Last year, after I finished the documentation for the second work in the project From an orange point of view, I went through a burnout period.
Fortunately, I recovered quite quickly, after a five days complete break when I also started doing intermitent fasting. Or I thought I recovered. It feels debatable now.
Anyway, I started creating the second work, which has in the background a street from a small town near Seville, and probably the only street with just one balcony in Andalusia, although there were grates in all the windows and I just had to include them all.
There was a small detail, quite unimportant for the concept of the project, that I thought would be fun to include. However, I didn’t have the energy to do anything more than what I percieved as strictly necessary. So I didn’t.
The detail is a street lamp placed halfway down the street.
I thought it would be nice if it would light up since the first work has the candles that produce light.
I had no idea at this point the third work will not have any light source, though it shines in my eyes and that’s enough.
Last week, I had a surgery. I went to the hospital in one of the worst mental states I’ve ever been in, unrelated to the surgery, and came back in my usual (not more, which is important) creative mood, and maybe just a little bit more relaxed since for at least a week I planned to do nothing (which didn’t happen, because I do not know how to do nothing). It feels like it was one of those cases of “have you tried shutting it down and turing it back on again” for my brain since I had total anesthesia during the surgery.
So, on my second day back from the hospital, my favorite song of the moment was released and is still on repeat four days later, which gave me a boost of inspiration.
As I was sitting in my studio, where I had a hard time entering for the past month and a half, and I was looking at the works on the walls, I thought I could make that lamp. And I did.
It was quite an emotional moment when I realized I am doing it. Feeling powerless is probably my worst fear. I do not want full control over anything, it’s not realistic, but feeling completely out of control has put me in a state of mind that made my last three months quite horrible. And it isn’t that I didn’t achieve things during this time, but somehow making this little lamp and completing this work felt more empowering than anything else. ✨
The joy of creating 