I want to write about how the smile is not always reflecting what is going on inside me. Yet the smile is still real and genuine. The contradiction is real, it is full of love and care for what you do, it is a testimony of self esteem, yes I am not saying not to process your pain, I am talking about simply doing what you know is important for you, open time to create, to build, to see your friends and family, go to the gym and eat the food that brings health to your body. We could say that everyday has a bit of that. I want to learn to keep doing what I am doing, to feel and to connect my feelings to these words. I want to be present here, smiling when I finally reach that point through these words. I am sorry because sometimes I worry that I am not being authentic enough, that I am not writing from my gut or my heart, because that was always the point of this blog.
I have many periods of time where I am honestly enjoying what I am doing, from showering, to eating, as well as training or teaching my classes, and having food with Tiff. Not always, but often. I love how in my classes I can just laugh at myself, or get inspired by the student who feels excited about what he or she just learnt. The music tangles with my steps like they know that they belong together. The bond is so strong that even when I am distracted or annoyed by something else, I manage to connect to the moment, because a lot of the pieces that make me happy are still there, helping me to be. The perfect environment, the place where you can get things done, the utopic space to release your productivity to the highest level. Not every moment helps me to achieve this space. Yet a few spaces have these wonderful qualities. The school, when teaching most of my classes, has years of experience backing me up to become the teacher that I know I can be. It is a space where I have some constraints that guide the development of the class. It is a space created to focus on improving the skills of my students as they hopefully have a good time with me. Even when feeling under the weather, stressed or extremely tired, the people, the studio, the time, and myself allow me to tap into a Pedro that flows, despite being in intense battles within.
Of course, these days my own body is kind of that place, a place that I am more in touch with, a calmer place than it used to be in the past. The meditation retreat helped, the fact that I am sleeping better and eating better, and the fact that I am treating myself nicer, is creating a vessel. Thank you, Pedro. Yet it is still the one that creates the most distraction, it is always finding ways to bring me out of these moments, drifting me to places that are not really important. The spiral of not being enough, the spiral of having to be doing or listening to something. Yes, that one, the one that insists on telling me that Instagram is important. I know that I get nothing, but I am still hooked on it. So I am sorry, Pedro, I love it when you charge your phone downstairs in your office. I am loving every time I find something that helps me, something that makes me more present, more capable of telling the story I want to tell.
I really miss the cinema and I really miss some of my friends. My days are quite full of activities. I am working on finding places and times to spend doing some of those things that I enjoy. I guess I really enjoy my work. I can feel how these might be one of those distractors that keep bringing me out of my ‘doing’.
Values that stand strong are one of the things that keep me connected to my task at hand. I know that at Cortés, I just want to bring a little bit of Latino happiness to Australia. A little bit of my aunties and my culture. I am proud of all the artist who remember and tell others about their heritage, not because they have to but because they want to. It was very painful to see how, in Venezuela, a lot of the culture is being lost. It was hard to find a painter or any kind of artist to bring souvenirs for my friends in Australia. When I landed in Colombia, at the airport of Bogota, it was so beautiful to find so many different kinds of things created by hundreds of artists from different areas. It was a moment of realisation, in these last 20 years, Venezuela had lost so much, starving artists is a phrase that does not give justice to the reality of the suffering of our artists. I could not feel prouder than I am that at Cortes Dance, we are a group of people building culture and displaying it around the world. So, if some days I am a bit sad or disappointed for any reason, my smile is a reflection of pride, because I am still out there communicating something that I love.
Gracias for reading,
Pedro