from a letter to a friend

"I was thinking...its funny how people say that people don't change...like when you are in a bad relationship people will tell you that you can't even try to change someone because people are incapable of change and that old dogs don't learn new tricks...etc etc etc....

but I don't think this is in fact true...at all..people change all the time...people are changing everyday. I was listening to a conference online yesterday and they were talking about identity and how we are really just a sum of parts. Like a computer...a computer is a hard disk with a monitor, with a key board and well whatever else composes a computer. one computer is different from another depending on the different pieces they have. and that is pretty much how we are...we are a collection of things a body with a brain with different experiences all that sums up to who we are...there is no real "essence" to our identity...it is constantly changing because of the different things we live through...would you still consider yourself to be yourself if they took your body and put another brain in it...it would be your body..but it wouldnt really be you...and if they put your brain in another body it wouldnt be you completely either...because your body is part of who you are...but it is not enough to make you you by itself. its pretty much the same with everything else that makes you you...you cant be you if you are missing any of the components...or can you?

anyways I found it interesting because it pretty much says people are in constant change...because everyday we have new experiences that add to who we are...so its illogic to say people can't change...we change all the time. we are never the same...tomorrow I will already be a different person."

You can listen to the conference by downloading the RSA podcast "what does it mean to be you?" by Julian Baggini

Identity and Me

I am thinking about identity again. I guess I think about it most of the time.

A couple of months ago I posted about Identity and Nationality, and then later I talked about Identity and Objects. However, I am still struggling with my own identity. As I said before identity is basically what you identify yourself with. In other words my identity is based on whatever I find I have similarities with. In its essence identity would be completely relative to what I know and what surrounds me. It all goes down to comparisons.

In my favorite book in the whole world, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, there is a short episode where Milo, the main character is sent to meet "The Giant". He heads over to the house with an inscription above the door that reads "The Giant". After knocking an ordinary man comes out claiming to be the smallest giant in the world. He then sends Milo to the other side of the house to find "The Midget". Here Milo finds a man who looks exactly like The Giant, but who claims to be the tallest midget in the world. He then gets send to find the Fat Man and the Skinny Man...of course Milo realizes they are all the same person. Here is an excerpt:

     "I think you're all the same man," said Milo Emphatically.
"S-S-S-S-S-H-H-H-H-H-H-H," he cautioned, putting his finger to his lips and drawing Milo closer. "Do you want to ruin everything? You see, to tall men I'm a midget, and to short men I'm a giant; to the skinny ones I'm a fat man, and to the fat ones I'm a thin man. That way I can hold four jobs at once. As you can see, though, I'm neither tall nor short nor fat nor thin. In fact, I'm quite ordinary, but there are so many ordinary men that no one asks their opinion about anything."

I pretty much agree with this; We can only be described in comparison to what we know and what surrounds me. If I go to some far away village up in the mountains of Ecuador, where they have little contact with foreigners, I am pretty sure I will be one of the tallest people the villagers have ever met. To them I will be considered tall, or even extremely tall, but I consider myself average, even short at times, because I have met taller people.

So maybe that is why I have troubles with identity. If I constantly learn new things and everyday I see different things, then I have to place myself in context every time that I add any piece of  knowledge to my life. Any object that I interact with should have the capacity to change the way I feel about myself and how I view myself with the world; ideas and thoughts should have a similar effect. However, this doesn't really help me with my identity issues. Maybe some day I will figure it out.

If you have any thoughts about where identity comes from, let me know!

The truth about objects

I am never really quite sure why I studied fashion design. Some days I love it, some days I don't understand it and some days I wonder why in the world I decided to study it. And I don't really know. I find it fascinating and at times completely unattractive.

One thing I know for sure is that I love design, art and beauty, and that I am captivated by our relationship with objects. So for a while I think I will dedicate my blog to that. To objects, and the wonderful creators of objects. And we'll see what happens after that.

:)

So here is to objects and to finding the hidden truth in them!

Love is Beauty

So much has been said about love and beauty. To me they continue to be the most ambiguous ideas out in the world, well, add art as well.

The oxford american dictionary defines beauty as "a combination of qualities....that pleases the aesthetic senses" as well as the "intellect or moral sense."

and it defines the noun love as "an intense feeling of deep affection" and as a verb to "feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment to (someone)....to find pleasure in."

So if to love is to find pleasure in something or someone, and beauty is a combination of qualities that pleases, then love is beauty. And so beauty leads to love.

one of my favorite books is The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. In it he talks about all sorts of topics, amongst them of course is love. One of my favorite parts is when he talks about love and metaphors.

"I have said before that metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory."

