Portugal: the remeder 8
I often think of that line from Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes's "A felicidade": "Tristeza nao tem fim, felicidade, sim." Today I was looking at some flowers that aren't very common in Spain. I usually photograph them, although I'm not one to save still images that no one ever sees again, or in other words, I'm not a mobile phone photographer. I approach it more like a professional, trying to capture its artistic essence.
Following on from yesterday's reflection, has no one ever wondered why flowers have such short lifespans? Their beauty is ephemeral.
Science says that the reason for their attractive colors is their own survival, although we also know that many animals have a limited range of colors in their eyes. What we understand as beauty, which is just another human convention, seems destined for brevity. It responds to a life cycle imposed by Nature and to our conception of time.I've always wondered why we live so long. Yet science insists on extending this space, this chronological frieze of existence, obsessed with the immortality sought by medieval sorcerers. This need to outpace natural cycles seems foolish to me. This attachment to life, this desire for eternity, this role of creator, of god, reveals that human beings don't share bonds with other species that inhabit the planet; they aren't made of the same stuff. I'm not a believer, but perhaps Genesis is symbolic of the role that humankind has been destined to play: that of the villain.
Returning to that wonderful song, happiness is as fleeting as beauty; everything that leaves us dissatisfied is echoed in that phrase by the Brazilian poet. If we could measure one moment against another, we wouldn't hesitate to say that if Creation was an invention, its creator is so cruel and psychopathological that it's almost better to call it the result of an accident, of chance—I prefer to call it Providence, stripping it of its religious connotations. As Javier Reinoso, creator of the astrological Zodiac software, said, the world is very badly made.
I've had a few ideas for a new album, but they're just that—ideas. Right now, it's impossible for me to sit down and compose. I need a huge amount of concentration, which I don't currently have. The environmental conditions have to be just right. I'm a composer who works hard, not like Manolo García from El Último de la Fila says, who's blessed by the gods. I believe, like him, that there's something magical, incomprehensible about inspiration that gets you out of bed and compels you to record, but I don't see it from a romantic perspective.
Composing is a huge effort for me, from the moment the idea is born until it dies in the arms of the listeners. Tyrannical, merciless, tyrannical, and exhausting. Ideas and their development are becoming less frequent, less original. I, too, am searching for an elixir: the elixir of the genuine, the groundbreaking, the sublime… I imagine that, like most artists who don't see art as a necessity to put food on the table.
My compositional techniques become increasingly limited, and I tell myself: you've already used this, and that, the chords, the melodies, the textures—everything is subjected to rigorous critical analysis, searching and searching. No, composing isn't a game; it's not fun if you have a commitment to yourself. You discard more and more, and that, combined with an unsuitable environment, is frustrating and discouraging. You sit down at the computer, and the temptation to quit is stronger than the fight. Because it is a battle, a bloody, life-or-death struggle between you and the ideas, the creations, like in Miguel de Unamuno's *Niebla*, where the character is revealed. In the battle, you leave something of yourself behind; you want to perpetuate yourself like the aforementioned scientists, you want to be eternal, but it's the work that achieves it, not you.
What's the point of a symphony? What's the use of playing a musical instrument? And soon we'll have to face the threat of AI. Everything is meaningless; everything must respond to productivity and resources, and so we'll soon see that this being with aspirations of being a creator is swallowed up by its own creation. It's the moral of Frankenstein that no one seems to want to see. A planet of blind people approaching the abyss. Who hasn't thought more than once that something was created with AI and not by humans? What credibility does the artist have left? It's like closing the piano lid, and it says: "Come off it!"