I came decided to write you a short but
concise email. And I faced the curious sintony of the importance of music in
our letters…how beautiful. Sometimes I also listen what you were listening when
I want to think, or look serious. I carry a rare feeling and by reading our
correspondence I also notice what is to be in a residency and work with
people…I’m dislocated so there are new things, that even in my country don’t
stop surprising me: words, habits, foods (today I tried black pork’s cheeks,
excellent). There are new people to meet always, although you want to establish
a special relation as they are your work mates, but above that, they are people
from the place, that make the place, and that can also result in being friends.
And you still have a goal, in my case my project as a very defined goal from
the beginning (unlike yours). And I’m far from everyone, communicating by skype
and by phone. (I write at the same time to Miguel that says he would have loved
to come and film my painting today).
I’m both curious and with tourist distance
at the same time. Crazy focused on work. So it is hard to process in useful
time something concrete to day…besides memories and disperse connections with
myself or fantasy…I don’t have time to read or quote…or even check the
references you sent earlier…maybe tomorrow, It is very cold and the working
conditions are not the best… in my room the books are getting waved by
humidity…I hope the heater will make them straight again…It rained all day with
a few moments of pause. I started painting at the beginning of afternoon in one
of those pauses but it soon started to rain again. Strongly. I couldn’t even
take more pictures. Suddenly I was on top of a garbage bin with the guys that
clean the streets, with three man around, one holding the garbage bin, another
passing me the paint bucket and the third one watching (besides the typical
Portuguese “problem solvers” improvising the lack of the ladder, not even the
rainy day was missing…) this scene is at the level of a real anecdote that
happened a few years ago in São Cristóvão when it snowed in Alentejo (South of
Portugal):
A very irritated man came and asked the
mayor: “how is it possible that the roads are possible and the city hall
doesn’t have a truck to clean the snow?”
Yes, painting in November with rain is at
the same level of probability than snow blocking the roads in Alentejo or even
less…But we do what we got to do for the façade to be ready for the TV. In this
case I hope to have managed to make the circumstances, if rain hasn’t washed
the paintings during the night…I thought that the only thing I know that holds
with humidity is the glue to stick the denture to the gum…I tried once in the
tongue just for fun and didn’t want to believe (detail).
Thanks for the correction with Napoleon, I
don’t know which one is true or if he would have said both. I keep the good
mood that we can change the return in our favor. I will then tell you for which
side did luck fall and in which quote did the project end.
And small notes that keep my attention and that later on will be in my
head for a while. I keep collecting events. ..I don’t know if you ever saw my
diary of events in Odivelas, where there was a bath on the road, it was for
some geese that a man was raising in the garage. Or the “saint of shit”, an
image of Virgin Mary above some concrete sheckles, illuminated at night and
painted with color and drawings… decorated…well, and that was on a pedestal
next to the church under construction. Things that could perfectly marry with
this marble computer that decorates the grave in the cemetery that I see from
the window of my room. And that always wakes my up with a smile of black
humor…I can’t avoid although I already know that is the grave of a kid that was
always playing on his pc and his parents asked to make this sculpture in his
memory…(memory and monuments…I will comment on your email later on)
The same kind of stuff is the stories of
the people from the village. Today the mayor told me that he was a hip hop
dancer during ten years and that he even travelled as a dancer… and dance again
in our letters…by the way I have to send you a picture that they took while I
was painting, where my feat are making points, I couldn’t believe…so ridiculous
and so mine…
I’d like to send you pictures of this part and ask you (if it’s ok with
you) to print them in the form of a postcard and send them here. It would be a
way of bringing you here as well. Would that be possible? It wouldn’t be many,
but I’d like to see the evolution of my work connected to postcards from you
printed in the wall of my bedroom…
I’m very tired and I have to sleep. Today
it was the radio interview where at the end of everything I said the journalist
asked the mayor “Mr. President please explain as if I were a child…”. I hope
there won’t be problems with what I said. I told the purpose of my proposal, I
said it was a proposal of freedom, a moment of affirmation that I thought to be
important for the locals while Portuguese people and recalling José Gil that
says we are afraid of existing… to place on the walls whatever one wants and
whatever one wants to propose for the community more than being stocked in
memories (I said if we would keep it within the territory of memory I would be
sad) it’s an act of affirmation.
See what comes out of that. They placed the
posters for the opening without sending the flyers, so no one knew very well
what is going to be done and one lady though I was going to paint their façades
without permission, during the night, that I would paint tiny flowers and
another one that I would paint Santa Claus on the windows… God…they are very
far from seeing themselves doing whatever…surprise, surprise…
It’s cold and my books are wrinkling… No,
and on top of that one of them is not mine, it’s borrowed from Pedro…
Thousand kisses
V
Tomorrow I comment on your email
