Within a Sky Full of Earth

A big night is coming to town. A first timer. It's not a religious event whatsoever, no. It's beyond that. It's experimental and raw. And it gets even better when it gulps against our throats. Yeah, all the way down. We're sure it doesn't come benched on the touristic class. Probably will be under that, aside the trash can or so, close enough to the bar and to a pack of beer. Word to mouth. A whiskey doll. A piano play.
Like a bird will bend its wings and will slightly whisper its lungs out. With smoke. With anger. Quietly. Deep. Vanishing inside our minds, step by step, jump by jump, in crescendo. Have you seen it? Have you heard of it before? In your dreams, perhaps, into your lonely dreams, hanging the words together. The words you hear. The words you see.
Well, you still have to wait. We'll give you the time to prepare yourself. To be at ease. Burning. So you can fight back. So you can drink and swallow. Mouthful. But not more than that. Not a day more. And one more thing. Forget the luxury. Forget your best dress. Forget your wealth. This is all about disturbance and it will get worst while the night falls. But then again everything it's simple. Plain natural. Like the tip of your tongue when it touches the first bottle.
[STAY TUNED]

Escrito em 2007 e pensado numa perspectiva mais europeia do que apenas portuguesa, «O Socialismo Nunca Existiu?» compõe-se de quatro capítulos: o primeiro, sobre o que é o socialismo, diferenciado de comunismo; o segundo, sobre as origens liberais do pensamento político de Esquerda e o rumo que, desde o século XIX, o liberalismo tomou junto da opinião pública, que hoje o confunde com apenas uma corrente económica de Direita; o terceiro capítulo é um comentário a um caso recente (Verão de 2007, destruição de um milheiral no Algarve por «anarquistas»), que ilustra o tipo de socialismo extremista que não pode ser confundido com o socialismo democrático; por fim, o quarto e último capítulo é dedicado a uma proposta positiva para o futuro do socialismo, que mantenha a tradição política descrita no primeiro capítulo e a integre na actualidade.
Apesar de poder ser objecto de uma leitura imediatista e circunstancial, este pequeno ensaio pretende ser pertinente como interpretação de fenómenos políticos e culturais mais vastos. Na «Nota Prévia» do autor pode ler-se: «O livro é uma crítica a uma perversão em curso do legado histórico da esquerda, que, após o fim do comunismo e com o sucesso do modelo reformista do socialismo democrático, ou social democracia, retoma uma tradição de esquerda pré-marxista, o utopismo, para a perverter numa distopia generalizada. Como crítica em sentido próprio, faz-se uma história, ainda que breve, dos termos do problema, e apresenta-se uma descrição, baseada em acontecimentos, do presente; isso serve de fundamento para terminar com uma proposta positiva, aquilo a que chamo tolerância activa.»

SOBRE O AUTOR
Carlos Leone (n. 1973) publicou o seu primeiro livro em 1999 («Dez Críticas», Colibri, Lisboa). Desde 2004 que publica regularmente na INCM, tanto obras suas como estudos relativos a autores portugueses dos séculos XIX e XX.
O seu trabalho de maior fôlego, baseado na tese de doutoramento em História das Ideias, é o estudo sobre o discurso crítico «Portugal Extemporâneo» (2 vols., INCM, 2005). Sobre o seu tema de investigação actual, publicou também «O Essencial sobre Estrangeirados no Século XX» (INCM, 2005), dedicando-se desde então ao estudo dos «estrangeirados», o que já o levou às universidades de Brown, Cambridge, Rutgers-Newark e a várias outras instituições. Dirige ainda a revista cultural «Prelo» (INCM, Lisboa, quadrimestral). Organizou, com Manuela Rêgo, o volume colectivo «Liberdade sem Dogma. Homenagem a Sottomayor Cardia», publicado pela tinta-da-china em 2007. Em 2008, publicará, também na tinta-da-china, o seu estudo sobre estrangeirados e, em simultâneo com o ensaio «O Socialismo Nunca Existiu?», publicará ainda na INCM «O Essencial sobre Democracia».

