Starting at 'the end of the road... ' - Umberto Tosi
Jobim, 1981 Águas de Março, Tom Jobim's poetic, meditative, 1971 Bossa Nova gem celebrating southern Brazil's rainy month of March, has been playing in my head as we free-fall into 2021. Back in the 1980s, I memorized the lyrics so I could strum to it with my Goya, Spanish guitar. The song - about endings, beginnings and timeless flow, Zen and the beauty of common things - helped me through a rough patch. I can neither recite nor strum it from memory now, as this new year begins in which we all hope to emerge from a rough patch. But it's there, still flowing. "A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun It is night, it is death, it's a trap, it's a gun The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush A knot in the wood, the song of a thrush... ... It's the wind blowing free, it's the end of the slope" - The Waters of March , Antonio Carlos ...