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“I really appreciate this idea: not only I have a lot of questions to ask you, I also love birds.
Due to the recent Paul Auster’s death, a Portuguese newspaper published a really interesting report. On it, I read about a peculiar tradition Auster had: every time he felt stuck on his writing, he started to dance. According to his words, ‘through music, movement always helps me to bring new words to my mind’.
Since you are a musician interested in other arts, I would like to know what are your biggest influences and how it motivates you to create?? Connected to it, what are your latest discoveries and how do you know / feel when something new excites you??”
Dear Pedro,
What a beautiful surprise to read you here. It is always a joy to receive your letters -at the shows and through socials- but it makes me so happy to see you understood this idea immediately. Now your letters have a proper home.
I love cinema and I love books. I also love painting, land art, photography, but reading and watching movies are things I do every single day. I dedicate a lot of my time to them, so they naturally constitute a bigger chunk of who I am. Now, I don't think I can -or have the capability- to intellectualize or pin down and write exactly what it is about them that awakens something in me, that inspires me to make things or what keeps me coming back to them. I think the best I could do is write a list of the first things that come to mind now, while writing this: peace, challenge, depth, awe, questioning, freedom, freeing myself from myself, getting out of my own body and mind, human emotions, ideas.
Now how this transforms into motivation -I dont really know-, but my guess today will be that in the presence of greatness one feels awe and something that resembles hope and that motivates.
To answer your second question; Instinct. My stomach, my heart, my eyes when they tear up, the lack of thoughts in my mind, that is how I know when something excites me. It is impossible to put it into words, I just know. It's an undeniable certainty. Yet sometimes I feel doubt or contradictory feelings/thoughts/emotions or reason stepping in to argue against or in favor, in those cases I refrain from landing at a decision and take a step back to let time decide for me.
Ela.