"There is no Try"

When things turn black, there is always the chance to start over. I was very silly in my youth to be so afraid of doing things that well, I thought would make me happy. Know it's good to know that I could've just take them all by opening my hand. Anything. We empower ourselves to a new marketing of emotion, in a mental world crisis and things could get worse, but just maybe, they won't. "Try Not. Do or do not"

Miami International Airport. Picture by JHS.

Are we ready to get confused with politics?

Must of us hate politics, mostly when it's interrupting our favorite television shows? We can see people living and fighting with politics anywhere you point your finger at. What makes politicians so easy to hate and us to lazy to even know something about it?

"Almost Utopia" editorial

For over a year, I have traveled looking for characters and topics to inspire from to write my first novel. I have then studied and read about human behavior in society. Then finally in the back of my head I was able to filed out some of those encounters with the subject, and found groups formed by the interaction among individuals. This interaction leads us to decide whether to have a simple life, a mediocre life or just whatever version we get to have.

At the conclusion of my journey I have discovered a complexity but yet flexible patterns that makes the world just spin around. Work the way it does. From the weather influencing the spirit of the people, to religious wars, the world goes unstoppable. We go to work, we get a girlfriend or maybe cancer, and then we buy a house, the cat dies and the world moves on.

Laszlo Barabasi called it links. Links that unites us and connects us. Wherever we are.

And after all this time I have come to the conclusion that this phenomena is so complex that the mind of an average character of the worlds stage will never even dream of reaching. It would be like a mouse reaching the peanut treat on the head of the elephant. Just a few will actually be able to reach it.

The more I get informed about the world, the lonelier we get.

After a few years of waking on earth is funny to say that I still feel like an alien in my hometown. Discovering my homeland with a "ham satellite" in a far away land. We must see each other on a mirror and most of all unite on a universal code, perhaps in a new definition of “almost utopia”

But yet the poor signal is interrupted. How can we know that what we see is true? We cannot change the world. How could we, if we have to live attached to it? How could we take the right decision, if our mirror, is the television, controlled by others, destined for us to chew and easy digest?

"Silly"

I woke up today and everything is so screwed up. Thinking about many things at once, plus the stupid hand over from last night. No matter how many friends, or clothes or things you can accumulate, life with it bitchy mood come to kick you in the balls.

Such is life; we cancel plans and sail into the void. The black hole that surrounds us sometimes and does not let us see straight. It interrupts us

I will have to stay in Italy, and who knows when I’ll be able to start with the list. I thought I was going to be able to manage at least a few for the next months, but the words are not coming out of my mouth to reality as easy. It happens. It doesn’t happen that easy.

I will stay in Italy longer than expected.

"Homeland/Wonderland"

Photo by Kunstlerin N.V 09

Simple moments make a good day, or a shitty say. I used to receive mailed songs from my mates back home, and I usually couldn’t download them at work. Everything was controlled. They count the minutes and the seconds on us. It was a terrible measure of the days. Listening to complains from people is a job, then I come here and I stoped listening to the music, I listen to the people in the street, complaining but it’s another language, it’s like theatre.

I step on a banana peel for the first time in my life in Milan? Like in the cartoons. I participated in a wedding bouquet thing in Piazza San Marco for the first time as well. Hey, my friends are smart and they don’t get married. What can I say? I come from a tropical banana exporter and it never happened to me. What can I say? I love those pieces that match somehow to make it a bit more interesting. Irony, man! I could make love to it and then dump the whore back home.

I can’t blame it. I put my finger in the fact that we can make of home a wonderland. Advertureland listening to music while driving home after listening to everybody’s needs. After doing exactly what the world expects from us. Let’s be naked in front of the mirror and say, “ that’s me, fat ass and all” Would you make love to yourself? I once heard that is the only way of self-improvement. If you would not be able to make to yourself, you are pretty screwed. If that is the case I can just give you a little tip. Somebody will do it for you if you give him or her the chance.

Simple, we can kill the routine or make it more easy. Let's see what pieces of our life make it great and sinful.

"Traveling Without Moving"

Photo by Kunstlerin N.V 09

http://warp.net/records/nice-nice/player/video/everything-falling-apart

I found this and it just fits. Everything is falling apart. I see some sun for the first time in two weeks. I was about to forget what it was to actually have the sun around.

