Pablo Castoldi is in peace with everything

We always knew this was going to happen at some point. I remember thinking about the future watching “Logan’s run” as a kid, a series about a bunch of friends who didn’t want to die at the age of 30 like they were supposed to! I feel like I was always prepared to be the pig that jumps from the truck to the slaughterhouse.
The first two months of the pandemic –when I was not able to leave the country, even not to visit a friend nearby – made me understand that “it” arrived.

Like a shipwrecked person waiting for rescue, I arranged my trench as nice as possible and started to do Yoga, something that was close several times before in life to me, but I had never achieved continuity. Here I found some positive moments, how wonderful it is to model your body with static positions! The feeling of mastering ourselves with precision and the confidence it gives.
Through covid-19 we all had to accept that everything from economy to private circumstances is changing and we had to redo our plans! We had to listen to what is indispensable and unbreakable.

My parents made me love Brazil. At the age of eight, my first great tourist adventure was a family trip to Rio de Janeiro; flying for the first time in a huge Boing airplane of Varig and staying at the brand new Hotel Nacional by Oscar Niemeyer. For the first time I was seeing women in real who until that day only existed to me on the covers of the records we danced to at home, as well as to experience those superhero-men becoming reality. Happiness was always accompanied by Brazilian chords in the background, a feeling like wearing a slip (and nothing else) on hot summer days and enjoy little water bombs.

The first days of November I went to Sao Paulo! I love to pass by my friend Fernando’s house, with its art deco terrace over the adult cinemas, the neighborhood full of beggar transvestites. An uncomfortable city, a pose, the tall buildings and their shadows, the infinite distances and even if you want to see the sun, it always hides from your eyes. But then another brother was waiting in Rio de Janeiro: Nilton! We did spent almost a month together there, including a twosome date on  Christmas.

I had money and it was hot! Without thinking about it or planning it, I suddenly landed in Salvador! I spent the end of the year in peace with everything.
Salvador is the most afro city in Brazil. It is here, where the music hits get published – and then the whole country dances. I had already been there three times before, but each time only for a few days only, not long enough to really contemplate that very special horizon there. This time I didn’t have to leave– and after a few days I was falling in love, a love I had not felt for a long time, maybe I have never had that feeling of desiring someone who wanted me to this extent.

I moved far away from the center of Salvador – guided by the verses of my musical idol Dorival Caymmi – to Itapoa, near the lagoon of Abaete; to swim every day. It was the first summer (southern hemisphere) without carnival. Well, while some people worried about covering until their eyes with a mask, the problems of others were more substantial: how to get something to eat – like before, but worse and worse.

Still I was spending my afternoons in Itapoa talking about love, just as in the song by Toquinho & Gilberto Gil. I found a lot of love on the corner inhabited by a Rasta man, who decided to clean a vacant lot and turn it into an amusement park, bright and hilarious. He sells coconuts, loose cigarettes, some drinks, and he also sew. A meeting point to enjoy excellent music, sometimes without himself being present – and still nobody steals anything from him …
Here the joints are still circulating well sucked from mouth to mouth, and every night you can find souls floating on the seashore looking at the infinite while their bodies roll in the sand.
How can one not to fall in love with these people when traveling along the north coast of Bahia, they give you – against all bad news in the background – the warmest possible welcome possible, nothing can convince them to stay at home and in distance.

I had to go back to Buenos Aires in March to reassure my mother.
The city is more and more saddened – many friends turned into guardians of the confinement, the queen of silver has nothing to offer.
My refuge are the parks, now restricted and shaped by paralyzed brothers, waiting for this to be solved, clasping illusions while the worst seems good to them.
I feel like Sarah Connor in this “Terminator” scene, when she takes her picture in the jeep and dictates  the modus operandi to the future generations: “The future depends on us!”

I only wish that there would be also health guideline warnings about the indiscriminate consumption of ultra-sweetened sodas and the thousands of toxins we consume every day – and I wish more people would talk about the origin of the covid-19 tragedy: the overproduction of animal meat to begin with.
Well, let`s hope that the media is picking up these facts too.

Right now it feels sadly like that we, the love defenders of freedom, smell like the rancid right wing. Why?
Within a month I went back to Brazil. Nothing compares to the feeling of being in love, I want to continue living this romance.