PALAVRAS ESTÚPIDAS 5

Frida and Diego

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I can’t write. I just realized that. I’ve been writing for more than 20 years and the only thing I’ve learned so far is that I can’t write. So why do I keep doing it? Why do I stubbornly keep doing something I know I’ll probably never do as good as I would like to do? I don’t know ...
Maybe because it’s the only thing that keeps me alive. If I stop writing, I won’t have any other reason to live. Writing is the only thing I never quit. I never quit a book, although they take more than 2 years to finish and although I hate almost everything that takes ages to complete. I always have to finish my books. It’s almost a sacred thing. Sometimes it’s really hard to finish them, but I never quit.

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Will I ever publish? Will the world ever know what I want to tell it? I have no idea ... Probably not ... Who the fuck am I to even consider that? Nobody ... So why do I keep doing it? Maybe because inside me there’s this tiny, tough little black ball which doesn’t think or feel. It’s like this little bug and the only thing it does, the only thing it ever did since I was a little girl, is to push me to write. It pushes and pushes and pushes and that’s the only thing it knows. It’s the only thing it was meant to do. And I have to do it. I don’t even question it. I have to do what the little black ball pushes me to do. I have to write stories. So I write them. Are they good? No. They suck. But I do know one thing. I write better today than I wrote yesterday. Just 0.000000001% better. The improvements are very, very slow, they are excrutiatingly slow, but they happen.

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That’s not why the little black ball inside me pushes. I could have stagnated in the mediocre writer I was 10 years ago. It wouldn’t matter to that little black ball. It doesn’t care about the quality of what I write. But I do. And so, since I am forced to write, at least I can learn to do it better as time goes by. I was never the top of the class. I had good grades, but I had to study a lot. I wasn’t bright enough, like some kids. But there is something I always was – persistent and stubborn. And so I keep writing. What for? I have no idea.

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Frida Khalo once went to see the great painter Diego Rivera and she asked him:

“I've done some paintings which I want you to look over professionally, and I need an absolutely straightforward opinion of my work. (...) I just want your serious opinion.”

And he answered:

“What do you care about my opinion? If you're a real painter, you'll paint because you can't live without painting. You'll paint till you die, okay?”
I know exactly what he meant.
And then she said:

"I have to work to earn a living, so I don't have time to fool around just for vanity."

And I also know exactly what she meant ...