Born This Way

I love my life because I'm free to be what I am, and one aspect of my whole as a human and my persona is being homosexual.

I'm lucky, because I can be this, say this, live this.

It's not always been like that. I've suffered, hidden, been ashamed. Because people made me think I was a freak, an unnatural being, a mistake, wrong.
It's been a frustrating and hurtful path but I'm able now to be proud of what I am.

And I'm lucky, because I can be this, say this, live this.

But nobody is as lucky.

So please, stop being assholes.

‪#‎IDAHOBiT‬ (17th May is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia)

2 Years

Exactly two years ago I took a plane and moved to London, full of hope and love for my future. I imagined everything would change and I would get everything I wanted just because my residence would change. I would find myself, and a lover, and a deal with a label and millions of fan, and I would produce the best music, and be inspired in every moment, and solve all my issues, and be an adult, and reach some kind of Nirvana I would abide with for ever.
It doesn't work like that.

I'm still looking for completeness, I still haven't found love, I still don't have a deal or a one billion dollar record coming out, my music is evolving, inspiration comes and goes, I solve issues and more arise, and I haven't seen any door leading to Nirvana.

But many things have changed, and I've learnt so much. I'm discovering myself and I'm so proud of having made that choice, and my life is beautiful even though imperfect.

There's a lot to do, the path is long and arduous, but the hope and love for my future are still there. 

Just, I also love my present now. 

Celebrate, Cherish, Bless, Try, Deserve, Be Yourself, Be Happy

I've been through change and development and sadness and joy and excitement and tiredness and despair and hope and saudade and depletion and inadequacy and abundance this year.

Just like everyone else.

Walked on cobblestones and soil and grass and concrete and bridges and towers. 

Set my feet on mattresses and pedals and altars and staircases and rainwater and planes and trains.

I've been confident and I've doubted in myself.

Just like everyone else.

I've learnt new words, of which my favourite ones are aghast, bereft, dalliance, shoal, forsake, repentance, cease, dregs, poised, sleet, fickle.

I've followed new styles and discovered new parts of the world and of me with them. 

I've completed and made resolutions.

A year in which I've (re)built my foundations.

It's all set now.

A proper list of resolutions is not ready yet, but it's going to be soon.

2014 has left me listening to this, throwing myself into the new year with a continuous line. I don't feel the ridges between the borders of December and January. I'm just the same person I was yesterday. (Or am I not? Are we really the same person we were yesterday? The person who we were yesterday hadn't lived today. We have. So are we still the same person?)

There is no cliff dividing 23.59 from 00.00, so I keep following my wake, impelled by the beautiful things I knew in this segment of time that we divided in 365 days of 24 hours.

And by beautiful I mean each and every thing I have lived.

Including these songs, soundtracking my life in the last months, that I invite you to listen to if you haven't already:

These two books I've read:
Through the Language Glass,  Guy Deutscher, about the alleged different way people think depending on their language (or do they not?);
and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer, captivating novel about a special kid investigating about his father's secret after his death, just beautiful.

These two movies I've loved:

Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho,


Kill Your Darlings

And these two poems I've loved, the latter I've just met and it's going to be my motto for this wonderful year that is here and shiny and malleable:

A Fragment, George Gordon Byron

When, to their airy hall, my father’s voice
Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice;
When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride,
Or, dark in mist, descend the mountains side;
Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns,
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns!
No lengthen’d scroll, no praise-encumber’d stone;
My epitaph shall be my name alone:
If that with honour fail to crown my clay,
Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay!
That, only that, shall single out the spot;
By that remember’d, or with that forgot.

Footnote to Howl, Allen Ginsberg

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middleclass! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!

This is to remember and celebrate the ashes of this 2014, a year that gave me a lot but I want more, and to cherish this bliss that time has given me, I bless the holiness that surrounds me, I'm ready to knead this year, and with it I'll be the form I really am. I'll get the best I can from it, trying to deserve it, and you try to do it too.

Happy holy new year my fellows of the world!

:)

Rain, in London

Rain is a very important song for me, it exemplify why I love making music so much.

I started writing it on a bench in my hometown, it was raining, of course, and it wasn't a good day. It continued at my piano and there I eventually had what I thought it was a final version.
Then my friend Sofia Albanese played it with me once and tried to do a few different things on it with her guitar, a new chord in the chorus and a change in the way the final part was arranged. And oh, that was exactly what I was looking for, it made the song more complete. She read my mind and put into music what I didn't even know I wanted.
Then, I was reharsing new songs here in London with the beautiful cellist Andrea Rocha Music. She had heard a recording of a very rough version of it and practiced on her own. So when we met to practice I didn't know what to expect but she started playing her cello as if she perfectly knew about all the landscapes and colours and scents this song meant for me.
It's not easy to find people that can understand and develop another person own world, but when this happen it's just magic, and I'm so lucky to have experienced this many times.

