Poetic Musings Over a Friend’s Self-Portraits
There Are Many Ways to Search for Yourself: A Lens Is a Great Looking-Glass.
*** Edit: a few days after publishing the original article, I realized I had written ~ 4 pages + images. I cut it in half and I’m writing [22/04/2022 now] a second article. This will become a series. Tks! [TK]
For a while, I had a very good friend.
I never met her, because my country is vast and she lives far away.
There was Covid as well, and we were all stuck. Grounded.
Birds with wild imaginations and broken wings.
Her name is, was, will be Tita.
We kept each other alive and relatively sane while the pandemics pounded death upon death upon us all.
While our dreadful right-wing psycho-lunatic denialist religious fundamentalist soulless president let people die, lacking oxygen lacking vaccines lacking basic care by lack of planning from a government lacking humanity, we talked.
We talked a lot, sometimes daily. While talking, days could have some meaning.
For an hour or two, the Universe opened up in its infinite probabilities. In its garden of forking paths [**], some paths looked good and comforting. For Tita spoke with the voice of Muses. I could feel the flow of life as if I had been Ikkyu, Zen-enlightened, loving, drunk, clear-minded.
She is, was, will be one of the most impressive self-portraitists I have met in my journey. One of the most expressive photographers. A one-of-a-kind creative soul.
But she was very broken way before I met her. Physically, because of a weird and destructive accident. Psychologically, for many reasons.
But even in this unfair Universe most of us have a choice left: make our pain apparent to others in way we can relate, or suffer quietly in a corner.
There are many possible definitions of art; communicating your soul to others surely is one of them.
She is the person who made me think even harder about my beliefs in any belief system. In Humanity. In our capacity to understand, help, and hope.
As we got to know each other, I saw more of her work — her pictures kept coming out of her, into this space we share, and I was bewildered.
One of the peculiar things about her is that, while most of her images transmit desperation, pain, isolation, inner views from a broken self, in others she impersonates the sexiest version of an improbable Marilyn Monroe.
And the funny crazy little videos she posted on her Instagram are yet some sort of third persona.
I always wanted to meet Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Manson, David Bowie and Annie Lennox, with bits of Calvin (the cartoon) and touches of Antonin Artaud. I never thought I’d meet them all in one person.
You want to talk about creating soulful images in your bedroom with a phone?
Don’t talk to me, I’m a newbie playing with complex toys in this soul-capture path. Talk to Tita — she doesn’t care much about the toys, but only as a career writer & poet can I approach her level of intensity while creating images.
In closing, I’d like to let one of Ikkyu’s poems speak for me:
Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning — already gone —
thus should one regard one’s self. [*]
Thanks for reading, and if you appreciate my honest attempt of creating my own metaphysical BS, instead of copying others, I’ll be honored if you decide follow me. 😛
[*] Ikkyu Sojun was a 15th-century Japanese monk, Abbott, poet, drunkard, rebel, and lover. For years I’ve been reading most of what I could buy of his translated poems in English. If you like poetry and, weirdly enough, specially if you like Bukowski, do read Ikkyu. I’ll leave you an EXTERNAL link about him (no affiliation etc).
[**] The garden of forking paths, El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, is a short story by world famous Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. You can find a printed copy on Book Depository. If you like Borges, this is an expensive way to buy just one short story - his “Complete Works” offer a better option. In case you don’t know him at all, do your search and find a PDF on-line to get acquainted.
This is an EXTERNAL link to The Book Depository. I’m not affiliated to anything.
[***] Hieronimus Bosch, and you can DuckDuckGo it. The title is a later fabrication, though. Please please please DON’T read any explanations about his triptych: it’s all in his painting.
