Riobaldo e o Aleph

Lyrics#

the crossroad is a point in space that does not move.
the devil did not appear, but all the space appeared.

drought-cracked earth on the nineteenth step.
a sphere of two or three centimeters.
i saw the sertão from every angle at once, without transparency.

i am not speaking.
i am being seen by the thing i am looking at.

the noise of the universe does not fit in the mouth.
so i tell the story until the story dissolves.

the Aleph is a hole in the real.
the pact was not a signature, it was an observation.

Composer Notes#

I grew up in the interior of Rondônia, where the Amazon dries up and turns into cerrado. That is where I read Grande Sertão: Veredas. Riobaldo goes to a crossroads at midnight to make a pact with the devil. He calls out, and nothing appears. The entire six-hundred-page narrative oscillates because he is never sure whether the devil ignored the call or whether the devil was the silence of the crossroads itself. There is no pact more final than the one you are not sure you signed.

The Aleph, in Borges’s story, is a point in the basement of a house in Buenos Aires. It is two or three centimeters in diameter. Whoever looks at the Aleph sees the entire universe, every place from every angle simultaneously, without overlap.

Riobaldo saw the sertão, and the sertão was too big to fit into one life. Borges saw the Aleph, and the totality was too big to fit into a description. Putting them together was not an attempt to solve the problem of observation. It was the realization that the observer is pierced by the thing they observe. The point that contains all points leaves no room for the watcher to stand outside.

I asked Suno for a didgeridoo drone, theremin, and tribal percussion. The lyrics emerged in English, in a continuous flow. “i am not seeing i am being seen.” There is no active subject when space has no edges. The music is the sound of someone trying to close their eyes and failing.