Linn Da Quebrada

Rui Miguel Abreu

Today, I have next to me a very special person. One of those artists that I think has the strength to change the world. The topics we’ll be talking about in the next… I don’t want to limit time because we never know where conversations will lead us. Please give your applause to Linn da Quebrada. [applause]

Welcome. Let’s start by trying to understand what is, in the end, a gender terrorist. Can you explain it?

Linn Da Quebrada

I’m going to try. Good evening everyone. It’s so good to see you again. Some of you I’ve seen other times here, in my comings and goings. I’m Lina Pereira, for those who don’t know me, also known as Linn da Quebrada, one of the parts which makes me.

Well, in the beginning of my trajectory I talked much more about gender terrorism, right? But I keep believing, as a strategy, in terror and violence. Mainly because bodies as mine, and bodies as some of ours, are used to being treated with violence for all their trajectory. They are bodies where violence is almost the rule. For this reason, I think that I started realizing and knowing that Brazil is a country where we were taught, raised, persuaded and programed to be polite and to receive too, with so much cordiality, violence, right? To give the other cheek when we get a blow. I think that when I started questioning my behavior in this respect, I started understanding that violence could also be a weapon and that my body could be that weapon of war. That my body could serve not only as a battlefield but also as a kamikaze. By placing myself under scrutiny and at risk, since I was already in that risky position. So, I put not only myself at risk but also all this system, as I place under scrutiny the entire structure, right? And then I think that I point the gun to my own head, I risk my own existence, but I scrutinize this failed structure. This failed structure, this expired structure, and this structure which is in ruins. Because I feel that my body, in a certain way, gives testimony to these failed contours. Contours that don’t say… Didn’t predict my existence. They not only didn’t want for us to be alive but also didn’t expect we resisted for so long. This is exactly why I’m the gun pointed to my own head, pointed to each of us and to the whole system. This is what I understand by acting through terror. And now, this time, pointing terror to the system’s face, so to speak.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Wow.

Linn Da Quebrada

It’s what I try to do. I’m not saying that it is what necessarily happens. It is what I would like to do. Making them feel afraid. Since they made us feel fear for so long, now I would like to see them trembling. To see their shortness of breath as they feel we are getting closer.

Rui Miguel Abreu

You used the word fear and the question I was thinking about, and I’m already deviating from the script, while listening to you is, only those who are conscious about their own fear manifest courage, right? Otherwise it is not courage, it is solely madness. What are you afraid of?

Linn Da Quebrada

Look, honestly nowadays I think fear is a luxury. I cannot give myself the luxury of feeling fear. I feel anger. I feel a lot of anger. And I think that, in a certain way, anger brings us together, equips us and it makes us immune. Once I heard a transvestite, in Santo André, saying that we cannot give ourselves the luxury of feeling afraid. That we can have worries but not fear. Because if we were afraid we would not be risking ourselves this way. If I was afraid, I would have given up on myself a long time ago. And at the same time, I feel that it is precisely fear, right? The fear of death, that makes me fight so fervently for my own life.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Well, let’s change a little bit, but only slightly, the conversation. Before you were making the distinction between fear and worries which is a clever way to use words to say things that are, in fact, are being felt. It isn’t fear, it’s worry. And words have been an important vehicle for your message. A way to express your message through music. So, let’s talk a bit about music. When did you realize, and, Linda, you did theater, other things, right? When did you realize that music could be an effective vehicle to deliver that message to whom needed to receive it?

Linn Da Quebrada

I think that… My body has always been my main raw material in what concerns work. I think that it has always been the only thing that I had. The only way I had to communicate and also in what concerns my own solitude and my space in the world. I only had myself. And I think that music was a surprise. I never expected to be a singer. I think that I don’t necessarily have what is considered a good voice or a beautiful voice. I think that I even have a slightly sexy voice, right? But not necessarily what is expected to sing, to be a singer. And I found in music a possibility of being heard.

I was living with Liniker. And when I saw her singing for the first time and when I saw what she could do with people around her, I said, “I want to do that too.” And not necessarily in the same frequency as she, but I realized that she was able to gain access to people through music but through a different path. Because Liniker she can say, sing, anything that she will be able to get to us. Due to a type of voice and frequency that crosses us. And I not necessarily have that frequency to be able to get to people but I knew that what I was saying, at least for me, was very important. So, I realized that music could be an access path. And I then started writing not for other people and this might seem a bit egoistical but I only did this for myself.

I only started doing this because I needed to listen to those things. And more than needing it, I needed to be able to say those things. I needed to be able to say that repeatedly so I would believe in my own discourse. To make my music magic, a spell and in a way that the spell would turn against the sorcerer.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Interesting. But then there’s an aesthetic choice, right? It could have been samba, jazz, it could have been lyrical music. Why this music? How does one get to this music?

Linn Da Quebrada

I think that precisely by understanding what I needed to listen to, I realized that people talk about love exhaustively. That exhaustively there is a type of narrative construction that programs us, builds us, builds our affections, and builds our desires, in the same way. Music and arts in general are responsible, the way I see it, not only for the reproduction of the world as it is. For me art is not a mirror. Or maybe it is too in a certain way. But for me, I wanted to make art which could be a hammer. I wanted to make art that would break precisely the image I saw reflected in the mirror but that I did not recognize. I think that exactly then was when I realized that the things we sing about, the things we talk about repeatedly, make them feel that way. I think that from listening to love songs so much I was eager to love, I expected even more, much more, to be loved. And my anger, for realizing that my body did not have a space in this territory, made me want to make music that would destroy love and this sacred and profane territory. I think, then, that my aesthetical choice comes not necessarily as a form but as… Content. Content, I see, is not separated from the form but in its effect. I think that I kind of knew what I wanted to make as an effect. But I wanted to make inside myself. Because I knew I had a desire. Mainly a desire… Honestly, it was all because of love. It was all because I wanted to love and be loved. It was. It was more because of love than sexual drive. Precisely because of that I felt angry by desiring the same type of bodies and wanting to be desired by those bodies. My anger was, “Why don’t you desire me? After all, I think I’m not that bad, right?” But I think this made me want to deviate my desire.

