Coração Acordeão

«Há uns poucos adultos presentes, além de dezenas de meninas e meninos que riem, gritam, cantam e dançam. Um dj toca hits de funk e divas pop, enquanto a música que ouço é outra: a de uma história alternativa à que acabo de contar aqui. Nela há coisas que não cabiam nestas notas, momentos de leveza, humor, amizade e plenitude ocorridos comigo aos doze anos, e aos dezesseis, dezessete e demais idades até a que tenho hoje. Um dia talvez eu escreva sobre a beleza e a graça do passado e do presente. Talvez eu descubra que a angústia e a tristeza são bengalas narrativas, e desista de ver nelas mais apelos que os da felicidade.»

«Há uma pichação no cemitério da Cardeal Arcoverde pela qual guardo muito espanto. É bruta e ruidosa, são dois versos, um grito: acorda morto! Gosto porque não tem vírgula, só ponto de exclamação (mas o gesto verdadeiro não precisa de ponto de exclamação…!). Leio esse mandamento todo dia de manhã: acordamorto, acordamorto, acordamôr; acorda, amor; acorda, morto; acorda morto. Gosto porque é um chamamento à ressurreição e gosto porque, sem a vírgula, parece estar falando não com os mortos, mas com os passantes, os que espiam rapidamente pela janela do ônibus a caminho do trabalho: Você acorda morto, Você está acordado, mas não está vivo. Gosto dessa involuntária maldição ao trabalho sem alegria, trampo de mundo caduco, serviço.»

«Mr. Nixon disliked writers and refused flatly to have them in, but Mr. Ford has invited them together with actors, musicians, television newscasters and politicians. On these great evenings the East Room fills with celebrities who become ecstatic at the sight of other clebrities. Secretary Kissinger and Danny Kaye fall into each other's arms. Cary Grant is surrounded by Senators' wives who find him wonderfully preserved, as handsome in the flesh as on film, and they can hardly bear the excitement of personal contact with the greatness. People speak of their diets, of travel and holidays, of vitamins and the problem of aging. Questions of language or style, the structure of novels, trends in painting are not discussed. The writer finds this a wonderful Pop occasion. Senator Fulbright seems almost to recognize his name and says, "You write essays, don't you? I think I can remember one of them." But the senator, as everyone knows, was once a Rhodes Scholar.     Its actually pleasant on such an evening for a writer to pass half disembodied and unmolested by small talk from room to room, looking and listening. He knows that activ public men can't combine government with literature, art and philosophy. Theirs is a world of high-tension wires not of primroses on the river brim. Ten years ago Mayor Daley in a little City Hall ceremony gave me a five hundred dollar check on behalf of the Midland Authors' Society. "Mr. Mayor, have you read Herzog?" asked one of the reportes standing by. "I've looked into it," said Daley, yielding no ground. Art is not the Mayor's dish. But then why should it be? I much prefer his neglect to the sort of interest Stalin took in poetry, phoning Pasternak to chat with him about Mandelstam and, shortly afterwards, sending Mandelstam to die.»

«To act within the marketplace, but not to be governed by the values of the market-place, is a considerable personal discipline. To see the audient as consumer denies them their humanity. They become a purchasing unit. Our human interaction ends with the completion of the transaction.»