Come visit the exhibition!
Vernissage: Friday, 28th of April, 19 o’clock
Via di Santa Maria Maggiore,149
I will be in Rome for this collective exhibition with Goyart, accompanying the itinerant artworks, that were on display before in Paris and Madrid.
This is an open invitation to all my Italian friends living in Rome, to fellow artists and collectors -wink-
There’s a voice out there can speak the language of any of your frustrations, but the ones worth listening to are those that can make you grow into a more self aware individual, that can choose kindness, knowing evil is also an option. There’s a moral duty of the writers who were given the gift and the power of words.
There are loud voices of criticism that can make one doubt so much until the whole beliefs systems starts shaking, the destructive voices that can bring one up to the dead end of the meaningless. There are people one meets, holding cynical, bitter speeches about how things should be done because everyone does it so, including themselves, who surrendered their hope blindly and left plenty of room for blind actions to flourish. I could be one of those people as well. Their voice echoes a voice I carry inside myself also. I could become, but I don’t want to. Becoming cynical and bitter is the easy way out. The path from blindness to opening the eyes in front of miracles of existence is not an easy one.
Art is not about being flower power all the time, although that’s the most fun part of it, there’s a lot of struggle behind: doubts about direction and meaning, deep questions about the essence of humanity. Art is about building a beliefs system and sticking to it and defending it with all your being, if necessary. Don’t let anyone criticise your sensibility, if that is what your essence is about, or take away your enthusiasm. With hope and trust in the wanders of all kinds life has offered and will still do, you can accomplish basically anything. Hope is at the base of it all and that’s the priority in the mystical plan, a plan specially tailored to reach the most delicate condition of existence: balance.
When the beliefs system is subjected to mental entropy, there is not too much possibly of action left. I spent the last year in a sort of a mental lethargy, with two divergent directions tearing me apart: the need for stability and the need for creativity. I kept writing, texts which I kept mostly for myself, I have plenty of material for my next book, but the texts are divergent as well, I still haven’t found the best way to glue them together. But it will be a book about almost losing hope and recovering it.
There are people we cross paths with and situations life places us into, however much heartbreaking and disturbing, that can still hold the capacity of teaching us a lesson. They would push secrets buttons, blindly or bad intentioned and we will suffer. For how long? Until we’re ready to believe again, until we learn our lesson: that we already are a bit like them also in our hidden, shadowy side and we could act like them as well if we give up our purest dreams too easily.
In the past year, I’ve been hearing from everyone around me about the necessity of a plan to put my artist desires into practice. I bent my ears to those who suggested it, knowing they care and tried to help, but until I develop the required practical skills and get rid of the fear that kept me imprisoned, I came up with a mystical plan, since that is what I can do best, the journey I embarked on is an inner journey and I want safety and calm so I can keep creating and pass on to the people the things I consider important. The first step in the mystical plan is the recovery of hope, as it is at the base of it all, followed by practising gratitude, focusing on what we have and not on what we miss. We can’t have it all, that’s another important lesson I learnt about acknowledging our human limits. The roots of dissatisfaction are in the endless possibilities of imagination, but this is why we have imagination for: to have a space where we can fly free.
I visited my grandfather yesterday, from whom I inherited my humanist views on life, and I told him I am going to Rome at the end of the month as I am part of an exhibition. And when I left, he told me: hey Laura, when you go to Rome, shake hands with the Pope and I laughed, how do you know, this is precisely what I intend to do.
Love,
Laura
It’s early in the morning and I take the metro in the wrong direction. I’m in Munich. Time is ticking and I’m worried I will lose the flight. I feel the anxiety level raising. I don’t know when I started developping anxiety. I didn’t have it in my early twenties. Maybe it’s the sabbatical I took, the time I spent off outside the life most of the people chose to live. I believe we constantly make choices, even when we think we have no choice, that everything is set for us, we keep choosing, in the background. When we sleep, our dreams go on.They follow a pattern. Our desires, our experiences, little precise spots in place and time connecting to each other. The sea I constantly dream of and its immensity, the boats and the people in them, the explosions, the way forward.
I get off the train and change for the right direction. It’s strange how we sometimes become stubborn following a direction we secretly know it is wrong. I had the feeling, but I ignored it. Or maybe it was the right one. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong or right. Morals can drive one crazy.