It seems a bit strange that he would consider love as something dangerous. He is basically saying that when a person enters someones poetic memory which is usually something beautiful then love is born, and that is why he considers metaphors dangerous, as he says later "a single metaphor can give birth to love." A metaphor is poetry, poetry tends to appreciate beauty and beauty gives birth to love. But why be scared?

E.E. Cummings used to have a similar perception of love when he wrote "be of love a little more careful than of anything."

I guess it could be because love leaves us exposed and vulnerable. Maybe it is frightening because we wish we could enjoy it for the longest time possible and the idea that it could end at some point is what causes the fear. So maybe to fear love is to in fact fear the end of love and the end of beauty. So maybe to fix this we should try to find the beauty in ends and learn to accept that when something dies something else can be born.

Anyways, this whole discussion came about in my head because I am planing to get a tattoo sometime in  the proximate future. And "Love & Beauty" being two things that matter to me, was one of my tattoo ideas.

Here are a couple of tattoos online that I find inspiring.

the things that matter to me

...the things that matter to me are the things that make me think of love and beauty. I think that is how I have summed it up for the moment. I'm always trying to figure out what matters the most to me, and I make lists, and then I review them. I make lists of the things I love about life: family, friends, cold foggy days, micro nature in big cities, food, lakes up in mountains, birds, dancing, long conversations with friends, animals, great movies. And then I make lists of things that I believe in: nature, respect, passion, fresh air, love, beauty, relationships. But maybe it all sums up in two things: Love & Beauty.

Maybe that is what brings it all together.

I was thinking about objects & identity again. And of all the objects that surround me, and why I chose them and decided to bring them into my environment. And I got the urge to draw 3 of my favorite accessories, which all happen to be jewelry. The first are two necklaces made with huayruro seeds (Ormosia coccinea), I bought them in mexico. These seeds are used as protection charms all across south america. On each of these necklaces I attached another good-luck/protection charm this time from Napoli. They are two red "corni" or horns. The second necklace I love is also from Napoli and it is a red "mano cornuto" (a hand making horn signs) hanging from a long pink chain. It is a traditional charm that protects against the evil eye, although I have had some trouble wearing it in latin america because many people have come to believe it is the sign of the devil thanks to the catholic church). Finally I have a necklace and earring set I bought in Oaxaca made out of ceramic skulls. Apart from being lucky charms I wear these accesories and love them for the things they make me think of. First of all the huayruro seeds will always remind me of life and its duality and about passion and love. The Italian charms remind me of my life in Italy and how much I love that country. Finally the skulls also remind me of life, instead of death. So in the end the two most important facts are that they are beautiful and make me think of beautiful things and that they remind me of the things I love.

for the moment I guess those are the things that matter the most.

identity & objects

After yesterday's post I am still thinking about identity. Before falling asleep I kept asking myself where it comes from. So today I decided to look it up in the dictionary, which is what I should have done in the first place.

From The Oxford Dictionary:

i·den·ti·ty /noun/
1. The fact of being who or what a person or thing is. The characteristics determining this.
2. A close similarity or affinity.

ORIGIN late 16th cent. (in sense [quality of being identical]): from late Latin identitas, from Latin idem 'same.'

and then I realized that the word identify also comes from Latin identitas. and the Oxford dictionary defines it as: "to establish or indicate who or what (someone or something) is." And also as: "regard oneself as sharing the same characteristics or thinking as someone else."

So I guess in the end it is really simple. Identity is what you identify yourself with.

While studying fashion, we discussed this subject quite a bit. Every semester he had to investigate real people and who they were as consumers so that we could at on point design for them. Our teachers would tell us that we had to dig deep into their lives, ask them where they spent their time, what their spaces looked like, what they carried in their bags. Many times we would find ourselves in strangers' houses taking pictures of what was in their rooms, in their drawers, in their closets. Any objects that were important to them where important for our studies. In conclusion, whenever you buy something you buy it first out of need and then because you relate to it. The fact that you identify yourself with an object is what causes you to chose between one phone or another, or one note book instead of another.

These are a couple of images I found with google when typing "in my bag" in the image search. These people clearly identify themselves with different objects and lifestyles. 

Sometimes we identify ourselves with things because we grew up with them, because we learned them from our parents or the society and culture we lived in. I for example love plants and flowers, probably because my father grows and exports roses and my mom loves tending her garden. I guess this also answers the question of why sometimes I have trouble calling myself a Colombian, perhaps I just don't identify myself with the style of life Colombians have and the things they do and appreciate. 

At other times we identify ourselves with objects because they represent ideas or concepts that we believe in. For example buying an iphone instead of a blackberry might be just making a statement that I believe in design. 

