Silence is a Lisbon Wind

TILKKU TAKKI / PATCHWORK - Tony Pelkonen, Venla Ververs, Hannah Macza -Two Finnish came with the plan to create an art show in response to Lisboa through two weeks of paying attention. They serendipitously shared an apartment with a Canadian writer and decided to collaborate. The result is a patchwork of ourselves with Lisboa as the backdrop, shown through film, soundscapes, drawings, poetry, painting, and story.

MELTING POT - (it shows up as a blank space but it's there if you click) Here is the video we collaborated on. It's about 20min long, and the sound (Velna) and video (Tony) were recorded COMPLETELY separately (the camera had no sound function) and patchworked together. 

The main elements I contributed were some watercolour and pastel resist drawings; for me, they were very much scenes of tranquillity that I felt were impossible to find in the city and that I deeply craved.

My other contribution was: 

Double Meaning – These photographs were found at the Lisbon flea market, and through them I found the stories in myself. Short fictional stories written by Hannah Macza, images taken by unknown photographers. A process of sitting with each image and writing without thinking, just seeing what transpired and inspired. 

She Loves me, She loves me not

What does she love? She loves the shade of white. She loves fashion. She loves the way sand feels against freshly shaved legs. She loves the grand mystery of life. That every moment she has lived so far has led her to this one. She loves to think about the mysteries of science and the environment. She thinks about Oxygen, how breath is nutrients from trees. She thinks about sex at work sometimes, as her co-workers' nails clack on the keys. She thinks about learning to play the violin. Figuring out how to make a crowd weep. Maybe she should take a class on how to make cheese. She loves the wind. She loves the idea of harnessing it. She loves that her curls don’t belong to her but are borrowed snails through her mother's genetics. She is a lover, her love a fierce necessity, and she was born to play. Her life a grand party, one she will leave from late. Dancing, drinking, saúde-ing with a clink, before closing her eyes. Before plucking her eyelashes one at a time like petals, saying she loves me, she loves me not. Her last loving whispering, a final thank-you and goodnight. 

1972

They were both good people. Soft like the light that leaks into a film roll. Soft like rose petals that fall from the wedding bouquet. Soft like the smile aimed across the room at midnight, surrounded by your favourite people. Soft as the lapping of waves, of sea foam kissing your toes, same as your first kiss that still lives in those very same feet. Who knew so much life existed within a toe! The feeling of a blade of grass. A stub against a rock. Sand. Pavement. Shoes that don’t fit, a nail that should get clipped. Your toe, well, all ten, have worked together to walk to the fridge at midnight to grab a snack. They were painted by an aunt at age nine. They’ve bobbed on the top of the waves, spread wide like sea stars. Hiked through the Rockies, felt the hot sand of the Sahara. They got pinched by grandpa at birth, singing ”Now this little piggy!” Your toes have taken every step with you across your lifetime. Who knew a toe that’s so little has done so much living.

A Sunday in August

What is it about the hills in the distance? The darkness of evergreen? The feeling in the morning, before the heat quite set in. In blades of fresh cut grass, two best friends play imagination as fluffy clouds pass. Remember how summer felt as a child? Time moved differently, stretched out, ran endlessly. Time as a child is an infinite pool. Cannonballing, gelato, boredom. Boredom! What a luxurious feeling! That thing we forgot, that comes before a creative wallop.  Remember your childhood summers? The smells, the freedom? A memory you hold now in your hand delicately.  Before we worried about what our bodies look like, about the bills, what our neighbour might think, before a war in Sudan, Iran, and Palestine. Before anxiety, the hands of society choke-holding us, cutting off any feeling from the neck down, like we are chickens squawking in a warehouse. Run, run little chicks run free, fly quick towards the memory of a Sunday in August. Where fireflies dance, and cicadas hum, and frogs sing in an orchestra, and you spend your nights with a headlamp in search of its conductor. You can be that child in summer again. It’s spring now; the rest of your life is just beginning.

The most Interesting Man in the World

I was overthinking it, trying to figure out who this man was. Thinking he must be the most interesting man in the world, with his European linen outfit paired with his suitcase in mint condition. There’s a casual way he sits on this boat, as if he has all the money in the world. Is he a spy? A traveling salesperson? Is he a rich kid’s mama’s boy who’s never lifted a single finger from his clenched fist? Is he thinking about the way the water ripples with the light? About some island in the distance where he’s destined to spend the month dancing, drinking, and fucking? Maybe he’s pondering what he ate for lunch. Maybe he’s just trying his best not to fart.
I try to imagine the photograph without him in it. Is he the subject? Or maybe it’s the light, the shadow, the movement of the material in his pants, or the stop-motion quality of the water...but no...he is the interesting subject of this photograph because of the photographer. The one who took the time, who spent a minute noticing him enough to capture the man, which makes the photographer the truly most interesting part of all this. Who are they? A lover? A spy? The mother? They are the most interesting person. The great mystery. A piece of them captured, caught in time in the shape of this man.

 

Sexual Healing

He tells his friend to take a seat, enjoy the show. His friend sits in the middle, a buoy in a sea of white plastic. He runs up on stage. He takes the statue's face in his hands and pretends to make out with the woman warrior left behind by the Romans. His hand grazes her cemented thighs while he makes a circular motion on her butt with the other hand. Oh Baby! He calls out while fake gyrating. His friend starts loudly singing Marvin Gayes sexual healing just as the statue comes alive, strip-teasing. She spins, does the splits, push-ups, you like that, boys? Who both now definitely have a stone hard erection. He leans in to kiss her, and *poof* is turned into stone. She becomes a real living creature, runs gleefully like a cheerleader from the bleachers. The friend with his mouth agape starts to clap. Now that was the best show he’d seen in centuries.

