What are you waiting for?

I've followed Carnaval from afar from the last month, from chilly Portland, Oregon. The distant roar of the blocos and escolas have been about all that's been keeping me warm. But with the final Monobloco parade done, I decree this season over. Time to hunker down and practice and turn my attention to my own groups: the Lions of Batucada, Axe Dide, Samba Gata here in Portland, and Tudo Beleza up in Seattle. Time to work on those repinique rolls again... get my crappy timbal playing up to speed... buy my ticket for Bloco X (here's hoping!) ... and get ready for whatever comes next. If you want to hear about my musical life outside of Brazil, I'll be posting to www.sambagypsy.blogspot.com. That's where I post in between my Brazil trips.

If you want to work on your Portuguese, all the escola news & bloco blogs that I've been gleaning my info from are online at:
www.oglobo.com.br
www.extra.globo.com
odia.terra.com.br

And it never stops. Even as I'm typing this, more news items are popping up: Laila's robbers actually called him back later to apologize. (My god, Rio is so insane...) The escolas are starting to talk about their themes for next year; they've got till April to choose a new theme, and then the songwriters get to work. Mangueira's thinking Cirque do Soleil. France is offering a lot of sponsorship money, possibly to Império Serrano, in return for a French theme. (Império's amazing and perfect response to the idea of selling their theme: "In our conception of Carnaval, money isn't everything.")

So it never really ends. It is starting all over again.

I've received so many great emails via this blog, from everywhere from Glasgow to Ohio to... well, Rio actually! The best part has been meeting a lot of those people in person. Not to get too sappy or anything, but honestly I think I have met more new wonderful friends on this three-year samba journey than in the previous thirty years all put together. And the journey keeps branching in new directions that I never could have predicted. Those reading this from Brazil know what I'm talking about. But if you're one of those who hasn't yet been to Brazil, but is getting kind of bit by that samba bug.... and you're starting to think, hmmm, wow, what would it be like to be there....

Why not go see it for yourself?

If you answered... oh, I'd love to do that... but... job.... money.... house... furniture... family....partner.... career...

How long are you going to live?

What is life for?

What are you waiting for?