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Despertás un día… y seguís… aquí…

Vos te imaginaste un día una historia. La historia, o más bien su incepción, surgió de repente. Y vos la viste pasar. Volar.

Se encendió una conexión neuronal nueva. Y en esa conexión algo extraño sucedió. Una imagen que sólo en tu cabeza existió se planteó como realidad alternativa. Como posibilidad.

De ahí se tiró una línea argumental que funcionó de manera autónoma con un único espectador: vos.

Y desde ahí viste desvelarse una historia extraordinaria que lo arreglaba todo en su sitio. Aquello que habías querido decir en el contexto de la cosa que más te ha ocupado el tiempo mental. El sentido de tu ser. La cuestión con la que querés cambiar el mundo. De pronto está ahí, desanudando el porvenir. Didacticamente.

De pronto te parás y despertás. Ya no estás en el campo en el que la idea trabaja autonomamente. El resto de tus funciones vitales encendieron toda la maquinaria de la vigilia y los trabadores de la fábrica volvieron a sus puestos, todavía adormilados, pero generando un ruido ensordecedor para aquella brillante idea onírica que lo resolvía todo.

Si no corrés a apuntarlo en algún sitio, la clarividencia se esfuma. Y el aire se lleva consigo la ilusión. Al rato ni te acordás. Ni te preocupa. Otra cosa ocupa tu cabeza. Y no hay nada más que hacer. Quizás volver a dormir. Y soñar. Seguir.

ALLS

Publicado el

To write

To be

To think

To wonder

I’ve taken a deep breath. And then started to let go. The air spilling out in yet another iteration. Ohhhhhh.

Still, I feel the need to be here. To be attentive. To feel the texture in my fingertips. To lay the next step willingly. And advance. Move. Glide.

I’m back to this.

I’m back to thee.

I’ve only long to keep rolling and growing.

Yet a deep feeling of wonder and dispear raise up once again.

As if it is here to stay.

As if we are all part of it.

And relentlessly accept to surrender.

Not today.

Not me.

I’ll keep breathing deep.

One. And once again.

And then I’ll overlap the same intention as yesteday. To cope, to drive, to shine, to build, to excel, to fly.

It’s a matter of staging this departure.

Not yet decided.

Not yet proclaimed.

While the entire story has been layed out.

My time is still to come.

As the best is yet to unroll.

Let it all be.

As we shall.

We’ll see.

We’ll be.

IT.

NEW

ALLS

Publicado el

Monday… once again

It’s a wheel turning. A day in, a day out. And what for? That’s the real issue. The focus on something worth be-ing. And that is achieved in a long process of questioning yourself. Questioning the learnings in your education, in the system, in society. And still, there is no right answer.

Things are tough. And we are dealing with stuff in our very own personal circumstances. The things within our heads. The voices that speak just to us. And the deamons.

But somehow, the struggle within is just a one man show. Or an insider’s job. There is something of us in every conspiracy. And the opposite two. The white angel and the red devil that inhabit our elbows. The duality starts right there. And you are stuck in the middle.

There is no clear alternative but to go on. And find the inspiration in every step along the way. Every step with the confidence that it is taking you places. Places you need to attend to. To show up. And deliver a good version of yourself. Maybe so by inspiring trust. Or building it. Or recovering it. It’s still a massive effort to get out and do your thing. Unless you’re in the zone. But that takes work. And time. And effort.

I’m close to that feeling. The zone is close by. And I’m ready to make that final sprint.

Or this initial drive.

Let’s start the week with this first step: Monday.

ALLS

Publicado el

Ain’t no script for you in Hollywood

Denial letters will keep you going

When am you going to write a script? You think all the script you’ll get for you are going to be as good as «Boys N the Hood»? Hollywood ain’t got no scripts for you. Unless you wanna do bullshit. You can write songs like you write, you can write a movie.

John Singleton to Ice Cube

Representation will not come to you just as mainstream drive. You need to present a case for yourself. You got to do that part of the job. It’s not going to happen just because you think it would be fair. You need to make it happen. You.

The singularity of everyone’s perspective is determined by the uniqueness of our experience, from our very own little point of view. We are the active actors of the development of our vision. And no one else is going to pave the way for you.

I know this shit from way back when. And I’ve never come out myself. I’ve held on to something else. A lame excuse that holds to my very own insecurities to avoid the stepping into the abyss drill. And I’m pretty sure this shit ain’t working, because no one has taken that step for me. As only I can.

As only I should.

Damn, it’s a hard shit.