O Socialismo Nunca Existiu?, de Carlos Leone • TINTA DA CHINA • 2008
[BREVEMENTE NA BLOOM]

METADE DE UMA CONVERSA. NA COZINHA. FIM DA TARDE. LUZ ARTIFICIAL.
- Mas é ou não é verdade?
- O quê?
- Que meteste um boi lá em casa?
- Um quê?
- Um boi...
- Hmmm... não sei. Talvez. Pensando bem, é capaz de ter sido verdade, sim. Mas não interessa.
- Não interessa? E... e... o cheiro?
- Sim, não interessa. Nada disso é importante. Agora.
- E o que as pessoas dizem, os vizinhos?
- Sim? O que tem? Queres saber o que as pessoas dizem? Dás-lhes ouvidos?
- Não, não dou.
- Então cala-te.
- Mas queres saber? Queres saber o que dizem?
- Não, não quero!
- Dizem...
- Cala-te!
- Dizem que devo ser paneleiro por andar com uma gaja como tu. Sim, é isso que eles dizem.
CAI O PANO. A LUZ APAGA-SE.

AND THAT'S WHY I LOVE THE NEW YORKER *
On the morning of July 8, 1980, Raymond Carver wrote an impassioned letter to Gordon Lish, his friend and editor at Alfred A. Knopf, begging his forgiveness but insisting that Lish “stop production” of Carver’s forthcoming collection of stories, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Carver had been up all night reviewing Lish’s severe editorial cuts––two stories had been slashed by nearly seventy per cent, many by almost half; many descriptions and digressions were gone; endings had been truncated or rewritten––and he was unnerved to the point of desperation. A recovering alcoholic and a fragile spirit, Carver wrote that he was “confused, tired, paranoid, and afraid.” He feared exposure before his friends, who had read many of the stories in their earlier versions. If the book went forward, he said, he feared he might never write again; if he stopped it, he feared losing Lish’s love and friendship. And he feared, above all, a return to “those dark days,” not long before, when he was broken, defeated. “I’ll tell you the truth, my very sanity is on the line here,” he wrote to Lish.
[FOLLOW THE FULL TEXT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES HERE]
* If you like we borrow you this edition of the magazine, but you have to promise that you'll bring it back.

Ontem poderia ter sido Quinta-feira. Que não foi.
Hoje poderia ter sido véspera desse dia. Que também não foi.

Mas entre nós, na duração translativa de ontem em hoje,
sonhei pela primeira vez contigo.

Definido como lúcido esse meu sonho,
explorando a própria mente e a violar as regras da minha vida desperta,
na vaga lembrança de ter superado restrições com algum sabor a felicidade.

E sei que entre ontem e hoje,
entre nós,
nunca poderei ser acusada de falta de coragem,
porque percorri com dificuldade e com os meus próprios pés
quilómetros que me levaram às portas das minhas fragilizadas emoções,
sem trazer resquícios de um sentimento que também julgo ter sido teu,

como

álbuns de fotografias por tirar,
com rostos despercebidos
que poderiam ter sido os nossos,

ou rascunhos por escrever,
de um amor vivido entre dois corpos,
debaixo das sombras quentes de Verão

ou simplesmente,
palavras rápidas e estimulantes deixadas no gravador,
que poderia muito bem ter sido o nosso.

Apesar de tudo isso,
das minhas melhores recordações,
evitei perder de vista toda a bagagem,
ou os passos demorados que poderíamos ter dado debaixo da chuva,
ou o aroma de sal dos nossos corpos se tivéssemos percorrido a areia de todas as praias.

Mas mesmo assim,
no final de todas as contas por pagar,
cravei no meu coração a ilha onde fui feliz.
Porque também sei ser feliz,
no meio de um dia qualquer, mesmo que não o de uma Quinta-feira.
E sei do sabor da última fatia de felicidade que teria saboreado, se eventualmente estivesse estado lúcida nesse meu sonho, ao teu lado.

We still have some copies of the successful title This Diary Will Change Your Life 2008. Follow it this year, and you will get to interact with terrorists, traffic wardens and the Dalai Lama. This year's edition also features a red and yellow sticker, hand-attached by the nimble fingers of underage workers in the world's poorest regions. Peel it off after purchase to reveal a) your secret instructions and b) a stunning cover, full of unreadably small Swedish witticisms. It makes a timeless present of taste, and is suitable for relatives and friends of all ages and IQ levels. You may buy it with a 30% discount and move your life with this weekly task's advisor.

