Welcome to FalastinVision!

I’m an artivist: someone who communicates primarily through singing/dancing/acting/writing with a constant need to at least try to do something worthwhile with everything I do. Always felt the Palestinian cause as mine (for whatever is unfair in this world must be fought against by every one of us) and Eurovision as a symbol of what I thought the world should be like (a place where people come together to share what unites them, celebrating diversity in peace). My support for the first has grown proportionally to my disbelief in the second.

I was privileged enough to interview a Palestinian young man in detention for being in an irregular situation in my home country, Portugal. His story resembled the ones of thousands of other Palestinians, subjected to oppression, violence and unfair treatment in their own land and anywhere they may go. His experience touched me so much, it ended up flowing through me as a poem I knew from the beginning was meant to be a song.

 An initial riff was playing in my soul for years before I found the complete melody for it, and when I finally did, a so-called “refugee crisis” was starting to frighten fortress Europe. The two interconnected realities ended up blending into one song, which I started writing in English but finished in my native Portuguese. My intention was to take it to Eurovision, but not only was that never made possible, right now it just doesn’t make any sense for me to keep on trying to do it in a show that has been consistently used to promote the vision of oppressors that get away with anything.

“Vento” (Wind) refers to the forces that carry away the cries for help of those risking their lives at sea or wherever else, running from the homes and lives stolen from them. Humans whose pain and struggles are tendentially disregarded by a society we dare to call “civilized” …

 The wind that silences their voices is no other than our own choice to turn our backs on some, a choice that harms the lives of those in need of our respect as much as it shatters our own dignity. The word in Arabic that follows the title is not a translation though, it means Hope, for that is what Palestinians keep on sharing with the world amidst all the pain endured and all the many “winds” trying to silence them/us. أمل

Vento (أمل)- Annie G. Silva

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

WIND

 

Darkness has become my place

Since the world forgot about me

Fear leads me to believe

In the sea they say it’s only yours

 

The life I used to know

Has disappeared into the ground

I hold on to what’s left of that day

When my home turned into a prison

 

Look at me, you know there’s so much more than what a simple word can say

I am still here…

 

The wind blows and carries away

The screams that you refuse to hear

In my chest there is a song

The one that you chose not to feel…

 

Far away, far away, far away

To wherever it’s too far to see

That your dream is an illusion 

And the voice that cradles you is the sound of your heart giving in…

VENTO

 

A escuridão é o meu lugar

Desde que o mundo me esqueceu

O medo faz-me acreditar

Num mar que dizem ser só teu.

 

A vida que antes conhecia

Desapareceu por entre o chão

Agarro à força os restos desse dia

Em que a minha casa se tornou prisão

 

Olha p’ra mim, sabes que há muito mais além do que a palavra quer dizer

Continuo aqui….

 

O vento sopra e leva longe

Os gritos que não queres ouvir 

Há no meu peito uma canção

A que escolheste não sentir…

 

Pr’a longe, p’ra longe, p’ra longe 

P’ra onde não possas saber que o teu sonho é miragem 

e a voz que te embala é o teu coração a ceder…