adrián dozetas

On the poet’s journey

Transcription of a lecture in Lisbon, Portugal on April 2023

I was invited to read my poetry but I instead I decided to talk about something else, I hope for the organizers of the event it is fine. We had already enough poetry for tonight. I call this lecture “The project is life and life is the project” and I want to talk about the poets.

A poet is not necessarily a writer. A poet is just person who wants to share with other persons her or his own Self-discovery journey.

You might think that I am talking about the process of making art, but in fact I am talking about the process of making life.

Nowadays we can affirm that we know everything. We can learn how to write or how to play an instrument just watching tutorials and then practicing. We know by repetition some things get better. I know skilled instrumentalists that when it comes to create they simply suck. Yes, they are awful as creators.

Now, let us come back to Self-discovery and sharing. When I am talking about sharing I am not talking about selfies even if the structure of the process might be similar. But the main difference is that Self-discovery is a fucking hard job.

The process in and by a a poet lives is Self-discovery. The poet goes to the darkness of her or his own cave to cut the head of a monster and comes back to light to show the others that head of that monster. The poet is someone who walks her or his own shore to pick up shells that nobody saw before and comes back to someone she or he loves to show how beautiful the shells she or he found are.

In other words. The poet is someone who illuminates darkness, a poet is someone who gives lightness where there was darkness, a poet is someone that gives awareness. 

Okay, very beautiful words, I also feel the same, you might say. But can I know how the hell I discover myself?

Here I am afraid I can’t help so much. The main difficulty of self-discovery is that has no method. The consequence: you are alone. Loneliness is the natural consequence of having a private identity.

For obvious reasons our technology and environment leds us to the beginning of the end of private identity. We are everywhere at anytime, involved with everything. There is too much noise for hearing ourselves. The only condition for a poet to exist, is a good dosis of detachment, a good meal of distance with the outside world and seeing the big picture. Accepting loneliness as a natural consequence of the path of the poet.

We fear what other people think of what we feel or think. And if we are not enough detached, and being able to stand loneliness, we will not be able to listen what we don’t like, what was dark before and a poet now made into light. If we are not willing to listen to what we do not want to hear, there is no evolution, there is no light.

The situation in arts today is a reflection of this. The more your work looks like others work the more comercial success you have. Look at Shakira. Look at trap. They are a cartoon of somebody else that never existed. The less an artist shakes you and the less awareness an artist gives you, the better. Because no one wants to be disturbed, no one wants to be moved because we have enough with this crazy world, no one wants more pain. But many times pain is THE MASTER.

A poet is someone who suffers. Suffer not necessarily as a bad word. Suffer as existing with intensity. You choose. You are who decide if you want a life with or without honesty and intensity. A poet is somebody who wants to be agree with her or himself and wants to share it. A poet is just person who wants to share with other persons her or his own self-discovery journey.

But, what is at the end of the journey of Self-Discovery? I am convinced that the more we go into ourselves, the more variety and awareness we give to the world. And as the french poet Rimbaud said: me is the others.

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Normally in my articles here I leave a link to a song, movie, book or video that accompanies the theme of the text. In this case I leave nothing, waiting for you to turn off your phone or computer and go to discover yourself =).