Soplo de Vida
2014 @ Santurce es Ley 5. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
This was our first headlining in a mural festival. We returned to Santurce es Ley in its 5th edition, to paint the main wall of the event. It was a great opportunity for us, where we learned a lot about the differences between studio painting and muralism.
For Soplo de vida (Kiss of Life) we published this text on September 27, 2014.
Today: routine, hurry, noise, fatigue. So much is done every day, but we still must question the meaning of what we do. We dedicate so much time to studying, to work, to have things. Is that what we want, or what we have been taught to want? Because of this, life can feel like a race and at the end of it we realize that the prize we saw at the finish line is just a mirage at the beginning.
The light has been diffracted by the particles released by our imperfect creation. The noise appeases the ode of nature. We are suffocated by a world that we have created, but we did not decide to create. We were born in a work in progress that we must continue. Then, we stumble upon our existence that feels like an echo of the breath within us. It is the erratic sound of “holding on to life with each inhalation and the fear of exhaling in relaxation. The modern man breathes from the chest.”—Devapath, (Osho's World of Energetic Breathing). You have been taught – vaguely – that breathing happens in the lungs, when only an exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide occurs there. Respiration extends from the brain, reaching the end of the most remote capillary, and an entire system pulsates in unison.
Breathing gives us the certainty that we are alive. As human beings, we have two identities. On the one hand, it is me, the individual, the unit; because in my mind only one reigns. On the other hand, we are humanity, granted by right of birth and inheritance. So, both are linked and one responds to the other. Being born in the 21st century, we have a lot. It entraps us so much. We lie in a cramped position, isolated and short of breath. The tie suffocates us. Our legs become heavy and lose mobility, they plant themselves like a mountain. We feel trapped, as if we were surrounded by salt water from which we cannot drink and which dries us little by little. We lie isolated and suffocated.
Why, then, do we continue? What obliges us? Something inexplicable seems to fill us. It is something whose metaphor begins with what happens in a mother's womb. Something that beats in us and in everything that is said to exist. It is something that encompasses the soul, love, consciousness, existence, and our life force. There are countless names that try to synthesize it, but one of the oldest is the breath of life.
It would be impossible to assign an origin to such a concept when the universe itself feels breathing. Between its chaos and its order there is a bridge, time. How do you measure something so abstract and relative? It is measured through how its cycles (circles) are completed. What is breathing but a cycle? Aren't cycles big palpitations? Aren't palpitations governed by breathing? So, we could say that the universe is governed and linked (flower) by breathing.
Breathing is the second hand of our clock. Unconsciously, we humans easily ignore it and allow its importance to be diluted. However, it is there. Breath is the sound of life, existence, and the universe.