Reflections

Seriously speaking, Roberto Carlos (1941, from Cachoeiro, Espírito Santo), and his constant partner, Erasmo Carlos (also from 1941, from Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro), have been part of our lives for a long time. Both through their songs, present in emotionally significant moments, and through their lyrics, as chroniclers of the soul and/or uncertain hearts, youthful, mature, and now, senile.

Although they started in the music scene back in 1962, with (today he would be an influencer?) Carlos Imperial, it was in 1965, with the Jovem Guarda program (TV Record SP), that Brazilians realized they were important for Brazil and the world.

Erasmo passed away on November 22, 2022. I was able to see him live twice. Once around 1973, in the intimate “Flag” in Copacabana, and the other time when he celebrated 50 years of career, commemorated with a show at the Municipal Theater of Rio in 2012.

However, for one reason or another, it was only in 2023 that I saw a Roberto Carlos show live for the first time. Not as I had wished, at a table in the now-defunct “Canecão”, where I never managed to go, either because the tickets were sold out or because it was a price that didn’t fit my budget for such things.

This time, my wife and I went to the “Jeunesse Arena”, a huge gymnasium, a legacy of the Rio Olympics, where we had never been (during the Olympics I went to see a basketball game in a neighboring and smaller “stadium”).

Because we didn’t know the place, and because we bought at the last minute (two days before), in that “we’ve never seen Roberto” spirit, we chose two seats in a place called N3, which means Level 3. In other words, as they call it around here, “in the perch”, where the price per seat was approximately $62. As seniors, it came out to half: $31. The seats were numbered, but the tickets were not, people sat as they arrived, which caused some confusion. In the chairs, called the audience, (on the ground floor, where the court (of “volleyball”?) would have been) it would be $200.00 per young person.

The architects who designed that, and those who approved the project, must have thought that the spectators were all Olympic athletes: the height of some inevitable steps was 50cm, the continuity of handrails for people to hold on to and the space to move in the rows of chairs was minimal. An absurdity, almost impossible accessibility.

And during the Paralympics, how was it? I joked with the dark humor that I appreciate.

But the unexpected was worth it. Besides seeing my idol, I experienced the cordiality and solidarity of everyone in that perch of Roberto fans: _ emotional! All good people. Many families bringing their elderly. It was clear that, for many, it must have been a sacrifice to pay to attend that event.

People with walkers, with canes, bent and hesitant, some supporting each other, wet from the rain, to fulfill a wish, an illusion: to see the King live. Some wearing and putting on the best they could gather, in the insufficient budget, in questionable taste, in calloused hands and deformed bodies of many ladies, certainly working women from the outskirts.

A large part under the complacent eyes of some, younger, bourgeois and/or pretending to be aristocrats, actually from other tribes who consider themselves more intellectual, more “gauche”, who seemed to be there out of obligation to parents and grandparents, thankfully, but somewhat embarrassed, feeling like they were “paying a mico”.

They were moments that crowned a life of admiration for the idol. It had to work out. And everything worked out, although it’s worth noting a “detail”: none of those ladies in the perch received roses at the end, only the audience.

It was two hours of show, at a distance where the artist was barely visible, except for the screens, but two hours that everyone present turned into magical moments, unforgettable, singing along to the songs, predictable and perfect repertoire. It was what everyone wanted to hear. Even the “up there” helped, after all, the last song was for Him. The rain stopped at the entrance and exit.

The “audience” was led by the lyrics to their youth, to their amorous initiation, some more platonic, others not so much, to the disappointments and amorous complications. To the successes, doubts, lived mistakes. Things that thought and memory keep and that no one wants to confess even to themselves. Or that they want to tell everyone, but something doesn’t let them. Thankfully the other/the other also don’t tell, also think it’s better to pretend to forget. Is love sex? Is sex love? (hello, Jabor, Rita and Carvalho)

In two hours, looking sometimes at Roberto, sometimes at the faces around, sometimes inside myself, I realized we were there in a communion of spirit. The women reviewed their Antonios, their Silvios, their Aristeus, some their Veras, it happens, the closets open. The men reviewed their Marílias, their Enis, their Anas, their Marlís, their Helenas, their Lorenas, some their Eduardos, there’s everything. Not forgetting the beloved lover.

Roberto and Erasmo were also the “kings of motels”, nests of love that emerged and proliferated at the same time as the contraceptive pill (±1964?) and Jovem Guarda, which made the ambient sound, preferred by these “establishments”. Everything concave and convex.

How many attempted cases? How many fictitious? How many were true? How many were lies? How many unconfessed dreams? How many unnecessary necessary jealousies, back and forth. The lyrics of those songs know all the details, they become accomplices!

During the show, it seems that the recorder of your life is rewound, making that tape rewinding noise at high speed. You can’t understand anything, but you know your life is there, summarized, and what matters is what emotions you lived. Whether it was good or bad, what matters is that it was your life.

Better poorly accompanied than alone, advised the wise grandmother. And what is all this worth if you’re not here?

Roberto already with his 82, voice handling the task, artist’s appearance that takes care of the posture on stage, professional stuff, must have been making the same conjectures as I, up in the perch:

_ until when? I looked at him and, telepathically, said:

_ I propose to say nothing more...

Already with ideas choked, I thought: pay attention, this is our station, let’s get off, thanking the journey on this spaceship, with such beautiful soundtracks and poetry.

I left there mumbling: thank you Roberto, thank you Erasmo.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer and chronicler, 20230729 6.436 “characters””