Here's a little third cup of coffee thinking... Why do we seek improvement? I'm holding my guitar in hand, well under my arm, and for the past half hour I have begun to learn Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam. It has some very slick guitar licks that I feel, so I figured why not? But as I have been doing so, I stopped and thought... why? What motivates me? What motivates me to learn this song? Is it because it makes me happy? Because I feel it deep when I hear the crisp hits of the guitar? Or is it because I want to be "good." 5 years ago I wanted be "good,"to be able to be playing some of the things I do now. And now I want to be "good".... maybe able to improv or play lead licks off the cuff without thinking. Let's take guitar out of this... What is it that we, that you, do over and over... that you seek to improve yourself in... to be "good." But why? Sometimes I think, one day I'm going to be an old women, unable to pick up a guitar and play the things I spend hours playing or learning. Is it all worth it? I mean what is truly worth it? So why seek improvement at all? Are we not satisfied with our own place of being? Or perhaps we just desire to experience what the heart does when we come to find more... when we come to feel things deeper. When the notes of a guitar and each choice the guitarist makes while playing becomes this.... this art that somehow, our very being relates to. hmmm... it's all so interesting. What is that, that makes us, to the core, feel part of something bigger?
For now I have this song that reminds me of a wonderful evening with a good friend, playing pool in an empty bar while we were listening to this song all the way up. -M
WARNING: If you are about to watch this video and do not already love me very much
(unconditional love may be needed) then I would warn you that you may find this video
1) too detailed 2) excessively long 3) boring
If you do love me, I believe it still may be a chosen few who are able to stick it out
through to the end of this video. I know this. I understand.
I will not try and trick you. It is almost 17 minutes long...of reflection and story telling...
and if you know me at all, you know how those two things go for me.
***
Scroll down and click play if you would like to hear about my adventure
in São Miguel, Açores this past weekend.
The Açores are nine Portuguese islands way out in the Atlantic Ocean.
For four days and five nights I stayed on the largest island, São Miguel.
Right here:
Initially, I was traveling to the island to experience the Festa de Santo Cristo for research I am doing with my Anthropology professor on socio-religious feasts. Some days got mixed up and I ended up finding out the day before I left that Santo Cristo was taking place at the very moment and had been since the past weekend. "Oh crap." I would then arrive on the last day of the festival, but then have three full days of "fly by the seat of my pants-ness". Which is something I am accustomed to; however, this time I was very much aware of the fact that I was traveling out into the middle of the ocean with no plan and no clear vision of why I was going anymore...
So I just took a deep breath and got on the plane.
My chest is made of knots and braids, trapping dust and voices that block my airways.
I knead my fingers in my palms then press my finger pads below my collar bone to no avail.
My mind manifests its worries in my body through the sensation of suffocation as
I strain to meet deadlines.
On days like this I don't talk much, but can write a poem to express my angst for a world and school
that causes pain from cognitive signals sent from my brain through my veins
creating tightness in my chest.
At the beginning of this adventure, when my friend Allison was visiting from her own study abroad experience in Spain, her and I moseyed into the shop of a man who would become a mentor and friend to me. Rui owns "Amarelo 28", a tourist shop in Alfama with beautiful local/regional artists' work. His mission is to showcase the work of Portuguese artists and to bring people together so they can form connections and bonds themselves.
I learned this was his mission only after I had asked him for a favor, that day I met him with Allison, of helping me to find someone with whom I could have some sort of ceramics or tile painting lesson with. Little did I know this was right up Rui's alley. A couple of weeks later Rui got back to me with the contact information of a woman he knew who agreed to give me a lesson. Little did he know that I had already spoke with this same woman in her little shop in Alfama a couple weeks prior and had been politely turned down because her space was so small.
...perks of making a friend who has a tile painter as a "dear friend" who will happily help another friend out.
So the tile painting lesson was in the works.
Later that week Rui and I grabbed lunch, he showed me around Alfama, and then introduced me to Elisabete. She didn't remember me from the polite, "that's sweet, but no" conversation her and I had, which was a-okay with me. Afterwards I met back up with Rui, we walked around Lisboa some more, there was a fashion show involved and also another one of his friends selling perfume products there. That'd be a tangent story though, so I'll just keep on with the tile painting...
This past Thursday I finally had my lesson with Elisabete. I messaged her in the morning the day of to clarify if we were still on. It was raining pretty hard and she had mentioned that in April her sister, who she works with, paints outside when it is nice. This April day was not so nice, but she said we were still a go. So I went.
I met her in her tiny tiiiiny, sized shop (that is about the size of my bathroom back home) and she took me back outside and to the shop's neighboring apartment. I believe Elisabete rents this apartment out, she explained the woman "living" there hasn't been back for a year now. She lives part of the year in London and the other part...well still in London at this rate. She is in her eighties and the travel is not as easy for her. So, Elisabete transformed a little corner of the, bordering hoarder-like, apartment into a little studio for our lesson on this calm stirring rainy day.
The lesson began.
I never had a lesson with painting ceramics before, my only experience is those therapeutic crafty events Loras puts on and the occasional childhood birthday party that was thrown at a pottery place. It's harder than you think...or than I thought. I like acrylic because you layer and overlap and mix and add texture and get messy and let it become what it will be as your hand is moving and moving slowly but surely and intentionally yet sporadically...
Yea, water color, which is what we use for said tile painting, is not like that.
We plan it out, use rapid brush strokes, and never ever go over it again...ever. Elisabete reminded me of this more than once, from my own fault. Hey, this is why I wanted a lesson, so I could learn.
I also learned to embrace those mistakes and not let my instant reaction to "touch it up" get me sweetly scolded in Elisabete's enduring way. Just roll with it. The mistake becomes the character of the piece when you let it happen and keep on moving, but when you try and go back and fix it, it becomes the center of the piece and un-ignorable. This isn't my point, but there is definitely a lesson bigger than my painting skills in there.
We'll see how she turns out, I'm not expecting a masterpiece, but only a reminder. A reminder of Elisabete, Rui, adventure, embracing mistakes, and the beautiful tiles plastered all over the city that will be my home for two more months. My mom's little idea she mentioned before I left evolved into a staple memory of my time here. Now I too have hand painted my own tile, even if it's just to be in solidarity with Elisabete or to more deeply appreciate the tradition (and skill!!) evolving from Portugal's Islamic influences or to now be able to say "hey, that style is called figuras avulsa!" when I see a tile similar to mine or all of the above.
