Wednesday 13 July 2011

Where Is My Mind



I have been away.
And I don't mean away from town, or the country. Well, of course I had been pretty busy in the last two months, with the end of the MA Curating, the last co-curated show, the last bits, the last moment of blissful ignorance of the aftermath, when you have to ask yourself: "And now what?"

My mind has been kidnapped by old dreams that I thought were forgotten.
Well, more than forgotten, I would say archived. Transformed. Grown into grown-up dreams. But no.
In your head, you always have this idea of "growing up".
What it really means, still is a mystery to me. A friend who lately passed away once advised me not to wallow in fantasy, but keep my feet on the ground. This was because, if you'd known me a good fifteen years ago, you could tell my head was up in the clouds. Way up.
They called it the Peter Pan Syndrome.
They called me the eternal child and casted me aside, sometimes.
Because a child can't really think straight: he - or she - is all instincts. It's all black or all white, everything is beautiful or the whole thing is ugly.
A child loves or hates completely; sees the world, the beauty in it, with different eyes.
I have never understood why people force you to forget that kind of beauty by advising you to keep it real.

Well, after a sort of daydreaming I am not entirely sure I have awoken from, I think I know.
Dreams can seduce you and take you away. And when you're there, it can happen that you don't want to come back. It can happen that, by pursuing that beauty, you touch the bottom of this longing, and forget what is really around you.
Your dreams can consume you, especially if you don't dream of cars, homes or the perfect family.
These things are feasible, with a little luck.
Other dreams are different. Coming back to the real world, I would call them ideas.
Like when you say, for example, 'I want to be a pop star'. You know it's not going to happen. Well, someone succeeds of course, but only a few. And then it is not what it seemed.
So, you decide on principle that you will never become a pop star, but that idea is always there, teasing you. A dismissed dream.
All you can do is dancing in front of the mirror when you're home alone. Right?

Now, this is not my case (although I did want to become a pop star at some point. Ouch), but if there was something that I ever wanted to do, is writing. Although I have never been constant at it.
It is not like the fire of art, making people filling up entire painting books, canvases, or walls to quench their thirst. I write when I feel like it, otherwise I don't.
And now I have discovered English, this amazing language. A whole world enclosed in just one sentence. An unexplored potential laying before me, despite the limits of not being a native.
There are stories in my head, embryonic characters shouting at me to let them come to life.
So forceful they are, I am almost afraid they are going to destroy me. Will they make me loose my way, my other purposes?
Shall I answer their call, or let them float in the limbo for another good fifteen years, before I find the courage to, at least, try?

Courage. That's all it takes. Courage of one's ideas.
Why don't you listen to your dreams?
I thought I had plenty of courage, but I was wrong.

My friend, I think your advice of keeping the feet on the ground was good...but you, yourself, didn't buy it.

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