To whom it may concern

When it comes to writing, I’m not sure what I tried first, if letters or diaries. I know that I started by writing one of the two long before venturing into school compositions, children’s stories, short articles, bad poems or theatre plays, I’m just not sure which one. But I would say letters, brief ones like postcards, for family members first, thanking for Christmas and birthday gifts. Later for friends and lovers too. Longer ones, massive ones, sad and joyful, desperate, silly, poetic, fun, hysterical, drunk, artsy, happy letters, all kinds of them. At a certain point I started to do my own envelopes too, by means of collage and paintwork. A good friend from early teenage years, who is still a snail mail enthusiastic too, used to create amazing ones; she was already studying arts back then and I guess her envelopes had an immense influence on me. She once wrote me on toilet paper, we still laugh about it from time to time. I would like to say that I never lost the habit of self producing unique envelopes or writing really long thoughtful letters, but I can’t. As soon as I left Portugal, it was almost mandatory to engage on social media and quickly thereafter the letters exchange became pretty much a living dead situation. In my own defense, it didn’t help much that most people normally responding had stopped doing so if not virtually.

I used to think that I would write so many letters over the course of my life, that they would be enough to fill up my coffin in the day I’m buried. Eventually I stopped writing letters almost completely for a long while. When I did start again, more or less recently, I first worried myself sick about those pages of pure intimacy already spread all over the world in the hands of family, friends, ex lovers, but also people who became nothing more than strangers with footsteps that have walked side by side somehow somewhen. And then I stopped worrying, simply because writing them makes me happy. Intimacy is just so much better for me than most common basic exchange. 

Why exactly I stopped writing in general, or why I finally came back to it again, I’m not absolutely sure yet. I know that most of it it’s related with focusing on learning better English, Spanish and mainly German as I left my country, my language and the possibility to get a book in Portuguese in every corner. One could say that I didn’t really leave the language, as I still live with a Portuguese native speaker, I speak with Portuguese friends often, I watch the Portuguese news, read articles in Portuguese and I certainly still think and dream mostly in Portuguese - but it is also certain that something different happens with your brain from the moment you’re surrounded by a language you can’t stop doing massive efforts to dominate at all costs on. Just before abruptly stop working on what would be my first and only attempt to write an adults’ novel, inspired by what social scientists nowadays call a (non existing) post-migrant society, I was living in Berlin for less than a year and had about four chapters ready when my father suddenly died. When I went to his rented house with my brothers to clear it up from no ending shelves full of books and a lifetime purchasing office materials, printed paper and an infinity of many more objects in a couple of days, we found my last letter still unopened in his mailbox. I think my heart broke with more pain than ever before in that moment and so it stayed for many years after. I couldn’t stop thinking on how I used to cruelly complain about him on my diaries from an early age on for almost a decade and how I wrote half a children’s book imagining a much better life in a boarding school together with other kids. That part was mainly Enid Blyton’s books from the 50s influencing me greatly, I gather now. I somehow developed the myth that I started to write because of him - against him - and that I stopped writing as he was no more. I now think that what happened is that I just stopped writing due to emotional trauma and an overwhelming life, I wasn’t expecting to be as hard in the first years, as a Southern European emigrant in Germany. I resumed creative writing for real as soon as I ceased to care so much about my German proficiency (or what many Germans think of its lack of perfection), which naturally happened after I unconsciously started to recuperate my language(s) this summer. Perhaps I’m even being unfair with my mother, as she is the one who taught me more things language related, but it is my father that I still think of first when I reflect about the beginning and maintenance of healthy writing; maybe that’s actually because I still remember how he taught me to use a dictionary as soon as I learned how to read, 36 years ago. In fact, both of them taught me the pleasure of reading for their whole lives: firstly by reading themselves and loving books; secondly by reading to me and with me; and last but not least, by giving me books as precious gifts and enjoying discussing them too. Without that pleasure I’m sure there would be no writing whatsoever.

So... I’m back for some months now. In the last few days I indulged again into way too much time of social media over idiotic superficial political discussions due to last presidential elections in Portugal, the results of which are still tormenting me. I now know perfectly well and for long that it will not be there that the slightest meaningful change will take place. Not in a sustainable way. Not in an increasingly worse - toxic and polarizing - [lack of] communication culture. Apart from that, the energy spent immediately drained out my appetite for writing. So I just decided on a new renewed social media diet: it’s crazy how fast it makes us addicted to a visible response to start with. And how frustrating it is not to get anything in that direction right away, even if poorly, as soon as one is hanging out there again. In fact, I truly appreciate that I can count on a couple of readers every time I publish some writing, which is not the same as also getting applauses or much needed criticism, but still implies interaction. I love a thoughtful comment too and even some provocations; but if I don’t get any attention by the actual writing, though I might be disappointed for a while, I won’t break off, as I never did before there was even the possibility of an audience. Be it now made up of willing conscientious participants, silent voyeurs, bench coachers or none: I have to go on. And I intend to do so.

For reciprocity I’ve just started a pink phase with my letters: first I am writing to anyone I’m owing some ink words to or to whom I promised a zine and a development of the artist collective’s projects I co-grounded back in April (the Palettentheaterkollektiv). I am then changing colors and start writing to all children I didn’t consider teaching theatre online to, but with whom I would gladly keep in touch through writing and crafting - to the willing ones only, obviously. I’m excited with new perspectives on pedagogy and creativity again, which is great, priceless and not providing immediate satisfaction (or frustration). Life is good if we are to live it in reality with long term dedication.