A question that stuck with me for a while was, a river if we image a river and realize that our desires are like a river. And a river has a current. It flows. So much that it can be very dangerous, right? There are rivers where you make a mistake and they are much deeper than what you imagined and the current can be much stronger even for someone who knows how to swim, right? So, if our desires are like a river and they flow in a natural way, my question to you is, is it possible to deviate the course of a river?

Rui Miguel Abreu

Science says so.

Linn Da Quebrada

[to audience] What do you think? What is that? It is possible but you can’t be sure. Because it depends on the soil conditions, it depends on the work that we are willing to make. Whether it is a sandy ground, an arid ground, if the river goes through a city… There are several things involved. If we can or not build new creeks and new creeks of affections so that we can think about irrigating affective zones that so far were desert, dry. I was dry and needed to be wet. Honestly, it was that. I make my music as a detour of this river and this affective creek, affective sex and, in a certain way, humorous.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Please allow me to use an expression you just used. What kind of music made you feel wet? What music inspired you? What music made you restless?

Linn Da Quebrada

There wasn’t any.

Rui Miguel Abreu

What were your references? Didn’t you collect references?

Linn Da Quebrada

I had references. Especially about what I didn’t want to make. Those were my main references, including, forgive my sister, I love Liniker, but that was not what I wanted to do. Because it wasn’t about that kind of love I wanted to sing but, honestly, that was what I wanted to feel. And that appalled me. That revolted me deeply and precisely because of that, for not having a reference on what I would like to listen to, I started writing the things I wanted to listen to. I started trying to make the things I would like to sing and listen to.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Even so, and after a lot of insistence from me, when I asked Linda to choose a song outside her direct sphere it was Liniker that she chose, right? One word about that artist?

Linn Da Quebrada

Intimacy. I think Liniker was responsible for… She was a person who taught me a lot and to whom I was able to teach a lot too. We shared a lot of things and we survived the São Paulo jungle together. We served as support, we built an affective, financial, material, economic concrete net. What we built was something real. A psychological net. We needed each other to be alive, really. So…

Rui Miguel Abreu

“Intimidade” by Liniker.

(music: Liniker – “Intimidade”)

Let’s talk about music and resistance, activism, about that never-ending fight against prejudice. If a live show, a concert, is a performance, and masks are always important in performance, my question is, don’t you fear that your message might be misunderstood. Or, on the contrary, if you feel that the stage is like a magnifying glass that amplifies everything that you say. Do you ever feel that what you are communicating while holding a microphone on stage gets lost?

Linn Da Quebrada

Before that I want to talk about something before, in my view. For example, it always bothers me when there is talk about our work as only activism or resistance. Why? Yes, I certainly think my work is an activist work, it’s a work of resistance. But if we conceive an activist work as linked to activity, and resistance linked to action, why don’t we consider all other musical and artistic productions also as an activity of resistance against conservatism, against resisting to changes, resisting to transformations.

All work is political, all songs and artistic pieces have a fundamental role in the construction of the present, in the construction of what we have been building during this and other historical moments. All songs have this role. Those which talk about love can make, or not, things stay as they have always been.

Rui Miguel Abreu

True.

Linn Da Quebrada

And I believe… That my work or my performance materializes on stage. Because I think it’s a matter of vocabulary. I remember when I was trying to explain to my mother what I was. And when I was trying to explain to her what I was, I was trying to explain it to myself as well. I was trying, through the materialization of words, to make her understand. That was when I understood that to make her understand I needed to access her vocabulary. The words she had as reference and what those words meant to her, and from there to transform that vocabulary or transform that meaning. Those words, right? I feel that most people, when listening to my songs at home they get the words I use through their own references of those words. But, still, this is reconstructed through a context.

Rui Miguel Abreu

So there is no wrong way of understanding music?

Linn Da Quebrada

No. No because this is it. Our vocabulary, our references, we are talking about referentiality. What I am doing is to dispute, don’t fool yourselves. This is not a show. Maybe it is a show masked as dispute. This, here, is dispute. For many of us, it might look like, in these game of lights, more scenic or more cynical. More iconic or not. But this here, for me, is a power dispute. It is a language dispute and it is a sex dispute. It is a dispute for my own body. On stage I think that I take on this role in an even more evident and transparent way. Because there I transform, more than transform, I give my body to my songs. I give voice to my words and I transform them in substance. From that, I think I’m able to create a more transparent, physical dialogue through my own references. I think that during my performances I’m able to translate my songs better. But still, I’m totally aware, and that is exactly why it is so important to me the choice of every word. I sing exactly everything I would like to sing. Each word I chose is exactly the work I wanted to say even though gay, transvestite, woman, [these words] have so many distinct meanings for us, and for others who are not in this room they might have different meanings. Because if I say “woman” what picture comes to your minds? When I say “home,” when I say “man,” when I say “territory,” when I say “chair.” An image comes to our mind. That image has color, format. That woman has a size, she has hair or not, she has a color on her skin, she has an economic status. And this is what builds our references in such a diverse… Because there are women, and there is womanhood, there are bodies and corporality. Different and with different effects and affections over us. Because of that I believe that when I make a song it ceases to be my song and it becomes ours, in a certain manner. Each one of us builds the meaning of these songs in accordance with their references.

