Beautiful Darkness

11.05.12

Finding beauty in darkness its an uncommon quality, one that makes you very aware of your own difference, of your own rarity, its passion that runs very deep, its hard to understand, even more to share and to hide…but we keep trying as is we could inhabit another space. Its ‘art own tragedy’, to accept and express the soul. But there is no darkness in beauty, if you find it; you will discover it is actually a pure feeling like an Epiphany. And I really wish I could make someone feel that.

"For beauty is nothing
 but the beginning of terror we can just barely endure,
 and we admire it so because it calmly disdains to destroy us.
 Every angel is terrible." -Rainer Maria Rilke

                                  
In stead, for many years I have felt somehow ashammed of what I do and like. About the type of architecture I have done which sometimes has a very dark side, and the fact that I can see the human dimension that many choose to ignore…I have felt very selfconcious of my many books filling every corner of my house, about my fascination for anatomy and nature, about my taste for independent/art films that dare fail in the name of their art and thruth….some how it weighted on me. I felt rare, too alive but displaced… and I saw many walking away with a big question mark in their faces. I kept trying to change, always, to blend in, to belong….

“Everyone I come across, in cages they bought / they think of me and my wandering but I am never what they thought/I got my indignation but I am purer on my thought / I am alive”-Eddie Vedder (Guaranteed)

One day  I decided, after much struggle,  that I could not avoid my self in my art….its not something easy to do, but it was an unavoidable path. It took much longer personally, to come to terms to myself and exorcising all my ghosts. As a result y intellectual side was at ease, honest, but my sentimental one has been in complete denial.

This weekend I finally reconciled the two sides of myself, the intellectual and the sentimental. ‘Savage Beauty’ did that for me. I had a moment, it suddenly came to me; finding myself perfectly at ease in that place where there was no compromise. The purity of the craft dominated the design, not the business, not the public… there was not mass production, but the idea taken clearly, strongly and exquisitely from concept to final product.                              

McQueen understood life by its many faces and found beauty in the strangest places; he looked where people usually turn their head not to see, and un-covered the other side of beauty. He used history, death, nature; cultural stereotypes….and always transformed it in a version of life, of something positive, throwing it at everyone faces with the strenght of an elephant stampede and the delicacy of a butterfly.He said:

‘it is important to look at death because its part of life.It is a sad thing, melancholic but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle-everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things’

Every piece was beautiful in its own right. Every one of them made you question society, believes, cultural differences, history, materiality…reality.

That was a very strong and fulfilling experience and somehow it acted as a catalyst or my introspection  process. I was moved and I could identify myself with it.
Only until recently, I don’t know why,  I kept trying to imitate others, and that has worked against me.  I wanted to be open minded, daring, light… like others, but in stead I failed myself again. I wanted to feel stronger but instead I felt more vulnerable, exposed. It took all that, for me to realize and accept that I have a heart, and a very sentimental one, that is my problem, my difference.  I need time, to get deep and know what is real. I need to know what is real because I am looking for meaning. I know now that that is a heavy weight, but settling for less it’s not worth it. And pretending I can’t see only prolongs the pain.

Nevertheless, there is an honesty that comes out of that vulnerability, of exposing oneself way more than usual that cannot be neglected, is the moment when you decide  that you want to be yourself with out apologies.

Since then my heart has been at peace and full.  “Beauty is a joy for ever” J. Keats