 |
| The real life Girl from Ipanema Helô Pinheiro. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Last August THE GUARDIAN's Johnathan Watts tracked down and spoke with Helo Pinheiro (left), the inspiration for this classic song detailing unrequited love. Granted the story is about "love" based on nothing more than the girl's good looks and her good sense to not engage with ride men catcalling her from bars, but the syncopation, mournful lyrics and nostalgia made this a hit and continue to keep this song at the top of many play lists.
In the early 1960s, a 17-year-old girl called Helô Pinheiro would walk past the Veloso bar on the beachfront of Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, every day. She was "tall and tanned and young and lovely" – and she was regaled by the men who drank there.Have you ever had an unrequited love? Was it love, attraction or lust?
"When they saw me, they would whistle and shout out, 'Hey beautiful girl! Come over here,'" says Pinheiro, the girl from Ipanema who inspired the song of the same name – which turns 50 today. "I did not know who they were until years later." The barflies she ignored were the composer Tom Jobim and the poet Vinícius de Moraes, who turned desire and frustration into a track that is now second only to the Beatles' Yesterday as the most recorded song in the world, a sultry hymn to unrequited lust that launched the bossa nova rhythm across the world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/01/helo-pinheiro-girl-from-ipanema
Yes, multiple times... love, attraction and lust, in various combinations and degrees. But how is 'attraction' separate from love or lust? Is it not inherent in both love and lust?
ReplyDeleteHow about longing? Longing for something beyond what thought can reduce to words... feelings from beyond stars or from undefinable depths of heart, soul feelings. Definitely have experienced unrequited longing. But then again, longing by its very nature requires it to be unrequited, does it not?
Attraction and Lust are probably degrees of the same thing. Attraction - "S/He's cute." Lust - "S/He's cute and I want to do him." Love, well I don't think love can arise without knowing a person. If one calls a visual and one sided relationship "love" disappointment is certain to follow.
DeleteLonging is unrequited until it is fulfilled.
But, I only know that I don't know much. And after thirty years of marriage, I either know everything or nothing about love.
I agree re your thoughts on love, attraction, lust.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that you know plenty about love with 30 years of happy marriage. That is such a great gift to be given by yourself and your other! Others of us have had to learn about love with decades of relationships that have not led to the profound commitment of marriage. Learning through the losing too, if we are listening.
I doubt that any of us know everything! And may we never. An ever unfolding flower in the great garden. May we continue to grow learn for the next 30 years!
Before enlightenment, drink tea. After enlightenment, drink tea.
ReplyDelete