THE TIME. When you see yourself.

Kings of Leon has always been present in my creative life. I listened to their albums over and over again while working, early in my advertising life. They used to tell stories, share emotions and create anguish.

And even years after that girl who had barely discovered her creative powers, the band's bittersweet nostalgia still follows me. In 2021 they released their latest album, “When you see yourself”, an album that was supposed to be released in March 2020. Guess what? Ha. 

Anguishes, anxieties and frustrations in the face of postponed plans. Sounds familiar. Re-signification of the finished work, appreciated by distance. Some weirdness and a shitload of doubts.

“How long will we be stuck in this long waiting that is divided between days dragged by the speed of light and others that fly anchored to the hard and heavy stone of reality?” 

I decided to break this incessant cycle of creative fatigue and give a new meaning to this work that was stopped for a year, from the band that always creatively inspired me. And consequently to re-signify my form of creation, expression and, above all, connection. Getting involved in this project made me understand that time is relative, impalpable and unique. I managed to see all the faces that time has. That my time is not yours. And each one of you is not the same as the rest of us all.

From my perspective of when I see myself, and my perception of what time means to me when listening to this album.

When you see yourself, Kings of Leon - 2021.

PROJECT COVER

#01 - WHEN YOU SEE YOURSELF, ARE YOU FAR AWAY

The title of the album is the opening of this new time-space. The mixture of sensations, from beginning to end. Sometimes nostalgic and sometimes uncomfortable feelings.

The relationship of proximity and distance between everything that is said, touched, felt; at one time palpable, at another surreal.

I feel like I'm entering a short tunnel, full of mirrors revealing who I really am. A mixture of the sun, of the night, of nature, of what was created by us, of mysteries that cannot be explained.

The tunnel is no longer physical, it is spiritual. It's real. Within my own thoughts and feelings, I see all these reflections as a way to show who I am, my purposes and my weaknesses - because I am made of many of them.

The opening of this album is just the beginning of the attempt to demonstrate what music provokes inside a head full of doubts and a heart full of certainties.

#2 - THE BANDIT

Urgency. Hurry. Anxiety. In The Bandit I feel like I'm in a race against time and all I need to do is get to the end of the road. The shades of red emerge under a smokescreen that dissipates over the course of the song, bringing calm to the chaos. All I can think about is our daily struggle to find some true meaning for our lives, in the midst of so many obstacles and doubts. In the midst of so much pressure and anxiety.

We must catch the bandit but... who is actually the bandit?

#3 - 100,000 PEOPLE

The slowness of the music brings all the necessary wait… Contemplatively, I find myself at different levels of emotions… Anxious, sad, happy, exhausted, grateful… And still looking for more. The feelings drag throughout the song. “All your time was heaven sent” sounds like the appeal to calm everything that confuses me and surrender to simply... Believe. And when I least expect it, everything seems to fit together like a perfect analogy of life, for everything that brings us anxiety, exhaustion, happiness... All our continuous fetch for love, for success, for complete happiness, for freedom... And, in the middle of crowds, we manage to find a little bit of all of this over the long - but countable - years we've had here. And nothing makes me feel the way… this all do <3

#4 - STORMY WEATHER

On this poster I could only imagine that morning light when we wake up feeling grateful for everything. Many times we surrender to morning depressions due to daily life, and we end up forgetting to appreciate the ones that we wake up thanking even for what didn't go so well. “Never Seen a Bad Moon Rise” has never sounded so natural to me as it represents the beginning of the end of days that make it all worthwhile.

#5 - A WAVE

The depth of this song puts me in a spiral of nostalgia taken by waves of happiness and anguish. It's like I want to swim against the current that the music takes me to, but I'm also paralyzed by the good feelings that deep down I feel. It's like a new chance for me to understand that enjoying the moment we have now is the only opportunity to make so “bittersweet” the flavor of these memories. It's bitter knowing that we're not going to experience them again, no matter how hard we try to reproduce them. But sweet to the point of feeling this tightness in the heart followed by a smile - which in good old Portuguese translates to “saudade”. And so we navigate this ocean of unexplored feelings, seeking to experience everything as if it were our only opportunity. Because in fact it is.

#6 - GOLDEN RESTLESS AGE

From the moment I realised it was time to make the poster of this song, I got shivers all over my body and my eyes got wet. It was with this song that I was introduced by my dear friend Bruno Cirino to this magnificent album. Since then I got into this spiral of feelings and in a sort of time tunnel, where I surrender myself to infinite analogies and an incomparable synesthesia. The infinite road of self discovery, between ups and downs and with an uncertain destiny. We are who we are and we keep going because that's our path. Everything, once so heavy and intense, becomes part of our truth. Becomes unique. The intensity of the phrase: "You're only passing through a form of you" turns everything into gold. Seeing THIS song being materialized this way... Speechless.