This Diary Will Change Your Life 2008
Benrik Ltd

MOUSETRAP 2. It will happen tonight. A bunch of rock 'n' dolls. DJ's, live painting, videos and slide guitars. Lots of noise with body jam. It's all underground on the 17th floor.
Saturday, March 8, 2008 at 11:00pm • STUDIO • Macau
[CHECK OUR MAP ON THE RIGHT TO SEE WHERE THE STUDIO IS]

This must be a pretty hell of a coincidence. As we are trying to dig ourselves into our new place in St. Lazarus, the district of Macau near Tap Seac, set by the local government as a Creative Industries area, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds release their new album called “Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!” Well, I like to think that they made it just for us. To push ourselves further inside of it. "Go!", they say. "Dig for it!"
The first video, as usual, is available at Bloom TV (courtesy of YouTube and the MuteChannel, thank you very much!). Nick Cave returns to the Bible, his first and favorite subject. It's a crazy song. “Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!” is a song written by Nick Cave and was released by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds as a single on February 18th, 2008. It is the title track from the new album. The song, like much of the band's recent work, was produced by Nick Launay. and has been available to be listen to on the band's official website since Christmas Day, 2007. In a journal available at the Nick Cave Exhibition, it is revealed that an earlier version was instead about a man who was dead, who when he was saying "I don't know what it is but there's definitely something going on upstairs" referring to continuing brain activity, who never asked to be raised from the tomb and then ends up homeless and slave, and finally dead.
This is how Cave describes the whole record:

Ever since I can remember hearing the Lazarus story, when I was a kid, you know, back in church, I was disturbed and worried by it. Traumatized, actually. We are all, of course, in awe of the greatest of Christ's miracles - raising a man from the dead - but I couldn't help but wonder how Lazarus felt about it. As a child it gave me the creeps, to be honest. I've taken Lazarus and stuck him in New York City, in order to give the song, a hip, contemporary feel. I was also thinking about Harry Houdini who spent a lot of his life trying to debunk the spiritualists who were cashing in on the bereaved. He believed there was nothing going on beyond the grave. He was the second greatest escapologist, Harry was, Lazarus, of course, being the greatest. I wanted to create a kind of vehicle, a medium, for Houdini to speak to us if he so desires, you know, from beyond the grave.

At current reviews all the critical voices gave them a mass high mark. It seems that Nick Cave is set loose, he and his moustache, since his project called The Grinderman, and goes wilder than ever in the last years of his career. Fuck the "Love Song", he might have said. Check the reviews on the bottom, but first of all load on to the video clip here. The video was directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard and features Cave walking towards the camera in a strut fashion, singing the song, whilst images of New York pass by him. During the chorus, the images of New York are replaced by the members of the Bad Seeds dancing. Nick Cave will turn 51 next September 22.

REVIEWS: The Observer • The Guardian • The Sun • On Record • Gigwise • NME • The Independent • The Times

AGAIN:
Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
[GO TO THEIR 'MYSPACE' SITE AND HEAR ALL THE RECORD]

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. [DORIS LESSING]

