They are already in my head, plenty of them: stories. But in my eyes, I can not write properly. I read book writers and read poems of poets and I think: this is writing.

Excerpt from Typewriter Diary, November 22 2024

So, I thought, maybe should I paint the stories. But these days, I am at the Lonely Landscapes stage. And the problem is, the stories I have here are the opposite of what these landscapes portray.

The stories I have to tell are painful & bloody. They play in my head automatically. Scenarios flashing in front of my eyes while I’m biking.

I dream of scenes of fights, punching faces. Knocking out a tooth. Of a man doing something wrong.
Of a frêle body dying of cancer. Of massaging the legs of a sick father. Feeling muscle decay. I dream of the scene of someone holding this flesh in their hands. Portraying the feeling, of how it is to know, this flesh in your hands is ill. And will never get better.

Or, touching the last remaining warmth of a dead body. Trying to catch this moment, that is only fading. Physically.

And also the story of the dead rat.

The most recent scenarios, a serie of ways I could find my grandmother, unalived when I come home.

Scene 1. She slipped in the bathtub, I find a blood bath.

Scene 2. Peacefully in bed, next to me.

Scene 3. In the haze of the heat and sleep, I hear an enormous explosion sound. Half asleep I think: this is it. This is my last thought. I never have thought of an atomic bomb to kill me, and her. But here we are.

Scene 4. She gets beat up in the streets.

Scene 5. She fell in her apartment. The emergency can’t get in because the door is closed. We find out it’s been days.

Scene 6. Etc.

Maybe the problem is, I want to tell these bloody stories along the sides of a gorgeous waterfall.

See the drops of the water crystalize into tears of a child who is being taken away, in silence, to not disturb the party, to her other parent. She knows they are about to divorce. She holds back her tears to not make the situation worse. A first heartbreak.

Or, the story of a gay couple discussing their future kitchen. How will they decorate it? What colours will the walls be? But then their conversation shifts back to this difficult topic. How difficult it has been to adopt a child. The papers are still not all valid. Now the coffee is getting cold. They love each other so deeply. The world makes it harder for them but they still do — love each other so much.

On my way back from grocery shopping, I had 3 seconds to find something to listen too before jumping on my bike.

Supporting my recent obsession with analogue photography,
I stumble upon the dutch speaking podcast « De Donkere Kamer » by Kaat Celis.

This episode was her interviewing Dutch photographer & story maker Anaïs Lopez.

She uses many mediums, mostly inage based but also performance, and decided to call herself “a story teller” rather than a photographer.

Documentation of her book, *The Migrant*

It made me question, in what ways I can tell stories. Probably poeple tell stories with one still image, or even with one line.
I think I do it to, but somehow I don’t really believe myself. I have a weird relationship with my art.

But think I mostly have to shed the layers that withhold me from telling these stories in words, because I have a problem with words, and I want to solve it.

The thing is, nowadays, in order to tell your story with just an images, you would need to have a few words with it first.

To, “introduce” it. Ease the people’s mind into it… Or to ask for money to make it.

I am a bit annoyed by that, but I think this is simply how the world works here.

Listening to the podcast, I realised the stories I have to tell are mostly family related. About youth, ancestors, fatherhood.

Lopez in her interview says something in the line of “What stories remain from your grand grand grand parents? »

*Excerpt sketchbook December* *2023*
Maybe I am already writing stories, but they are just very short?

In a way, what stories remain, who captures them along the line of the family?

Also, they mention a quote:

“Those who tell stories rule society”

— Plato

I don’t know what to think about that. What do you think about it?

It reminded me of my early art school years. We had a course, I don’t remember it well - I remember the teacher, Charif. He made us think of a story and write it down. Any story. Just a story, with a beginning, a middle, an end.

I couldn’t think of anything in that shape. When it was my turn to present my sheet of paper to him, and I stumbled upon my words, he got angry.

We then had to turn the story into an artwork of any kind.

My piece was terrible. It was about my father suffering of cancer, or dying, I don’t remember. But the art was bad.

I felt incapable of telling “a story”.

But I think I do, and I might not realise it, because maybe when I look at my art, I don’t make up more stories around it, or I don’t fabricate too many words around it.

But there is one story I started to document:my grandparents life.

Now I think I am the person in the family line that has the duty to collect their stories.

I think writing my blog is the start of letting go of my fear to write. It took me 5 years to convince myself to openly post what I write, be confident enough to believe what I have to say is interesting enough. I still don’t think it is, but I want to tell myself a story, and pretend it is.