Juan moved on together with a gold-digger named Evaristo who owned a little plane. They arrived in the city of Santarem on the big Madeira river. Then he joined with some fortune-hunters and fisherman over te rivers until the city of Itaituba. There he starded hitch-hiking, on trucks, old automobiles and strange colored motorcycles on his way to Bahia, the country of dusty roads, the Brazilian wasteland. This is the barbaric landscape, homeland of the Sertanejo, the occupier who could deal with the harsh climate of sun and dust.
 The land where the Icó-brushes decorate scarves on face and leather outfit of the 'vaquero' the Brazilian northeast cowboy. And in this wild land still strayed the ghost of man like Antonio Conselheiro, the advisor, the messiah who died for the poor of this wasteland, and the ghost of a man named 'Lampiâo', Lampoon, for his gun-barrel coloured fire-red in the shootings. It's no secret that the spririts of these man still wander in the wilderness, and folks say that they are able to find liquefied cactuses, filled up with blood.
 This were the place where Juan arrived, and where he was noticed by a old Sertanejo, which brought him to a lodge-bar, one of the thousands in this neighbourhood, dark and decorated with old tables, jars, sugarcane-gin and even older hookers, with sparkling faces, red gleaming eyes of hunger and spicy voices, which seem to come from the deepest holes of famelness and sexual fury. What was this gringo doing in this by God forgotten place Pinhua, not far from Cicero Dantas? Was he only here to screw one of  the whores? Because here in this by God and the devil forgotten deadland, was nothing to get, or it must be dust and love? No! Thumbs down. Juan Rojo was on his way to Sete Coraçôes! Why? Well, he had no answer yet, he just wanted to get to Seven Hearts, and it was a force which entered his brains, and  in some way even repressed his music.
 Shovin' aside his music? Goddamned! Fuckin'! Where are the God's who once were angry on him? Where was his guardian-angel? The black man with three fingers who sang the blues for him, that night in a old cabin in Mississippi... and told him to be his protector! His music... No! They may take everything, but not his music! Not his soul! Damned!
Suddenly the night fell over the village and a old recordplayer started playing, the music of the Sertanejo, named Modinha. Songs of homesickness, tears of drunken paupers in ragged shirts and jeans, of drunken man hanging against the counter and withered women who'll never be reasonable again, the faded roses of the wilderness. But they were kind and tenderly, like babies in a craddle, and soft like drifting breeze. The people asked Juan to pick up his guitar and play for them. He stared at his black Gibson, painted with red roses. He kissed her and called her Gladys. His Spanisch was just perfect and he had translated old country songs in to Spanish. But the Brazilians understood the mainline of the songs when he sang "Love Tender". The people were listing like they could hear a soft wind blowing from the dessert. Than he sang his favorite song 'I'm so lonesome I could cry', but in English, and even they could not understand the words, they felt the strenght of the melody. The old Sertanejo came unsteadely up to Juan and with quivering hands he served him a 'feijoado', a plate of black beans and pork. They wanted Juan to drink and eat, he was a guest, a special. The Sertanejo, which was a descendent of a slave and Indian mother, told Juan that he knew a man close to Sete Coraçôes, which played the same music as he did, with the same strange words: 'Sim Senhor... a mesmo que vocé!' Yes mister... just like you!
'Com o mesmo gringo lingua!' With the same gringo language! And ain't that strange?

to be continued....