WE STILL HAD TWO PARTS MISSING • previous part
Why is perhaps a third of Anna Karenina stuck here on this counter in a remote Indian store? It is like this.
A certain high official, United Nations, as it happens, bought a copy of this novel in the bookshop when he set out on his journeys to cross several oceans and seas. On the plane, settled in his business-class seat, he tore the book into three parts. He looked around at his fellow passengers as he did this, knowing he would see looks of shock, curiosity, but some of amusement. When he was settled, his seatbelt tight, he said aloud to whomever could hear: "I always do this when I've a long trip. You don't want to have to hold up some heavy great book." The novel was a paperback, but, true, it is a long book. This man was used to people listening when he spoke. When people looked his way, curiously or not, he confided in them. "No, it is really the only way to travel."
When he reached the end of a section of the book, he called the airhostess, and sent it back to his secretary, who was travelling in the cheaper seats. This caused much interest, condemnation, certainly curiosity, every time a section of the great Russian novel arrived, mutilated, but readable, in the back part of the plane.
Meanwhile, down in the Indian store, the young woman is holding on to the counter, her little children clinging to her skirts. She wears jeans, since she is a modern woman, but over them she has put on the heavy woollen skirt, part of traditional garb of her people: her children can easily cling on to it, the thick folds.
She sends a thankful look at the Indian, who she knows likes her and is sorry for her, and she steps out into the blowing clouds. The children have gone past crying, and their throats are full of dust anyway.
This is hard, oh yes, it is hard, this stepping, one foot after another, through the dust that lays in soft deceiving mounds under her feet. Hard, hard - but she is used to hardship, is she not? Her mind is on the story she has been reading. She is thinking: "She is just like me, in her white headscarf, and she is looking after children, too. I could be her, that Russian girl. And the man there, he loves her and will ask her to marry him. (She has not finished more than that one paragraph). Yes, and a man will come for me, and take me away from all this, take me and the children, yes, he will love me and look after me."
She thinks. My teacher said there was a library there, bigger than the supermarket, a big building, and it is full of books. The young woman is smiling as she moves on, the dust blowing in her face. I am clever, she thinks. Teacher said I am clever. The cleverest in the school. My children will be clever, like me. I will take them to the library, the place full of books, and they will go to school, and they will be teachers - my teacher told me I could be a teacher. They will live far from here, earning money. They will live near the big library and enjoy a good life.
You may ask how that piece of the Russian novel ever ended up on that counter in the Indian store?
It would make a pretty story. Perhaps someone will tell it.
On goes that poor girl, held upright by thoughts of the water she would give her children once home, and drink a little herself. On she goes, through the dreaded dusts of an African drought.
[DORIS LESSING ON THE NOBEL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH]

No compasso do silêncio dos violinos,
Reformulando o tempo das notas de orações,
Há quem
Por ti reze
Linhas de partituras inacabadas
de futuros imperfeitos desejos.
E nessas madrugadas friccionadas
Há quem
Por ti reze
Desabrochados restos disfarçados do meu corpo em timbre de mil gotas de chuva.
*dedicado à T. e ao A. por transformarem os meus domingos em quintas-feiras.

Following the great exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci at the Macau Tower we brought this great edition of all his masterpieces, so the exhibition can go on endlessly. A giant book. This sumptuous TASCHEN offering, one of the special 25th anniversary titles, is the most thorough and beautifully produced Leonardo book ever published, and this special edition offers it for a third of the usual price.
Da Vinci (1452-1519) possessed one of the greatest minds of all time; his importance and influence are inestimable. This XXL-format comprehensive survey is the most complete book ever made on the subject of this Italian painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, scientist and all-around genius. With huge, full-bleed details of Leonardo's masterworks, this highly original publication allows the reader to inspect the subtlest facets of his brushstrokes.


• Part I explores Leonardo's life and work in ten chapters. All of his paintings are interpreted in depth, with The Annunciation and The Last Supper featured on large double-spreads.
• Part II comprises a catalogue raisonné of Leonardo's paintings, which covers all of his surviving and lost painted works and includes texts describing their states of preservation.
• Part III contains an extensive catalogue of his drawings (numbering in the thousands, they cannot all be reproduced in one book); 663 are presented, arranged by category (architecture, technical, anatomical, figures, proportion, cartography, etc).

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Johannes Nathan studied art history at New York University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1995 with a dissertation on the working methods of Leonardo da Vinci. He has taught at New York University and at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and is the author of a range of publications on the art of the Italian Renaissance.

Frank Zöllner wrote his doctoral theses on artistic and architectural theory (1987) and Leonardo da Vinci (1996). He has written numerous publications on the art and artistic theory of the Renaissance and on Paul Klee. Since 1996 he has been Professor of Renaissance and Modern Art at Leipzig University. He is also the author of TASCHEN's XL monograph on Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci - The Complete Paintings and Drawings
Prof. Dr. Frank Zöllner and Dr. Johannes Nathan
TASCHEN • HARDCOVER • 696 PAGES SIZE • 29 x 44 CM • AVAILABLE NOW • 670 MOP$

Quando
Se efectivamente
E quando finalmente acordares,
terás da ponta da cabeça aos teus lindos pés,
versos teus escritos por mim, declarando-te os perigos que se situam na outra margem do sabor de um beijo teu,
capaz de inundar dez mil e trezentos corpos meus.

