having an assigned seat might have contributed to her death, but it didn’t cause it. Lack of water caused her death, and if there are good ways to make sure people are hydrated, then it is fine. 

One good thing about GA is that large groups of friends can attend the concert together because that can each buy one ticket in the same section. On the train to the shows, we saw packs of women traveling to the show together. Claire-Adele saw the show in Seattle and there weren’t as many large groups going to the show together.

I hope Taylor Swift and her team are recovering after the death of her fan. I was shaken after hearing the news—I can’t imagine how Swift felt. A kind woman and her tween daughter helped my daughter and I navigate the Rio Metro and train systems by to get to the show. We were transferring from the Metro to the train when we heard the show was postponed. The tween daughter was stunned and dismayed when she heard the concert was postponed, and the worried she wouldn’t be able to attend the show on a different date.

I have to admit I was relieved the show was canceled. I wasn’t sure the stadium could deliver on their promise to provide water to the crowd in that short of time. Emotionally, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be at a show where someone unnecessarily died less than twenty-four hours before.

Swift is both a brilliant performer and concerned about the health and welfare of her fans. The heavens answered the water question on Sunday with continuous rain during the show. Swift is reported to love rain shows, and perhaps the rain had a healing effect on her and the crowd. Sunday’s show was phenomenal, yet Monday’s was less muted, more vibrant.

I imagine there are some haters out there who would think that Taylor should have canceled all of her Rio shows and to avoid any such possible tragedy from ever occurring.

Bullshit.

The girl died from stadium policies that are the same around the globe. Because this death happened at the biggest concert tour of the century, it caught the attention of the world.

The Eras Tour has brought show much joy to so many people. I couldn’t have imagined it without seeing it for myself. I dreamed about this show before I saw it. I can’t imagine what it was like for the true Swifties. When I looked around the crowd, I saw people crying. I get it. I cried more than a few tears of joy myself.

And yet Taylor’s specialty is singing about sorrow and sadness while dressed in sequins and sparkles. For her surprise song on Sunday, she sang “Bigger Than the Whole Sky,” a song clearly about grief and loss, a tribute to Benevides.

My daughter asked me, “Is it okay that we still had fun?” Honestly, I am not sure. I want to say yes, but I am conflicted. The shows we saw were magnificent. As my daughter said, the Eras Tour is a work of art.

My heart goes to to Benevides’ family, especially her mother, losing a daughter so beautiful and full of promise. I lost an infant daughter twenty-five years ago, and here I am in Brazil celebrating a new life with my daughter. I imagine Benevides was kind, only because so many Swifties are. Whether this is due to Taylor’s influence or because Swifties are a self-selecting crowd, I don’t know. Yet, my heart breaks.

My heart breaks for Benevides herself. Not only was her life cut short, but she missed the show.

It is hard to find consolation in any unnecessary and untimely death, but I will say this: I hope the last few hours of this young woman’s life were some of her happiest, full of unrivaled joy, delight and love.

I can’t imagine otherwise.

Weird (Er…I mean interesting) Stuff About Traveling to Brazil

I’ve been in Brazil more than a week, which makes me an expert on the giant place, right? Here are some interesting things I’ve learned about Brazil. Also included are ideas on preparing to go to Brazil.

• Pomeranians are the most popular dog based on my count in the Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo. Fox Dog would fit right in.
• Some cars here run on natural gas. I don’t know if these cars were made this way or if they were retrofitted. I’ve been in Ubers that needed gas and stopped to fill the tank. Drivers made us step out in case the car exploded while they were filling the tank.
• Three minutes a day on Duolingo isn’t enough to learn Portuguese to get around. Not many people speak English. It is surprising how well we can navigate the world using sign language and gestures and the Apple translation app. I should have done 15 to 20.
• “We don’t wear nice things,” said a young woman to us on the train the Taylor Swift concert. A handful people before earlier told us to not look on our phones while we walk down the streets, which is big city common sense. If you are looking at your phone, you aren’t paying attention to your surroundings and that makes you a target. Got it. The woman on the train continued: “That is a nice watch. Don’t wear that watch unless you want to be targeted.”
• Uber has motorcycles where you can hire a ride on the back seat of a bike.
• Traffic in Rio is heavy and chaotic. The white line that divides car lanes is the motorcycle lane. The heavy traffic means the motorcycles look for shortcuts and the motorcycles looking for shortcuts make it chaotic.
• I don’t know how tourists/visitors got around before Uber. 
• Sidewalks in Rio are mosaics, which is neat.
• Want to look like a local? Wear a baseball hat for the New York Yankees. Or L.A. Dodgers. But mostly the Yankees. 
• People on Ilhe Grande are unphased by 15 hour power outages.
• Samba dancing is fancy grinding, as I witnessed people dancing on the beach. I take that back. Samba is a form of dance created by emancipated slaves, much like jazz and the blues in the U.S.  
• People show a lot of flesh, but it really isn’t sexualized. I wore a dress with a plunging neckline to the second night of Taylor Swift concerts. If people looked at me funny (which they weren’t), they have wondered why I was wearing a bra as it was sticking out. (It was part of my outfit!) They would have said skip the bra instead. Maybe Americans are prudes?
• Don’t flush toilet paper here. There is a little can next to the potty for used TP. 
• There also is a little shower head next to toilets in hotels to clean yourself so you don’t need to use as much TP.
• If you aren’t going to bring enough socks and underwear for a seventeen day trip, bring some laundry soap. Shampoo and hand soap doesn’t cut it. 
• Want to stay really, really, really hydrated? Bring Nuun or some other electrolyte tablets/powder to drop into a bottle of water. Also helps with hangovers.
• People shower here a lot. Maybe because every time you step outside, you sweat. 
• Chocolate cake for breakfast at hotel buffets! Woohoo! Red velvet is also wicked popular around here. Maybe it is a Christmas thing?

