Ideas and how to retain them

Where do I get my inspirations from? Easy. I get inspired by a lot of things. I see or read or hear something, and I get an idea. The problem is how to retain it. I might go to an art gallery and see a painting that inspires me. The inspiration I get very often has little to do with the original work. I don’t want to copy a certain painting, I want to retain and work and pass on the inspiration that came to me by looking at that painting. So how do I do that? Taking a picture of that painting doesn’t seem to work. When I look at it later, it doesn’t talk to me in the same way. The other solution is key words, but on their own they also lose strength. I tried different apps, like Evernote, OneNote, google keep. They are definitely useful but what I would need is an app that helps me identify and retain my mental process, that goes from the trigger, i.e. the painting or book or conversation, to the excitement that precedes the idea, to the idea itself. I somewhat think that it would work in columns or panels. Brief description or picture of the work; raw impressions, ways of translating it into my creative world. While I wait for somebody to come up with this ideas app, I might just stick to a notebook, and then read it aloud into google docs and organise it later .

Why do I find it more useful in retaining ideas than writing on Evernote on my phone? Two reasons: I can’t type as fast as I think, but also in my notes I doodle and also my writing changes with my emotions and so the written note seems to retain more of my mood at the time of writing.

As I said, I get inspired by a lot of things, so I’m never short of ideas, but still, a lot of thoughts get lost and perhaps some of them are good thoughts.

Originally posted on medium

Inertia and other revelations

What does 'LIES' mean? Was it written by a disgruntled passenger 

with no room for his suitcase? Is it the name of a kid with an unfaithful parent?

Was it a comment to a conversation?

While I was on the train today, I noticed this intriguing graffito. A battle immediately ensued in my head between Adventure and Inertia. Inertia suggesting that I could photograph it another day (?), or, better still, never. But because today was a day filled with revelations, Adventure prevailed. Inertia was talking with a voice very similar to Depression, 'Why should I bother taking this picture? What's the point? Is it consistent with my unity, is it in line with my consistency as an artist, as a poet, as a brand, as a friend, as me? Is it revealing, unveiling, understandable, useful, progressive?' One of today's revelations is that Inertia is the force that stops you from overcoming imaginary obstacles. The obstacles can be summarised as the difference between who we are striving to be and who we are. In most cases we are striving for acceptance, hence we are striving for whatever image of adulthood we've had in our head since the age of four. We look up to people we are incapable of emulating, as we see them as real adults, while we see ourselves as promising kids. As we keep on failing to become like the adults we admire, we hope at least in their benevolence, in their acknowledgement that eventually we'll get there too. Of course, when the kid in question is older than the accomplished adult he/she wants to impress, or when the admired adult is already dead and cannot validate you anymore, Inertia steps in to save the unity or integrity of the dream. It protects the dream from shattering into a million imperfect, immature, pieces. The faulty logic is that, in our solipsistic nature, we project ourselves into others, and look back at ourselves with disdain for having failed to reach all those goals that are, ultimately, only known or important to us. Until today, I thought that my goal was to please my dad and Pablo Picasso, and I tried so hard to speak a language and follow a path that were not natural or even possible for me. It's a lie, I didn't try hard at all, I just listened more to Inertia than to Adventure, because, in order to impress my dead heroes I thought I had to be deliberate, know my destination before embarking on the journey. Who I really am, though, is a vagabond, led by an insatiable curiosity and a relentless douleur de vivre. Wherever my mind takes me, there is where I need to go, no matter how winding the path, how many real and imaginary obstacles, how uncertain or far away my destination. When I see it at the horizon, I am sure I will recognise it.

Identity, belonging & cheap hotels

I was a film extra for fifteen years and did a lot of costume drama, period and sci-fi. What was fascinating was how the costumes - and to a lesser degree the settings - changed our personality. We identified with the clothes, we became our characters. To the point, even, that all the guards, all the uniformed characters, would sit together at the same table for lunch. We all have our rituals, and these rituals give some roots and solidity to our sense of identity. We make tea or coffee in a certain way, drink it from our favourite cup. We have our breakfast in a certain way, in a certain place in the house, we even dress in a certain order. And, obviously, we also surround ourselves with things that are of our choice, that are familiar and make us know, without a doubt, that we are who we are, and are where we are at. But when we stay in a hotel room, or are guests in someone's house, all of that goes out the window. I am choosing here to talk about cheap or average accommodations and not luxury hotels, because I am interested in the quirks and in how we adapt or react. For instance, last week I was in a hotel room. It wasn't too bad, quite decent and clean. But the sheets felt damp. Why? Were they really damp? I touched the walls and they were dry. And it was cold. I am always cold, but at home I have all my blankets and central heating. Here, I found a heater and after a mighty struggle I managed to turn it on. Then I proceeded to make myself a cup of tea. I had brought my own tea, just in case. The kettle didn't fit under the tap, so I filled it with tiny glasses of water, one at a time. The cups were tiny too. I felt really clumsy in my attempts to create a routine that fitted all this stuff that wasn't mine with my personality. But my personality was already changing. The irrational part of me was trying to figure out, "Who am I? How did I end up in a room with damp sheets, silver wallpaper, and very small cups? Am I this room? Is this room a result of me? And what sad me would end up living here?" As a foreigner in a foreign land for nearly 30 years, I have always been very interested in the feeling of belonging. What makes you feel that you belong? Familiarity? Purpose? Acceptance? In that hotel room, I started feeling that belonging is when your rituals feel right. I was learning my environment already, adapting to it, and transforming it, so that my rituals felt more real and familiar. I quickly adapted to the kettle and the small cups. I put my ipod with guitar jazz radio in an empty drawer to amplify it, and wrote. Writing always feels comfortable, and profoundly me. "This hotel room," I started to think, "is not my story, but it will become my history, part of my past, yet it's not an interaction on equal grounds. My input, the music, the tea, cannot quite overcome the old blue carpet, the damp sheets, the small cups." I wondered if in order to feel that we belong we need to be on equal grounds in the giving and taking. Because my irrational me could not make sense of how I ended up there, I lost part of my history, and started fresh, like an explorer. I tried to find more ways to personalise my space, I bought a vintage dolly and a small red penguin that I put on her lap, almost like a Mexican apparition, and then started making some very rough collages (I had no scissors) of the stuff I had come across during the day, gluing everything on paper shopping bags. I would then hang the handle on the bathroom door or the closet's. Soon, a bizarre sense of belonging formed, not the me who is writing in my flat now, but another me, with less history, who had blended into an affinity with the place, and struck a decent compromise between mild squalor and creativity. Perhaps creativity is the number one ingredient that makes you belong.

High expectations

Being free with Blendypens

My art may look quite diverse, but it all stems from two desires - of living the creative and carefree childhood I never quite had and, on the other hand, the desire that I had so strong as a child, of being skilled at reproducing images that I saw in my head or on art supply boxes. I often get children's art supplies and see how far they can extend into the adult world of expression. I was amused when I read negative reviews of the Blendypens from unhappy mothers who said that their child could not reproduce the pictures on the package. Of course not, those pictures are done by very capable illustrators, not by children. But my frustration as a child turned out to be one of the strongest incentives to my creativity. I love my new invented childhood. You may not be able to change your past, but you can always create images and settings and feelings and stories in your head where you can be any age, any place, doing what you like best.