Page 187 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

172 Maria José A. de Abreu

to refer to practices of “infusion” and “diffusion,” “circuitry” and “conduc-
tivity” of spiritual charisma.
Similar juxtapositions between electricity and spirituality became par-
ticularly salient in 2001 during my fieldwork period. That year the so-
called Lei do Apagão (“he Switch-Off Law) was declared, a national
energy-saving regime caused by an alarming dry-out of the main barrages
resulting from exceptional rain shortage of the previous years. The darken-
ing of the nation in homes, hospitals, institutions, streets, and media sta-
tions stirred a major campaign to find alternative resources to keep the
country operating against the dark alleys, dimmed public monuments,
defrosted fridges, and turned-off devices. As the government went on a
frantic search for alternative forms of energy, Canção Nova mined all sorts
of metaphors to further conflate the Holy Spirit with media’s electrical
power. The Holy Spirit was compared to an “electricity generator” that
“infuses energies,” the bodies of believers were associated with “antennas of
retransmission” (de Abreu 2005, 345), and crowds were described in terms
of their “good contact” (ibid.). Not infrequently, visitors to Canção Nova
expressed that they came to “charge their batteries,” or “to obtain good
signals,” “to galvanize the world.” In time, the circuit of analogies between
weather, electricity, and spirituality also came to encompass Canção Nova’s
physical proximity to the national Institute of Spatial Research and Center
5
of Weather Forecast and Climacteric Studies (CPTEC). Curiously, the
analogy between electricity and spirituality on the basis of weather condi-
tions was in turn reinscribed in the stock-like economic rhythms of Canção
Nova that were being activated as part of its regime of economic transpar-
ency and that strikingly resembled the weather maps and real-time screen-
ing technologies used by the meteorological broadcast Institute.

Embodying the Midst

Ideas of rejuvenation and renewal form an integral part of CCR’s imagi-
nary of an agile and aerate body. These attributes are projected on, and

literally embodied by, the thousands of youngsters who assiduously come
to Canção Nova. Significant adherence to Canção Nova comes primarily
from an upper middle-class and well-educated youth sector. Most travel
from within the state of São Paulo in excursions organized via online uni-
6
versity networks where the CCR has always had a major presence. Events
at Canção Nova are prepared according to certain themes such as “mar-
riage and sexuality,” “youth camping,” “cure and deliverance,” or “semi-
nars in the spirit,” many of which show a clear orientation toward young