On being moved by art and writers

When I started writing this post, I was faced with a difficult task of naming a feeling. I sat down and stared blankly at my computer, wondering how I’d call it. As the sun slowly set in the horizon, the sunset expanded brightly through the sky, as if someone had been playing with yellow and red leaves. In my quest to make clear what I had in my mind, I came across the definition of “being moved”, which can mean the same as to “stir the emotions of a person or group. It suggests a strong or deep emotional impact that is often expressed openly.” I decided to go with it, even if it is far from being a perfect word to describe it.

In fact, I simply don’t know how to define this strong and enormous feeling, mostly because there are various degrees of “being moved”. The same thing happens with people. There are people we love; our relatives, our closest friends, our husband or wife, our children. But there is a different kind of interaction which I have trouble defining: when I meet someone who moves me. A person who deeply affects me, not in a romantic or friendly sense, but in a unique, profound and impactful sense. Some of these people come and go abruptly, leaving you with words, images and thoughts that change you forever. 

 Over the last years, I noticed there were several authors whose work moved me. We are moved by an author due to several different reasons. We might appreciate the way they entrance us through a captivating plot, using words like threads of a web, their arachnid eyes chasing us through their sentences. We might feel enthusiastic with their bold style, with the sort of novelty that is not sold on supermarkets. Or we might admire their characters, their worlds, the laws and beliefs that sometimes seem even more plausible than those to which we are subjugated.

 We all have authors and books that we admire. I could choose several who have touched and surprised me: Haruki Murakami and his volatile and mysterious stories; Stefan Zweig and his social critique; Gabriel García Marquez and his magical realism; Virginia Woolf and her poetic narrative. But in the course of our lives, there are a number of authors who move us deeply and provoke a deeper impact. Something in their works, phrases and ideas - perhaps an echo, a whisper – vibrates our heart’s tendinous cords, making them shiver and tremble like clothes in the wind.

 I do not intend to review all the books that have awakened in me this myriad of unique sensations, but I would like to write about two particular authors that have moved me in recent years. Deep down, I feel as if I am writing a letter to these authors - a letter without a destination, a silent ode of gratitude.

 In May 2016, I wrote down some words in my notebook after I had finished reading my first book by Patti Smith, "M Train”. "M Train" is itself the product of Patti Smith’s notebook’s writings, a kind of autobiographical work that portrays her thoughts, her wanderings through cafes, her memories, readings and reflections. "M Train" lives in the shadow of "Just Kids", the American singer's most popular work, which portrays her years of youth and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. However, I chose "M Train” only by a matter of availability on my usual bookstore.

 What prompted me to read something written by Patti Smith? It was surely because I had had the pleasure of watching her concert back in 2015. Until then, I had never explored the discography of Patti Smith, although I was aware of her influence on music in general. Everything else about her was unknown for me.

 As a side note, I must say that until then I had always distrusted writers who kept another parallel artistic activity. Patti Smith was no exception. Perhaps my suspicion dates back to a time when many popular actors and musicians published self-help books and autobiographies. I now know that distrust was a form of personal bias, even if I didn’t know it when I first started reading “M Train”.

 Let's go back to the moment I read "M Train". Something in me was suspended in Patti Smith’s words - not because of her lyricism, but because of her honest ability to translate contradictory feelings through her writing, feelings which seemed inherent to my own being. Whole scenes where slowly built in my mind, scenes that transcended the photographs that illustrated some of the passages in the book. Patti Smith talks about writing in a way that did not scare me. During my life I have tried - and read - several books on the art of writing. Advice from writers, reflections on how best to complete and publish a book. Most of these works, however, aroused in me an endless fear of failure and of generic and empty opinions and critics. To read Patti Smith was to find a calm voice amidst the background noise of a society in perpetual movement, thirsting for competition.

 Simultaneously, reading Patti Smith was to see validated emotions I rarely reveal to other people. The identification with some passages was so intense that it forced me to pause and reflect on its content.