But when I make a show, a performance, and when I establish my dispute territory there I’m able to give my meaning. More than my meaning, I can set my position in front of all those people standing there and I try to build a common meaning. Because we are all very different, even only in this room we can see that. There are Brazilians, there are queer people, there are women, there are lesbians. Where are the transvestite inside this room? Where are the trans men and so many other trans-corporalities which exist? And all these make up a referential of different worlds, right? I think that in my show I’m able, or I try, to, even though we are so different, build a common ground. A starting point. Not our final objective but a place where we start from. Someone once said that masks are what we wear all day long and that the stage is where we take off our masks. Or not, right? It is where we assume even more our masks. I don’t think masks are a problem. There are more expensive masks, there are less expensive masks, there are masks which easily break when they fall. Many masks fall and it is important that that is so. It is important that we put on other masks. I have many masks because sometimes I don’t know if I recognize myself in the mask that I have been using. And I cannot promise you for how long I’ll keep recognizing myself as Linn Da Quebrada. I cannot promise you that I’ll remain still. I cannot promise you that I’ll think and have this exact opinion in a few years, in a few days, or right after I leave this room. I grant myself the right to doubt, the right to transit, the right to life. For that I need to be present and I need to take on my own limitations. I grow, I diminish, I shrink in certain places. During a show, on stage, I’m very brave. Now, in certain places I’m not. I’m not Linn da Quebrada all the time. I don’t have courage all the time. I don’t have courage all the time. I try to convince myself so I’m not afraid but sometimes I am. I’m afraid of dying, I’m afraid of not being loved. I’m afraid of all this admiration which was build around Linn Da Quebrada. And I’m afraid that Linn Da Quebrada erases Lina Pereira. I’m afraid that Linn Da Quebrada becomes so strong that few people know Lina Pereira, with all her fragilities, all her limitations, who was responsible for the birth of Linn Da Quebrada. Linn Da Quebrada was born only from my fragilities, from my limits, from everything that I wanted to be and I was not. And for that I needed to take on Linn Da Quebrada’s mask.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Just now, I found it intriguing that when you referred to your mother you used the past tense. “I was trying to explain my mother, in her own words, who I was.” Not who you are now? I thought. That transformation is continuous and it does not stop. It’s a continuous task of finding a path, is that it?

Linn Da Quebrada

I believe so. I change my mind a lot. Man, I change my mind a lot. I don’t know already if I agree with all these things that I just said. But yes, I think that I’m in transit, I’m in trance with myself. I see myself in the mirror, and I constantly ask myself “who am I?”. I really am always asking myself. All this changes. I don’t know. This is all very new. I don’t know if you have an idea. I do what I do for a long time. I exist for a very long time. I doubt myself for a long time, right? But Linn Da Quebrada she was born in 2015. Four years ago. came to Europe for the first time last year. Until then I had barely left São Paulo state. Each of these places, these territories and the people I crossed paths with, transformed me. It is impossible to remain the same after encounters like this one. It is impossible to remain the same after a tour, a trans-tour, without being transformed. I prefer to, I want to be transformed. I want that disruption because I want to become many things. I want to change my mind much more times. But yes, that is a continuous task. It is arduous work. All this makes me feel things differently. There was a time, I never expected this… I think I’m living. I never dreamed of this, to be honest, I never even dreamed. I never dreamed about Linn Da Quebrada. I never dreamed about being a singer. I wanted to be a dancer. When I started I wanted to dance. I wanted to have the right to my own body. Music was a surprise, I never expected any of this and as these things started to happen I came to realize that they were completely different from all that I could have imagined. I didn’t dream. I made things. I don’t dream. Man, I don’t even sleep. If I’m being honest, I don’t have time to sleep. So instead of sleeping, I make things happen. And I don’t do these things alone. They are completely different from anything that I could have imagined. They make me rethink if this is really the place where I would like to be.

I think it is important that we give ourselves this right to doubt and that we ask this to ourselves. Because most times I think these places for being a diva are harmful as they are so close to spaces for gods. These spaces for icons that we built in a 2D picture. Still pictures. I’m not like that. I think that this creates and replicates a social imaginary of the world which is already worn out. The idolatry, idols, our way of worshiping, our way of cultivating culture, all that we cultivate, is old, has expired. In most of the times it is not so good for us. That sacred representation is very important because many of us did not have role models who represented us. I didn’t have one. I have Linn Da Quebrada. Nowadays I even think that she’s too much, right? I think these spaces for representation are dangerous. Because these spaces they place us like this. Structurally like this. Distant. And this says so much about ourselves. Because this separates us and makes us feel more comfortable because now, now I have someone who represents me. Now I have someone who is doing something for me. “Go, kill it, my icon. Without flaws. Never making a mistake.” And in this way, we build images which are far from us and that put the responsibility in other people. Honestly, I cannot carry this responsibility alone. And I don’t want to carry this responsibility. It would be unfair on my side to impair the responsibility each of you has in this historical moment we are building. People, this is very important. I think that everyone can understand that we are living a critical moment. A very important moment. We are living in a crisis moment. Beyond what is disseminated through the media and social networks, underneath the makeup and all the editing we use in our media outlets, we are living in a very important critical moment. I love crisis. I have lived in crisis. I made myself in crisis. And it is exactly because of this that I know that it is during a crisis that we have the possibility of transforming everything. Maybe you came here for any other reason, to meet Linn Da Quebrada, to see how courageous she is, to feel inspired, but I’m here to tell you that you are responsible for everything that we are doing. Don’t be distracted with Linn Da Quebrada. Don’t be distracted with Linn Da Quebrada. This is very important. I’m not here to distract anyone. At the most I’m here to destroy.

