I met Dom Phillips in 2007, when he arrived in Brazil, with the plan of staying in the country for a year, maybe two, to play frilas, passionate about music and football and with his book about the 1990s raves scene, “Superstar DJs Here We Go!” almost out of the oven. We’d first spoken when we’d both arrived outrageously early for a festive lunch at a mutual friend’s house. He, out of British punctuality, I certainly out of confusion. The conversation took place on the sidewalk, under a strong sun. And the conversation that started that Saturday afternoon in São Paulo only came to an end, in fact, in the last week.
During this period, we did not stop talking and meeting, even after moving to different cities. In the first chat, he introduced himself as a former Mixmag editor wanting to take a break from England: “I can’t stand living in a country where it rains so much that sometimes it rains cold rain straight in your face, horizontally” (Dom accompanied these phrases with a unique gesture, impossible not to understand or feel drips on your own face). It was the first time Dom had ever made me laugh. I had no idea, but the conversation with Dom would last for years, just as the jokes and mutual interest in each other’s plans never stopped. Until our last communication. He always sent original-looking photos with clever, ironic captions about everything he saw on his travels. The last one I received was the image of the rainbow plane sent by Whats App when he announced another return to the Amazon, which was supposed to be one of his last trips before dedicating himself completely to writing the book.
Much has been politicized on the subject, and it is normal and urgent that this be done. Much has also been labeled Dom as an environmental activist. There I disagree a little. Dom was a nature lover, he had a legitimate interest in the future of the Amazon and, in his later years, devoted efforts to this. But his goals were journalistic, the idea was to portray the Amazon through the voices of all who inhabit that place, and formulate solutions, in a clear and accessible way. It had never been his idea to write a pamphlet. Dom was never an activist, always a keen journalist who could always delve a little deeper than the rest, if he was really interested in the subject. And the subject could be of different natures, from the last album by Criolo to the impact of the works for the Olympics in Rio.
Much has been discussed about the impact that his and other deaths of indigenists and environmentalists are having on Brazil’s image in the world. I have agreed with most texts that make the relationship between the tragedy that claimed Dom’s life and current Brazilian politics. These chronic problems in the Amazon existed before, mining and illegal fishing, among them. But it is clear that the current government has either given carte blanche or at least turned a blind eye to the abuses of the mafias that operate there.
The death of Dom and Bruno Pereira leaves a crime that we already knew existed even more wide open. The question their deaths leave us with is, are we going to allow things to go on as they are?
But I can’t help but emphasize, within all this whirlwind of pain we’ve been living in the last few weeks, the value of friendship. This luxury that we have the opportunity to amass in our lives. We always imagine that our friends will always be there for us. And they are. Until no more. Dom’s death made me think about how, many times, we live with (some) wonderful people and that we take it as something banal, already conquered. Until they’re gone. Although, as the enlightened Alessandra, Dom’s wife says, they leave a little bit of them in each of us. And that’s why here I prefer to pay tribute to inspiring friendships. Because that’s what Dom is to me (and I say in the present tense because I imagine myself commenting on many day-to-day things with him from now on).
In the 15 years he lived in Brazil, Dom changed a lot, always driven by his unstoppable curiosity. In his early years, in São Paulo, he went to everything that seemed interesting to him to understand the city, samba circles, rap concerts in the periphery, bars, music festivals and countless Corinthians games, of which he became a fan, for the my happiness. In 2009, when the player Ronaldo returned from Europe to play for alvinegro, Dom was carried away by the enthusiasm of Saturday afternoons at Pacaembu. He wrote on the subject, sought out interviews with players for British media. I went with him to several games. One day, I was a little depressed at home and he convinced me to go out and go with him to see a Corinthians and São Paulo, outside São Paulo, and in which our Timão was destroyed. I, even lower than when I left, was driving back down the road trying to explain to Dom what the word “stolen” meant. “We went to a robbery today, you know that, no?”, I would say. And he laughed. From there we stopped at a bar in the northeast, the conversation flowed to the infinity of delicacies in the house, whose names he knew better than I did, and Dom’s appetite and curiosity towards everyone. We keep laughing.
He is the kind of friend that even the simplest anecdotes carry a lesson. And today, in the face of this tragedy, I think of the best lesson I received from Dom. Although it seems banal, being curious about everything and at the same time being able to laugh at everything, even at yourself, was the most important of them.
