Keith Haring

We went to Mons today to see the Keith Haring retrospective - a first in Belgium - at the baM (Beaux Arts Mons). I rediscovered Haring after years of oblivion. What I like about him is the obsession with the black line surrounding the drawings, which both confines and liberates meaning, the pure colour, the paint drops reminding you of the movement of the hand and brush across the paper.

The first time I read about him was in 1988. I had just finished my AFS year of studies in Belgium and there was an article about him in a magazine I got as a farewell present. There was a picture of Haring, naked, with his body painted in what I now know is a signature pattern, but at the time it basically reminded me of African and Aboriginal drawings (actually, these are also influences behind Haring's work, so I wasn't too far from the truth). The reason I also liked the picture so much was because I found it sexy.

Haring interests me too, because he was socially engaged and his art his about issues that have also touched my consciousness as I was growing up in the 1980's and the 1990's, the devastation of the AIDS epidemic in particular. He himself would die of AIDS in 1990. Haring also dealt through his painting and artistic interventions with issues such as racism and the scourge of crack cocaine.

I read in the baM catalogue that he dealt with very serious issues in a light and fun way. I agree. But what I also find about his artwork is that he managed to communicate widely, directly and with force to people all over the world. And he was able to create a language all of his own that didn't need to borrow any meaning from the outside world, because his creations were iconic per se. Haring did signature painting, i.e. a style that could be easily identified anywhere it showed.

I learned about Haring's close collaboration and contact with Grace Jones and Madonna, and their shared involvement in New York's underground culture of the early 1980's (I was faraway in Lisbon at the time just being a kid, but also becoming slowly aware of this other world out there). Grace Jones and Madonna, in particular some of their early work, have also left a mark in me.

It's not just the "gay dance floor thing" and the "alternative club scene" that I like (and somehow identify with), which Haring, Jones and Madonna shared, but also the fact that they brought the "New York City street" into that expression, transformed it and made it universally appealing and culturally relevant, despite the negative pop connotation and the criticised mass consumption label. The street reclaimed a voice in the art world through and because of their work. They were counter-culture and the fact that they appealed to so many people did not necessarily make their art less worthy.

This brings me back to Haring. His mass production art, its mass appeal, instead of reducing the value of his artwork, are just constitutive elements of his artistic production. They actually enhance the relevance of what he did, because so much of his paintings is about communicating through symbols, the most ancient and important art form of all, to the widest audience possible. And all artists want to see their emotions and thoughts reach as many people as they can, because art - particularly how we understand it today - is so much about individual expression and its projection in the world. So many of the roots of my own intellectual upbringing lie in there too.

I guess you can tell that all this made the trip to baM and to Mons well worth it!

that's not purple, that's mauve!

It's said by of one of the characters in Tony Kushner's play "Angels in America". I saw it first in Lisbon, in Teatro Dona Maria II (When was that? Before 1996, the year I came to live in Brussels). A revelation. Like a miracle. Then I watched it on DVD, directed by Mike Nichols for HBO.

I bought in New York, in a shop in Trump Tower (Was it 5th Avenue? I think so, but I can't remember the year). I couldn't wait to come home and watch it, which I did, the whole 6 hours of it, in one single go, totally enthralled by it and on the verge of tears. The tears did come at some stage.

Later, I will explain why this particular line touched a chord or more. Why I made it the title of my blog. Later. But now at least the origin has been revealed. Wings. Flutter. Trumpet. Wings.

missing Chicago

I'm here in the office looking at the photo of Chicago. How I miss the joggers along the lake, and the tornado-breeze around the top of the John Hancock Center. And the horse-driven carriages by the Water Tower and me and my daughter going for a ride (with that unfriendly woman-driver who didn't even smile for the photos). I even miss the cars and the cacophony of sounds and fuels.

I miss the vibrancy of summer. Heck, I know winter can be gloomy and frozen on those shores, but I'm talking about the summer here. The summer. Eating glowing red apples and trotting with my ipod down Michigan Avenue. Hushed voices at the Art Institute and a fright in front of those Asian masks that Georgie says look like monsters. And the Fantastic Fountains. Hello Crowne Fountain! Hello Buckingham Fountain! How are you doing today? Let's go and see the clouds travel through the space-age surface of The Bean.

I miss the vertiginous speed and the twang of the mid-western accent. Chicagoans can be real cute. I miss the buzz of the asphalt and that lake. Oh, that lake of golden pure and artificial sandy beaches. I want to be there, just there and nowhere else. It's my kind of town.

flawless

I came by the library this evening before bed. I looked at the books, rejoicing in their existence. Then came upon that photo of Zé and Guida taken by a friend, Maria João I think, in Rua Augusta, some hundred years ago. They are embracing, and their smiles contain a ton of early sunshine and boundless hope.

