It’s a dreary Sunday in Amsterdam about 10 years ago. I’m working the morning shift of coffeeshop “de supermarkt”. Regulars occasionally drop in for a cappuccino and a place at a table to quietly listen to DJ Herman van Gelder’s dj set. The usual Sunday morning routine. We celebrate a bit of stillness with music you won’t hear in any other coffee shop around town. It’s not company policy but on Sundays the management turns a blind eye.
I can still envision him in my minds eye even though I can’t recall his name. He was a friendly Brazilian colleague who occasionally gave the place a more thorough rub down than the staff usually did. He came by somewhere halfway into my shift with a friend. He ordered coffee and together they sat down at a little table in the back.
(He naturally received his order for free on the grounds of him being a colleague and all. An unspoken law even I, after 10 years, am still the beneficiary off when I happen to run into an old friend behind the counter)
His animated conversation fell quiet when I played this song. And for as long as it played my buddy wasn’t here in Amsterdam anymore. He was somewhere else entirely. Home perhaps with his mother or sitting on his granddad’s lap. Don’t know. Never asked. Right before he left he told something about something in a grateful manner. I forgot the gist of it but now his memorizing is my memory and perhaps whatever it is you’re doing now will be your memory when listen to..
Manhã de Carnaval van Elizeth Cardoso
