Do you know who you are?

It’s common knowledge that there are three versions of yourself and mostly anything in this universe, but let’s focus on yourself. The first version is the one you create. What you think about yourself! The second version is the one others create. It can have infinite variations of it and if you could sum all these informations into a singular version that would be it. What others think about you! The third version as you can imagine is what you really are! That one is not a sum of first and second versions  therefore will never be know either by you or others. So what should you do? Follow your guts? Listen to others? Do both things? Surely that depends on what are you looking for. Do you want to be understood by others? Do you want to print your mark? Do you want to find your soul? Looks like we can see now the difference between these three versions. The one you create will lead you to a strong journey inside of your self but will not help others to interact with it. The one others create belongs to them and you have no control over it. It can be risky to use it as the stronger voice on your judgement. But the important thing is that seems like the first is the one with the big ego. The second with the small ego. Finally the third is the one with no ego at all. One would need to have no ego to understand the truth about one’s self. That sounds like nirvana. That’s what monks try to achieve by meditating their whole lives. What’s the importance of this? None if questions don’t crowd your mind all the time. To lower your ego is the only way to quiet your mind and sometimes that can be lifesaving. In other hand it’s impossible to accomplish big things by lowering your ego. If Van Gogh didn’t have a big ego and listened to other more we would not have his paintings. Only a happier Van Gogh that would live doing things regular people do. By the way regular people usually tends to listen a lot to others and are very preoccupied in sculpting them selves in a way it fits our society better. So who’s right? Are you what you think of yourself, are you what others think? One thing for sure: If you know who you really are you are not from this world for sure.

The real muse…

I was just watching the new film from Copolla “Tetro”. I’m not sure i loved the story but i’m really sure i loved to see the work of this great master. It’s all there. Amazing how artists, and in this case i consider Coppola’s work as an “auteur” in this film and some others to be art, can leave so many stylistic and personal traces. There’s one thing all artists are for sure: Egocentric. Really not judging here. The thing is: to create you GOTTA take a trip and that is an ego trip. If you use your ears you listen. If you use your eyes you see. If you use your ego you create. As simple as that. Van Gogh didn’t care for money and that’s not because he was an altruist. His ego didn’t leave space to think about money and that’s a big characteristic of the artist. that could sound as a bad thing but maybe it was just bad for him and his family. For the generations after him that was a blessing. As they say you can make an omelet without breaking some eggs. You can’t go as far without being obsessive. Without being always certain you are right even when everyone thinks you are wrong. That demands a very big ego. That demands letting go of everything else and just following your “muse”. Well… the muse is the biggest synonymous for ego. To follow the muse is to follow the ego and to take a trip no matter that will harm yourself  you family and other. The only thing that matters is the art, the muse and the ego. So i can remember Fellini. A real artist with a really marked presence in everything he ever did. What does he do? He talks about him. His life and his vision about the world. All his for sure. The way he does it is like a fingerprint and that’s art. Anyone that follows this path will create art. But i didn’t say it will be good or bad art. That’s a hole different story.

The mad man and the umbrella

When i was recording the interviews for my documentary on music there was this teacher from modern music who used a great metaphor to describe the work of the artist.” There is chaos and there is our society. The society constructed during it’s history a big umbrella separating us from chaos. Institutions like church and governments and family and moral codes and fashion and culture. Those are all parts of the umbrella that separate us from chaos. From time to time a mad man show up with a knive and opens up a hole in this umbrella. When he does that society gets exposed to some of this chaos. Soon the institutions go and fix this hole closing this window again. This exposure though hits the society and we have waves created by the original chaos. Each wave is broader and less intense because is already done by these institutions. If for and example Beethoven was this mad man and his music was the glimpse of the chaos he witnessed the movement it created was the romanticism. The composers that embraced romanticism where the first waves created and the more intense ones until all society assimilated this glimpse in a more confortable way. The institutions worked to keep up with beethoven’s innovations until they become tradition as they are today and like that they did it with all the holes all the mad men opened in this umbrella that separates us from chaos.”
I loved this metaphor and to me it really describes art in our society. You always have the ultimate visionary like Van Gogh. Sometimes these are recognized only centuries later on when the dust is already gone and history is more understood. Sometimes they are never recognized and only the next waves are understood. Maybe there was a mad man that opened a hole and what this man saw was passed on to another man that showed to Van Gogh so he would be the third wave in this movement. Nobody can know this for sure but once one of these glimpses are spotted it’s easier to find the sequence that followed it even if was not a first glimpse. So the real question that can not be answered is: Who was the actual mad man? Did we ever knew him? Did the known artists were so original in their work or were they following someone’s steps?And by that i mean someone that could also not been an artist at all. Maybe a scientist or a politician. Maybe an important man or maybe a bum. Just a mad man with a knive that opened a hole in the umbrella showing us the chaos.