Rui Miguel Abreu

I think that deserves an applause, am I right? [applause]

Linn Da Quebrada

Applause are this failed structure. We don’t need applause. Boo me. I want to be booed. Please everyone. [boos]

Rui Miguel Abreu

It’s the same thing. Do you know something, Lina? I love the pauses you take. When you go looking for the next word because you always want to say the right thing. I think that is an incredible luxury. Changing topics, I’ve learned almost everything that I don’t know about Brazil, a little bit on the school books that I’ve already forgotten, through records. And a little bit in the soap operas my mother had permanently on.

Linn Da Quebrada

You learned everything wrong.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Yes, exactly. But at least in the records, in Jorge Ben’s, Tim Maia’s, in the Black Rio movement, I built an apparently wrong idea, listening to you speaking, certainly wrong of Brazil like a case of successful integration, a case of unusual harmony between what was white and what was black. It isn’t really like it, isn’t it? Have I been mistaken all this time?

Linn Da Quebrada

I believe so. I also believe that Brazil is so many things. On this talk there are Brazilians who can tell me that. Brazil is so plural. Brazil is so diverse, mainly I think because of having so much people, right? There is so much people in a small territory. If we think of Portugal. How many inhabitants has Portugal?

Rui Miguel Abreu

Tenmillion.

Linn Da Quebrada

Ten million inhabitants. How many has São Paulo, one city? 20 million. Do you realize? It is a lot of people. And at the same time, there are few people thinking and building thoughts for so many people. This is exactly where the risk lies. There are people thinking for so many others. There are few people thinking collectively. That’s dangerous. If these people were acting collectively, in person, on their own time, things would be very different. Or not. You can’t be sure. Once more, here my utopian side comes out. Brazil is much more than samba. Brazil is much more than funk. It is these things too but it is something beyond that. It is beyond funk. It is beyond samba. It is beyond soap operas. It is beyond songs. It is beyond the history written in books. It was precisely for that, for not seeing myself…

Honestly people, now I’m going to tell you something that I just remembered. Jupi always told me in the beginning, because she knew why I was doing all that, you want to know the truth? I did not allow myself to think all the things I was thinking and for those things not to be spread. I did not allow my history to be deleted. I’m very close to myself. Really, I am. I think this, in fact, isn’t bad. That we are connected to our history. Maybe the majority of you can see yourselves in the books. Maybe you know where you came from. I never knew. And when I knew, look at where we are, that you discovered Brazil. Look at that! Portugal, Pedro Álvares Cabral? That’s it, right? The one who discovered Brazil. And today, coincidentally, we have a show with MC Carol that tells us in a transparent way that, don’t take me wrong, but who discovered Brazil was not Cabral. And Portugal is even one of those responsible for our historical construction of invasion and violence which makes our history one to be deleted and disguised. It is exactly because of that that me, by occupying this space, is something so important. Because this here is not a favor, this is a settling of scores. I came to take what is mine. I came to take what is ours. And applauses are not necessary. They are not necessary. This is not what this is about. It’s about thinking that many times applauses distract us and prevent us from receiving the cruelty of what I’m saying. This is cruel. This has effects until today. It has not passed. Our history continues to be built and you need to take responsibility. You have an historical debt towards me. For that reason I’m here. To charge and to leave this noted. I demand what is mine and ours back. I don’t know if I answered the question but… [laughs]

Rui Miguel Abreu

In what a way. There are many references, including some which were already given here today, to the idea or maybe to the reality of the body in its art. Today, thinking about this, I thought about a thinker, a man who was important, a communication philosopher, one of those who formed or deformed me in university, Marshall McLuhan who, in the ’60s when we started to discuss all these computers, TV and radio, said that the medium was the message. In your case, the body is the message itself? I said I love the pause.

Linn Da Quebrada

I love it too. I think it will even be nice in the video. Me thinking, looking up, taking advantage of this light on my face. I believe so. I believe that the body is my message. My voice is my body. My discourse tells the course I want to build. The course of these rivers and creeks. I think that my thoughts are a body. Our thoughts are body. Maybe our notion of body is outdated and in ruins. Because we build an idea of body more and more individualistic and isolated. We see ourselves more and more as independents. I think this idea of independence is total bullshit. I think that what we experience is a co-dependency. Even when we’re talking about affective relationships and others, we create an idea that we have to be independent, that we have to have an affective independence. For me, I don’t know about you, this is impossible. I wouldn’t do anything of what I’m currently doing if I was completely independent. I am completely dependent on the people who work with me. I’m entirely dependent on the people who buy my work. I’m completely dependent on the media, be it mainstream media or the underground media we’ve been creating. I think that, inside all this, we created an idea about the bodies as independents which isolates us from the world and strips out our commotional side. I’ve been talking more and more about commotion. If my body is my discourse, my discourse is constructed collectively with bodies that agree with what I say and those who disagree with it. What I’m doing, what I’m building as a discourse isn’t fiction. I’m inventing, I’m creating? Yes, I love to invent fashion, but what I do isn’t fictional work. What I do and build is frictional work. It’s work build through friction. Friction between our bodies, between our stories, between our points of view. It is precisely on this that I realize that while we conceive our corporality as an independent thing, we are losing the possibility of becoming moved. Especially those who live or lived in São Paulo, they understand this. We are increasingly insensitive but for me it’s not even that, it’s about this other sensitivity which is built. We don’t feel touched, we aren’t moved with what is next to us. Those who live here don’t have this idea of having a social death marker so explicitly in front of them, of seeing people living with absolutely nothing and not feeling moved whatsoever. For me, to be moved is to act collectively. This is to be moved. It’s our ability to act collectively. And for us, in this idea of isolation, while the problem does not directly affect us, our body, our discourses, it will not move me. Something only moves me if it affects me as an individual or a group. If something doesn’t affect me or my people, I will not be moved by it. I think this is where I’ve been trying to reconstruct my idea of corporality and discourse. Because I’m no longer the body I used to be. Today the risks I face are different. The needs and the limits I now have are different. Thanks to Linn Da Quebrada. Linn Da Quebrada moved me. She moved me and many others like me. But this made me stop being moved for other reasons. I no longer go through those situations. Do you understand what I’m saying or am I just tripping?