“Overhead the fans spin, feigning the four directions of a traversing weather vane. High winds, cold rain, or the threat of rain; a looming continuum of calamitous skies that subtly permeate my entire being.Without noticing, I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a small planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue.”
― M Train, Patti Smith

Me at NOS Primavera Sound reading “Woolgathering”, by Patti Smith

 Why did I empathize with Patti Smith’s words? I would never live what she did nor would I be able to imagine exactly what she felt on her own time - and yet my body and thoughts slowly became one with her words and ideas.

The moments described in the book took the form of instant snapshots which I would vividly remember in the following days as something tangible and real. Through her work, Patti Smith had taught me to nurture those feelings, those tiny obsessions as a form of symbiosis with oneself and with life itself. 

This feeling endured for a few days, in the same way a fond memory does; however, it eventually dissipated. I read all of Patti Smith’s books that I could get my hands on and in all of them the same original feeling keep resurfacing repetadly. 

After finishing her published work, I turned to her social media presence and, despite still admiring her, I feel that the special connection I just described only seems to come up with her literary pieces.

A few months had gone by. April had returned and with it a light drizzle whose persistence echoed slivers of eternity. In that day, traces of light drained through a body of dense and dark clouds, whose softness imparted it a celestial and undying nature. I found myself in a city close to the sea, where seagulls screamed distant and cryptic words as they flew overhead. I had lived in this city a few years ago and the avenues, shops and naked trees all felt strangely familiar. Nostalgia took over me and I felt the same happiness that had been present when I took my trips there and met some people with whom I experienced moments of happiness and discovery. In moments like these, I usually end up at bookshops, as if compelled by a thirst for words, and that day was no exception.

As I sat in my favorite café with “My Brilliant Friend”, I wondered what lead me to choose that particular book. Perhaps it had been its white contours and the solemn look of the girl in the monochromatic picture on the cover or even perhaps a long-forgotten review stored somewhere in my mind. Yet none of this was intentional.

 Elena Ferrante’s books have often described as being “addictive” in the sense that they force the reader to devour its paragraphs in order to learn the characters journey.

Something snapped in my mind as I read the detailed description of Lila Cerullo’s dissolving boundaries phenomenon, as described by Elena Greco, the story’s narrator and Lila’s childhood friend. The feeling of depersonalization had always impressed me greatly and reading such a beautiful description of this phenomenon stole my breath, as if a wave had burst through that café and kept me from breathing. I felt my hands shaking over the printed page, as if swayed by dozens of silent tones. After reading the 4 books of the so called “Neapolitan Novels”, something in me had changed; something invisible to other people but forever present.

 Some might define all of this as empathy. In some situations, I do believe that art serves as an empathy-learning vehicle. However, all that I’ve described goes beyond that definition. It is, if you will, the ultimate expression of inspiration and creative unquiet. As I see it, it is the utmost purpose of an artist to express oneself and perhaps, with some luck, to awaken in another human being something that will move and lead him or her to change socially, politically and artistically. 

Susan Sontag once said “I water my mind with books.” Few quotes are as meaningful as this one but I would add that books go beyond the mind and also influence one’s spirit, heart, body and ultimately one’s existence.

Whether with books, music or films, let us water our existence with experiences that move us and leads us to question everything around us - that is the true importance of art and literature.

On keeping a journal - reflections about writing in everyday life

“I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living.”
- The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Sylvia Plath

I clearly remember the first time I felt the urge to write. I had just finished reading a book written by a Portuguese author called Alice Vieira. It was a June afternoon; the sun was bright, the birds where chirping and my house was silent. As soon as I finished it, my eyes were filled with tears, but I couldn’t explain why. In fact, I don’t remember the plot very well, but I recall exactly the emotions that emerged from reading it: I felt as if my body was flying, carried by all the words I had just read, and everything was in its right place.

After completing this book, I felt I needed to write. Deep down, my soul and mind had just changed, and from that moment on I knew that I would always feel words, sentences and ideas floating around me like tiny and invisible dust particles. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote a poem. I have never shared those words, but I still remember the feeling of writing them, the urge of translating into words something that was inside of me. I will always feel grateful to Alice Vieira for creating something that made me feel that way.

