Be protean.
GAZETTE OLDWOOD #14 {excerpt}
My dear sleeping mountains,
All the misfortune of humankind comes from one thing: not knowing how to remain peacefully in a room. Pascal wrote that. Rest, at last.
Paul Éluard once amused himself by writing poems inspired by his painter friends’ canvases. The collection is called, I believe, Painting in Poems. Poets are indispensable, though no one knows quite why. Words and images, intrinsically intertwined, as if woven from the same fibers of a shared world.
In a previous edition of this gazette, I told you about my ongoing work illustrating a classic of literature. Writing remains tightly bound to my visual work. I’m currently creating a series of cards, each paired with a short poem echoing its illustration. It’s my way of preparing for my next ambitious project: designing a card deck inspired by folklore.
At school, I was the equivocal one — good student, though easily distracted and unruly, yet somehow always managing. My way of learning was disorderly, I brushed against the off-topic, I wandered beyond the assignment. Instructions had to spark my imagination, or else they bored me terribly. On the day of the baccalauréat, I arrived slightly late. Most of the filmmakers I admired back then had never passed it anyway.
And suddenly, no later than last week, I heard one of my collaborators in art direction say: “Be protean.”
Be curious, be multiple, don’t fear scattering yourself. There is nothing more intoxicating than fumbling through a fog of nascent ideas.