Rui Miguel Abreu

You’re tripping but we are alongside you.

Linn Da Quebrada

I think this is the way. Got it? That’s it. [laughter]

Rui Miguel Abreu

Let’s hear the song.

(music: Unknown)

In some of the interviews that I checked out before this talk, you said that in your fight, or maybe I should use a word that was highlighted here today, your dispute is for the conquest of a place in the society’s imagination. Just now you mentioned that all this is very new. In 2015, 2016 you start taking your first steps. What have you conquered so far? Do you feel that you are in a different place comparing to where you were when you started this dispute, this path?

Linn Da Quebrada

Totally.

Rui Miguel Abreu

A lot has changed already?

Linn Da Quebrada

A lot has changed. I feel that a lot has changed for me, economically, materially. Specifically, in what concerns my relationships, affectively, psychologically. All that has changed. People say that our cells… I always share this information but I never checked if it’s true but I’ll share it again. People say our cells, all our body cells, they renew every seven years. And even though less than seven years have passed, I already feel that all my body cells have transformed. I don’t know if there is a single thing from before that still remains in my body. I think that if I use a sponge there will only be dead cells. And something completely new was born. Why? Because economically we’ve been creating other opportunities to survive.

For those who live here in Portugal for a long time, things are really different, am I right? It’s really different. In Brazil, we worked and still work, and many of us who aren’t me, work without earning money. Let’s talk proper Portuguese. Without earning money. They work because they really need to do that. I remember when I started doing my performances for 50 Reals. Let convert it, how many euros is that? Ten euros, right? Ten little euros for performing all night long. And I thought I was making a profit because I could buy my two-way ticket and have a few drinks during the night. I thought that that was enough for me. In fact, I didn’t think it was enough but I was going by with that and I was satisfied with that. Economically everything changed. Not for all of us. You see, I’m in a privileged position. Not the position where I think we deserve to be. I think that we should be occupying other economic territories. We are not sufficiently valued for the importance of our work. And it bothers me when they place us as militants, as activists, because this seem to be social work which doesn’t deserve compensation. On this issue, I get really pissed. I get extremely nervous because all this work is political and social. In a certain way it is for the system. Why do the jobs which reiterate the system exactly as it already is deserve compensation and we, that do social work for a new system, a new construction, don’t deserve to be compensated, right? We are in an economic transformation but there’s a long way to go. In terms of affections, I feel I’ve been occupying other territories. I’ve been feeling other things. This is something I wanted to live because I was tired of always feeling the exact same thing. I got to the conclusion that… Not that there will be a point in time in which no one will have problems, it’s not that, but it’s time we experience other problems. We’ve been living the same problems for so long. We’ve been feeling the same things for so long. For so many generations. In different ways but problems get reinstalled and we realize everything is cyclical.

Coming back, why did I realize we’re living such a critical and important moment? It is always in crisis. If we look at history it seems that we’re living in an eternal déjà vu because all this has happened in different proportions. Others like us had already been through it. I’m not a pioneer. I’m just using the words of others. I’m just updating our vocabulary. We had Marsha P. Johnson, we had Dzi Croquettes, Claudio, we had the Black Panthers, we had innumerous movements who stirred their times and built their present. But every time these groups gained territory, the conservative group, as a spoiled little boy who was used to win everything, sees someone taking his presents and rebels because he is losing territory. The white colonist male, foreman, the landowner, who thinks he is always ahead but lives backwards. He rebels and fights for his territory, for the right to his own territory. This has happened many times before. It is precisely on this that they try and they use an old strategy, the fear strategy. They try to make us feel afraid, they try to make us doubt of our won strength and ability to revolt. Once more, in that situation, music is, I feel, largely responsible for social anesthesia. And love is one of the main ingredients that keep us distracted in our little bourgeois problems. In this case, instead of understanding what has happened to us socially, I’m very worried about love. I’m worried with my own relationships within my home and within my private environment. This distracts us and destroys our collective ability to understand what is happening in our society. I forgot the question already. What was it?

Rui Miguel Abreu

We were talking about the societal imaginary, the space in our minds.

Linn Da Quebrada

That’s it. Everything I said, right?

Rui Miguel Abreu

Right. Let’s talk about Pajubá. What is it? How was it born? What ideas did you have in its starting point? How was it to execute that vision?

Linn Da Quebrada

I’ll continue talking about the same thing I’ve been talking about but disguised as Pajubá, alright?

Rui Miguel Abreu

As politicians do.

