Brazilian creativity

I was with my wife walking back from some place I do not remember when we passed a place that smelled like a dirty homeless guy was sleeping somewhere, except we could not not see him (important point for this post, my wife is brazilian, I'm not). So my wife said "it is a ghost" which made me trip a bit but as I am not a 7 year old anymore (30 years ago I was) I quickly came back to Earth and told her the same thing I just told you. But she was convinced, so I strat to trip again... until I came back to my sences and asked what she meant. A ghost is actually the rag these guy used and that catches their smell, so when they are not here it seems they still are linging around but you cannot see them... a "ghost"! That reminded me that I was always impressed by the way the brazilian people I was hanging with always had that sort of game of contextual nicknaming, more than other cultures (USA, France... you name it). The game is to find the funniest nickname that would immediately have you understanding a fact by the context relating the two (in fact here, the "smeely" ghost and the homeless rag left which smell reminds the presence of the person). That creativity is hardly matched.

Yesterday I watched that documentary about creativity as well, and was interviewed Paulo Barros, the director of the carnival of the samba school União da Tijuca. He said that while he was doing something (irrelevant) he saw a truck with thousands of cooking panels that would go to trash, that gave him an idea as he had to create the carnival's car which was about Oz. The panels where used to create a huge tin man. 

Creativity is something that Brazil has a lot, maybe from the fact (e.g.) that they need to make something important (allegoric cars and costumes) out of not much every year for carnival, and it drags throughout the entire society. Counterpart is that they have trouble to monetize correctly that creativity, which seems to be more an north american quality.

Happy Carnival!!