So this is a live version of Rain, recorded (on my phone :/) last Thursday at the Dublin Castle in Camden, with my little lovely band (Rui Silva, Joanna Roberts, Andrea Rocha). I was listening to it this afternoon and it just gave me the chills, realising I love it so much because of and thanks to all the people that have been part of it. I am so grateful for all this.

Now if you like it, please give me a like and share it with your friends :)
http://youtu.be/jgdKYl-9Y1U

And maybe buy my EP on iTunes or Bandcamp?
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/tidal-mental-head/id886371666
http://valeriolysander.bandcamp.com/album/tidal-mental-head 

Hugs for everyone :)

Home and Passion Fruit Tea

On Air: "Us", Regina Spektor

What do you think it's home to you?

I've been thinking about this for a while. It's more than a year that I am away from my family, living on my own miles away from what I called home for so many years, without even thinking about the meaning of the word.
Yesterday I felt like home in this room of mine. Rain ticking on the window, lying on my bed, under the sheets and a cover, or sitting at this tiny little desk, with new music in the speakers.
Home is where there is nothing scary.
Home is where you feel at ease.
Home is where you can feel sick and do it without worry.
Home is where you know everything.
Home is when you want to know more than that.
Home is when you want to go away.
Home is when you need something else.
Home is when you could go somewhere else but leave pieces of you behind.
Home is where there is someone to water your plants for a week.
Home is when you can go away and go back.
Home is where you can hurt and don't feel bad.

And I have this weird tendency that makes me want to leave when I've found it.
Could it be I'm a gipsy as they said.
I wish I didn't choose a piano to play. It would be so much easier to go around the world with a little bag and a Ukulele.
And have the sky as my roof and the grass as my bed. And strangers as my friends.
I'd like to have a home around me, the biggest, most beautiful, shared home. Where everybody is welcome.
Let's have a cup of passion fruit tea in the woods.

Amsterdam and the Reason Why

There was a (relatively near) time in the past in which I thought I wanted to be a singer/songwriter because I wanted money and fame, being in TV, having millions of fans and living out of my music. It's what I like doing, and the opportunity of getting money for that would be so bright.

Then one day I was talking with a random stranger and I realised I didn't need any money, just fame. Because I wanted people to know me and appreciate me, making me fill that lack of confidence that every human has and that I cope with in this way.

But well. I came back from the Netherlands yesterday. I went without knowing much about it or having any particular expectation. I took the plane from London with a trolley, a notebook and 10 of my CDs in my bag, because you never know.

Got in Rotterdam and enjoyed its mesmerizing skylines, it's such a surprising city. My eyes weren't used to these wide spaces any more, and the clouds reflecting on the skyscrapers glass. Wow. 

Then in Amsterdam I got lost (literally) in the streets, among the canals and the slanting façades of the houses leaning towards the water. The people, smiling. Colours, sunlight and flowers. It took me a while to get centred in my body, but eventually I did. And (among other unrelated things) started learning something more about myself, about me making music.

It may sound cheesy, and probably it is, but other than that, it is very true, and it's what keeps me going.

I've always asked myself why I'm here (in this room, in this city, in this continent, on this heart, in this moment), and rarely I have found a convincing answer. Well, I think I have a good one now.

I'm here for those smiles. I'm here to give them to these people I meet on my path. I'm here to be useful, to learn and teach, to make them happy. And one of the better ways I do it is with music. 

That's why I make it. 

For the guy sitting in the Starbucks at the station, for the one with the watery eyes in the audience and the other nodding his head with the beat, for the not-brave-enough-to-get-a-guitar-and-sing girl sitting next to me, for the clerk whose eyes brightened when I asked a different question, for the guy sitting by the canal and his little book.

Music can make people feel better, and I don't think I'm being conceited if I say that my music does so sometimes (or at least that's what they say). 

To me, this is more important than money and fame. Of course, these two elements are useful and part of the process. My music won't be heard if I don't have (even a small amount of) fame, and I won't have fame if I don't have the means to produce something to be heard (which require money). I will need a bit more money and a bit more fame, which will give me more time to write and improve and distribute and reach more ears and souls. But the ultimate goal is the smiles of the people I meet, physically and acoustically.

Writing my emotions on the music staff (I am grateful for this possibility that music gives me of sublimating my sorrows and amplifying my joys) and putting my life, my body, my time, my words, to use of these smiles or tears that people give me in return.

I think this is why I live.