From that day on, I felt compelled to write. But what should I write about? During the 90s, many young girls would keep a journal. At the same time, there were some popular works regarding personal diaries, such as “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole” or “The Princess Diaries” series. Eventually I thought it would be nice to keep a journal, but soon I felt it was a pointless activity. I hated explaining what I had done, the conversations I had had and the activities I had enrolled in. Who would want to know that? I also hated the secrecy behind writing a journal. Everyone would say a journal was supposed to contain secrets about crushes - and I hated that notion. I was too shy to write about my juvenile crushes or even my future plans or projects, even though I was an only child and the odds of someone reading it besides me were almost zero. Even so, I tried really hard to maintain a diary, but I would always give up after a few days.

So I gave up writing journals. Instead, I began writing short stories, poems and some fantasy stories drafts that I’d keep to myself. But everything changed when medical school started. My mind was filled with thoughts regarding studying and working. The urge to write still lived in me, but every time I sat down to write something I would end up feeling I should be studying. Something drained me; the pressure of studying, the pressure of finishing medical school without failing, the pressure of earning my own money. All the while every single person would assure me that everything would to be better as soon as I’d finish my medical degree. I would finally have time to write.

Today, I am a medical resident and I still struggle. My work still drains me. There is never enough time. Every time I want to write, I end up feeling I should be studying, doing research work or reading the most recent paper about some subject. People often state there is enough time to work and to write, as long as you are organized and have enough willpower. Many writers did that; they worked and they wrote (Haruki Murakami, for instance, sat down every night after working at the bar he owned with his wife.) Some of them would not sleep in order to write. If you choose to read a book about being an author, you will eventually stumble with some generic sayings, such as: “you have to spend X daily hours writing” or “if you want to pursue a writing career, you have to give up on everything and start writing. There are no excuses.”

In my opinion, however, this is not as easy as it might sound. I tried many things: I started waking up two hours earlier in order to write. When that didn’t work, I started going to bed two hours later. I sat down every single day to write a certain number of words. I used my vacation period to write. I read plenty of books about writing, organization and productivity. But nothing worked, because I always had something to study, something to finish at work and something to clean at home. Eventually, frustration started piling up. I would cry, shout or get frustrated with everything. I could not help feeling that something - my job, my inability, my lack of courage - was preventing me from writing. So instead of forcing myself to write a story, I opted to write a personal journal.

As I have stated before, I did not enjoy the experience of writing a journal while I was a teenager, but I had just finished reading some interesting journals, such as Anne Truitt’s “Daybook, the Journal of an Artist”, Franz Kafka's Diaries and Susan Sontag’s “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks”. Keeping a diary or a personal notebook may have plenty of advantages. Many authors wrote about this theme: Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Virginia Woolf are some examples. I wanted the discipline of writing something every day, but I could not spend too many hours writing. Instead, I decided to write a few lines every day. And so, ever since 2017, I have kept a five year journal.

I have learned many things from this exercise. First, most of my days are filled with work. There are days when I only write a few sentences: “I have worked all day. Nothing else happened.” I’ve found that sometimes I write almost the exact words I did a year before. But sometimes I write something that, at that moment, made absolute sense. Sometimes I write down ideas I just had for a story. Sometimes I write a description about that foggy December morning, the way the sun got through the mist and illuminated the green meadow. Sometimes I write about the images that arose after hearing a certain song or a movie. Sometimes I write down short thoughts about art or books or something similar that I use in this blog. Sometimes I just write about things - things that often inspire and don’t inspire me. I have to write, I have to keep writing. And sometimes I just write down reflections to find myself in those words.

This is why I keep a daily journal: to find myself in those words. In a society where we are always running late for work, where we are always asked to do more and more, where the pressure of being excellent sometimes subdues our personal objectives and beliefs, I struggle to keep myself alive. I must struggle to keep alive that girl who cried when she read a book and felt the urge to write a poem. I must find her, I must remember she still lives and is heard everyday.

Perhaps someday I will have the courage to do that.

“Be kind to yourself in the year ahead. (…) Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.”

- Neil Gaiman’s Journal, Neil Gaiman