Taylor Te Amo

The past twelve months have been a fresh slice of hell and heartbreak. My mom died, my dad was hospitalized three days after her funeral, my divorce was finalized, and I was laid up for six weeks after I had survey to remove an ovary which was overtaken by a cyst the size of an orange. And that was just December through April.

(There was even more shit, but I’ll skip all that for now.)

Last June when Claire-Adele told me Taylor Swift announced her South American tour, I said, “Let’s go.”

“Is it crazy to travel just to see a concert?” she asked.

“You are talking to a woman who saw Hamilton in four different cities,” I replied. I am a big advocate for using live entertainment as an excuse to travel.

My dad said people need something to look forward to, and I believe him. I remember in my twenties when I was working and before I had kids, a deep sense of ennui had built up. Planning a trip to Thailand fixed that fast. Seeing Taylor Swift in Rio was the big “something to look forward to” in my life. It wasn’t just seeing Taylor: it was an excuse to book a two week vacation to Brazil.

I haven’t taken a two week trip since New Zealand in 2014-15. This trip was long overdue, and yet I don’t need to leave the continent for a trip more than fourteen days.

Here we are in Brazil. Last night, Claire-Adele and I saw Taylor Swift in Rio along with 65,000 other people. Taylor Swift is not doubt an amazing entertainer, and like Beyonce, sings songs about women for women. I would say she is niche, but women, “girls, gays and theys” are her main audience, which is like more than half the population. She is #relatable. 

The parents who attended with their teens and tweens were probably some of the coolest parents ever. I saw a dad with a his daughter, going to the show. He was wearing a (Taylor’s Version) hat and medallion of Swift in a Jesus pose. The moms were all dressed in Era attire. 

The most impressive part of the show was the audience. not many people here speak English but holy cow the audience knew every word to every song and sang and top voice. At times, I could hear Taylor over the crowd. People were crying they were so moved. After the show, Claire-Adele and I booked it out to get back to the hotel. A majority of the crowd stayed in their seats, perhaps wanting to continue to bask in the magic.

Even though she sings about heartbreak, there was serious joy in this event. After the divorce, Jack gave me a book for my birthday called Inciting Joy. In it, the author writes that sorrow and joy are kin, you can’t truly have one without the other. Taylor has made a career of this, singing of sorrow in spandex and sparkles.

After the show, Claire-Adele me what my favorite part was. There were too many moments too count, including Sabrina Carpenter singing ABBA’s Dancing Queen as part of the opening act. 

Now that I am wake the next morning, my favorite part was when the Brazilian crowd chanted “Taylor te amo” for what seemed like five minutes.

Thank you, Ms. Swift, for sharing your heartbreak and sorrow, and turning it into joy for so many.

P.S. To Taylor— If you ever do get married please don’t change your name. What would the Swifties call themselves then?

Masks

Keith Johnstone in his book Impro writes about using masks in Improv. The idea in acting is that actors inhabit the mask they wear. They become it. A person who wears the mask of a grumpy old man will act like a grumpy old man. We did this in class by making faces and I literally became the Wicked Witch of the West when I scrunched up my face. It was trippy. 

I think about the masks we all wear on a daily basis. We present one side to work, another side to friends, and maybe a third side to family. These masks become us, and we become them. I think of my good friend H, whose mask is Silicon Valley wife. How much does that mask make her life easy and how much does it imprison her? 

So what mask did I bring to Brazil? The mask that serves me in Seattle, does it serve me here? Can I see my own masks more clearly in a different land, and not a European land of my ancestors? 

My mask—and probably the mask of many people I know — is one of seriousness, that work and success and accomplishment is more important than fun and relaxation and living in the moment. How can we live in the moment when we are focused on success? Success is all about the future, not now. We are waiting for some greater reward. 

My mask is probably generally worried and afraid. I feel the weight and heaviness of this mask as I travel, and I want to take it off. When we travel to places we have never been to, to places that are so different from where we live now, it is an opportunity to see our daily masks, and decide how we want to live. 

Where will I go next? Sicily, to see the home of my grandfather? India? I have a bunch of friends form India. I need to get one of them to take me.

It isn’t just about learning what I dislike about my mask. This isn’t a journey of self-hatred and loathing. Rather it is about what is beneath the mask that I can more fully explore. 

Flesh & Tudo Bem

“There is nothing too slutty for the Brazilians,” said Claire-Adele as we have visited Ilha Grande, a beautiful tropical island south of Rio and Copacabana.

