last minute flower
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For me, being an artist is about finding one’s position in the world. To act with honest intentions, making genuine attempts. In adult lives, there are millions of reasons and motivations to be bind to some work contracts, relationships or insurance schemes. Eventually, you act only in ways that are rational to these systems; you become the system, it rules over your life.
“You read their notes and crumple them into a ball. They make plans with you that you don’t go. You lie on your narrow bench, with your arms behind your neck and knees pulled up. You look at the ceiling and discover cracks, scales, stains, reliefs. You don’t want to see anyone, you don’t want to talk, you don’t want to think, you don’t want to go out, you don’t want to move.
On a day like this, a little later, a little earlier, you discover without being surprised, that something is not working, that, to put it carelessly, you don’t know how to live, and you will never understand.” — A Man Who Sleeps, Georges Perec, 1967
I remember looking forward to growing up as a kid. Growing into the freedom of being an adult: having ice cream for breakfast, fake calling in sick for school to spend the day swimming. Somewhere in the middle (likely at the moment when you realised you need to pay for health insurance) this vision was lost. Life has became the daily march into offices and the adrenaline high into weekends.
Years ago I was an architectural student in New York. One night I left my studio at 2 a.m. . I decided to walk home and save the subway fare. The night was deadly still and pitch dark, I raised my head and a full sky of stars gracefully unfolded in front of my tired eyes.
” beautiful, huh? ”
Says an old lady with a shopping cart filled with trash, wobbling by.
” yes ” I smiled.
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photo shot with Fuji XT-3, 35mm f 1.4