The clandestine observer

Last month, I attended a significant and beautiful event whose primary focus was to immerse myself in the exposition of ideas from thinkers and artists about their creative processes.

At this “Writing Ideas” festival, with great thinkers and artists, various speakers gathered to share their writings, works, and creative processes.  

Reflecting on their diverse journeys is a source of inspiration for someone like me, who is in a constant quest for the meaning of the creative act. Also, I want to tell you that for two consecutive years, I have been creating the graphic image for this festival! Before diving into this story, I’d like to say that each of us plays a role in this reality.

We can be silent observers or the characters in action of this grand act.

C’est la vie, mon ami! 

Through this reading, you will discover that:

- Observing attentively silences and calms the flow of thoughts.

- It opens up space and time to understand how others' processes influence your own creative process. -

This type of participation enhances our cognitive capacity and psychological knowledge.

- You will learn more about my work and how I develop these types of pieces through my creative process, which is heavily based on observation and the stories I weave between reality and fantasy.  The event was held at a 16th-century castle in Boris, in the state of Carlow, about an hour from Dublin, Ireland.

In the gardens of this beautiful castle, tents made of fine material were set up, reminding me of scenes from Agatha Christie's books. In the camps described by the author on the banks of the Nile River, those early 20th-century English expeditions she meticulously depicted with landscapes, antique objects, and characters while Poirot solved crimes in Egypt. From the moment we arrived, you could feel a spring air in an environment created for social aristocracy, but now occupied by intellectual aristocracy—artists, ecologists, and bohemians. Contemporary rebels who observe and build new stories and narratives in this fairy-tale-like setting.

Among the various talks by thinkers about their actions, words seemed to bloom, turning into melodies, making my heart rhythmically beat with happiness like a little drum: bom bom bom. I was there, actively listening, observing.

My eyes and the eyes of all of us shone with a desire for more, a thirst for continuing to share and create stories.

How we observe ourselves speaks volumes about our perceptive power. There are various factors that complement it: a sense of curiosity that jumps with multiplicity—sometimes innocent, sometimes tender, often a bit morbid.

However, a key element is the complicity between your external self, the incognito character, and your internal self. In that moment, as you scan, using your X-ray vision, meticulously contemplating and processing a series of narratives that begin to intertwine times: the past, future, and present of what is observed. There’s a synergy of external influences and the fantasy you narrate as you observe. It’s an atomic and expansive creation, your micro-cosmos connecting with the universe.

Another curious element of this activity is a game so human, so natural—the belief that you go unnoticed, that superpower you suppose in thinking you are invisible to others. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps, knowing the high probability that you are part of another narrative, observed by another clandestine observer who is now watching you, making you actively a character in another story parallel to yours.

 I find this dynamic extremely amusing, and it was something I consciously enjoyed that weekend. It was curious to feel how we were jointly building various bridges, connectors to new stories that were being woven by the simple act of observing and listening.

Those words flying in the air, caressing, giving different nuances. The pleasure of living in the present, of contemplating reality as it is, of actively playing in the here and now, and feeling complicit in this complex plot we call the present—observing in detail all the events, the moments that connect us with the outside, with others, with ourselves.

That frictionless addition, that flow of information that constantly envelops us, leading us to feel, create, receive, give, and be. It is the dance of the cosmos.

The word clandestine savors me; I've always liked it. I choose its connotation of invisible adventure, the mystery of living in spaces without being perceived, of witnessing the observed, and also of feeling a latent immigrant background that for a long time was under the radar. It had to move this way to design its life, and now it can gloriously integrate because it has fought and earned a space through work and dedication. I ask you, how do you position yourself in your reality?

How do you see yourself? As a creator or a character in another creation? Do you usually live in the present, or do you ride on the dreams of others? I invite you to reflect on this, to be a co-author, director, and character; to write and savor each of the wonderful possibilities that present themselves before your eyes, as an active and also clandestine observer.

I share with you the graphic pieces I have created. 

This narrative translates into a written language; these descriptive aspects transfer to the visuals of the graphic pieces—the man and his infinite blooming, the fountain of inspiring thoughts that, after undergoing analytical processes, finally forge themselves in the material and visual world, describing the creation of characters, ideas, and an endless series of analogies referring to the world of the observer.

Thank you family for reading.