Category: thoughts

A question often introduced in my mind, which appeals to be very existentialist, working alongside self-improvement to become a better person and following the premise of asking ourselves the right questions, has been chasing me since its acceptance in my philosophical values. My conclusion was devastating. I was not expecting that my empirical logic would be defining my current role in society till the point where I want to quit and stop doing what I have been supporting in the last three years. Perhaps this is my dramatic persona working flawlessly or obsessive behaviorism of mine, but the late motif in this dilemma is the art itself. I stopped interrogating “what art should I do?” and began to question “why should I do art?”. The answer: because I want to express MY feelings, MY ideas, MY knowledge on the living things. All this time I have been producing material to sustain my fears or my mental illnesses overall, my points towards various themes. All this time, I had to feed my ego as I way to exponentiate my self-pithiness. I have been admiring my suffering and my perspectives and painting in with sound and music. 

In conclusion, art is, in fact, an egocentric expression, and for now, it seems impossible for me to refute this idea.

Lately, I found myself reading Bukowski’s Tales of Ordinary Madness, a book where he writes, in short stories, about his personal experiences where some of which are fictional versions of his reality. Apart from his cutting edge way of writing, which is very dirty, hostile, and drunk, all the tales depict a man decaying in his flaws, till the point you are impressed with the level of indecency that the poor guy has. Along with the reading, you come across descriptions like:

– LISTEN, GUSTAV, THE LAST POET WE WENT TO SEE WAS A TERRIBLE PERSON. WE HADN’T BEEN THERE MUCH MORE THAN A HOUR AND HE STARTED GOT DRUNK AND STARTED THROWING BOTTLES ACROSS THE ROOM AND CUSSING US. – THAT WAS BUKOWSKI. ONLY HE DOESN’T REMEMBER US. – NO WONDER. – BUT HE’S VERY LONELY. WE SHOULD GO SEE HIM.

in Great Poets Die in Steaming Pots of Shit

Artists live this fake reality where they think their products are made for others to appreciate, and perhaps cure or help or relate, where it is only made for the person who created it. Now every time I read interviews to musicians about their new content, they often say something not as literally as I am going to indicate, but very similar – this album was made for those who... The answer: No, it was not. It was made for you, and only you. The only problem is you can see your egocentrism. Jean Piaget, in his theory of “Stages of Cognitive Development”, would say that egocentrism is one of the characteristics of a child in the “Preoperational Stage” (2-7 years) because the subject in this zone cannot see a situation from another’s point of view, assuming that other people see, hear, and feel the same as the child does (Saul McLeod, 2018). I believe that artists lack the same things, which in this case is more complex to understand and to depict. Artists are blind to a deeper understanding.

The dark side of being creative and having art motion is that we all look at the mirror in the same way as Narcissus did, but this time we can’t tell that reflection, considering there is nothing wrong with it. On a larger scale, artists are closed into one reality – anthropocentric reality. Our creations are only available for our species, for those who speak and communicate the way we do. Historians focus on our doings in the past, but only for our species. Phylosophers interrogate themselves about problems we, the homo sapiens, have. Even scientists are a bit focused on what we are formed on, even if they are geocentric. The study only what inside this strange blue and green bubble called Earth. We are too closed and too enclosed. Maybe I should focus on the universe. Possibly the right questions are made among the stars and the things that don’t belong to our reality. I don’t to be an artist anymore. I want to avoid anything that resonates with the need to look to myself.

When I first left my country in 2018 I had bad connections with it. I wanted both emotional and physical relations linked to my country to disappear completely. I didn’t even want people to recognize me as apart of my country. I didn’t felt Portuguese. I didn’t want to be it. I wanted a fresh start as someone with no roots. during those years, coming back home to Portugal was strange. All these ideas crossing my head like imperative guidelines for my existence and all the memories of places and people and family striking back at me in every street I recrossed. Whenever I went back to Madrid, people would ask – how’re things back there? How’s your family? How are your friends? I would always answer in an avoiding way: “It’s all good”. But, as soon as I started to note differences between my hometown and Madrid, I started to talk about Portugal more carefully – I would say “people talk differently in Porto”, “people act differently”, “people don’t do this in Portugal”. Little by little, I started to look at my country as a place that I esteem and care for. Little by little I looked at it as it was my responsibility and my duty to protect. Since then, everything looked different and I was no longer denying my identity.

However, I would look at Portugal as a place that it’s dying. Its people are disappearing. Its voice is becoming weak. As it always was in our history, people are fleeing to other places, looking for a better life. Now I feel that my duty, inside the capabilities of art, is to maintain our torch alive for more years. Therefore, I will expose one of those people that tried to inlight that torch.

Its name is Michel Giacometti, a french ethnologist that dedicated his life and work to Portuguese culture. When he was working in the Musée de L’homme, in the ’50s, he passed most of his time in the archives section. One day, he came across the underground Portuguese traditions, that most of the world didn’t know about and certainly was dying because of the impact of globalization. He fell in love immediately. He moved into the coast of Lisbon (Cascais) in 1959, in a country that was living one of the least talked dictatorships, with concentration camps, wars in Africa and India, prosecutions, oppressive police, and all everything else that a fascist influenced regime has. Michel went to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to seek funding for his Trás-Os-Montes sound collection project. The investment was denied and the minister of propaganda now knew about him. He decided to do things on his own. In 1960, he founded the Portuguese sound archives and started recording material for Emissora Nacional (Portugal), Radio France, WDR (West Germany), and Sveriges Riskradio (Sweden). People started to notice his work and became very interested in the perception he had of Portuguese culture. By the end of the 1960s, he had the whole intellectual Portugal following him everywhere he went. In 1970, RTP (Rádio e Televesião Portuguesa – Portuguese Radio and Television) invited him to present his work on a program called “O Povo Que Canta” (the people who sing) for 4 years, where he showed the songs people would sing during their labor spontaneously.

For many, this wasn’t only recordings of the people singing while working, this was a political movement against Salazar’s dictatorship. Michel was telling the world how people lived in poor conditions, how the state was oppressive against them, how hopeless people sounded. Michel looked to these people as if they were carrying with them a superpower. That superpower was their voice, their arms, their shoes, their labor, their tears, their strength, and their resilience. Michel carried about these people as much he carried about the sound they were reproducing while working.

At the end of those 4 years with RTP, in 1974, the 25th of April happened, also known as the carnation revolution. It wasn’t because of Michel Giacometti certainly, but the echoes of his work most probably struck those who still had a small hope for freedom of speech. When I first saw myself with his legacy I felt the same. I felt a need to expand the voice of my people, their struggles, and their history. But I will always expose the toxicity that lies in many of them, that retrogrades Portugal and its progress. Nowadays, Portuguese fascism is reverberating again in a different form in our people. In 1930, it was called União Nacional (National Union) under the hands of António Oliveira Salazar. In 2020, it is called Chega and the voice is André Ventura.

Ah! don’t give me sympathetic intentions! don’t ask me for definitions! don’t tell me: “come this way”! my life is a whirlwind that broke loose, it’s a wave that rose. it’s one more atom that ignited… I don’t know which way I’ll go, I don’t know where I’m going to – I know I’m not going that way!

José Régio

I consider this poem my modus operandi at this right moment. So many doubts. So many anxieties. The only thing that is clear for me is where I am heading and it is definitely not in that way. As ambiguous as it is, for now, there’s no need for objective definitions of what is happening.