How do You Relate to Your Country?

First night in Brazil, shocked, as expected, on how the slums are big, the steaks are good, people looking in my eyes, understandable conversations (unfortunately) all around, Sao Paulo’s noise, its harsh beauty, people walking slow…

So I went to see a Brazilian movie, “My name is not Johnny”. It is about this guy, this charismatic guy, this middle-class-liberal-with-good-friends kind of guy, who from smoking a joint and sniffing some dust becomes quite a drug dealer. He ventures in Europe, makes a big deal there, gets loaded and burns it all before coming back. He was having a blast.

While in this blast, of course, he faces the corrupted cops, who he pays in order to have it taken easy on him, and then he faces less flexible cops, who send him to jail. And then, of course, the film shows the Carandiru-like scenes in the detention and so on…

Eventually, his lawyer convinces the judge that he could not entirely respond for his acts (he sniffed 100 grams of cocaine a week, for Christ’s sake) and so he is removed to a judicial mental institution. He manages to survive there and he was freed in 2 years time. Today he is a music producer.

Yeah, the movie was based on true facts and the judge who convicts João (that’s his name, not Johnny) affirms he is an example that it is POSSIBLE to recuperate someone.

But, coming back to my initial question, how do you relate to your country?

In a letter addressed to our cool guy, the judge also says that “the true place of birth is the one where you look intelligently upon yourself for the first time.” …

Brazil challenges me, it puzzles me. Fundamentally, it destroys my innocence. How do I relate to that? How we, Brazilians, can relate to such thing? Maybe, possibly, by creating a fresh “innocence” on a daily basis, conscientious that it will be very soon destroyed, but creating it nonetheless. I reborn here, probably not by looking intelligently upon myself, but by reinventing fresh beliefs, opinions and values to be soon challenged and destroyed.

So maybe that is how we relate to one another and to this amazing (for good and bad) part of the Earth. After the movie, people stare at me. I wonder what kind of innocence they created today and, more importantly, how tonight will destroy it. I stare back. I cannot hide from them. They know, deep inside, my innocence is to be destroyed soon as well.