Song

You know those songs that get stuck in your head and go around and around and at some point disappear as if they had fallen off a cliff? These round and rounds are called "earworms." My current problem is not an earworm, but a repeating desire to hear a particular song. The song doesn't stick in my head like an earworm, but the desire to hear it is Velcroed there. I don't know if there is a technical term for this, but it is insistent, named or not. So I listen again and again. I listen to O Homem do Leme by various performers. My favorite and current object of obsession is the version that Mariza and Tim did at the 2012 Rock in Rio Lisbon Festival in Lisbon, Portugal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTq9W6IblGY).

Who knows why these things happen? I don't, but I do know they are important. Is it the beat? The melody? The lyrics? It's something of all these, I think, together, forming some kind of whole that sparks something in me that wants (desires) to be with it, immersed in it, moving with it. I know it's Portuguese Fado. I know Mariza is my favorite Fado voice. But not knowing Portuguese, I did not know what the words were saying.

I sent the lyrics Paco and he immediately sent back a beautiful translation. Even before I knew what the magical Portuguese said, I knew that some of the lines and verses were functioning like mysterious rays penetrating deep into me.

Here is Paco's translation:

THE WHEEL MAN

Alone in the night
A boat courses to where it goes.
A light in the dark shines ahead
Obfuscates the rest

And more than one wave, more that one tide
They tried to arrest him impose him a faith
But, sailing to the will, breaking the longing(=saudade)
Goes the one who fears nothing else, goes the wheel man

And a will to smile, is born from the bottom of the being
And a will to go, run the world and leave
Life is allways losing

In the bottom of the sea
Lie the others, the ones who there stayed
In grey days
Eternal rest they found there

And more than one wave, more that one tide
They tried to arrest him impose him a faith
But, sailing to the will, breaking the longing(=saudade)
Goes the one who fears nothing else, goes the wheel man

And a will to smile, is born from the bottom of the being
And a will to go, run the world and leave
Life is allways losing

In the deep horizon
Blows the murmur to where he goes
In the deep of time
Flees the future, it's too late

And a will to smile, is born from the bottom of the being
And a will to go, run the world and leave
Life is always losing

It's next to last verse of the lettra that got me even before I knew what it was. And now? I'll let you know.