The Art of Being Seen.
For those who never get their flowers.
Welcome to Bluezone. Every week, I send out weekly articles consisting of creative philosophy and musings. If you enjoy this, consider sharing it, or giving it a like.
I. Anima
There’s a break in the clouds and it’s making me want to cry. Making me want to get on my knees and yell at the sky. My eyes glide across dimpled water towards the beach. I watch a man pray on pale sand. No one else seems to see him, or even throw a glance his way, which makes me question if my eyes are playing tricks on me. I see him though, I really do, so I watch him bend forward and press his forehead to the sand and I wonder what he’s praying for.
II. Corpus
Hidden through a back-entryway of a Madrid hotel stands a man with a thousand faces. Within several seconds, humour, fear, seduction, embarrassment, pride and lust cross his face like projections on a white sheet. My hampered Spanish tries to keep up with his lyrics about love, but my understanding for long, concentrated chunks is clunky. Even still, not a single gesture is lost in translation. The totality of the confidence in his act transcends normalcy, so much so that he seems like he’s on drugs, so much so that the audience doesn’t quite know what to do with themselves as they watch a man strip off his armour, his clothes, his manners. I’ve never seen someone so willing to lose themselves in their performance with such unabashed boundlessness. It makes me think. It makes me wonder at the extreme talent wrapped up in the folds of the world that never quite get beneath global lights.
Social media has made us believe that to be ‘valid’ as artists, we must have impact on a worldwide scale. That without the credibility of millions of followers, subscribers, fans, sales and thumbs up from people we’ve never met, we haven’t made it. That without this we aren’t worth a second glance, or a long, wide-eyed stare. This is minimised thinking.
What if the next global anthem is stuck inside a girl’s throat somewhere? A throat never meant for singing, or stages, or thousands of fans screaming the words that could come out of it. A throat like any other, like mine, or yours perhaps. The world’s greatest writer is probably scratching pen to paper on thinning notepad, taking orders from customers at wanna-be-fancy restaurants, thoughts swimming with un-penned dialogue. The world’s greatest filmmaker is probably camouflaged in the green-brown vetements of a bird-watcher. The drama on nature’s stage is as alive as Shakespearean plays; unrecorded tragedies escaped in time’s ever-pressing forwardness. The world’s greatest musician is probably neglected somewhere in the corner of a dark jazz club where customers talk over slated piano notes and humdrum staccato tones. His fingers look just ours, except they rap-tap-tap along the white-black keys like a fearless athlete. It’s the mind, though, that’s minimised— that lets him believe that all his talent is good for is his Friday night ‘hobby-hustle.’ These individuals are Picasso’s who’ve never had a paintbrush thrust in their hands and been told, ‘Go crazy, make whatever you want to make.’ Tolkien’s who’ve never dared to pen down the epic worlds living behind their eyes. Woolf’s without a room of their own. Their ideas are boundless, yet they are also intangible.
I can’t prove to you that these individuals are the greatest artists of all time because you would only accept it as fact if such a person never quit writing, filming, making music, painting, drawing, acting, singing, loving and living with that unabashed boundlessness that is the sure marker of any great artist. I can’t convince you of such a fact without showing you the undeniable greatness in their work. More than that, what would convince you is not something these individuals are yet to find, but instead, something they already possess. Themselves. The mark of any great artist is that they are utterly themselves. When embraced with loose hands—yes, loose hands, for it is an act of surrender as much as it is control—the result is singular, irreplaceable, fleeting, yet eternal. They are a one of one.
To the untrained eye, art appears in the most unassuming of places. In the cadence of a lonely figure on a misty night, in the stride of a rower through widened rivers, in the calligraphy on a grocery note. In the modern sense, art is defined by the room it stands in. A crushed can is junk on the street, but in a gallery, it becomes art. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In a world which deems it virtuous, valuable, most valid to be observed, to be beheld— we must ask ourselves in what realm we wish to be limited. As a child, we are not so tightly held to definitions of what is or isn’t valid as art; we simply create with whatever tools lay in front of us. We become boundless by ignorance to etiquette.
III. Spiritus
I’m haunted by the invisible man on the sand. His presence feels deliberate. As if he was placed in my line of sight to hint at letters which form the words to an elusive force I’ve tried to name for most of my life. As if his physicality, knees, hands and forehead to the ground, personify the power of those who miss the spotlight. Perhaps his prayers are for the unseen. For the ones who never get their flowers or for those who need the courage to let out what lives inside.
There’s a wealth to that performer, to that man praying on the sand. A richness that can’t be taken away by anyone: unapologetic honesty. They don’t ask for permission or validation; they simply do what they do. They are boundless. Not only because the act pervades past any societal boundary but because they refuse to be contained. It’s in the freedom of a child smearing paint on a wall. It’s the improvisation of a jazz musician who trusts his fingers more than the sheet music. It’s the writer filling notebooks with thoughts no one may ever read. It’s our need for expression, not recognition.
Boundlessness isn’t just freedom from constraint—it’s a return to the instinctual, to the pure joy of creation for creation’s sake. In such a sense, what if boundlessness isn’t something we find but something we allow? If that’s true, we can stop waiting for the world to see us. We can see ourselves. We can perform art like a prayer, content in the presence of the act itself. The act becomes our proof of existence, the dazzle from our own spotlight, the transcendence beyond societal validity, and the ultimate dedication to truth.
— IL.
loved thissss!! will be returning to reread cuz it's just that good.
kept copy & pasting lines to send to my best friend, keeping tabs on ones that struck me. she said, and i quote "daaaang. of course this is bluezone. the writing."
love love love
makes me think about the people who gave up on something because they didn't get recognition - mistaking recognition as the ultimate sign for quality of talent and effort, and not perhaps not of insecurity, but simply because this has what the modern world has trained us to think.
Love this!
It really does take a lot of courage to materialise an idea that was born from a dream.
It’s true how many talented people never turn that ‘hobbie’ that they’re great at into a career, but it does make you think, is it because of fear of failure, or is it because they enjoy it so much they don’t want to ruin the feeling they get when creating ( whatever it is they do), and if so, would that be considered selfish?
I guess it’s hard to know why there are so many unseen talents. There is some beauty and mystery to the unseen too though! Xx