It's a black & white photo, eaten at the edges and a bit faded here and there. But it captures the rapture of youth so well that it aches to look at. Zé is posing, but fooling no one about his eagerness to soar, and Guida sports that shy giggle of hers, half-way between regret, mockery and willfulness. They both look flawless. And I love them so much. Both stuck in that photo, like a feeling stuck inside my mind in time. They both look so damn flawless. Like pure emotion. Flawless.

KiosK

Lemonade and queijadinhas in Principe Real. Lisbon through a window on the second floor of a building with green doors, blue tiles and stairs smelling of cat's piss.

Buying vegetables at a small mini-market in Rua da Escola Politécnica and chatting with the cashier about how fresh they are and that they came from a friend's horta just outside Lisbon. And seeing the shiny blue of the river in every end of street, and through the veil of our imagined waters; our pregnant eyes. The river is everywhere inside you.

Butterflies fluttering their wings in the Botanical Garden, stepping carefully on flowers of raspberry and thyme and some other flowers that looked blue sometimes and purple other times. More lemonade and queijadinhas at the pink kiosk. People who look like people going nowhere, others going somewhere, others just there. Then rushing to the swings for Georgie and happy chatting with the neighbourhood kids. Like swallows.

It all came easy, like pearls on an elegant neck, like water flowing from a jug in one of those days of green summer breezes blowing leaves on a tall tree. Waking up to the benevolence of the sun-god. Bathing in the warmth, just melting with pleasure. Then strolling down to Chiado, crazy with dust and wind under our wings. At the museum there was a giant beanstalk and we climbed to the clouds. And stayed there, stayed there, stayed there, watching the city below like glass beads around a castle, like droplets of honey skidding on water. Who would ever want to climb down?

hair

My mother used to straighten my hair when I was a child. She used the hair-dryer and a roll-brush to make it all smooth and white. Like white. Roll. Pull. Roll. Pull. Pat a cake. I later learned how to do it myself. I learned how to be afraid of rain because it curled it all up again. I learned how to be afraid of damp and humid weather because the blackness came back into my hair.

One day, I was in Luanda on holidays and, I must have been around 16 or something, I tried on some hair gel at my aunt's place. My hair went frizzy in the space of a second. My long, smooth, white hair, went black. I got into a panic. I begged my mother to take me home to the safety of my hair-dryer and my roll-brush. Otherwise, I refused to face the world. When I was 17, I used my mother's "chemical bomb" to straighten my hair. It left in its wake a smell of rotten eggs, but my hair looked so white I couldn't hide the smile. My hair was so white, my mother would be proud. One of my friends said I looked like George Michael, I almost swooned.

I have hair no more, and I feel cheated. I don't care that I'm bald, but I'm finally proud of my curls and would like to show them off, to parade them in bold strokes of orange and blue. My blackness multicoloured, just like I am. Roll. Pull. Roll. Pull. So much work of hands. Such waste of beauty. My curls!

Today, as I braided my daughter's hair, I felt the joy of her hair invade me. It's long and coarse. It's rough and tender. It's full of attitude. I'm becoming a pro! I braid and I braid and I braid. And in each of her braids there is one of my curls. Hidden inside, there it is, curling up pretty, like the hair of an angel. In each of her braids there is orange and blue. There is blackness. Blackness proud and shimmering. Like a scintillating, brilliant, shining precious gem, my daughter's hair is teaching me proud. And I want her proud too.

dislocated

I have a foot inside my mouth and a tree growing beside my ear. My eyes are petals, my trunk a chest. I feel dislocated. Went to Lisbon this weekend and saw my cousins and saw my friends. I wonder what to say, how to sound rooted, how to connect. Sometimes I know. Sometimes I feel like I'm floating, roots uprooted, a plant outside a vase, hungry for soil, happy to be in mid-air. I don't know how to talk to people I don't know. Is this new or was I always this way?

Do I care what they think? Do I still? I guess I do. I feel embarrassed, I search the words, I want to be nice, just right, not too nice, not too eager to please. I don't care so much what they think, I don't, I really don't. But I always wonder. Why is it that I don't know where I fit? I have a leg inside my ear. My tongue is licking my elbow.

I wish I knew how to speak without saying anything. Language leaves me in silence. I swim for words, like life. The sort of wisdom I only see glimpses of when I wake up happy in the morning, or when I make love without constraints. New people make me shy. They intimidate me. They think many things about me. Some are right, many are wrong. I feel unsure of where I am, where I want to be, where I wish I'll be.

Lisbon confuses me. It rains emotions into my roots, it dries my cheeks, it turns me upside down. Lisbon leaves me breathless, feeling awkward. Alone. It makes me want to be loved. I care about hugs and kisses. I care about bosoms and shoulders. The sky in Lisbon is very raw so it is difficult not to look, like a wound. I'm dislocated. Dislocated. Dislocated. With an arm pressing my crotch. Afraid of being unloved. And missing it so terribly, like blood, or a piece of my soul.