Happy Easter! I moved to Portugal six months ago, and the past months have been a blur of activity for me. I could have chosen to spend more time walking by the beach, eating sardines. Instead, I chose to form a startup. It has been all too easy for me to lose myself in work, writing code and engrossing myself in the life of a startup founder. Throughout my adult life, work has always been an emotional refuge for me, and it really does feel comforting returning to the rhythms of long hours at work.
I’ve also returned to the rhythms of playing my French horn. I’ve joined the Banda Marcial da Foz do Douro, a Portuguese community band that plays at religious festivals and other events. At the end of the first rehearsal, the director asked me how I felt. I responded, in my stumbling Portuguese. “I played 99% of the notes. Words? Maybe 20%.” (Rehearsals are in Portuguese. My friend and I, who joined the band at the same time, are the only two foreigners.)
My Portuguese stand partner helps me understand the conductor’s instructions, and I feel like I don’t always need her help to decipher what’s going on. Many of the interactions transcend language – the brass is too loud, the band is dragging, there’s a typo in the clarinet part. Parts of rehearsal feel like coming home, encountering familiar personality archetypes. The old guard band veterans who have been here for decades, the young gossiping music students, the music librarian who has taught me more about how to swear in Portuguese than any language class. The woman running uniform distribution exudes strong “marching band mom” energy; and last weekend I saw pictures on social media of a group of bandies getting together to paint and refurbish the official band minivan. I think they’d fit in just fine with the “band dads” at the high school in Richmond.
The band’s performances also feel to me like a mix of the familiar and the foreign. The band has over 20 performances scheduled this year, and almost all of them are for area Catholic religious festivals. The band will lead processions honoring Nossa Senhora de Fátima, Santo António, Santo Isidoro, and others. So far, I’ve participated in two traditional processionals with the band, one observing “Passos”, the steps Jesus took from the condemnation to the crucifixion, and one for Sexta Feira Santa, Good Friday.
I’ve spoken to band members who talk passionately about the need to keep these old traditions alive. So much of this resonates with me. Marching in formation while playing music is straightforward, and the drumline immediately behind me in formation has been super helpful in keeping me in line and playing the correct piece. On Good Friday I helped my American friend interpret some of the signals. I was even correct, most of the time.
The religious aspect of the processionals also feels familiar. The cadences of the reading of the Passion, of a highly elocuted sermon, the congregational chants and responses – it all feels like variations on a theme from my childhood.
Perhaps the most-foreign feeling thing I’ve done with the band has been our performance yesterday, at the FC Porto football game, in front of 50,000 cheering football fans. At halftime, the band marched onto the middle of the pitch, joined in a circle with a University of Porto student singing group wearing their black academic robes, and played “Filhos do Dragão”, one of the football club’s anthems. It’s a banger. Hearing a packed stadium of 50,000 people belting out the song would be an amazing experience to begin with. Seeing and hearing and feeling all of that from center-pitch? I’m still fully processing the moment.
Video 1 — I can be seen standing at around 2:45 in the circle (orientation-wise).
All of these experiences make me pause and think about my immigration journey, about what it means to be an American who has left her country, what it means to be trying to integrate. To learn. To find community. To belong.
The band is not the only community I’ve found. Last weekend, I participated in Porto’s Trans Visibility March. I somehow found myself as one of the people marching with the giant trans pride flag, walking through some of Porto’s historic areas and through a tourist-filled shopping street. Portugal’s far-right party has joined with the center-right parties to propose rolling back legal protections for transgender people here. Listening to Portuguese trans people talk about their hopes and fears, this also feels familiar to me.
I last wrote here on Christmas Eve, and it seems appropriate to return on Easter to share an update with my friends and family. Easter, and the coming of spring, evokes messages of renewal and rebirth. I don’t want to suggest that I’m somehow being reborn as Portuguese. I think, though, that after six months, I feel that this place has changed me. It’s not just a European sensibility for drying my clothes on the balcony or appreciating daily fresh bread and a regular pastel de nata. It’s learning to appreciate that the foreign here is not really that foreign to me, and the familiar rhythms I’ve found speak strongly to who I am. Who I have been. Who I continue to be.
Where does that all lead me? Foda-se, não faço a puta da mínima ideia, caralho. In the meantime, here I am. Don’t be a stranger. 😉