I feel for the feeling of the underrepresented. Their voices haven’t been heard. They don’t get the chance mainstream stories are depicting. But who’s to change that. The scriptwriters write about what know. About what works. About their own little formulas. The establishement works like that because that how it got established. Something else is up for the up and coming voice within you. And if you are searching for recognition, maybe you should try searching within to find your truth, your soul, your arguments. And from there on, built the narrative that represent the stories you wish you had. The truth you would like to see on the screen. And then you have the type of shit that would look in the character you are playing, in the scenes that you are directing, or in the films you are producing.

Open the door. Assume the responsibilities. Act upon them. Write your own shit. Walk your own talk. Stop complaining to the world, and start showing up with your own voice.

Start with the first.

Start today.

ALLS

Publicado el

The lazily mood and moves of cats

Seldom slow pace is a trait

Nowadays everything needs to be super fast. Super quick. It’s as if we need to disregard the pace of time, the different levels of indiference, if really consider that it’s all relative, according to Eistein, even speed itself. So where are we trying to go at this pace?

Slow down, your are moving too fast, sings Paul Simon. It’s rebelious. But also a sign of trait. A kind of mood. A way of looking at life. Like cats do. Or sloths, to bring it home to a protected reference species from my own little tropical country: Costa Rica.

I used to yawn evertime I was about to compete in a track and field competition. Or right before the whistle sound in futbol game. It was a sign of concentration. It was part of an inconcious routine. This happens to cats, as described by the narrator in Woo Pak:

It moves with such confidence, he said, that the world seems to belong to it. It moves lazily, he said as we approached the ponds. It moves quietly. It is as if its whole body was nothing but an eye, an ear. Sometimes, he said, you will see it yawn, perhaps as a sign of nerves, perhaps only out of a massive indifference.

Gabriel Josipovici, Woo Pak

But it was a latter reference which really caught my attention towards cat’s attitude towards the fleeting pray. They take no pain or thought in wasting time after the prey has scaped a sudden unsuccesful attempt.

The mature cat, he said, does not waste any effort on what has not been caught or what, he realises, is not going to be caught. It is as if, the prey gone, even if he has been stalking it for a considerable length of time, he is able instantly to forget about it.

Gabriel Josipovici, Woo Pak

This is a superpower. It’s also what builds up resilience in competitive sports, and even more in the case of a 9, in futbolartistry, as it is scoring he’s supposed to be excelling at. When you’ve missed a chance, you’ll score the next one. You are sure of it. You must forget as soon as possible. Waste no time in anything realted to the past. But rather build upon the next opportunity to strike. And make it happen.

ALLS

Publicado el

People frightened of silence

Moo Pak ins and out

I’m walking along with this book like a walk in a park with a conversationalist. I’m steping in and out cause I need to come back to it, and then I feel the rush of comming here to write. It’s an exercise I’ve been forced to do by the fact that I cannot jot down a single scribble on the pages, as I am used to, because the book is borrowed. I need to give it back, eventually, as I got it. And it is in impecable conditions.

Nobody imposed this on me. I did. It’s always you who drive things around. In or out. It’s all in your head anyway. And you categorize the exercise. You make it happen so we understand the feeling of where this system is going. The personal system you own set of microcomponents, soul, body and shit… make up for. You are a complete social ecosystem. Yet, you still are just on your own, among the masses of an interconnected society.

So for quite some days I’ve had this urge to go back to Moo Pak to write about this. Silence. Solitude. Being with yourself. But as it turns out, the book has this beautiful constant voice that keeps talking and walking, and there is no stopping. It’s a single thread of a thought that connects logically with the next, and so on, and so forth. Sudenly, I don’t feel alone.

I do the same. This is how I write. No matter the intention. I just show up and start. And I’ve become obsessed with this. It’s time with myself. Alone. In silence. Just meeting the point of interconnectivity with my fingertips, my voice, unheard, within my head. Does anybody knows where this is going? No. And that’s no problem.

The problem is I leave map from Donosti to as a page marker. It’s a bit chunky but it does the job. It does less damage than leaving a pen, which I will avoid doing in this case, as I would like to spill ink, or some shit like that. You know that’s always a chance. Specially with a borrowed item. You are constantly on the verge of messing up. I know. We all know. It’s the pressure of staying consistant, and logical, and sane. We fool ourselves to stay on the game. And it’s there, a little bit on the edge, glancing at the scene.

In any case, what I was trying to say is that every time I go back to that point in the book where I last left my reading, I need to be able to go back to the point where Woo Pak left that last intense message I needed to come back to. To make a point. To deliver this other thought. Writers do that. I’ve heard them say it when they show up in that other state of mind you get yourself into when you are speaking for an audience. And then you are no longer a writer, but also an entertainer. Publicly addressing crowds, sometimes even larger than 9 people.

So when I go back to read I’m not in the page where the last message that signal my writing spirit erupted, so I need to go back to the last two or three pages, in order to get back in track with a stream of consciousness. So I do. And then I wonder what I was looking for. For everything turns out to be truth. Slightly more intense in places I hadn’t wondered upon. And I keep going back, maybe, to find what my past reading found that now is eluding me. And I wonder if I put then, on this second reading, the Donosti map a page earlier than the last time I read, because I’d be already signaling the place where I needed to come back to, to write, not to keep reading.

So you see, Woo Pak becomes like this pleasent conversion of time. I can move back and forth this stream, as time should allow to do, for any given timeline. But we are always so focused on going forward, we sometimes disregard the fact that time also has that negative ride: backwards.

And this also why I don’t feel alone anymore. I found a place in which I can excercise this going back. And I am enjoying myself. In this silent mode. Everytime Woo Pak kicks me out of that book, and into this one.

I keep reading back and back and get entangled with that direction of the book. And I’m already hooked. I’m back to the point that I last wrote about. About typing in a computer or typing in a typewriter. As an exercise to rewrite a single page. Over and over. Until you have cleaned it up. Something I never do. As write directly on the cloud. And almos never edit. Which is my own little purgatory.

It’s the sense of writing. The interconection with reading. How they are both there. The silences. Of the book. But also of this other time: the writing one. Even if it is closer to something you may relate to, like reading a post. Or like reading an actual book. Just to organize your time around something physical. Not just a screen. A real human interaction. I also write on paper. It nos just gives me pleasure, it also sits on a different table than writing on the computer or right into the page with an Olivetti. I used to own a typewritter. Not anymore.

The labour of scribes and editors and printers and proof-readers, [ ] Because of the work of these dedicated people, he says, we can now pick up the words of singular men and women and read them and listen to them and question them and live with them in greater intimacy than we do with our own spouses or partners. For a persona like myself, he says, with no country and no language to call his own, a life without Sophocles and Dante and Donne and Stevens would be intolerable.

Gabriel Jsopivici, Moo Pak

In fact I came into this writing exercise today to speak about the silence in books. The silence in writing. The intimacy of being alright with yourself. How writing and reading is part of it. How the author is aligned with Proust about the kind of special silence books have. And I’ve gone back too far back, to point out he craft of those who rescued the ancient voices of the past. Others burned books and libraries. Entire cultures. Washed away and mistreated by our current western ways, disregarding our infliction of damage in this bluring effect.

The most terrible thing that has happen to people today, he says, is that they have grown frightened ofsilence. Instead of seeking it as a friend and as a source of renewal they now try in every way they can to shut it out.

Gabriel Jsopivici, Moo Pak

This is has grown worst nowadays. Silence is not there anymore. Everyone’s got some source of continuos distraction in the mobile phone. It’s not even a complete song. It’s a message to keep you hooked to a short spasm of blabering. Something intense as pill, or distractful enough to catch your attention. We are switcing channels all the time. Endlessly. Which leaves no space for silence. And that’s not just a thing to miss, but also the source of being alright with yourself. No matter what. Books, silence, writting, it’s all part of the source of inmense power we have refill ourselves. We can bring it up as a routine to heal. Walks. To the mountain. Walks with a friend, with different kinds of friends, to align and talk, and to share the silences in between.

ALLS

Publicado el

About a thought

«Whenever we thing of thought, he says, we have before our eyes the image of Rodin’s Thinker, sitting immense and solitary with his great wise head in his great wise hand and gazing deep into himself.»

Moo Pak, Gabriel Josipovici

It’s certainly relevant. A thought. It’s as good as it gets. The inception of new idea. The consolidation of an inspiring new thought, there passing by for the first time in our human experience. And somehow magical.

But Moo Pak nails it, whether the narrator of the writer, or the universal connection between them, and us, plain readers of someone else’s thought. «It does not need Gilbert Ryle, he says, to show us that this image ins only and image of what those who have never had a thought in thier lives imagine the process of thinking to be».

That’s it. It’s not that at all. It’s not really there. Not the precise image, but rather what we hav socially simplify of what should be a very natural development for any human being.

«There is no such a thing as a pure thought, he says, there is only a sudden sharp intuition, a stirring of the blood, which you have to coax into shape, into words».

Precisely. It’s a scavenger hunt that you have not been prepared for. But you have trained yourself to capture them. To coax them into words. As a matter of life or death. The death of deepness in that thought, that if you are not able to recover, it will never be. It’s a dark road filled with intention and failure. «Most of the time you do not succeed. Either you cannot find the words or you find the words but they are not the right words for the feeling you have had».

But he idea is that sometimes when you are hit with one of those moments and actually nail it down to words, the feeling becomes complete: bigger than itself, as well as than yourself.

Such clarity to define the robust and simply nature of a thought. But from a precise persepctive. It’s not that the image of thought of the Thinker is vague, or that he goes out for a walk with a fried to thinkg. Or to come up with thoughts. He does it to talk. To talk and walk. And that has some rules on its own. A common set of rules that you share with the person you walk with, and his own context, problems, and circumstances. No script. No landmark. Just walk. Street. Life. What’s in your head. What’s become of you. What’s in the air?

And that links the two spaces in one. I mean Moo Pak. The idea of thought, as it emerges. But rather the relevance of walking with a friend, talking. That’s the deal. But not only. It’s when you go back to your desk, and you find yourself once again in the solitude of the alchemist producing the mixture of words to define the text that pursues the clarity, the brevity, the spotonness of the ideas, that now, become vividly connected with where we were before that walk. We need to be in places that await for us to link them with their sense of higher being. The final destination. The essence of a thought.

Walk, talk and desk. It’s about the written experience of that solitude, once you’ve done the letting go, the active listening, the silence-sharing, and the harmonizing beats of every step along the ride. And it’s also about aknowledging those places. About nourishing the spirits. Searching for the time to meet, to walk. And talk. In a sensible way friends fill in the time to let you be. And to listen. And to build from there. Whatever fulfills us. Whatever help we need. It’s all there.

Yet, the homework awaits.

You must come back.

A find the place. The time. The desk. And write.

Like this.

Like that.

ALLS

Publicado el

I’m one of those fools

«We have all known instances of would-be writers who spend all their time talking and produce nothing»

Moo Pak, Gabriel Josipovici

I’ve beginning to wonder where this is going to take me. Every sentence I read, every sentence that blows me away. And one more time: guilty as charged. That’s exactly what I am: a would-be writer.

Nobody had ever defined me with such clarity. Except maybe Milena Busquets. She once told me the story of another would-be writer who never ended up writing anything. Nothing. Nothing at all. Even though everybody expected him to write something magnificent. Aparently he spoke all the ideas out loud in clever conversations that fade away into the night. And nobody picked them up. His name: Clotas.

He did build himself a reputation as one of Jorge Herralde’s close circle of judges who would give away every year the famous Anagrama Award. Or the Herralde award. Either one, he was always one of the readers who would decide. So he was deep into the literary world, but just never with his own set of words. Clotas is my kind of man: the ultimate would-be writer.

Ever since Milena describe him/me I know I’m one of those. I thought of looking him up and get to ask him if he had any regrets from his would-be writing ideas. Maybe there would be some that would still find its way to a reader. Maybe a documentary of that kind would make me less of a would-be writer, and more of a would-be documentalist. Another trait of mine.

Nowadays it’s not fine to try to be a Renaissance man. In fact, it does not qualify as anything as heteropatriarchy is failing all us, no matter our upbringing. It’s all a big trap, and we’re already stuck at the spider web. It’s a matter of dimentions. And a matter of time. Time’s ticking, and my would-be creations are rotting away in pages of notebooks that will never see the light.

Unless I begin to explore them, and make something out of them.

This is what I need: to become a would-be editor of my own expectations.

Golman, would-be futbolartist.

ALLS

Publicado el

Walking and talking

An introduction to the walking podcast

Talking the walk and walking the talk

«At the same time, he says, unlike the strolls you are reduced to taking in a city like Paris or New York, you can walk at a decent pace in the London parks and on the London heaths, at the sort of pace that gets the blood flowing and there is nothing more conducive to good talk thatn the healthy flowing of the bood in the veins and a decent walking rhythm»

Moo Pak, Gabriel Josipovici

For quite some time, I’ve made walking a relevant aspect of my routine. Moreover, these walks have represented a way in which I could also improve the mental thought that pops up in any given walk you take. But explicity so, I’ve made a format that includes recording a podcast as the ultimate conversation within yourself, as an exploration to dedicate this thought to align the elements that converge between my current internal journey, my external interaction with society, as I walk to places where I’m suppose to go.

So when I go to work, in the time it takes me to go from my home to the bus stop, which is around 9 to 15 minutes, I launch another session of the Walking Podcast. «Hello, this is Golman, and welcome to another episode of the Walking Podcast. Talking the walk and walking the talk.» That’s my entry line in every episode. Then there’s nothing but the string of thought that comes with the day. This is no other that an immediate connection with the moment. Each step at a time. It’s a certain way to address that I am here, alive, and in this simple gesture, I will align myself with my inner forces to make of this day one that counts.

So that’s what I do. And they all turn out to be versions of the same conspiracy: what if we all could be actors of revelation of NEW collective framework that enables us to become active actors or a greater, fairer, gentler version of our humanity? What will it take for a collective instruments and mechanisms to bring out this emergent structure to reflect on change, impact and tranformation of our global ecosystem?

Yet, Jack Toledano talks about another type of walk. One you make with another person, to strike a conversation. I agree. That’s the most sympathetic way of striking a mood for the direct interaction between two people. The way in which you connect with other, by interacting with what’s in stake, whatever subject pops ups, that requires the immediacy of a response, and the pause and attention of a good listener, and the iteration of evolving feedback.

I’ve practiced those walks. I’ve been exploring the transit of my city, Barcelona, in order to understand the unfolding of each journey and pathways that interconnect the diversity of borroughs, as I understand that walking here is as rich as walking through London parks. It’s not a walking competition, but I’ve managed to do so by allowing myself to be doing those walks as an exploration of my surroundings, at first, and then as a possibility to show others that journey, with the sense of discovery and companionship, that one gets by simply breaking down through unchartered territories. And there, in those walks, the talks and conversations gain a new dimention.

Nietzsche perhaps overdid it, he says, as he overdid everything, in his insistence that the only thoughts worth preserving are those that come to one on walks and in his conviction that what was wrong with Descartes and Kant was that they refused ever to get off their backsides.

While Jack Toledano has something clear: «I personally, Jack says, don’t know what it means to think, either walking or sitting, but I know that the only way I can make anything that will cause other to think is sitting at my typewriter at my desk and the only way I can talk is walking.

The walking podcast
Publicado el

Letting go to find the literature within your head

«Writing, he says, is a means of escape from the self as well as a means for discovery»

About Jack Toledano way of writting. Moo Pak, Gabriel Josipovici.

Writting. That’s the act. If one writes something is expressed. Good, bad, who cares. Writting takes you places. You may not know where it will end. But it triggers something that you don’t realise until it’s been written. And there’s no other way. It needs to come out a stream of conscious tought that is being spilled somewhere. That kind of freedom is what Jack Toledano is talking about when whe says this to the narrator of Moo Pak. And I couldn’t agree more with it.

Nevertheless, he goes on to rant against handwritting or using word processors in a way that he describes asn inhibitors of this freedom to let go. It cannot be done, he says. Or at least he exposes that it’s not availbe to him. As the little humming noise on the electronic typewritter and continuos glow of the red light that turned on to signal acusssingly his pauses when he stayed still for a moment to think between each moment of clear writing impulses.

Format and working mechanisms are for each to shape into our own way of delivering what it is we want to do. The creative process, in a broader sense than just writing could allow many other formats to produce some sort of spell that represents the artistic form and shape of the piece that encapsulates the profound meaning of our art. While I have explored many formats, I respect the people that find the clear pathway of a specific format that produces the results they are satisfied with. And I’ve also encouraged the transition from different formats to force myself to deliver the equivalent liberation at different wavelenghts of my own developement as a creator. This to me has represented new pathways to find myself in unexpected places I would have not imagined to reach if I had not turn to that spell, with those new tools, rules and mecanisms to follow through.

And eventualy, too, to break.

Jack Toledano says you can’t let go with a pen or a word-procesor. I believe you could. But then he also talks about a little conforence in London with Borges, where Q&A were addressed in written form for him to be read, so that he could say which one he would answer. Why don’t you write about women? If it was because he didn’t think of them. He said that’s why he writes, so he wouldn’t be thinking about them all the time. And that’s were jack Toledano finds the reason and importance of writting: escaping from a daily nimeous routines: «That is why a pean or a word-processor is no use, Jack Toledano said that day on Hampstead Heath, with a pen or a pencil you cannot escape yourself and your fantasies and why else does one write if it is not to escape from the prision-house of the self and its banalities?«

«Pens are for Victorian novelist, he said, and word-processors are playful post-modernists»

I guess I would be the in between of all those fools…