Milk at the Bar

Lyrics#

[Intro]
(Viola Caipira playing a rhythmic Cateretê strumming)
(A lively, catchy intro)

[Verse 1]
Dois domingos depois, o telefone tocou
Foi a primeira vez que o primo me chamou
Disse: "Vamos sair, ver o que o progresso criou"
Na esquina da rua, um tal 'Salão-Bar' inaugurou
Obra de Zunino e Zungri... o dinheiro ali sobrou

[Verse 2]
Fui com resignação, sem ter muita vontade
O lugar era o símbolo da tal modernidade
Luz forte que cega, sem nenhuma intimidade
Mesas de ferro frio, servindo a vaidade
O primo achava chique, aquela calamidade
Pedimos dois copos de leite... quanta felicidade!

[Chorus]
(Stronger, slightly humorous tone)
Ele alisou o bigode e foi direto ao ponto
"Primo Borges, escuta, não me tome por tonto
Meu poema é um tesouro, disso eu não desconto
Mas precisa de um prólogo, pra aumentar o seu conto!"

[Verse 3]
"Fale com o Álvaro Lafinur, aquele autor de desponte
Peça pra ele escrever... pra servir de horizonte"
Eu balancei a cabeça, fiz a confirmação
"Pode deixar, primo Carlos, tá na minha mão!"
Mas por dentro eu sabia... era tudo invenção

[Bridge]
(Viola Solo - Mischievous sound)

[Verse 4]
Prometi falar quinta, num jantar do Clube de Leitura
(Um jantar que não existe, pura e simples impostura)
Saí de lá decidido, mantendo a postura
Mas assim que dobrei a esquina, mudei a figura
O tal pedido do Álvaro... foi pra sepultura
Resolvi não fazer nada, com a maior cara dura!

[Outro]
O telefone tocou a semana inteira...
(Pause)
Eu não atendi.
(Viola slows down)
Deixei o primo e o prólogo... comendo poeira.
(Final sharp strum)

Composer Notes#

There is a Borges episode — not quite a story, more a confessional anecdote — where he describes meeting a distant cousin who asks him to introduce his poems to some influential intellectual. Borges agrees, knows immediately he will not follow through, and spends the rest of the telling describing his own cowardice with a clinical precision that borders on pride. What drew me to it was that Borges never apologizes and never condemns himself: he simply registers. I wanted to try that in the form of moda de viola.

For English readers who may not know the genre: viola caipira is a ten-string guitar central to the folk music of Brazil’s interior — the sertão and the cerrado — and the moda de viola is its narrative form, a storytelling tradition that specializes in ironic rural tales, in “causos,” the kind of story told by someone who watched the whole thing and thought it was mildly funny. Placing Borges inside that frame is a register transposition, and the tension between the literary content and the popular form was the point. “The work of Zunino and Zungri… money was not scarce there” — those names appear in Borges as markers of Buenos Aires nouveaux-riches, and in the viola caipira they land like the owners of every farm that bought a tractor before there was a road.

Suno delivered the cateretê with more liveliness than I expected — the viola caipira fingerpicking in the intro, the syncopated handclaps, the voice with a slightly accentuated caipira accent. The result has a humor I didn’t explicitly request but that belongs to the material. The phone ringing all week with no one answering is the final image — Borges finally quiet, the cousin waiting, the preface never written. There’s something about silence as a form of literary integrity that feels authentic to the character, even if the specific story is my invention on top of his.