Where are you now? I wanna know. What are you doing? Are you sitting in your desk “Working”? Are you drinking coffee at overpriced Starbucks? Are you checking your email for the 11th time today? What are you listening to? Are you watching to crazy people saying the most random, selfish, senseless things? Do you think about how it would be to get away? “Travelling without moving”. Can we lose control for a bit and rest our senses into feeling it all? Can we actually force the routine to suicide? I know there is a way. There must be. Everything is connected, we can surely find an answer to it.

I use music to travel. Is easy, cheap, it rushes hard and slow. It makes your guts move inside. Bouncing. Stripping out the layers of the mind and the body. Surely there is a link to everything. Like Borges said "Everything touches, everything".

Have you ever imagined how many people are listening to the same exact song somewhere else? Under different circumstances, weather, city? Have you wondered how some people imagined things like “ It’s a cruel cruel world, to face on your own” or “We do out time like pennies in a jar, what are we saving for?”

There are around 4 million people travelling with thoughts, quests and curiosity every day. Many people travel alone, others just can’t stand it. I have always admired those people who travel alone. I wonder what it is to arrive to a completely unknown place and be a stranger. We travel or we wish we could travel. I haven’t travelled in a while, not at least since a long coast trip in California. I’ve never been happier. Where do we imagine ourselves? What do you have in your mouth, how does it taste? (Yeah, that sounded a bit bad, take it as it is).

We just need to sit down and be brave and face the music of whatever it is we want. Settle down is a bargain, moving it’s hectic. Loving is painful, important decisions are never easy and bla bla bla. Everything cuts like butter while listening Hot Chip’s “Hand Me Down Your Love”.

What does it take to go where the mind is?

"The List"

Photo by J.HoLden.S.

I just had an idea. Grabbing my old sketchbooks, I found a very interesting thing to do. I found a list; a precious list of things I want to do for the next two years. Let’s see if I can make it happen. I will be giving up stories about everything I will do, starting today. I have no money, some of these things are crazy but others are just completely easy to do. I guess such us life. Stick around if you want to see me driving this spaceship.

1. Ride a hot air balloon.
2. Swim with calm sharks.
3. Witness a sunset in the desert.
4. Learn how to ride a motorcycle.
5. Take a Helicopter ride around the city.
6. Stay up all night in an extreme party in New York.
7. Meet and love an important character of Modern Times.
8. Jump in a clear blue reef.
9. Ride a Black Cadillac in Vegas.
10. Ride on a camel, an elephant and an ostrich.
11. Make my own wine bottle.
12. Be part on a theatre or movie production
13. Go to “The Beach” in Thailand and to Butterfly reef.
14. Help Animals in risk of Extinction.
15. Watch an Aurora borealis or an Iceberg.
16. Swim in Lake Michigan
17. Kiss a stranger in Rio de Janeiro.
18. Dance in a fountain under the Moon, like Silvia on the Fellini Movie.
19. Talk to a Real Geisha.
20. Watch a “Cirque du Soleil” show.
21. Go to the Opera to see Swan Lake.
22. Hear the voice of God in India.
23. Touch a Pyramid.
24. Be head over heals in Machu Pichu.
25. Buy a sacred good luck item in Cairo.
26. Go to a salted dessert.
27. Watch the Cherry blossoms fall in a real Japanese garden.
28. Meet a real guru or spiritual guide and be blessed.
29. Hang out with rock stars for one night.
30. Run in a Marathon.
31. Learn how to surf.
32. Watch the Blue Whales sing.
33. See a tiger in the snow.
34. Make friends with an important Criminal
35. Inspire a person to go on with living.
36. Win a poker tourney in Vegas
37. Do snowboarding.
38. Ride on a real submarine.
39. Have breakfast at Tiffanies.
40. Make street art in Barcelona.
41. Dance to tribal tunes. Learn a song in Japanese.
42. Create an art piece that will be on an important museum of the world.
43. Watch a grizzly bear while fishing salmons up north.
44. Participate on a “Lucha libre” match.
45. Ride a Gondola in Venice.
46. Make love on a train.
47. Learn to cook a dish from every country and city I visit.
48. Skate on a frozen Lake or get inside of an igloo.
49. Ride a canoe in Hawaii or Bali.
50. Sing Karaoke for Total Strangers.
51. Visit my friends in Israel and see.
52. Publish my first Novel.

This is a Kunstlerin life. Simple. In the meantime I will keep on writing my brains out, like a bullet. I made some editing of course. Mostly becuase the real list I made it on the train like 2 months ago.