John Baldessari, who happens to be one of my favorite artists, says that "meaning is derived from its immediate surroundings." Most of his work deals with language and its structure and how images can be used like words to create different meanings. Some of his most famous pieces involve text and images, others are altered photographs covered with blocks of color. Every time he alters an image or places it next to something else its meaning is changed. 

I believe the same happens with us humans and our identity. When we place ourselves in different contexts, or surround ourselves with different objects we are altering our meaning and how we communicate ourselves with the people that surround us. Our bodies and our image is how we present ourselves to the world, whether we are aware of it or not. Some people's choices might be unconscious, but they still say a lot about who they are. 

Learn more about Baldessari here.

Identity & Nationality

Identity and nationality are two topics that intrigue me. I have been watching Anthony Bourdain a lot lately. Mostly because I love it, but also because I have a lot of free time on my hands right now. Apart from Anthony's attitude and being able to see so many countries and cities and learn about their food, I love how he almost always meets and expat sometime during the show. In almost every city you have the people whose families are from the country and who have always been there and feel 100% from the place. And then you have the immigrants, who have been there for generations and feel as much from their original country as from the country they currently live in. And then there are the real ex-pats who for some reason decide to move to another country and live there, most of them because they love the place and decide thats where they want to live. I think one of my favorite ex-pats from the show was in Thailand, or maybe Indonesia, I can't remember. Anyways, what I liked about what him is that when Anthony asked him why he had decided to live there he answered that he had travelled a lot and everywhere he went he would ask himself "Could I live here?" and everywhere he went his answer was no. Until one day he said yes and so he sold most of his things back home and moved.

I wish life were that easy for me. I don't always ask myself that question, but I have asked it in certain places. I spent most of my life in Quito, Ecuador. And although I love this country most of my life I have been planning how to get out. And then I went to college in Medellín, Colombia and although it is a beautiful city, in the first week I was there I knew that I didn't want to live there for ever. Many people believed that I could change my mind and that the first years of college are always hard, especially when you are in a city where you don't know anyone or have any family. But I studied there for more or less 4 years and there was no moment where I thought, "this is where I could live for the rest of my life." Then I lived in Bogotá for two months. I always thought if there was any Colombian city which I would love to live in it would be Bogotá. First of all I was born there, and then most of my family lives there. It is a great city with so many things to see and do. I loved this city all my life and since our family lives there we would visit it once a year, probably thanks to the fact that it is right next to Ecuador. However, a week after actually living and working there maybe even less, I knew that I didn't want to live there either. I also realized that even though I was born in Colombia I would always be a tourist there. I have lots most of my accent and whenever I meet someone in Colombia they ask me right away where I am from, and most of the times don't believe me when I say I am from Colombia. I actually went through college telling everyone I was from Ecuador, it made it easier and most of the time I thought it was true. During all my college life I considered myself Ecuadorian. 

It wasn't until a couple of days ago that I started questioning my nationality once again. When I was in school I considered myself Colombian until I went to Colombia and experienced culture shock in birth country, plus I was considered a foreigner there. Then I decided I must be Ecuadorian because that is where I grew up, that is the culture that I know and where I thought I could pass of as a natural citizen. And then, last friday, I was at the gym and a man came up to me and asked me, "so what part of Colombia are you from?" At first I thought well he probably heard my mom speak and although she has lived here 24 years she still has a strong Colombian accent, and I told him I was practically Ecuadorian because I had lived here all my life. He quickly rejected this idea and told me it was great how after living here for such a long time I still had such a strong accent. If he only knew that in Colombia no one considers my accent Colombian. 

So where am I from? If in Colombia I am considered a foreigner, and apparently now I am considered a foreigner here in Ecuador, where I lived all my life, where does that leave me? 

What makes a person belong to one country? is it your passport? is it where you have spent more time? or where you know the most about the culture? Where you feel most comfortable with the culture? Or maybe you just decide? Maybe its all about me saying "well, I am from this place. period." Or does society decide for you?

Today I was watching Anthony Bourdain traveling around the Rust Belt in the USA. At one point of the show he says "American food is whatever food is being made in America in this moment." Does that apply to people? Is someone from the place he is living at the moment? Does that mean I was Colombian when I was in Colombia? Italian when I was living in Milano? and now Ecuadorian because now I am back in Quito?

Or should I stick to the fact that my passport says I am from Colombia, as well as all my identity cards? 

Maybe I don't belong anywhere and so I belong everywhere at the same time. I have encountered people from all over the world who believe in the same basic concept: nationalities are only lines on a map.