I get a flashback with a trip to Luxembourg in the summer of 2013, when I got lost in a forest, somewhere in a village at the border with Germany, on my way to an interview for a company. I called the human resources and said: I’m lost. It was Google’s fault, not mine. Ha! How easy it is to put the blame on someone else, if it’s an abstraction, even better. Maybe adulthood is about responsability. It’s funny to see this written by a proud representative of the Peter Pan generation. Morals again. My mind constantly ruminating.
I remember the train station in Luxembourg and the friend of my father who showed me around. He used to work in Angola for an international organisation. I remember him saying he used to live like on a island. I used to work on a island, too. And then I lived in a bubble in Bucharest. I did it because I wanted to. Now I’m on a different bubble, maybe this time it is one more open to the exterior.
I’m back in Bucharest and behaving like a tourist at home in the old city center. I’m behaving like a writer, observing the world and my understanding of it. I’m thinking about future exhibitions and places to see. What to write and what to do. I decided to start a novel, one Tuesday afternoon, while having tea at a warmed terrace in Munich. The truth and nothing but the truth. A strange decision to be taken, while having tea and watching the rain pouring, the wind blowing and life parading in front of me. A decision, yes, a decision because this is what Will is all about. Will is a power and a character I invented, who accompanied me in my lonely, reflective times. He must have accompanied me all my life, without me really knowing it.
Today, while at home with the flu, trying to raise my low mood, I watched a video of Jason Silva about humanity as an organism and artists as its necessary mutant genes. Artists, questioning even those things that most of the people take for granted are essential for the evolution of this organism. He emphasises the necessity of making the artists feel safe in order to unravel their full potentials. I felt inspired to write a sort of a manifesto: make an artist feel safe today. I also remembered an article on brainpickings I read a while ago about the link between creativity and mental disorder. While there is a nevertheless an undeniable connection between the two, there is also this tendency to romanticise the tormented life of VanGogh or the suicide of Sylvia Plath. The article ends saying that those artists who managed to create something, did it not because of their mental disorder, but despite of it.MAKE AN ARTIST FEEL SAFE TODAY is a project that I started today, over a glass of wine talking with a friend, and like all the things that just flash into our life, I don’t know where it is going. I always thought that my art is not just about self expression, but there should be some spiritual mission behind. If you would like to contribute to my project with either testimonials about how it feels like to live as an artist or just ideas, support or whatever pleases you, feel free to write to me.
Love, Laura
Today, while looking at the Aegen Sea, I remembered a few lines from one of my poems: when I left on this journey, I didn’t know what was pushing me forward, but I did leave to find my true nature. And I thought I would like to travel the world, that I have a nomad side, that is hungry for experience and meeting new people. Maybe after the inner journey, the journey around the world should start. Maybe I could be a travel writer. I started this live journal in Paris, a mix of facts and feelings and it’s late at night and I’m smoking in this balconaki in Greece and the itch to live and share is very strong again. Today, I realised with surprise I can read the Greek alphabet, it comes natural after so many years of maths. Written Greek is like a never ending equation. But without any equal sign, just a continuos flow. Life is like that as well.
I still haven’t written the rest of the story about Paris, maybe I will do it tomorrow, between a walk, a delicious snack or a glass of wine. Or on the bus towards our next stop. The truth is I am getting bored of Bucharest, I told A. in Paris, maybe it’s time to leave again. I still want to live in Lisbon one day. Would you like to live somewhere else? I asked. Mm, although I hate it, I want to be in Paris, here is the heart of the French cinema. Love and hatred, it’s always like that. Maybe when we manage to assume everything we do, we become true artists. I remember the talks with Larisa in Paris about the uplifting, healing aspect of art. But what do we do with our shadow, it’s a dilemma I haven’t solved yet. I can be warm and sweet, but also cruel. And it’s still me, we act and react, mirroring each other. I want to be authentic, to just let life flow through me. And just grab a pen, or a camera or a canvas and share what we all live. My experience is not different from those of other people, I just like to look at it sometimes as if I am a spectator. I will translate in French that theatre play I wrote and send it
to you.
