Sliding the pen on a paper, I realize how unfocused I am. Fingers shake attached to my unstable wrist and my brain struggle to understand what was once so clear. On the table, lays the photograph of the model’s face structure which seems to distort under my trembling eyelid. My mind wonders about the lack of freedom my parents went through during the military dictatorship.
Frustrated, I throw the pen aside, pick up the phone and pay my dues to capitalism, heavily pressing heart buttons on apps, hoping these political videos make it outside my bubble. Meanwhile, WhatsApp burns with screams and tasks from a guy that I didn’t even know until two days ago, but now he seems like our last democratic hope. A breath of fresh algorithmic air in a gigantic pile of the same cocky-empty narratives. How did we let it come to this?
I saw a video of Lula as Lady Gaga singing to “Judas” during the Mayhem Tour. Finally a relevant use for AI.
My eyes return to the almost empty sketchbook page and twitch once again to the sight of poor proportions: “when did I unlearn how to draw?”. Too stressed to keep trying, I grab the brush, paint the empty spaces in black Ecoline 700 and surrender to my obsession of just drawing lines, one after another, until the whole page is covered. Repetitive movements and sense of order calms me down, even if my self-saboteur never lets me forget that I do this as an excuse, because I’m not good enough to be a real artist.
In the end, what’s a good drawing anyway? I’ve spent so many years studying anatomy to try to reach the “perfect” image, when actually it just brings me more stress than pleasure. Is art supposed to be a struggle? I feel that when you have no other parameter, you stick to what you know. This might be the big mistake of our times: endurecimento. If it wasn’t so hard to translate this word, the meaning would be something like “toughening”, but it just doesn’t sound the same to me.
Impressive how the sound of words impacts the narrative differently. Or is it just the power of a mother-thong and the culture that raises us? Do same words have different meanings depending on how they sound? If we were to test people from different cultures, what would they feel when hearing the word “endurecimento”?
Na ja, typing sometimes is easier than drawing and I hate myself for that. Years of denying the digital just to end up using it as often as I drink water (sometimes even more, I’m afraid).
Today I woke up wishing again for the Comet to arrive soon. Maybe when we become stardust, we will learn how to feel again.