I would choose different words, but I can see how the sentiment applies. The people here wear the least amount of clothing with the most confidence. I saw an older gentleman at lunch today—probably in his 70’s—sitting in a restaurant wearing Speedo along with his tanned barreled chest. The guy pulled it off.

Claire-Adele said she thought everyone in Brazil would look like Giselle and that she would look like a troll.  (“Tom Brady fumbled Giselle,” she said.) Not so. Every size, shape, age and color is happy in either a bikini or shirtless, and not just those with six-pack abs. Even their feet are naked in their fancy flip flops. They are confident and content and don’t give a shit what other people think. God bless the Brazilians for no body shaming. 

The only contradiction was for young girls—they all wore long-sleeved swim suits, probably to prevent sunburn, which is real down here in South America. 

Claire-Adele and I had tickets to see Taylor Swift tonight. She scored some below list price tickets yesterday at breakfast and today we hauled ass from Ilha Grande to Rio, to make it to the show in time. We were halfway there when the show was canceled. (We still have our original tickets for tomorrow, which should be cool.) We heard the show was postponed when we were halfway to the stadium on public transit. Some guys started talking  to us in Portuguese, probably trying to tell us the show was canceled, but we couldn’t understand. 

I was surprised how I reacted. After all of the “hassle” to make it to Rio in time, I was surprisingly not upset. The trip to Brazil is amazing enough, with or without seeing Taylor. 

Instead of seeing Taylor, tonight Claire-Adele and I hit the bar at the neighboring Fairmont hotel, listened to live music and pounded a few cocktails and apps. The singer wasn’t Taylor, but she was fun, singing everything from Brazilian classics to the Doobey Brothers to Edith Piaf. I still have “Volare” stuck in my head. 

Tudo bem, as the Brazilians say. All good. 

1888 & Fisherman

1888 was the year Brazil abolished slavery, as was mentioned in the Afro-Brazilian Museum in Ibirapuera Park on São Paulo. The skeleton of an old slave ship transporting people from Africa was one of the central pieces on display. (The rest was mostly art.) after spending half the day in the park with Claire-Adele while we mostly people watched, I never would have guess that slavery ended so relatively recently in Brazil given the racial issues in the US. Based on the hundreds of people I saw in the park, I couldn’t identify a dominant race. I remember seeing a cover of Time magazine back as a kid where an artist predicted what people would look like after generations of racial intermingling. That is what everyone in Brazil looks like. It is really remarkable and so beautiful. That is my observation from Day 1. More to come.

In addition to people watching, Claire-Adele and I did some dog watching. The most common dog: light brown Pomeranians. All of Fox’s long lost cousins live in Brazil. It was awesome.  Thanks, New York Times, for telling us about sitting in the Madureira Cafe where we ate pao de quejo and drank tropical smoothies and looked at people and their pups. Claire-Adele loves big cities, and I think she is right. Sure, I love nature and beaches and quiet resorts, but is something else to mingle with the locals. We also drank coconut milk out of the coconut, which staved off dehydration in the 90 degree weather.

Other interesting news: I saw the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the line behind me at customs in the São Paulo airport. He was wearing branded RHCP merch, which I thought was odd for the lead singer to do. I was going to ask him if he was in the band, but I chickened out. (I need a few more Improv classes under my belt before I start introducing myself to rock stars in airports. Plus I just finished (as did he) a 10 hour red-eye so I wasn’t feeling as bubbly as usual. 

A picture for Pedro: there was a painting in the Afro-Brazilian Musuem of a man holding a fish. The caption read “It is the fish that guides the fisherman.”

I know what you are thinking: hey post some pictures! I’ll have to do it when I get back home. 

The Asshole

My improv teacher was talking about the left brain versus the right. The left brain is logical, analytical and focused on facts. Think of Dr. Spock from Star Trek. The dude has no emotions. The right brain is emotional, compassionate and creative. Think of poets or Moira Rose from Schitt’s Creek. We need both the left and the right in our lives. If we live our lives based only on facts, we will never have fun. If we live our lives solely based on intuition, we will never pay the bills.

In our modern capitalist world, the logicians prevail. We are often financially rewarded for our knowledge of math and science and finance and engineering.

In Improv, we need to learn to think with our second head, our second brain, that part where we listen to our gut. We need to turn off the right brain that censors our good ideas because they might not be the best idea. 

“The left brain is the asshole that doesn’t want you to have fun,” Mark said. 

How much have my life have I listened to the asshole? My god almost all of it! Back in college, Northwestern had a wonderful Improv show, The Meow Show. I had friends who said I should have tried out for it, but no, I was MMSS and was terrified of entering the same stage with bona fide actors, the pre-professionals. Maybe I wish I had learned more about Improv then instead of waiting so long, even if I didn’t make the first team.

Why did this friend say I should try out? I used to be funny. Not kind of funny or sort of funny, but make you snort out your nose funny. I want to find that soft, ticklish spot again.

Improv classes are helping me to tame and quiet the asshole. I will always love and honor my analytical side, but I need to make room for fun. The right side needs a chance to shine, to play, to dance, to sing.