Linn Da Quebrada

Exactly. As we do as political beings. So, in disguise, let’s talk about Pajubá. I did all this, for me all is connected. I did it because I wanted to be loved. I did it for sexual desire. I wanted to have a relationship because I was alone, I was tired of my solitude and I realized that I was alone but not lonely. Things are more complex than that. But I was alone because I kept looking for the same bodies, I wanted to be recognized as a body capable of being loved. By him, the almighty. Male, magnanimous. I wanted him to notice me. I wanted to occupy love’s territory because I was told that what makes us human is love. You can have nothing in life. You can be poor for your entire life. Movies told me so. Music told me that. Everything we need is love. What makes us human and what makes us have a valid experience during life is living love. I wanted so much to love and be loved. Pajubá was born from this but with a different purpose. I realized that love is one of the main tools for maintaining the current system. Love builds ties, bonds, affections which generate effects, which construct families that live in houses, that divide money, that create a social and economic net in which people help their loved ones. First of all, I’ll help those I love. Only then I’ll look at the rest of the world. Once more, our problems. Small and bourgeois. And there’s a line which isn’t weak, it’s very strong, between the bodies which were made and raised to be loved and the bodies which won’t enter this kingdom. If we understand and closely look at this, we will realize that men were made and raised to be loved. Women, womanhood was made and raised to love men. Movies show us this. What is the drama or great adventure of a female body in a movie? The great adventure, the great conquest of a woman in almost all movies is her attaining what? Getting the guy. She spends the entire movie trying to be loved while most of the male characters conquer the world, gain money, conquer land, fight, make war. This builds our affections, right? I realized that love is this tool for the maintenance of the system, that if we were made in God’s image and God is love, then it is necessary to destroy love. If it is necessary to destroy love and God is love. God, this beautiful word. God. I love God. God is a word built from the self. Then maybe, not maybe, for sure, it’s necessary to have courage to kill in you what constantly perpetuates things as they have always been. To have the courage to kill and to die. That you kill and die. Kill and die. Kill and die. Kill the white colonizer, landowner, foreman male within you. He who thinks he lives always ahead but lives backwards. Kill and die. Kill and die. Kill and die and that you feel the strength of my ancestors. And this how I made Pajubá. Killing and dying. Killing inside myself. And I keep killing. Continuously.

Sometimes, yes, we hesitate to kill something that we believe makes us what we are. It is almost as we had a third leg, a third leg which makes us a stable tripod. A third leg that gives us stability and security. We see and find ourselves with this third leg. But this third leg also keeps us still. It keeps us as a stable tripod that doesn’t move. Sometimes, it is necessary to have the courage to cut off this third leg that gives us so much security and stability and that makes us what we already are, so that we can acquire the ability to move again. The big question is that with the same speed that we cut off this third leg, others are born right away. It’s a continuous motion of cutting off these third legs. Some of them are already old and necrotic and we leave them there because it’s easier for us. Sometimes they aren’t even useful. They give us effects and affections which we have no use for. Nothing. But it takes courage to cut them off. I’m still in this continuous process. Song after song, trying to understand which is the third leg I have to cut off. Which legs am I attached to. If this is the third leg I have to cut off or if this is the new leg that I have to keep. It’s a self-analysis and continuous process.

Pajubá was this. It was this action of looking at the mirror and kill inside myself. I didn’t point the gun to others, as people think. People see my interviews where I say that I built my music as a weapon. But it’s a weapon pointed to my own head. I wanted to kill inside myself the desire for a male. I wanted to kill my racist desire. I needed to see inside myself what was already rotten. I needed to see inside myself my collateral affections so that I could wipe them out.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Is there more people with that same consciousness? In what point of the Brazilian contemporary musical map are you? Are you alone, are you an island? Are you an archipelago? Are there other voices looking for the same and pointing guns to their own heads to? Maybe tonight there’s another Brazilian artist in a stage very close by. Are there other artists with whom you feel this connection at this point?

Linn Da Quebrada

For sure. And not necessarily only musicians. There are a lot of ways to deconstruct collective thought. What interests me is that this encounter here is a way of building collective thoughts and that we realize that my body is political but the body of each of us here today is as political as mine.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Why?

Linn Da Quebrada

Art, for me, is not about being here. I could be there with you, in the same territory because I feel we’re together. It was nothing to do with these lights pointed out to my face. For me, to be an artist is about having the possibility to create something about our own existence. The possibility of creating something about our relationships. All of us have this possibility. The first time I realized this was through my performances, I was still doing theater and I was experimenting a lot in the rehearsal room. I started to realize that there is where Linn Da Quebrada sometime has a certain level of hysteria not for herself bur for the structure of relationships. On stage, most times, this is allowed. Mainly because of what? The majority of you, I hope, like Linn Da Quebrada, right? Who likes Linn Da Quebrada? If you say no… You don’t like her? Jesus! Who then likes Linn Da Quebrada? But would you like Linn Da Quebrada if she wasn’t an artist? If she wasn’t the singer? Would you have interest in Lina Pereira? They’re the same person. They are the same body. But is it, then, that what makes you get closer to a transvestite black body is only the fact that it’s in the allowed space and, in a certain way, slightly more aseptic, the stage? How many of you know a transvestite? Who knows them from being friends, from actually knowing their problems and issues? From kissing them in the face? From really having a profound bond with them. I’m not talking about knowing them because you saw them in a certain place, on the street. “Sometimes I pass by them and I even wave them.” With how many trans people, black people, do you really have a relationship? With how many transvestite and black people do you work? This isn’t a rhetorical question. No one? Zero. One. Works more or less, right? So, I think it’s about this. People, I’m talking about concrete things. My work, my performance is concrete. It’s material. It’s symbolic, it’s extremely symbolic, but it’s concrete. Understand your relationships, and there’s where courage is needed, and when you play the colonizer male role. Kill the male in you. Kill the white person in you. Kill the colonizer in you and in your relationships. Sexual, affective, material, economical. Understand where you act politically and reiterate things as they have always been and are. Once more, I got lost.

