Music is in the mind of the beholder

Bossa Nova is a little sadder now that João Gilberto has died. There's a reason why The Girl from Ipanema is one of the greatest songs ever written and emblematic of the Bossa Nova genre. Astrud Gilberto (his then-wife) sang in a way that was sexy, and oddly drowsy to me.

I vividly remember hearing this song for the first time in the back seat of my mom's car. I was young, no more than seven. It came on the radio and I was transported to another place. A country I barely knew existed that positively dripped with coolness. Her accented singing stirred strange emotions and planted seeds I wouldn't understand for a few more years when puberty hit like a ton of horny bricks.

It's not quite accurate to say I was completely unfamiliar with Brazil. My grandfather had been there on a business trip in the 1960's when he worked for U.S. Steel. Apparently, he'd seen a man stabbed in the street and rushed over to help him, risking infection by getting the man's blood on his hands while he applied pressure to stop the bleeding. I was told he loved the place but wouldn't go back because it was too dangerous.

He'd also been to Soviet Russia, and was convinced the KGB was listening to his phone calls in the hotel. In constrast to Brazil, Russia was horrible, dark and joyless. The only part of the trip he enjoyed was getting breakfast. Every morning, he was given a baked potato topped with sour cream, chives and caviar.

All of these stories were told to me second hand. Before my first birthday, my grandfather left my grandmother for another woman. I saw him once or twice as I got older, but by the time I was five he was out of the picture. This was at my mom's insistence. The mid-life crisis bomb he detonated in the household drove my grandmother to contemplate suicide. And though she didn't do it, I don't beieve she ever really recovered from the shock and strain.

In addition to being a philanderer (because as I would later discover, it wasn't the first time), and draftsman at U.S. Steel, my grandfather was a visual artist. Except for his smooth hands and white hair, I don't remember what he looked like.

The only tangible signs of him around the house that I remember were the artworks he left behind, paintings which were subsequently thrown away in a move of catharsis from my mom and grandmother.  I know the emotional context in which this act was committed. But in retrospect, it was shortsighted.

It's hard to say how much if any I blame them for keeping him at arm's length until the month before he died when his second wife reluctantly obeyed his insistence to reach out to us because he wanted make peace with my mom as best as the two of them could.

Were it not for that separation, we might all have forged some sort of relationship together, and I would have known what it was like to have had one pair of grandparents in my life. My dad did not keep in touch with anyone on his side of the family. The fact he never spoke of it, suggested it was even more dysfunctional. But all of that is speculation. What really happened was the whole thing festered out in the open for a few ensuing years and then retreated in the attic of everyone's mind until it was fossilized and forgotten.

My brother who is not that much older than I am, had such a strong bond with our grandfather that it was more traumatic. I was spared because of my age. Add to that my grandmother's suicidal thoughts, and my parents own marital and financial difficulties around the same years, and it was a perfect shit storm. Emotional issues are bad enough. My parents couldn't afford to keep their house, almost declared bankruptcy and moved in with my grandmother (in the house my grandfather helped build) to try and save money.

Oddly enough, going through, say, the first eight years of my life like this made me more traditional when it comes to marriage. The sixties might have broken the so-called chains of traditional values, but if the only thing it wrought was the fucked-up 70's decade, I'd rather go back.

On a whole other level, I'm philosophical about a grandparentless childhood. We can't change the past, just as we can't miss what you never had. If we're lucky, we learn from the situation.

I never got to speak to my grandfather before he died in 2002. So there's no redemptive ending to this story. Despite letting us know he was dying, his wife wouldn't allow more family contact than was necessary. Lhe woman let my mom visit the hospital once.

Feeling at a loss and wanting somehow to communicate, I ended up writing him a letter. I wanted him to know that even though we missed our lives together, somehow the artistic DNA got passed along through his daughter and then to me. Horrible as it is to say, I doubt the his wife read it to him. In the brief obligatory phone call she made after he died, her words sounded false. I suspect we were all going to use it as a way to get what money he had in the will, which was the last thing any of us cared about. My parents had long since sorted their money situations. My grandfather most likely had a decent pension but he was hardly a Rockefeller.

Despite this, after his death, my mom called letting me know he had left me $1500, which was exactly enough to get my first Mac, something I so desperately needed. Looking back on it now, I suspect the whole story was cooked up, so I wouldn't think he went to the grave without caring. It's not like he would have been able to alter his will in that condition, and its equally likely his wife would have permitted it since I assume she was legally in charge at that point.

If there is any regret I have, it's that I didn't get to know him through his art work. Since my mom and grandmother threw all of it out so many years before, the only thing I have are thirty-something-year-old memories. One piece in particular, I can still see when I close my eyes. Geometrical shapes in rows with such fantastic use of color. At least partially. I can see some of the rows and the black shapes against changing squares of color. But I can't see it all in total, not enough to reproduce it, which is something I would do if I could.

Beyond the art works, the only thing he left behind (beyond the house he made, as previously stated), was a strange Brazilian souvenir that looked like a good luck charm.  An eerie carving of a wooden hand whose thumb protruded between two fingers. In some cultures, it's an obscene gesture. In Brazil, it's considered a good luck charm used to ward off evil spirits. I wouldn't discover this meaning until a year after my grandfather died.

When I was in portfolio school, I befriended a bunch of Brazilians who were attending at the same time. I keep in touch with a few of them. One happens to be a fantastic designerwho owns her own branding firmin Rio. About two years about my grandfather died, when I was starting out in my career and was making a little extra money, I flew down to Brazil a couple of times. Each time, she showed me around Rio. At one point on the trip, I saw the hand carvings in a souvenir shop and the childhood memory flooded back as well as the memory of hearing "The Girl From Ipanema," for the first time.

To understand that song is to understand Rio, or at least one side of it. Without a doubt, Rio is an extremely violent city.  I missed a car jacking a few minutes after my arrival the first time there. Saw the aftermath of a bullet riddled van. I would not have visited the city without a local.

It is also true that the majority of people there are incredibly warm and friendly. And laid back. Rio is like L.A. in that sense only more so. There's no hurry. Life is beautiful. Hang loose, man.

My favorite way of illustrating this is to tell people here that Brazilians don't understand the American concept of party invitations that tell you the start and stop time. "It's a party," they say. "It starts whenever and ends whenever. What's this beginning and ending thing you speak of?" It was amusing to witness this firsthand.

In America, if the invitation says the start time is at eight, this means "arrive around eight, not later than nine-thirty, ten if you are really pushing it and only plan to stay for a little bit." Brazilians roll in well past midnight and wonder why everyone was passed out drunk or ready to wrap it up.

But this is also the culture of double kisses as greeting, sitting in a restaurant for hours, watching the world go by over a cafezinha or four. It gets hot as hell down there. Tropical jungle hot. Hot where you feel like you are sweating in a cold shower hot. You couldn't move fast if you wanted to unless it's at night and you blow through a red light on an empty street so you don't risk a carjacking.

When I think of my grandfather, I think of Brazil. It's safe to assume he knew "The Girl from Ipanema," since just about everyone on the planet knows it. He might have even heard the song when he was there, depending on what year he visited. Obviously, I'll never know. But I do like the way that sometimes music and memory get so tangled it's impossible for the song to travel in a straight line.