Autumnal rose buds and ivy, in Luxembourg.
An autumnal drive to the notes of Céu's APKÁ!
As I envisage my emotional landscape to look like Raúl Urias’ yellow and blue illustrations, the Brazilian music artist Céu (b. Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças) lets us in her inner world. It is a place that can be walked across, and that leads to the sky, just as if Céu’s name prophetically anticipated it. Céu’s 2020 album APKÁ! offers a vision inhabited by noize sonorities, that call for a smooth and relaxed drive — once again, ideal for an electric car leaving the city behind. As we come across the first yellow leaves, we listen to Forçar o verão. Interestingly enough, this summer song possesses the quite unique quality of being likeable in any season.
The summer that Céu describes arrives as an undesired guest, as a cloud. I imagine how sunny spring days are replaced with the humid summertime, in the best monsoon-influenced fashion of São Paulo, and so of its Ipiranga district. This is a forced summer. Céu asks: “Parem de forçar o verão!” (“Stop forcing summer!”) The unwanted guest does not want to leave. But, here comes the time for the cool weather to return to Brazil, like nothing ever happened.
Céu's Corpocontinente: a walk in a place of nostalgia
The videoclip from Corpocontinente shows a foggy landscape, an abandoned temple immersed in the Amazon forest, on the shores of a river. This is a vestige of some past times presided over by a goddess that metamorphically experiences the passage of time through the flourishing and the decay of nature. We see the main character escaping from a reality he does not fit in, to desperately search for that feeling of saudade, that still holds a connection to things past.
This is a place of nostalgia, where nostalgia is the result of a basic mathematical operation: the sum of 2. It is possible to take a casual walk (passear) to cross this delirium. There is a chance that moving on with your life — moving away from the continent and talking a walk (passear) in a different land — can also turn out well. Even then, nostalgia will knock to the door when you least expect it: “Mas quando escutar aquele som/ Vai lembrar do que chamamos de nos tornarnos um” (“But when you will hear that sound/ You will remember what we call becoming one is.”)
Green musk, ivy and dry leaves, in Luxembourg.
Pardo by Caetano Veloso: an alluring journey into a luxuriant jungle
We continue our drive. We go deeper into the emotional landscape, as we listen to Pardo: an enchanting song that the very Caetano Veloso wrote, here released for the first time. A wild beast, a leopard, cuts across the jungle — I think here of Henri Rousseau’s painting Forêt vierge au soleil couchant (c. 1910) — smelling the prey. Some blood lies under the petal.In the juxtaposition of the pink and the black colour, black prevails. The denial of pink is evident from the very beginning. It is time to accept the black colour (o pretume), and let it take over through a black kiss. Self-doubt and inner conflicts arise: “Pra que me quereres?/ Homens e mulheres há/ Por que tanto queres/ Não me querer querer?” (“Why do you want me?/ There are also other men and women/ Why do you want [me] so much/ Do you not want me?”) Why should we be preferred to someone else? Why should we deserve attention? Or even, love? It is okay to let in o pretume.
A bed of autumn leaves, in Luxembourg.
Céu's Nada Irreal: on reaching for the sky
Nada Irreal is the natural continuation of this journey. It takes us to the hyperuranium, the place where ideas — or as Céu would say, old ideals and so, truer dreams — reside. No impossible (unreal) promises were made: “Não te prometi o céu/ Nem você a mim o sol” (“I did not promise you the sky/ Nor you the Sun.”) Still, there is something that takes us to paradise. The song acquires a reggae character.Letting yourself go completely means immersing yourself into the unknown, diving into deepwater. You must be naive (infantil) enough to do it. Another unreal promise must be unveiled: “Sei que devo admitir que não levo jeito algum/ Pra salvar o mundo de mim, de você, de ninguém” (“I know I must admit I have no way/ Of saving the world from me, you, or anyone else.”)
Creek in autumn, in Luxembourg.
Oxytocin, or also the feeling of bonding with your inner self
We have nearly reached the destination, when Ocitocina plays. The song tells of a walk (um passeio) through a continent of its own, a free dimension, outside any known geography, without borders; of a walk (andada) looking for someone. A natural phenomenon, a pororoca — namely a wave originating at the mouth of an Amazonian river, where the freshwater stream meets with the high tide of the ocean — here exemplifies the emotional landscape.
There is no chance of running out of battery. The word charged is pronounced like it was in Portuguese.
The narration is marked by a fast paced rhythm. We leave the dense forest to cross a clearing — a new dawn awaits you. You have no fear of facing your present. That someone is nothing but your present.
Possibly that someone is our true self or that beloved one we have been longing for. Or again, Céu’s second child, Antonino, who gave the name to the album. According to Céu, Apká was a word invented by her son to express satisfaction and joy. After all, oxytocin is a hormone that is key in social and maternal behaviours, as well as survival and reproduction.