Rui Miguel Abreu

You didn’t get lost, Linn Da, I think that your speech is a bomb that is making a lot of things explode.

My head’s on fire. Let’s hear your bomb, Linn Da Quebrada “Bomba.”

(music: Linn Da Quebrada – “Bomba Pra Caralho”)

It blew up.

Linn Da Quebrada

Several times makes more sense, right?

Rui Miguel Abreu

Shortly you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions to Linn Da, but before that, one last thing from me. In the middle of that dispute, that path, that way, is there a place for hope, I wonder? Can you, considering the point where you started that trajectory and where you stand now, glimpse any light for the future? More harmony, more peace, a more blended world, more tolerant, more open. Is there a space for that? Or this is something that will never happen?

Linn Da Quebrada

No. There’s no space for hope. Hope keeps us waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Peace is white. All these are tools for keeping us waiting, right? Of keeping us in the same exact spots, believing that maybe in another life, after we die, we’ll be compensated. Because it is necessary the we have hope, that we believe in peace, that we give the other cheek so that they can also hit us. This is how they manipulate, program and control us. I don’t have time for love. I don’t have time for hope. I don’t have time for peace. I don’t even have the possibility of glimpsing a better future. What I have is anger to stir the present. I think that anger is an engine and something that unites us. If we pay attention, we’ll realize that all of us feel angry and that at every moment, for a long time, everyone tries to make us ignore our anger and free space for love. Love is so cute, right? I don’t have time for that and I think we need to organize our anger. We need to position us and take on a place in the present. No longer waiting that in the future things will change. Logically, things are built. Maybe, unfortunately, it won’t be now that I’ll experience all the things I would like to experience together with my people. This hurts. I tell you, I get nervous. I wanted to be calm but I see that we’ll have to do a lot, for much longer and without seeing where all this goes but knowing that we are doing it now.

What is the role you’re taking on now in the construction of this historical moment? You. You. You. What is the role? What is your political action? Do you have hope?

Rui Miguel Abreu

She asked you the question, now it’s up to you to answer. There’s a mic which can circulate in the room. You only have to raise your arm and the mic will magically materialize in your hand.

audience member

Hello, good evening, Lina, Linn Da. Talking about hope and political movement, without wanting to verbalize concretely what we all know, I want to ask if you think that your music, in the exact moment your anger wants to change, can make something for Brazil which we all love but that now is going through moments that aren’t that hopeful for all of us.

Linn Da Quebrada

If I’m not doing that already please let me know, people. Because for me, I’m already doing it that. Once more, I think that this moment is important, is necessary. For how much longer will we keep unclogging the blockage, preventing an explosion? Causing it to have little water but we’ll find a way and thing will keep working. In a fragile way but they’ll keep working. For how much longer will we continue waiting for things to happen and not allowing the blockage to explode? And that everyone feels the effects so that things change? I think that Brazil and the world, I don’t know the entire world but I’ve been travelling and I’ve been realizing that this has been happening globally. Portugal, and now Spain, have been some of the only countries where there’s still a leftist government or one which is not from the right wing. The rest of the world has experienced an advance, it’s not even an advance it’s a setback, of conservatism. This is because they’re afraid. Because they have access to the media, they can manipulate our thoughts, the construction of our thoughts. This, in a certain way, is clandestine. Not everyone has access to this type of information but you have, I have. It is my obligation, it is our duty to contaminate, in any way, other people with the virus of doubt, do you see? It’s my responsibility to do this with my music? Yes. I’m doing it. I think I’m doing it. I’m travelling the whole world with a movie, doing a thousand things, with a show, with my music. I’m trying to communicate in every possible way my point of view. I’m not saying I’m right. I never wanted to be right. But I’m looking for other thoughts, other world projects. I’m looking for other word projects and a thought construction that give us action paths. For that, I feel that we’re living in an enabling moment. More enabling than this moment… People, everything is happening and I have been doing all this. Together with me there are so many people acting with thoughts that are corrosive against the system. I’m not alone. If I would be alone I wouldn’t be here. But don’t you think it’s very interesting that, even though tradition is establishing itself with so much strength, there is so much contradiction at the same time? Isn’t it curious that this happens? I think it’s useful that we take this moment.

audience member

Linn, I study performative arts and creativity and it’s weird to say this now but you are the subject of my case study for my thesis.

Linn Da Quebrada

From abject to object, right people? See? Changes.

audience member

I’m studying language as a performance and I want to know if you have any special remark on that. I’m focusing specifically on the word queer as a term which comprises all identities. Do you have an opinion about this word? There are many critics and alternatives to the word queer because it’s an Anglo-Saxon word that comes from US liberal theory. So, what do you think about the word? I saw interviews where you said you have some reservations about these words which intend to encompass everything.

Linn Da Quebrada

No, I don’t like the word queer. Especially in what concerns my body. I’m not queer. I’m black, I’m transvestite. I make up the terms which reflect me. I realize that queer is a very academic term. It tries to diagnose the bodies that, most of the times, aren’t in academia. The bodies which lie in the margins. These bodies, as you said, leave an abject field to enter an object field of research. I’m the object of my own research and my own experience. I’m the subject of myself. I think that for these and other reasons I don’t get in the queer boat. In Brazil, as far as I know the word queer isn’t used. There’s the word crazy though, right?

