JOY IS A VITAL FORCE
Veronica Pinheiro
8 November 2024
Photo: Carol Delgado
At the start of the 2024 school year, I experienced the pain of seeing fear in children's eyes. I've come across this feeling only a few times in my life, but I can sense it in the air. I looked fear in the eye for an eternal moment. That encounter was described in this diary under the title ‘This week I didn't get any notes’. There, I doubted my ability to share care. But my heart full of dreams believed in times of dance. The dance I knew how to dance used to put broad bodies and affections, irreverence and kindness, reverence and memories into motion. My grandfather, an accordion player and a brincante, taught my father, an angoleiro and a brincante, that fear should be warded off by singing. "Singing is prayer! Singing heals! Sing and evil is warded off." The song was sung with voice and body. And from singing came dancing. We sang with our whole bodies.
When we weren't full-bodied, it was said that we were unwilling. And if we were unwilling, we wouldn't accept anything, not even our favourite food. Two things indicated that the person was in full body: singing and joy. Singing- praying-dancing was as healing as the plants in the yard. This way of being made my community committed to life and not to pain. Far from naivety and ignorance, the people of that community were aware of their pain. Joy was a political, strategic and ancestral position towards healing and the maintenance of life.
In the reading room, through workshops and art, we created sensitive dialogues in an attempt to awaken the sense of also being nature in the urbanised beings we are. While the Municipal School Professor Escragnolle Dória galaxy was expanding, the Ways of Knowing Group from Selvagem was gathering life. ‘While the universe expands, love agglutinates.’ Joy has been our most abundant agglutinator. Before the Ways of Knowing Group arrived at the school in February, Anna Dantes and Madeleine Deschamps presented a worksheet in which a party for the children would be the conclusion of the 2024 Apprenticeship Cycle. Nego Bispo says:
'Our festivities are an instrument for defending our practices, because the festivity is stronger than the Law. The State can't break the ways of life when they are involved in the festivities.’
Photos: Carol Delgado
At the school, we wrapped up the Playing Lights Up the Sun cycle with a party that reaffirmed our practices. A party where our ways of life based on cooperation, joy, abundance and respect could be celebrated. With the children, we experienced a day in which the classroom was more like the slab or the backyard of a house. Each classroom was a world full of games. A day in which joy was the general and specific objective of our planning. By playing and singing, we accomplished the day's task. I haven't got my hands on the records of the party yet. The children took the photos and will tell the story of lighting the sun. For today, I'll just share a few brief words written by happy hands.
Photo: Alice Faria
Joy is the original communication with life, capable of guiding affections and reformulating routes. Joy can deceive fear and death. Where have I seen this? I've seen it in children's eyes. And I've also read it in little notes written by teachers.
Photo: Carol Delgado
We end this page with a little note from a school teacher:
“I must congratulate you on this initiative at the school. Even though the resource is external, it is there and you are enabling and providing opportunities for different initiatives in a little corner of Costa Barros.
Ahhhh how I dreamt of seeing other movements in this place that is my starting point.
Stop, breathe, listen, touch... We have spent years competing with crime. We throw parties with toys so that children don't only have them within certain parameters, we give out free cotton candy (many cannot afford it and the criminals give it away).
Studying has always been a form of confrontation.
But this time, another movement is taking place and they can't take that away from the children.
A look from another perspective.
❤️
As a former resident, former student, and colleague, I am grateful to be able to experience this and to witness a possible, visible, and tangible utopia."
Miriam Ribeiro
Teacher Miriam Ribeiro is wearing a SUN tiara created by the students during the Costume workshop.
Photo: Veronica Pinheiro
See you next page.
NOTES
¹ Selvagem Notebook – Arrow 6, Time and Love
https://selvagemciclo.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CADERNO49_FLECHA_6.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMBCABxXCQ&t=620s&ab_channel=SELVAGEMciclodeestudossobreavida