The first thing I saw in Greece was a sign on the side of the road. There were two arrows, to the right: industrial area, to the left Christos. I was half asleep in the car and I opened my eyes and saw it. Laura doesn’t like to talk about her job, he said. In my secret financial life I am an engineer.
Signs, there are everywhere, if you have the eyes to see them.
At the middle of On Pont des Arts in Paris, A. stopped and asked me a question. It was one of those cinematic moments that life sometimes grants us with. With the Eiffel Tower on the background, I could see the actor performing his
personal drama. Laura, do you believe in God? I said yes, I believe there is something out there, I see like a net of coincidences and events wrapping around me. I should be grateful for that. But sometimes I am not.
I have a great resource of love that I don’t know what to do with sometimes, I bounce between isolation and the need to connect. I am attracted to troubled, neurotic artists, continously searching for the unknown. But also, as I age, I started liking young boys because I like the purity that is still untouched by cynism. This cynism is like a poison that we drop continously inside our own hearts. But we all want to be be open and free, don’t we? Maybe I have a spiritual mission, to filter hope from all my troubles and share it futher on. I am sometimes surprised when people percieve me as calm, because deep inside me there is always something burning, that does not allow me to rest. Maybe it’s a hunger for understanding and that spiritual mission I was talking about is to teach myself how to enjoy life, with its hills and valleys, seas and deserts and then share the tale of this journey with others. We are never really alone and as I travel more, on the inner and outside paths, I understand these three things that get constantly mixed inside me, art and life and love, are all about the people.
Are you a student? You can enter for free. I laugh: not anymore. The talk goes on at the entrace of Museé Rodin. He checks my bag and goes on talking: Je vous aime. I laugh. One cannot behave differently if working at Museé Rodin in Paris, maybe it’s comnon to confess your love here to strangers. The old man at the entrance kept showing up during my visit in unpredictable places: in the garden, at the museum shop and of course at the exit. How would it be like to live closely to all those feelings carved in marble? Because the Rodin Museum is a heavy experience, it’s something so beautiful and fluid and expressive and desperately sensual about it. Or maybe I am just projecting again my own mental content. Because after the natural high of yesterday, the retreat, natural as well, came. Together with the itch to sculpt, so intense while wandering through the rodin museum, the desire to stroll around the city in solitude came.It is the writer inside me that needs distance in order to create. But the day is still bright and beautiful and I walk around with L. and we have pleasent conversations about art and the mission of the artist. I’m still indecisive about what to do with my intense low moods, if to abandon myself fully to them or not when they come. The torment of the artist is one of the most authenic experience but there’s a danger to get fully absorded by a downawards spiral. And at the end of the road there should be a light to make us keep us walking. I tell her that I believe I am here in Paris to complete a circle in my evolution as an artist and that I will write that story about the the many coincidences that happened and the true cinematic quality of the life I am living. Maybe it is that I get sad when life is not cinematic enough or people are not romantic enough or just when I become again thirsty for new experiences and they are missing. But a new city means a break in the everyday rythm, with the new people and situations that seem to appear. When we are outside our habbitat, we are more open. We go outside our heads more. We meet two friends of hers and we discover they are both writers, one of them already wrote a book and the other has been writing it in his head for two years now. I tell him to take the time to write it down, that it is amazing to see the content of your head materialised, that in just two days I got to hold in my hands the book and to see my imagery hanging on the walls of a gallery. And that is what I mean when I am talking about the cinematic quality of life. Now that I am here, things do not seem that unreal anymore, maybe all this content started getting integrated in my consciousness: that I am here in Paris for a collective exhibition and I have a book published in New York. But it’s not about the “I”, it’s about the people, at some point the artist stops belonging to oneself. Later on, we pass by the gallery that is across the street from our exhition venue. It seems that the guy who owns it is a famous writer and painter and those surrounding him are his aprentices. And that it’s a common habbit to pick people from the streets to invite them to the gallery. Just as common as saying: ‘Je vous aime’ at the entrance of Musee Rodin. A. grabs my elbow and asks:after this, are you coming back to Paris?I don’t know. I wish.
Now I am the proud owner of a 3d photo of Rodin’s The Kiss and I am in the hotel room and I stare at it. My luggage is open and a messy rainbow comes out from it: it’s my dress up for this show: the adventures of a writer who went to exhibit in Paris.