Born 1968, in Canada.
Canadian publisher and style guru.
His father, Paul Brule, was a Canadian football star and later went into business. His mother is an artist.
Tyler Brûlé attended more than ten school while his father went from one football team to another. His parents split up.
He says that he guessed that he was gay when he was aged seven, and that he was always obsessed with clothes. His father stopped talking to him when Tyler Brûlé told him about his sexual tendencies.
He studied journalism and political science in Canada and the United States.
He worked in television in Australia.
In 1989 he moved to Britain to take up a job with BBC Manchester's youth television department and worked on style stories as well as some hard news.
He worked as a freelance writer for Vanity Fair, Vogue, Stern, and other publications.
In 1993 he was sent by Sky magazine to Afghanistan with photographer Zed Nelson to do a story about Médecins Sans Frontières. While driving through Kabul they were machine-gunned and Tyler Brûlé was shot. They managed to escape and get to a hospital where it was found that his injuries were to his arms and would end losing the use of his left hand. He returned to England and continued to be hospitalised for some time.
He set up the style magazine Wallpaper* in 1996. He sold it to Time Inc. in 1997 for over £1 million but continued to oversee it. By 2001 it had a worldwide monthly circulation of 134402.
He also launched the sports magazine, Line, and Spruce, fashion related, but were not successful and lasted for 3 issues only.
In 2001 he was hired to design the "look and feel" of Swiss International Air Lines at their relaunch, after the collapse of Swissair. In the same year he became the youngest ever recipient of the British Society of Magazine Editors' Lifetime Achievement Award.
In May 2002, Brûlé left Wallpaper and concentrated on Winkmedia (now Winkreative), a design agency he founded in 1998.
In 2005, hehosted the TV media magazine The Desk on BBC Four. In 2006, he co-produced Counter Culture, a documentary series about cultural aspects of shopping, on the same channel.
He was a columnist for the Financial Times, The New York Times, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag. His "Fast Lane" column, which appeared in the weekend supplement of the Financial Times, covered his observations on travel, trends and high-end consumer goods gathered in the course of his travels during the week, which often seemed to involve visits to more than two continents.
In October 2006, he announced that he would create a new magazine, to be called MONOCLE, which launched February 15, 2007. In December 2006, he announced in "Fast Lane" that he would be taking a break from the column to work on projects. On February 14, 2007, the International Herald Tribune announced a "new weekly column on urbanism and global navigation" by Brûlé, starting on the 3rd of March.
It is said that Brûlé's father does not appear to have used any diacritical marks or accents on the family surname.

O mês de Março é um mês para celebrar a Mulher. Essa é a inspiração do IPOR para este início primaveril de 2008 com um programa recheado de acontecimentos.
A Mulher inspiração e a Mulher inspirada servem de palco a conversas que atravessam o mundo para serem apresentadas sob diferentes perspectivas. Por palavras soltas e partilhadas.
Retratada num ciclo que percorre culturas, a Mulher Portuguesa apresenta-se na voz dos poetas, numa exposição de cartazes intitulada “Maria Mulher”, patente ao público a partir do próximo dia 8 e até 31 de Março, na Galeria da Livraria Portuguesa.
Confidenciadas no dia 10 de Março, as palavras de António Conceição Júnior e Beatriz da Conceição, numa viagem pela vida e obra de Deolinda da Conceição, Mulher Macaense, primeira escritora e jornalista de Macau.
Partindo da sua experiência no Oriente, Jorge Morbey apresenta-nos em Palavras Soltas, a Mulher em diferentes culturas, num Café Literário que terá lugar dia 12 de Março, pelas 18h30.
“A Mulher na China” serviu de inspiração a Ana Cristina Alves num livro que acompanha a situação da mulher chinesa ao longo da história do país e cuja apresentação estará a cargo de Maria Antónia Espadinha e Yao Jing Ming, no dia 18 de Março.
O IPOR assinala o Dia Internacional da Mulher com este programa e convida para a Galeria da Livraria Portuguesa todos aqueles que queiram homenagear a cultura de ser Mulher. O programa segue da seguinte forma:

