I can’t stop reading his books. It’s a kind of addiction. Like all inspirational writers, he breathes life and new ideas into you. With other writers, you know that no matter how much you enjoy reading, your journey with them will end with the last page of the book. With Saramago, the creative journey begins before, during and after the end of the book. Saramago’s books reflect a PROCESS, an evolution, a development, a quest.
What fascinates me about the form and content of his books is precisely this state of falling in love with a thought or creative process, experiencing every moment of its development from within, feeling excitement at every discovery, however small, at every modest progress, every sign, every recognition – page after page, day after day, like the passing of life itself.
It is the eve that we bring to every day we live; life is like loading and carrying eves, like someone carrying loads of stones. When we can no longer bear the load, the journey is over, and the last day is the only one that cannot be called an eve.
The Cave
The writer intertwines the ordinariness of an ordinary life with the extraordinary journey of the mind engaged in remembering, connecting, imagining, investigating, discovering and rediscovering. The development of this PROCESS is slow and sometimes thorny. A small step forward or in the wrong direction. A lot of walking while remaining still or turning around in concentric circles, with flights that take us away on other tangents, only to return to the main path: a cluster of stations in which to think and imagine – it is the most fascinating of journeys.
I do not know the man Saramago. But through his books I have met him many times. I have spoken to him. I have taken him around the house or to the park or through airport terminals. I have shared trains of thought with him, with joy, unease, affection, confusion, bliss, obsession, admiration. With lucidity. It is rare for words to get under your skin and start to proliferate new ideas. The writer manages to intertwine ordinary lives with the extraordinary journey of the mind, with a commitment and philosophical depth that strikes you with its disarming simplicity, its political integrity combined with the subversive power of imagination, memory, research and passion.
All my work is about a kind of PROCESS. I embark on new research with a vision, ideas and my experience, but I don’t know whether the path that leads me to the final image will be smooth or full of potholes. This process can be unsettling for some people. Is it perhaps the fear of the unknown? Or the fear of making mistakes, of failing? Or is it the fear of dying? Perhaps creativity is just that: a clouded memory, a fainting spell, a death, a void, a leap, a thought, a blindfold over the eyes: or a new pair of eyes that lets you see a glimpse of real life.
We have ended up sticking our consciousness into the colour of blood and the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we have turned our eyes into a sort of mirror facing inwards, with the result that they often show us without reserve what we were trying to deny with our mouths.
Blindness
A second correspondence with my work is the constant concern for places. Whether it is a quarry, a raft, an abandoned hospital or the State Archives that record life and death – a place is both inspiration and constraint. A container or playmate, a frame and a filter that distances you. A memory and an identity. A place is never just a place.