As Gilberto Gil once said, “life is confusion.” I discovered this literally on my 59th birthday, when I decided to celebrate with a big party (much cooler than celebrating the obvious sixty!), whose theme was exactly that: “life, the precious confusion.” The idea was simple. To celebrate the art of living as the ability to manage, better or worse, the inevitable chaos of existence. Flexibility in the face of challenges, valuing what is learned in difficult moments, making lemonade out of lemons, transforming trouble into opportunity.

And I took it seriously. The soundtrack of the party's “audio invitation” was the ‘Concerto for piano and small dog in C major,’ in which, in the middle of a recording of me playing the piano, our dog Zé Pequeno starts barking (for the curious, it's worth “listening to the invitation” in the audio article). I scold him, tell him to stop. Since he doesn't obey me, suddenly I begin to understand that… it was okay! And we start making music together! My daughters say it's toxic positivity. But I insist and continue to believe, until proven otherwise, that it's worth trying to find the best side in… almost everything. The luck of being alive on this incredible planet brings us the obligation to honor and celebrate it.

As for the party, of course, it was a reflection of this mix in every sense. Starting with the food: instead of a 'paired buffet', a jumble of the city's most delicious things — from Sônia's lamb rice to Gurume's sushi, from Celeiro's salads to Momo's pear ice cream, starting the day with toasted bread, filtered coffee and chocolate from Dengo! A chaotic and delicious menu, just like life is. A precious confusion, chosen, cultivated, celebrated. And when I realized it, I understood: more than food, music, and art, my greatest desire, in investing time, energy, and money to bring together 250 friends, was to create a space for encounters. Different people, from diverse worlds, sharing music, dance, and conversation. And it worked! Twelve hours of celebration where we celebrated unusual mixtures, chaos, catalyzing diversity. My daughters' friends with my father's friends, my lifelong brothers and sisters meeting the friends of friends who arrived. And so it went…

Ultimately, that's what celebrations do: they bring people together. And celebrations are the origin of culture. From harvest festivals to feasts for the dead, culture emerges from this human need to share reasons to continue together as a group, as families, as nations.

Perhaps that's why it was so symbolic that, the following day, Sunday, September 21st, this catharsis took place on a national scale. Brazil, immersed in immense turmoil, with trials, fiery speeches, turbulence, and noise of all kinds, and then, on Copacabana beach, a grand celebration of freedom and democracy catalyzes the crowd. Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Djavan, and Paulinho da Viola brought together more than 40,000 people on the sidewalks and sand. There, culture acted as a magnet, a pole of attraction capable of bringing together diverse people: from the left, from the right, conservatives, and progressives. (After all, who doesn't really like these guys?) People who, in another context, would be separated by our almost insurmountable ideological walls, but who, at that moment, shared the same space, the same song, the same sense of belonging. Culture dissolves borders. It brings people closer, connects them, mixes them, creates bonds, complicity, common sense.

And history is full of the best examples. Whenever freedom is threatened, culture rises up as a trench. Woodstock in 1969 was a generation's symbolic response to the Vietnam War. The Diretas Já movement in the 1980s only gained strength because musicians, actors, and poets lent their voices to the collective desire. Rock in Rio in 1985 was more than entertainment: it was the baptism of a democracy that was still in its infancy. The fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated in concert because music knew what politics could not yet formulate. From Tunisian rap in the Arab Spring to the exile songs of Caetano and Gil, history shows that it is always culture that opens cracks when walls seem insurmountable. And it is precisely because of its capacity to activate resistance that every authoritarian leader invests heavily against it, belittling it, censoring it.

Politics oscillates, advances and retreats; some win, others lose, and vice versa. With culture it is different. It can be stifled for a period, but it always ends up re-emerging. Culture is the invisible, yet powerful, field where belonging is woven, essential values ​​are remembered, and the future is projected. It is the ecology of freedom. And perhaps that is why, in the face of the confusion, the violence, the sort of madness and surrealism we are seeing in the world, only art can save us!