Dom was struggling to settle in Brazil in the early days. The life of a foreign freelancer in the country is not easy. But he always found a way to make fun of how impossible his life was between notaries and state entities to regularize his life in Brazil. “They gave me a paper, they told me take care of the paper (sic), bring the paper signed next time, I went to look for a guy who signs a paper, he wasn’t there, I came back days later, I found a guy, signed paper, I get there, I didn’t need the paper”. It was something like getting a CPF, or something like that, but we were amused by how he saw the bureaucracy of Brazilian procedures as something out of this world without having to go into much depth in his criticism, just the way he reported the saga.
Once, in 2008, I was living in Buenos Aires, for a change, studying for my master’s degree. And Dom came to visit me. At first, he said that it was very confusing to be so applied to Portuguese studies and I suddenly introduced him to a different language and world, in Spanish. An Englishman trying to speak Spanish with a Brazilian accent caused curiosity in waiters and friends. There wasn’t much to understand. OK, I was interpreter. But Dom, a freelancer, needed to do something to pay for the plane ticket. He sold a couple of ideas to the musical media he collaborated with, and the one that hit was one about “emos” in Latin America. “Emos”, for those who don’t remember, were those gothic teenagers who depressed themselves in squares and cemeteries. And off we went, looking for “emos” in Buenos Aires. We were shown the RodrÃguez Peña square, where we interviewed pale teenagers with dark circles under their eyes and sad faces. Dom would ask “Why are you so depressed?” (I think I was the only one who noticed the irony), and the thin 13-year-old boy replied that life didn’t make sense. People held back laughter. After about three samples, we went out drinking and laughing at teenage fashions.
Dom also wanted to go tango. I’d like to just show him what a milonga was. But, already in the hall, Dom asks me, “but we’re going to dance, right?” Well, after a few shots and hopefully without any cameras on, Clube Armenia saw a clumsy Brazilian and an Englishman who thought he was rocking the dance floor running over each other and laughing our lungs out. The next day, I barely woke up and Dom was already saying, “Today there’s a Racing game, take me?”. He wanted an intense Buenos Aires experience in just a few days.
That same zeal and interest in everything around him were things we got used to. If it was funny on the one hand, it was inspiring on the other. Like, I’ve lived here for years and I’ve never been to this neighborhood, to this bar, and in the end, I ended up going because Dom had pioneered before.
In Rio, his maturity on Brazil increased. Covering the preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics and their impact made him for the first time speak more strongly about politics, as if sensing that something was being diluted in Brazil.
I remember that, at his wedding with dear Alessandra Sampaio, around that time, a delicious party organized by the newlyweds in Rio, several correspondents were warning them that they were leaving, that after these events Brazil would lose interest, Dom was determined to stay, after having found “the right woman for me”, as he told me that same night, about Alê. It was kind of easy to conclude that Dom was so in love with him that he would spend his last years in Brazil. It was hard to realize that the last few years were already being those. There was an atmosphere of joy that night in Santa Tereza, a night of meetings and reunions, impossible to replicate.
If São Paulo gave Dom the idea of ​​a culturally bustling city, immense, with a lot to discover, Rio gave him nature, Stand Up Paddle, life outside and away from the screens. It also gave her a tan that she kept forever.
Then came a certain disenchantment with daily journalism, and an obsession with climate issues growing from some stories I had written for the Guardian. These days I recovered a conversation we had about work possibilities, before the scholarship he took for the Amazon book.
And he would tell me: “I need to reinvent myself, there is a vacancy in a news agency here in Rio, but I don’t want “hard news” anymore, I want something more consistent. I’m going to take my vacation to think”. His holidays were usually in the UK, when he went for walks “always in the mud”, he described, with brothers Sian and Gareth.
Once, he came back from one of these and announced, I’m going to make a book to make a difference about the Amazon, to propose solutions. A year before going to the field, Dom studied thoroughly, prepared. He did not enter the forest in an unsuspecting or “adventurous” way, as Bolsonaro claimed, nor did he go with a Manichean vision of “bad prospector x good indigenous”. His immense preparation, with readings, interviews, made him arrive there with an open mind and heart to listen to everyone, but with an immense theoretical background already processed. The same Bolsonaro also mocked Dom’s physical preparation. You must never have seen him. Dom swam, rode a bike, surfed, did weight training, trekking, had an iron lung, which not even the covid had been able to weaken.
We wish it had been longer. But, in these 15 years in Brazil, Dom has matured and lived an intense life, surrounded by friends and with lots of love.
Brazil transformed the Dom. Dom turned his friends. And, perhaps, his legacy will still help to transform Brazil.