Rui Miguel Abreu

One more?

audience member

Hi Linn, hi everyone. I just want to say that I’m a huge fan. I was in São Paulo in 2016 and I saw the show you gave in Virada Cultural. I think it’s great to see you again three years after that. You’re more and more inspiring. This is not even a question.

Linn Da Quebrada

Thank you. Thank you so much. Don’t make questions about your TCC. I’ll credit you on my TCC.

audience member

I saw in past interviews you talking about the importance of creating an affective, psychological, material, economical support net, about resistance as a way and in the trajectory to that you call on your people. I wanted to better understand what this means for you in practice. How do you do this on a daily basis?

Linn Da Quebrada

Look, that’s a very good question. I try to work with these people, I try to have affective relationships with these people, sexually even if they want to be part of my network too. Jokes aside, I really try to get closer and make something concrete. Since the time I was doing theater, I work with people who I believe share my thoughts and with whom I also have disagreements. Working with people with whom we don’t necessarily agree about everything. I try to create a net so that we can survive. There’s Jupi who works with me a lot. There’s Tiago from my theater times. There’s a lot of people. I’ve been trying to understand my relationships, be it sexual or emotional, and to whom do I give my availability, my interest. Because, honestly, it’s a privilege to be by my side. It’s a privilege to be part of it. I can’t let anyone have this privilege and drain it, you know? That’s why it is so important for me to choose the people who are and will continue to be part of my life. With whom I’ll share thoughts. And not only for them but also because these people also influence me. I need to have by my side people who contribute to my process. I frequently bring together people to work with me. Those people are still part of my life. They are people who change my way of thinking and connecting. This is concrete for me. It’s not only at the level of people I study and admire. I work with the people I admire. I love the people I admire. I climb with them. Not with all of them because they don’t want it, if they want to I could also do it.

Rui Miguel Abreu

One more.

audience member

Hello, I was stuck on something that you said when you spoke about your mother When you said that when you told your mother who you were you were careful and used words that she understood and maybe you filtered the way you were speaking so that she could understand. I think that on stage you don’t have any filters.

Linn Da Quebrada

I do. They’re different filters.

audience member

Or that, they’re different filters. I wanted to understand what you do in your daily life if someone who’s different from you talks with you and, out of mere curiosity, wants to know you better. How do you balance who you are and all that’s yours while trying to speak more like the other person so that he also understands?

Linn Da Quebrada

Alterity, right? Academically, they call it that. Who saw my movie Bixa Travesty? Who saw it understands the way I speak with my mother. It’s not that I have a filter or I’m careful. On the contrary, most people say I’m not careful. I don’t underestimate my mother. I think this is the thing. It was very important to me. Our processes build us, right? I didn’t grow up with my mother. We were abandoned by my father, as most women and mothers in Brazil. Like a reproduction of the Holy Mary, Mother of God mythology. Virgins who have children from the Holy Spirit, absent fathers. I’m one of these fruits. Pleased to meet you. I’m not Jesus but I’m the new Eve. I only went to live with my mother when I was 12 years old because she had to work as she works until today as a maiden and I had to live with my aunt. Out of necessity and I’m not saying this so you pity me, we don’t need the pity of any of you, we’re alive by our own merit. Precisely because of that, before seeing my mother as a mother, I saw her as a woman. I didn’t receive affection from my mother, I didn’t have any of that. Maybe seeing the movie there’s much more things that now make sense. For example, a scene with my mom where I was looking for rituals and things that would bring us closer. Because I didn’t have it naturally. That made me saw her as a woman, black, northeastern, fighter, warrior, hard worker. I understood my mother as a woman and I realized the burden that being a mother meant to her. I demystified all this. Because of this I speak with her as my mother but mostly as a woman. For that, I try to say things in a way she understands and if she doesn’t understand I’ll try to build a vocabulary and a dialogue she can understand. Since the narratives that were given to her made her believe that being black isn’t something bad. What is not the same as saying that being black is something easy. I had to build a dialogue so that she could understand it, so that she could understand that the way she talks about poverty and about all that we’ve been through was for us to appreciate money. This is a romanticized idea that makes us cling and conform to our situation. Hopeful that things change. I tell her this in a way that I know she can understand. I know this takes time. I think that until today my mother doesn’t understand how I earn money. I don’t know if she understands but she has been to shows, I called her on stage. The son of her boss made her an Instagram account and she sees all my stories, all that I say, all that I do I don’t filter it but from the things she sees and doesn’t understand, I try to build a dialogue so she can feel included in what I’m saying. About sex, sexuality, a lot of things.

One thing I came to realize is how many people disguise the violence they go through so that they are less painful. My mother went through a lot of violence. Women from my family went through a lot of violence. But she would talk about it while laughing, kind of like I do, laughing about my own trajectory so that I can accept it, so it is less painful. And I learned that with my mother too. But somethings I feel that… I don’t… I don’t mislead her, I don’t underestimate her so that she doesn’t understand the violence, but I build these narratives in a fair way for her now that she is 66 years old, you know? Being the northeastern that she is, having been through all that she went through. So that she can understand, for example, why she is lonely, why she’s alone as a woman now, why she feels helpless. So I think this is it, I’m honest. I’m sincere and cruel with my mom.

Rui Miguel Abreu

Linn Da Quebrada. [applause]