The Creation
On an oratory turned into a library, Vladi's murals, and the nature of every creative act: to build in layers, to accept that others will continue the work, and to understand that what we help bring into the world is destined to become itself.
For Lucio
The day I held you in my arms for the first time, I knew that to create was not to build things, but something far deeper.
I understood that the most important creation is not born of the hands, but of responsibility. It does not consist of giving shape to an idea, but of accompanying a life that, from a very young age, proved to have a soul, a vision, and dreams of its own.
The person I am today exists, in large part, because of you. The version of me that constantly grows, that tries to understand the world, and that seeks to be better every day.
Because in watching you I discovered questions I had never asked myself. Questions about origin, about time, about beauty, about who I am, and about the strange miracle that something new can arise from that which already existed.
There are no words to describe the love, the admiration, and the profound respect I feel toward you.
All that is left for me is to tell you the same thing Seneca wished upon those he cherished: be well.
Because whoever has health can pursue their dreams, build their path, and discover for themselves the immense wonder of being alive.
The Work
Last weekend I was walking through the streets of the city center, accompanied by my usual companions, those who tend to join me in my favorite activities, those small spaces where I can take a breath, observe the world, and remember that I am still learning.
For years I passed in front of an old church. It always struck me as beautiful. Its façade was imposing, laden with details and ornaments. Yet I also knew that its true beauty lay behind those walls.
The first time I entered, I understood that the building was no longer solely what it had been conceived to be.
What was born as the Oratory of San Felipe Neri had been transformed into the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada Library. Its walls, once destined for a religious purpose, were intervened upon by Vladimir Kibalchich Rusakov, better known as Vladi. The result is difficult to describe. One enters expecting to find a library and ends up stepping into a conversation between architecture, history, and painting.
The walls seem to ignore the physical limits of the building. The murals expand, surround the visitor, and play with the surfaces until it becomes hard to tell where the construction ends and where the work begins. Everything seems to form part of a single creation.
As I walked among the shelves and observed the murals, I thought of something I had never associated with that place.
I thought of creation.
When we create something, we usually imagine a specific purpose. We design a tool, write a book, construct a building, raise a child, or develop an idea with a concrete intention. We believe we know its destiny because we know its origin.
Yet time rarely respects the plans of creators.
People arrive afterward. They inhabit the work. They reinterpret it. They build upon it. They add meaning to it. They discover uses that were never imagined. Little by little the creation ceases to belong to us and becomes something greater than ourselves.
Perhaps that is the most authentic way to transcend.
I had not yet finished arranging these ideas when I came across an interview in which Vladi spoke about his technique. He explained that his paintings were built with dozens of layers. He spoke of light, of varnishes, of oils, and of how the great painters sought to turn color into something resembling a gem.
One phrase caught my attention in particular.
He said that what nature takes millions of years to produce —a diamond— the painter attempts to achieve in a few work sessions.
The idea struck me as profoundly familiar.
Not because painting has anything to do with architecture.
Nor because architecture has anything to do with literature.
Nor because literature has anything to do with programming.
But because all creative processes share the same nature.
They all consist of superimposing layers.
Layers of knowledge. Layers of experience. Layers of errors. Layers of corrections. Layers of time.
What was once an oratory became a library.
What was once stone became art.
What was once an individual vision ended up becoming a collective experience.
Human creation seems to work always in the same way. We build something and time adds new layers. Other people add new layers. History adds new layers.
And, in the end, the work ends up being far more than the original intention of the one who began it.
Perhaps that is why that place impressed me so much.
Because its walls tell several stories at once.
That of those who built it.
That of those who transformed it.
That of those who still visit it.
And because, in some way, it reminds us that to create has never meant merely to give rise to something.
To create also means to accept that others will continue the work after us.
Beauty
There is a reason I always return to thinking about creation.
Because to create something does not consist solely of giving it origin.
It also consists of accepting that one day it will cease to belong to us.
I think then of Victor Frankenstein.
Perhaps his tragedy was not having created life.
Perhaps his tragedy was not having understood the nature of his own creation.
He saw the creature as an extension of himself. As a work that had to meet his expectations, reflect his desires, and obey the image he had imagined for it.
He never managed to see it for what it truly was.
A unique creation.
An unrepeatable being.
Something destined to grow at its own pace and to find its own meaning.
Perhaps that is the lesson shared by all the great human works.
Buildings change.
Paintings acquire new readings.
Books find readers their authors never imagined.
And the people we help to form end up becoming something far greater than our expectations.
Because beauty has never resided in perfection.
Beauty lies in singularity.
In that which cannot be repeated.
In that which exists only once in all the history of the universe.
Had Victor understood that, Frankenstein would not be a tragedy.
It would be an epic about the most profound act of creation that exists:
To accept that what we help bring into the world is not destined to resemble us.
It is destined to become itself.