Whimsy is the Mercy of the Moon

Welcome to a night designed just for you. The room, a granite mass that once served as a convent. This table of starchy white linen tablecloths, candles with flames that flick like stars. Cherry wood chairs from the 1950s, crafted perfectly wide to accommodate all butt sizes, and backs to lean into with port in one hand and the shoulder of your neighbour in the other, as you throw your head all the way back, laughing tremendously at your own joke. You notice the moon is full, with cheeks as rosy as your own, peering down through the skylight at the party below. The moon’s beams are long hands that reach through the glass and pinch your cheeks. The moon gives you a wink, as if to say that you are the true magic that belongs in this room.

Oh Maria 

She always hosted parties at her place in Graca. She had a way of making you feel special. Every guest left feeling like they had made a new friend out of Maria. She wore bright colours. She was a real plant lover. Her house felt like a vacation to the tropics, the air thickly humid. She had this cool sunken living room floor carpeted in deep gold. She'd play Balkan music turned all the way up, and everyone would be twisting their feet till their hairs stood on ends from the friction. She had a gold tooth before it was cool, and she always wore these bright sunglasses inside. The coolest thing about Maria, though, was that on Christmas, she'd open her front door to the street, inviting in any strays, human or feline. She was the children's art teacher. A frontline protester. An advocator for those in need. She cooked a mean Caldo Verde. Maria! Maria! We'd wave to her from the top terrace above our laundry, floating in the breeze. She'd wave back like our neighbourhood queen. Maria died a few years ago; we created a shrine in her honour. At Christmas, it gets more roses than the statue of Mother Mary. 

Oh, and this piece, which I hung in the toilets, alongside a speaker in the bathroom that played my poems out loud all night: 

The location was BOTA in Lisbon, not a white-walled gallery space, so displaying our work was also a creative process. We ended up sewing and hanging our pieces from the two weeks into one giant collage. Velna did many beautiful, fast-paced pastel drawings on brown paper, capturing life in movement wherever we sat. Tony did many drawings, mixing current work with some pieces he made when he used to attend art school back in the day in Lisbon; it was so interesting to see how the art worked together and complimented eachother. He also did frottoge from all over the city and sewed those works together as well. Here's a look into the final product: 

It was an incredible, magical experience getting to write and be inspired and collaborate with Tony and Velna. My own critique, well, two, is that sadly not many people ended up coming because of poor advertising. This didn't bother the artists; they said it wasn't the point anyway, but I love that art is continuous; art inspires more creativity. For example, a dancer came to our show and, after watching the video, went upstairs to the roof to create a new dance routine because the video had moved him to his own creative source. 

My other critique was Lisbon itself, not the city for me. I never felt peace the entire time I was there, and I couldn't wait to leave. That being said, I had found instant community; the last night of my trip felt similar to the last night before beginning my adventure: with good friends. In Lisbon, I had made enough deep connections to have a picnic in the park, where we played music under gothic lamplights, eating whipped cream on green grapes. A tall white granite church scraped the starless sky, and the Tagus River flowed down below. After many goodbyes, I lay in bed that night, my bike boxed and ready to go; the suitcase I had found on the side of the road that day packed. I had to wake up for 3 am and couldn't sleep; fear was hilariously flowing through me. I recalled how terrified I was to go on this trip and now how terrified I was to return to my home. I thought about the adventure, how much fear had come up, how uncomfortable I had been for so many months, fear I faced every day, every which way. Then another feeling started as a soft voice, until it felt like music moving through, as corny as it is, it was this crazy tidal wave of self love, like a true embodied feeling of it, not just the mental wanting of it. The love felt so true, so pure, so beautiful and like I really could do anything and know it's going to be okay,  I was there with myself for what would come next. In a way, such a subtle, inner feeling, I had gone a really far way on a really long journey to find. 

I have a lot to say, but I mostly just want to share this show, so for now I will leave you with my final words from the art show, through poetry: 

Silence is a Lisbon wind 

What is a city? What is Lisbon?

”You must love it here!”

actually, I hate it

I found love in the community

What’s a city without its people anyways

 Heels scream as they slap cobblestone 

think about all the stories they hold  

I Lay on the streets like a lover asking

Tell me who’s touched you 

About the years, how you grew old

Is a city just a giant person?

To understand a person 

You learn of their history

A city is a choice, It’s manmade nature 

The earth quaked, it toppled, destructed, 

Lisbon, the second oldest capital 

again resurrected

This city is a melting pot

Tiles left by moors, a hint of romans, 

The land of explorers with a dash of explosions

You are apart of this melting pot

This soupy mess of a city

You must love it here, You tell them its growing on you

But now you have days, weeks, months of memories 

of this place you never planned on staying

Less tourism more neighborhood

But when does a tourist become thy neighbour

If you leave this city and go to different city

Does that make you a tourist?

Is leaving the only way to understand it

But isn’t it incredible that after all this time

A city is still becoming, 

can still be changing?

As I take the time  pay attention, 

to understand the city and how it functions 

am I learning how to do that for myself, for others?

I hate the city

But I love Lisbon

The city that taught me 

How to pay attention 

 

Normally, when my journey ends, so do my blog posts. The site that I don’t pay for usually sits patiently waiting, tapping its foot, collecting dust on some far corner of the interweb, waiting for the next trip. But this time around, after returning home, it’s a loud siren song, similar to the ones that are said to echo off the Amalfi Coast, the song is calling to me each night from the depths of twilight. 

So stay tuned, and thank you for being with me and a part of this journey! Would love to hear feedback on the art show. 

Yours especially, 

Hannah