António Variações:

"I can't control this state of anxiety. The hurry of getting there so as not to get there late. I don't know what I'm running from. Perhaps from this loneliness. Why is it that I refuse all who want to hold my hand? I shall continue to look for the one to whom I want to give myself, because so far I want the one I've never seen, I want the one I've never met. This dissatisfaction, I cannot comprehend. I always have this feeling that I'm losing out. I'm in a hurry to leave, and when I get there I want to leave. I shall continue to look for my world, for my place, because so far I can only be where I am not, I can only go where I do not go. "

Brave man. Wonderful performer. Lived in an ultra-conservative country and dared to be controversial and wear whatever he wanted and say whatever he wanted and go out with whomever he wanted. Died of AIDS in the early eighties and the whole thing was hushed up, maybe because people didn't know what AIDS was at the time (as a kid, I remember hearing he had died because he'd drunk cold water when he was hot and sweaty -!For a while, I didn't dare to drink water in hot, sunny days).

It's hard to be liberated where you live. People know you, or you yourself know the place too well, you have a job to keep, you have a social persona to maintain. In a place where you're completely unknown and don't care about holding on to a job, you can do other things, dress in a different way and reinvent yourself, maybe even pierce your eyebrow, which I would do if it wasn't for the fact that I might get, if not fired, then let's say warned.

Therein lies the attraction of travelling, of living abroad, of having the opportunity to be someone else all the time - in the fact that you can discard everything you don't like about yourself and keep only what you like. When you're bored, you reinvent yourself and become someone new. That's impossible to do when you live somewhere for a long time, though, and ultimately living with yourself all the time, with all your flaws, becomes just too tiring.

This man in the picture, however, didn't have to go anywhere to be exactly what he wanted to be and to look exactly how he wanted to look. He managed to be himself, to accept his flaws and to reinvent himself in his own country. He sang about permanent dissastifaction and the constant need for change and he set an example, I think. Good man.