8 Março
Maria Mulher
A Mulher Portuguesa na voz dos poetas – Exposição de cartazes
Galeria da Livraria Portuguesa até ao dia 31 de Março
10 Março
Uma Mulher Macaense: Deolinda da Conceição
Uma viagem pela vida e obra da primeira escritora e jornalista de Macau nas palavras de António Conceição Júnior e Beatriz da Conceição
Galeria da Livraria Portuguesa, 18:30
12 Março
Mulher – Palavras Soltas
Café literário numa conversa conduzida por Jorge Morbey
Galeria da Livraria Portuguesa, 18:30
18 Março
Apresentação do livro: "A Mulher na China"
Ana Cristina Alves partilha a sua visão da mulher chinesa ao longo da história do país. Apresentação de Maria Antónia Espadinha e Yao Jing Ming.
Galeria da Livraria Portuguesa, 18:30

This is Weekend Weekly a travel magazine from Hong Kong with a high circulation rate. As you can see on the left bottom corner we are on the cover, along side with some landmarks of Macau. It's incredible to have such a privilege and at first we could not believe it.
Nowadays everyone is giving a special attention to Macau. More and more visitors are coming and the scoop of citizens that want to live and work here is growing up. The territory is most of all an opportunity for business. Mainly for outside investors that bang the real estate and put it on fire. And other find their niches of market among the revenues of tourism and leisure. For most of the local population this snowball it's not bringing its benefits as prices are much higher on everything. But life goes on.
Weekend Weekly one more time gives its front to the other side of the Delta. But this time it's not about the big projects of luxury or the new casinos and their big complexes of entertainment. The main article is focused on the Best Kept Secrets of Macau. The undisclosed daily life of the streets. Small projects that give to the city a different expression. Almost individual efforts to create unique resources and furtive amenities where you can hide from the frame of the stressful demanding urban life.
From cultural places, to restaurants, to associations and other strolls, this edition, where the architect Nuno Soares also chooses his particular places, points to new targets on the map. And so, there we are as the Lonely Planet's Pick. We are much grateful and honored. This is a cover to be hanged on the wall. [CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE IT BIGGER.]

invisível és tu.
nessa tua maneira de o seres
cidade minha, onde à minha volta vejo reflexos espelhados deste mais pálido e teu desconcertante amor.

The new issue of MONOCLE is here and you cannot miss it. Of course you can, but that's up to you. You'll loose a lot of things you should see and read. I mean, I'm not trying to convince you about buying the magazine. It's just that I like it. Alright, I am. Really I am trying to getting your eyes into it. Yes, you should buy MONOCLE. Because it's so nice. The touch of the paper, the content, the layout. It talks about cities in the world. It tells you about other countries and their tempts to grow outstanding, not necessarily new or big, but wonderful. From Pakistan to Denmark you'll have it all. A, B, C, D, E. Affairs, Business, Culture, Design, Edits. And I'm the marketing manager down here.
MONOCLE is a multimedia venture by the Canadian journalist and entrepreneur Tyler Brûlé, a dissident and the man behind Wallpaper* magazine. It is edited by Andrew Tuck. The Creative Director is Richard Spencer Powell, and the Director of Web and Broadcast is Dan Hill.
'The cover brings the analogue world and the movement to resist against the digital conquer. Plus a security check on airport perimeter defenses. Inside, and every issue goes a bit on the orient, you have China's economic lubricant with its new pack of luxury malls; a photo essay on the new Beijing buildings; the African community in Guangzhou. And if you cannot hear about China anymore you can dig aside an article on Kabul or Johannesburg. Or whatever.
MONOCLE is one of the few magazines that cost less in Asia (100 Mop$) than in Europe (10 €). Maybe there's even a black market about it. People buying in Asia and smuggling it in Europe at a higher price. But that is something is not my business and I don't really know.
[FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS THROW AS AN EMAIL HERE AND YOU GET 2 ISSUES FOR FREE]