I open the window of this tiny hotel room in Paris and I light myself a cigarette, although the sign says clearly: please do not smoke. The bed is right next to the window and I breath in and breath out slowly. Smoking is just another way of breathing. What a day! I’m tired but I am doing this new experiment to register the flow of my consciousness, to write down new experiences as they are still fresh. Because our memory always has a dose of uncertainty. We sometimes make past events brighter, at other times lighter. Today, as I was sitting and smoking on Bateau Daphne on Quai de Montebello facing Notre Dame where fellow spanish artists are exhibiting, I thought that three years ago when I was alone in Paris I took a tourist bus on the Seine just for the pleasure of it, as I sometimes do things just for the sake of pure pleasure, but I would have never imagined I would come back here as an artist. As I stroll on rue Frédéric Sauton from the gallery to the exhibition, I hear hurried footsteps behind me and someone saying: Bon soir, bon soir! I turn and a man is trying to talk to me in french.
The vernisage tonight was a bright, colourful mix of languages, art is about meeting people, the organiser said and I agree: it is about making yourself understood. I had this evening one of the natural highs, I was talkative and energic, although at some point I confessed to a lady that happened to pass by the street and entered our vernisage that I am actually shy, but I have moments like this, it’s like getting on a stage and performing. I wish I could spend my entire life performing, I confessed at the table five glasses of wine later. It was more or less when I found out that onion soup is for late at night at the end of the celebration. This is what the collector and theatre play writer that spoke to me in French all night told me. I nodded and I said again in english: I understand everything, it just that I cannot speak. It was the same thing I said on rue frederic sauton when the unknown man running after me invited me out of the blue to see his gallery. And I also said: we have an exhibition on this very same street and I am going now to the boat for another exhibition.
How strange, nobody ever run after me to invite me to see a gallery.
We couldn’t understand each other so I said: ok, I come with you and I end up entering his gallery and he shows me some 20 century print on the wall. Do you know this artist? No.
His blue eyes remaind of someone who reminded me of someone, that’s how crazy I am, I tell myself, this is actually how I ended up doing art: by allowing my craziness to manifest itself.
He introduces me to his friends in the gallery and they say we have vernisage every day until 5 at night. We laugh and I say I need to go to the boat now, come to our vernisage. Me still speaking english and they still speaking french. And for the first time I wonder how it would be like to live as an artist in Paris and now I go to sleep and tomorrow at 8 we do another vernisage on rue Frédéric sauton 11.
Vous avais fasciné A. (or something like that) a lady tells me later on as he and his friends enter our exhibition. But later on A. walks in with a beautiful tall woman, who actually looks a bit like me and I wander if we are all crazy here on this boat and maybe this is what attracts us one to each other.
I am delighted to be part of this exhibition together with these wonderful artists. Come visit the exhibition!
Also, dear fellow artists and art enthusiasts, emphats, musicians, performers, fellow humans, if you want to meet me, feel free to drop me a line, as I will be in Paris for a few days for the exhibition. I have plenty of ideas and a willingness to materialise them and ofcourse, I cannot do everything by myself. We need each other. Just a small hint: I want to stage The Shadows of Mr Wisebird 😉 , a theatre play I wrote at the beginning of this year.
I was told many times
There is a fire inside you that blinds and devours and loves.
This fire used to stand naked in front of the blind, the half-blind and the eagles
In front of you and in front of your other versions
In front of me and all my other versions
When I understood a fire left unattened can still exist
Can destroy
Can illuminate.
I left ashes everywhere
Shaped as memories or fury or a drop of delicacy
A brushstroke
A letter
An open door to phantasy.
Some of the ashes I carried with me
As proof I can still burn after burning
Ashes are my watermark.
I walk around people, they see a diver suit and a flash of light looking for them.
I’m waiting.
I’ve been waiting all my life to dive somewhere deep inside them
Where nothing is diluting their emotions anymore
Where everything burns.
I’m not sure what they see
The blind, the half blind or the eagles
But I know
I’m fire dressed up like fire
I’m a fire with ashes in my pockets
But tonight I will go to sleep naked
And drop off all the unnecessary flames like old feathers
The color of ash
The colour of gold dust
And when I will wake up
What will be left of my dreams
The undestroyable part
The unbendable
The purest part
Will keep burning.
