*All song’s lyrics in this text were translated/adapted

“Picasso has passed away. (If it is possible)”

I remember reading this headline on an old newspaper cover in 1973 announcing the death of the Spanish painter. That sentence touched me so deep that it is still alive inside me – as Picasso who is still alive in his works and in the memory of those who love him. Beethoven died in 1827 and is still alive. To quote one of my favorites: Tom Jobim died on December 8, 1994 and is still alive. I’m so fond of him that I keep the date of his passing in my memory, along with the memory of that day. Where were you on December 8, 1994? I was at work. I remember looking at a window and spending a long time watching the buildings outside, at my feet, as I thought of Tom Jobim’s image surrounded by trees, listening to birds, a documentary I had seen on TV. In my mind at that moment there was a song playing, “Passarim”. Rewriting the lyrics over here, I realize that the choice was appropriate: “Little bird wanted to land, it couldn’t, it flew, because the shot was fired but it didn’t kill. Little Bird, tell me, then, let me know, why wasn’t I happy either? Tell me what I do with the passion? That devours my heart … that devours my heart… “.

The shot was fired but it did not kill because “whom we love is always alive inside us” (this is a phrase that we don’t get tired of repeating here on the website)

Tell me what I do with this passion that devours my heart?

I let the French actor Gerard Depardieu answer, reproducing here a statement given to the French magazine Gala, about the absence of his son Guillaume Depardieu, who died in 2008 at the age of 37 with a pneumonia. Gerard Depardieu says: “I do not miss Guillaume, because he is always with me. All the time, present in everything I do. And I see his presence also in Julie, his daughter, and his two children, Roxane and Jean. Guillaume is not someone untouchable, he is not a celebrity or an idol, but he remains alive. He is someone who lived intensely. He was an adventurer, a free soul. (The Depardieu’s son had a teenage hood marked by drugs and at 17 he was sentenced to three years in prison for dealing heroin.) Particularly I think the world is full of idiots who are yet alive, much more dead than my son who is gone.”

Someone we love is always alive inside us. And I suggest we say goodbye listening to “Passarim”: