Give it some time to contemplate

Time will never be enough.

A not-so-pleasant start, but also the premise that leads me to write after so long. I resigned myself to the fact that time will never be enough again. Never. I can't get rid of that feeling... there will never be enough time to do it all! To experience it all. Or to see it all, since during the last few years doing things has become actually seeing things.

But what is actually seeing it all? Every corner? From every angle? Every possible point of view at every second of the day? Even if I were immortal, there wouldn't be enough time to conceptually see it all. And, if possible, how would it actually be? I can't help thinking about The Aleph, that amazing point in the universe described by Borges, a point that contains all other points, a point where you can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion. Seeing it all would be, without a doubt, devastatingly overwhelming.

I can see today a disproportion between what is exhibited and the time that is available for contemplating it. Any city can be a good place to experience that feeling, but you can also think about any museum, or take just a single painting. This disproportion —which characterizes most of the contemporary exhibitions— has been overly intensified by social networks, where the availability of information and pictures have become virtually infinite. The quickness of the Calvino's Memos for the Next Millennium has been utterly misunderstood (looks like we have speed but we have no actual motion).

Some short stories by Felisberto Hernández were already at the beginning of the last century starting to focus on the changes of the rising consumer society, particularly on a sensory and perceptual level. In 1887, Nietzche had already spoken about an abundance of impressions in the material conditions of the cosmopolitan urban modernity. An overabundance that, like in Felisberto's stories, seemed to be not only difficult, but rather impossible to digest. The result of this distressing hyper stimulation is that: "one instinctively resists taking in anything, taking anything deeply, to "digest" anything". Contemplation turns into 'mere impressions'.

Why can't we slow down the speed and think of those situations that force us to gaze at one thing, just due to the impossibility of of moving towards volatile vertigo? I came across this thought on my fourteen-hour plane journey from Frankfurt to Buenos Aires last night, when I found myself staring in rapture at the dilatory passage of the sky under my feet through the window of the aircraft, while flying over the Sahara Dessert. The remaining flight hours created that "no vertigo" situation. Maybe the loss of one's own time control? —this does not happen to me on the bus because I can drop off at any time, or check my social media accounts—. An aesthetic experience moment, a larghissimo time, as opposed to the prestissimo that Nietzche mentioned in The Will to Power. A temporary dilation that revealed not the thing itself, but the moment in which the thing was happening, and therefore the subjective sensorial experience of that same thing. The founding principle of the spectacular (the assumption that something must happen before our eyes) got exterminated in that very moment: fabulous.

Intellectual elites, however, are rewarding the time of contemplation. For example, I think about Cuaron's latest film, Roma. A film in which the time of contemplation plays a major role, a film which has won many prizes including the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Oscars, and has several nominations for further recognitions. There is, again, a bourgeois split between cultured time and street time. The cultured time can be bought inside a movie theater with Campari orange.

And what is it about photography, which helps us multiply the joyful experiences in our memory? Is digital photography nowadays an unfortunate attempt to extend the time contemplating about a thing? A faint awareness of our lack of time, or at least, a weak certainty that contemplation may extend over time, even if the thing is gone. Photography has always been a reminder of the transitory nature of time, a record of unrepeatable moments that allows us to thieve that thing that will no longer be there, never again, a representation of an absence, of a pycnolesia.

But when I meditate about the reason why I take pictures with my phone, I can't help thinking of two scenarios: on one hand, I take pictures in order to represent something that turns into a past in the very moment of the capture —basically, a memory—. On the other hand (and this freaks me out), I am starting to feel that I take pictures just to give entity to the moment, a present being that is constructed as a digital present... as if I didn't take the picture, the moment simply wouldn't exist. The time is built by the picture, the reality criteria now lies on the digital picture... has social media shaped my mind so much?


And I also think that this reflection could actually be just a bit of nonconformism... just the necessary amount to be inspiring enough in a consumer world, the necessary amount just to produce a feeling of freedom, an illusive capability of being oneself. I wonder now if this whole contemplating time thing is just another form of late capitalism. The worst part is that I don't think I have the time to elucidate it.

Paint over your used canvas

If it is by nature, because of divine purposes or just another unwished consequence of capitalism, I actually don't know, but we humans are accumulators par excellence. We are surrounded by the culture of 'retain'. Digitally programmed to save it all. Even understanding the pointlessness of preserving a whole arsenal of useless things, we tend to think we might need some of it later on, and we keep them all. There is something awfully unhealthy in the fact that we need to retain everything we touch. As if having filled drawers and overflowing files could, ultimately, save us.

OK.

'Ephemeron, from the Greek, means something that last no more than a day (epi: on, for, hemera: day)'.

I've been lately taking special notice of a whole unpriced concept of art: the ephemeral art. Snow, ice and sand sculptures, body art, fireworks, gardening, magic fountains, graffiti, are all examples of artistic expressions that are not meant to last. Not that it is a groundbreaking brand new thing we have never heard of before, just think yourself as a child. I was used to build sand forts, and I should admit I still enjoy spending hours of patience and endurance to create useless sand barriers which will vainly fight against the fierce waves. Tons of hours spent that go down the drain. So what?

There is an explicit call to the idea of the transitory impermanence of life, something that as a rule, we humans avoid dealing with. It is to be found a strong relationship between the human being and the passage of time in the fleeting integrity of the structural components of those works of art. This is it, and it is now: later, probably it won't be anymore, and that's the whole point.

Figuring up our life stages as paintworks: we need to start painting over our used canvas! There is an urgent appeal to jettison the cursed habit of saving them all. It sounds so tough, after so much effort, thinking of letting our work go. And yes, I know, it has never been easy to experience, deeply, the devastating dispensability of being. But actually there is no need to throw them away. We just have to start over again, reuse them, paint over them.

Every brushstroke incorporates all the ones I made before. I mean: everything that I was and could not be brought me to this present place. The actual painting takes in everything that makes me be what I am. The actual painting includes somehow all the previous ones. It applies to relations, studies, decisions, failures: how many times we have changed course does not matter but for the purposes of what we are in the exact moment of now. Working on an only canvas allows us to step back and ask ourselves why. It helps us focus, clear out. Staying away from the damn habit of trying to understand it all. It helps especially to let go.

Social media as Snapchat or the recent update of Instagram moves in that direction, offering the chance to create a self-destroying message, placing first its content over its relevance in time. It makes me kind of comfortable and confident about the way the world is moving on now. It's time to stop feeding our fragile memories with poisonous chat histories and souvenirs' trunks, epic collections, which ironically stagnates us in a nostalgic whirlwind, no exit, no forward. Memories are an inevitable part of our lives, they bring almost bodily sensations (sometimes with uncanny acuteness) but come on, nothing can substitute a real experience, at no time. It avails me nothing to remember if I can't feel your skin in the end. Therefore no more brand new canvasses to buy, just the old and used ones to bring back. Provided, of course, we never run out of color and paint supplies.

The two brains

There are two brains.

There is one that we well know, inside the head, it thinks and reasons, analyzes, develops. It also imagines, magnifies, ennobles. Exposes. Spins, complicates, clarifies. Tells. All that, the brain in our head can do, and more.
However there is another brain we might miss. It is located in the chest. With another type of neurons. It feels. Some people call it heart.

There is something about the way our brain works that freaks me out. Sometimes it's just too hard to understand. The more I think about something, the further the matter darkens, the quicker the clarity vanishes, the more confused I feel. There are times in our lives, times of mental chaos. In those moments, urgent things normally impose over important ones. The threshold of endless arguments. We mistake a part for the whole. There is a beautiful saying in spanish that prays: don't let the tree prevents you from seeing the forest. Too many 'musts'. Too many contradictions. How to find peace in the midst of so much mess: the point.

When chaos reigns, it's time to pay attention to the other brain. The one located in the chest. It cannot think, analyze or explain. It can just say no or yes. But it should be enough, right? Listen to the second brain.

On transcending polarity

It is inevitable to polarize. From time immemorial, we have had the need to polarize and construct dualistic views of the world, perhaps as a human response in seeking to understand this complex environment in which we are placed. Just think about creation myths and religious stories—to quote an ancient example, but there are plenty—: they already showed these pairs of opposition: creator and created, light and shadow, day and night, sin and salvation. We still talk in terms of binarity as we continue to oppose objects and concepts to understand them: the sun and the moon, the city and the countryside, the left and the right. Even digital technologies are entirely based on two terms: ones and zeros. Over an above, human Modernity has done nothing but enhance this particular conception, mixing it with the idealization of order and progress and a cultural system that supports —and guarantees— this division.

Whether this binarization is fundamentally a structural issue of the world itself or whether it is a developed behavior of the human psyche is irrelevant to me. There is something clear: uncertainty generates anxiety, it is distressing, anguishing. Standing in front of the abstract, of the obtuse, of the vast, the inability to classify, it makes us blind, crazy, it stagnates us. We are not trained to enjoy this particular struggle between opposing forces. We humans have known, since archaic times, how to take advantage of the reduction of events' complexity to just a pair of alternatives and have turned it into a survival mechanism, which is particularly awesome. However, it looks like we are getting too accustomed to this simplification.

Grays —as the midpoints between black and white— mean complexity, the indeterminate, the incompleteness. Also, for the western culture that shapes us, grays translate directly into anguish due to the impossibility to choose between two differentiated elements, in this case black and white. The modern apparatus keep on making us think in terms of binarity. This symmetry has become even a quantum principle that now also runs our physics; just think about the latest scientific discoveries on matter and antimatter. A re-interpretation of Dante’s work The Divine Comedy actually mentions that "the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who are neutral in times of moral crisis". Why all this propaganda against the slightest idea of complexity?

Although duality works effectively when it comes to solving rational issues, it presents serious problems with regard to irrational affairs, often deeper and more relevant to our existence. The lack of polarity hence requires a higher critical analysis of what we know, see and experience, which does not sound particularly appealing to the world power system. Binarization continues to exert an obsolete hold on us if it stops us from looking beyond this duality of black and white, or good and bad. That's why it urges the need to transcend polarity.

There are probably other ways but this is what has worked for me so far —and I am sorry I always talk about my life, but the fact is I haven't lived another one—. If we assume that our understanding of the world depends on its deconstruction in pairs of opposition, then it is logical to choose one of two alternatives. Save that in order to transcend this polarity, I deeply believe it's necessary to explore both alternatives, and furthermore, carry to the extreme of them. There is somewhat controversial with the extremes and also a lot of modern propaganda against its implications. But I personally think that going to the extreme of possibilities is actually the best way to perceive the whole. It demands a high degree of commitment, a release of the organicity, an opening to the risk of exposing oneself to the self-awareness of being. The journey may become even magic when we find the opposites in total syncretism —the order in disorder, for example— and the whole conception of dualism starts to weaken: the two mutually exclusive alternatives show up together?

Openness to radical change is not seen as an alternative anymore, but as a consequence in the search of transcending polarity. Of course it's clear we have to think about what we're willing to lose, to let go, but not necessarily overthink. After all, there is no thing such as pure state of the subject, moreover, if something is actually true, it is the capacity of the subject to be affected by everything. We are so social, so created by the coercive apparatus, so assembled, that we find it almost impossible to think about a range of possibilities that breaks away from what we and society expect from us. These limits are closely related to the polarization model that runs our critical thinking.

If we are able to spot this slight deviation, this shift, this variation in our natural organicity, it probably means that somewhere there is a positive perturbation: time to take advantage of it, time to start exploring. Polarization is essential, as long as we do not just simply choose one of the poles but transcend carrying both alternatives to the extreme in order to lead the emergence of a new wider and more complex understanding of the whole thing in question, and also of oneself, of course. The era of continuous change is paying off, especially in this quest to transcend polarity. But the willingness to make it happen is still the determining factor.

When the road disappears

More than two years have passed since my last entry. I have recently found myself reading some of my old posts, and for some moments I couldn't help feeling that they were written by other person than me. Time is nothing but distance, and now, when I read those entries, it becomes clear to me how far we can travel from our old selves as time goes by, even being in the same physical location.

Fortunately I started this year travelling, and after being devoured by the most imposing corners of Patagonia, I wanted to share what I felt down there, which I believe is in tune with the beginning of a very special year for most of the people that surround me.

I would dare to say that more than light beings, humans are movement beings (which would be pretty much the same anyway). There is something about the way we move and what leads us to move, and I'd like to call it here 'the road', just to be clear in the metaphor. So, there is this certainty under our feet, the road we follow, with different intensities, more or less passionate, more or less confident, but still there: the road. If there is a road, therefore there is a goal, there is a destination, projects, ambitions, just movement, and when we move, we often have a kind of marked road underneath us. But recently, I have come across the thought that sometimes we put so much attention on the road, that it makes us unable to see where are we actually heading to.

But beyond that, the big thing comes when the road forks, or even worse, when it disappears. How difficult it is to keep us as movement beings when we can't descry the road! On a small scale, I felt this uncertainty when the trail vanished in the middle of a forest day-trekking in Fireland. There we were, standing still at the end of the road, at the beginning of the real world, looking forward but unable to move even a toe. Of course it took us not long to start walking our own path, avoiding swamps and passing through tunnels of fallen trees. What happened: we had to switch our source of confidence, what takes time, of course, and the bigger the scale, the more time it takes to unblock the fears and get back into the ring.

On the flight back home, it was extremely cloudy and I thought of the pilots, trying to catch sight of any hint that could locate them in the space. The cabin has to turn very very mystical when the plane is shrouded in clouds so thick that impede any vision. Even for them, the road disappears. The have to switch their sources of confidence: they can't trust their senses any longer, since those become fuzzy and confusing, but still they have other ways to feel that they are on the right path. There is no fear.

When the road disappears, one feels itself small. Roads make world look smaller, certainty makes world look smaller. As soon as the path vanishes and darkens, we feel tiny, minimum, fragile, but part of a huge expanding universe though. It puts us in a place where our boundaries, in communion with the outside, are effaced, and we cannot do anything but cultivate ourselves and grow. And once we dispel all our fears, we are able to move again. That absence of fear is the closest thing to God I've experienced in recent years, and in the Andes, in the middle of nowhere, it becomes stronger and emotional.

This year comes to me as a year of uncertainty. A kind of tabula rasa, empty. Far away from all the previous ones. I feel that what is certain today can change dramatically tomorrow. Everything changes, but actually. The evidence is everywhere. I've visited yesterday La Menesunda, a 1965 mythic work of the Argentine art’s history by Marta Minujin, which has been recreated at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. Anyone in Buenos Aires should visit it, mainly to feel this discomfort of the sudden, of the surprise, but also to realize how comfortable it becomes the uncertainty, so postmodern, so hedonist. This year appears as a year of uncertainty: which means, I need to switch my source of confidence. That's why, when I look back in time, those old entries on my blog strikes me as being remote and distant. There was a road, and now it's disappeared. 

Start over again

I have forgotten where or when it was that I first met the structure of a wave. Probably I did not think about the similarity between them and life. But now, this is interesting.

Waves are everywhere. They are oscillations that travels through space and matter transferring energy. Structurally, waves are formed by cycles (red arrow), which are determined by crests and throughs. These terms mean the maximum and minimum value within a cycle, respectively. Waves are everywhere, from the sounds we hear, the communications, medicine, to the colors we see. However, no matter where they are, they always display the same structure: energy that moves infinitely up and down (between crests and throughs), over and over again. And here we have another great metaphor about life: it is all about cycles. Up and down. Like waves, after each through (which could mean bad times), everything starts again. The wave starts to return to its original shape, to reach the top and go down again and so... But what really matters: you can't corrupt the structure! After a crest, it will come a through. After a through, it will come a crest, again. No choice. It is a rule of nature.

I believe it was Maquiavelli who wrote once that humans live in cycles: when they reach the highest point of civilization and progress, and in the event of it not being possible to improve more, the only possible thing to happen is to get worse. And then again, when societies reach their most miserable point of their existence, it not being the option to get worse, they have to improve. It is a must. It can't be helped. Cycles. Like waves. Crests and throughs. I was thinking about it because my days here have been plenty of ups and downs, and I have been trying to figure out the meaning of each 'descent'. And now, I think it is simply about letting go.

Every through brings something we must let go in order to get back up. And it's not the easiest thing to do, especially since we are a species that tend to create bonds with everything. We love people, things and actions and we want them all with us forever. But the secret (and hard thing) is just to let them go, and this relates to my previous post about time. We have to get used to the fact that we can't control it! Your hair will fall, the ice cream will melt, you will leave your place, people will die, your beloved will find a new love, right-wing extremists will still gain support, the winter will come and so... like it or not. Get over it. Like the structure of waves, non-breakable, uncontrollable... every through will bring something with that you will have to let it go in order to continue with your life, in order to reach the next crest. Like cards in a game of chance, you won't be able to change them but to use them in your benefit.

You could certainly ask yourself what sense makes to live if you know that everything is finite and that after every crest you are going to face a through. Well, at least for me, it is all about how we understand time. If the climb was worth it, you enjoyed the crest... who cares about the through? I mean, you need some bad times to notice the good ones! We are here to learn, and every cycle translates into learning. If this were your last cycle, would you dare stop doing something to save it for the next one?



In this exact moment, 4.31 A.M, I look through the window to see the moon of New York City pale and veiled with filmy clouds. For some reason, I can't sleep. There was a premonitory change in the atmosphere today, a quickening of tempo, an increased volume of sound. I am probably about to face a 'through'. Maybe it is time to let something go. In the phantom gleam of dawn I can see a new ascent. And there I go.

Rolling camera

I was so filled with the thought of coming to New York that I could think of nothing else... and yet this moment of arrival has come and gone, I have scarcely sensed its passing. But I am starting to get accustomed to the fact that time will fool us again and again so, quite mindless of the future, the last weeks I have surrendered myself to the flow of time, and it started to pay off.

I'm just about to become a film camera. Since I am here, I have almost spent more time with a camera than with my pillow, seriously. And it has been majestic: I was able to experience firsthand what so many great cinematographers have felt since the very beginning of cinema. Loading the camera with rolls, checking for speed, measuring light with a light meter... those actions sound nowadays nearly archaic. In fact, as a member of the Generation Y (also called The Millennial Generation), sometimes it is difficult for me to figure out that there is no chip in those cameras, that everything is mechanical, that getting the image is just a matter of light physics and chemistry. Amazing. But what made me sit down and write today is what happened in the middle of a party in a patio in Brooklyn. I was sitting by a little fire drinking sangria when I had this epiphany that made me understand life from a new and deeper perspective: I saw my life as a film camera. No kidding! Now comes the explanation:

Film cameras use rolls of film stock to capture images. The camera I have been using, an old german Arri designed by the Hitler government in the 40s, uses rolls of 100 feet, each one with enough footage to film about 2 minutes and 50 seconds at normal speed. After filming, to 'discover' what it was filmed, the film needs to be developed. I know, it is a process. It takes time, but especially, it costs money ($$$). And a lot! Filming is so outrageously expensive that I now know why the digital market is devastating film industry. When the camera is rolling, the film inside makes a beautiful noise as it runs through the mechanism that allows the light to enter and expose it. That noise means that film is being exposed, so every time that I film a scene with an Arri, I take care of everything that I can control before starting to roll and I cut in time because I don't want to waste footage, which translates into time and money.

So, let's go back to the party in Brooklyn. I was sitting there, alone, sipping my sangria calmly, my head plotting a million revolutions per second, when I started to hear in my mind the familiar noise of the camera rolling. And that feeling that comes out when the camera is rolling but nothing is happening in front of it and you know you are wasting film... that's called desperation. I kind of despaired, and I told a friend about my feeling. I felt that I had to make a change. However, he barely managed to nod and then said: "You are right, let's grab some drinks". I don't think he understood, but anyway it became clear to me.

The point is that with film, it is evident the feeling of wasting it because it costs money and when you have to pay for it, it hurts. But what about my life? If it was a camera and time was a film roll... shouldn't I be taking care of every time that the 'camera' rolls and nothing happens? Why is it so difficult to understand that time is finite like film and it is also valuable enough not to waste one iota? I am glad I have been working with a camera enough time to get this metaphor.

Now I know how it feels to waste film (and life). And I'll try not to let myself feel that way ever again. You should too. And if it is too difficult to understand, you can always get an Arri, film stock and try it yourself. In the end, life and cameras aren't that different at all.