“Such are the perfections of fiction...Everything it teaches is useless insofar as structuring your life: you can’t prop up anything with fiction. It, in fact, teaches you just that. That in order to attempt to employ its specific wisdom is a sign of madness...There is more profit in an hour’s talk with Billy Graham than in a reading of Joyce. Graham might conceivably make you sick, so that you might move, go somewhere to get well. But Joyce just sends you out into the street, where the world goes on, solid as a bus. If you met Joyce and said 'Help me,' he’d hand you a copy of Finnegans Wake. You could both cry.” – Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things


Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Songs about Washington: Fellini - Teu Ingles



Fellini is a great Brazillian postpunk band from the 80s that most people (unfortunately) don't know about. But this is a great song, which nominally mentions Washington (for our purposes, we'll assume they mean Washington, DC, and not Washington the state, which is probably incorrect given the reference to Westerns in the song). For those of you who don't know Portuguese (I sure don't), here is a rough translation of the lyrics, courtesy of Babelfish and my Portuguese-English dictionary. Also, some of the lyrics are in English, so I'm pretty certain about those bits:


'Washington finds your English funny?
Please come back. Please come back.
If the world explodes into pieces again,
please come back. Please come back.
All I see are Westerns on TV.
Please come back. Please come back.
If you're walking through the airport all alone,
please come back. Please come back.'


Anyone who actually knows Portuguese is encouraged to leave a better translation in the comments below!

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