Short-story devided in 5 chapters

1
The sun was a-shining like a villain, while Juan Rojo stared at the bleak road, where birds of preys circling full excitement close to the ground, lookin' for lifeless body's. Juan was dressed in a old jean and filthy white shirt, his hair, now with threads of silver, plunged at his shoulder. He was wearing black leather sandals and a rawhide guitarbag balanced at his back. He was sixty-five now and appeared to be a half-gipsy with a beard full of silver strings. This time he came  from Caracas, Venezuela, where he lived for the last six years, before that, he stayed, our let me say this more evident, he rambled through Mexico and Guatemala. The reason that he ended up here around Cicero Dantas was a kind of destiny, just like his life always had been.
 It's a long time since he said farewell to the world in which he had sunk, a irregular world full of fame, fortune and sadness. Away from Memphis, Tennessee. He wanted to live another life, a new and it should be a penitence. He took another name: Juan Rojo, worked on farms, factory's, constructions, was a tramp and played in small immortal bars a long the way. In Guatemala he lived together, just for a while, with a little hooker named Pluta. She reminded him, and this were Juan words, of his mother. But all went wrong and he started drinking, said goodby to Pluta ant went for Caracas, where he lived in region where crime was a passion and booze a normative obsession. But everywhere he went he took along his biggest love, his Gibson 1958, his support and remembrance of the things he always loved. And there was a another thing he couldn't get rid off: his love for music, the blues, country and gospel, the crying of the negro's way down at the lonely bars in the heart of old Memphis, and the spritual voice of big mama Loretta, which sang the words of the lord in that little sunday morning church. There was not a single day he didn't sang "How great thou art", and when he got too sentimental he crossed over to 'That's all right mama', a commitment to the woman he loved mostly.
 Well, Caracas was a living hell, and one night he got that stoned drunk, he reached a coma and stayed in there for two days, and while laying on his belly he throw up the fat-milk he drunk after two bottles of cheap rum, which assisted him to escape from a definite alcohol-poisoning.
Anyway, he woke up in the rotten hotel 'Concordia' and the the first thing he did was looking for his Gibson, his wooden love. Then he saw the cockroaches dancing like ballerinas, while  littlle rats racing across the room, over the tear-down sheets of the worn-out bed. It was like a destiny-circus, a world without meanings. He stood up, stumbled to the handbasin, but there was no water, no salvation! Just the horrible smell of a dung-hole, cockroaches and rats! But one of the rats took his attention, when it escaped through a litlle hole beneath the door and he saw the playing-card. It was a 'seven of hearts' with on the edge of the card the words: Bahia, Brazil.
'Amazinly,' he thought. How came this card beneath that door... and who put it there? That was the question! He started thinking, but his brains were a bunch of homeless jelly-fish, but then there was a light; this card múst be a sign, a mark to a place? In the Potuguese langue it signifies 'Sete Coraçôes' or 'Seven Hearts'; a place named Seven Hearts. Right, thats the answer.
  Many times he looked back at his life, a glorious one, than it became real, surreal, and because of that secrecy was not strange to him. The name on the card fascinated him, so he embraced a new direction.

to be continued...

WHY SHOULD THE DEVIL HAVE ALL THE GOOD SONGS!

Nordestino  (inhabitant of northeast Brasil) drawing  Wayn  1998




Mulatta de Bahia   (caricature) pencil/oil  on paper  Wayn 1997

Sundown at Rio Amazonas    2008 oil on cavas           




Madalena do Jucu   oil on canvas 2008       

naked gipsy woman

TERREIRO  (HOLY COURT)  RAMBLIN'WAYN   OIL ON board

LAVRADOR DO CAFE  (COFFEE WORKER)   OIL ON CANVAS 1935 CANDIDO PORTINARI


YANSA GODDESS OF THE OCEAN      -  WAYN  oil on board


MESTIÇO    C.PORTINARI    OIL ON CANVAS year?
 

"IT HATH BEEN THOUGHT A VAST COMMENDATION OF PAINTER TO SAY HIS FIGURES SEEM TO BREATHE; BUT SURELY IT IS MUCH GREATER AND NOBLER APPLAUSE, THAT THEY APPEAR TO THINK."
JOSEPH ANDREWS

"IT'S THE SAME OLE TUNE FIDDLIN' AND GUITAR
WHERE DO WE TAKE IT FROM HERE?
RHINESTONE SUITS AND NEW SHINY CARS
WELL... IT'S BEEN THE SAME WAY FOR YEARS!
WE NEED A CHANGE!..."



KITTY WELLS



PORTER WAGONER



FARON YOUNG

CARTER FAMILY



LEFTY FRIZELL



JOHNNY CASH



MARTY ROBBINS



HAMK SNOW

WAYLON JENNINGS