Saudade
We all experience within us what the Portuguese call
‘saudade’, an inexplicable longing,
an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul, and it is this feeling that lives in the realms of imagination
and inspiration, and is the
breeding ground for the sad song, for the love song. Saudade is the desire to be transported from darkness into
light, to be touched by the hand of
that which is not of this world … The love song is never simply happy. It must first embrace the potential for
pain. […] The love song must resonate with
the whispers of sorrow and the echoes of grief. The writer who refuses to explore the darker reaches of the
heart will never be able to write convincingly
about the wonder, magic and joy of love, for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed
the same air as evil, so within the fabric
of the love song, within its melody, its lyric, one must sense an acknowledgement of its capacity for suffering.
Nick Cave, „The
Secret Life of the Love Song“
Ummæli