#7 - TIME IN DISGUISE

As the good analogy-lover that I am, for me this is the most pandemic track - even though I know it was made long before all of this. The first color that came to my mind was green, and I soon associated it with the forest. The chorus invites us to close our eyes and say what we see: "is it a man or masked machine?" Following rules against the infinite time of endless days (as long as it sounds), in between our shadows and fears. Seeing so closely the most intrinsic details of this never-before-experienced existence brought us close to overflowing. Under the mask of our solitude, we discover that loneliness is more painful. And so we've worn this disguise for so long that going back to the old path seems scary. Over those long days we had the opportunity to know ourselves on a deeper level and now we have to find our way back. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel though. I've always heard that the color green is the color of hope anyway.

#8 - SUPERMARKET

This is one of the songs that I like the least in the album - but I didn't feel less inspired because of that - I even managed to make two versions out of it, rs! This is the one I like the most because it gives me exactly the same feeling that the song also does: the restlessness of the calm. The urge to speed everything up to get to see it all happening at our own pace. The butterflies are a reference to an episode of mine as a child, when I saw a butterfly exactly like this one and decided to draw it, in the middle of a play day, stunned by the delicateness that I had just seen. The orange butterfly is for me the perfect symbology of a song that brings calm in its movement and the certainty that time will always allow us to have wings to fly somewhere to.

#9 - CLAIRE & EDDIE

I feel time slow down completely when I listen to this song… The feeling of peace, of lightness and calm fill me in such an amazing way. I let myself driven by these feelings, I trust the path of the melody and I lose myself throughout the beauty of my imaginary world when I listen to love stories.

“This is love although you’ve never seen it” hits and another one of my analogies is born - that every single feeling of these are the same feelings of when you fall in love. That unexplained lightness, the trust in someone that shivers you up, the warm-heart feeling just by thinking about the person…

When I was younger I wouldn’t understand those people that didn’t like love songs. Today I understand that I already used to let myself driven by the delights of thinking about being in love with someone - and probably that’s why I used to get so attached to these songs.

Even with its cliches, a good romantic song is genuine like any love story.

Because who knows what love is, feels it by hearing it. Seeing it. Feeling it.

And when you put all this together it becomes a portrait that seems to be out of a fairytale. Out of a dream. One of those dreams that we never want to wake up from.

Just like the feeling of loving someone.

#10 - ECHOING

Do you know that feeling of anxiety but more like a feeling of excitement? Of when we are waiting for something amazing to happen and we can barely control ourselves? That’s how I listen and see this song. I see when we have that feeling echoing in our chest, waiting for that moment that we won’t forget. Sometimes we might even know what awaits us but we don’t have the full picture of it. We wait on a memory. That mixed feelings of happiness and fear, of excitement and anguish, of certainty and uncertainties. This song makes me experience the same things that I feel when I’m traveling and discovering new places. Coincidentally, I had the opportunity to create this poster while sitting in a plane, doing one of the things that I love the most: traveling. So I put all those feelings out, all the explosions and wonders that happen inside me when I have a new destination to go. It’s beautiful, it’s chaotic, it’s confusing, but it’s real. It’s mine. I feel it every time. And it echoes so hard and so loudly through each part of me that it becomes impossible not to get excited and want to make a routine out of this adrenaline. I believe this poster is a great representation of the feelings that we have regarding 2022 - a mix between anxiety, uncertainties, joy and hope… Hope for memories that were frozen but that are ready to be (re)created. I’m looking forward to experiencing it all. I don’t really know what “it” is. But this anxiety here tells me it’s actually good. 

#11 - FAIRYTALE

I was supposed to finish this series of posters in 2021. But as everything that it was supposed to happen last year, I was also caught up by the surprises that happened along the way. It may be an excuse. But we all know how many obstacles last year gifted us with.

Throughout the days, I realised that I couldn’t any longer translate in words my inner demons and frustrations. I risked myself to translate them into colors and shapes, many of them. Or at least I tried to make a draft out of the synesthesia that lived in me for far too long - and that I couldn’t understand it well back then. I finally managed to give textures to music and sounds, flavours to places, scents to memories, volume and matter to blank rectangles. I added all this to the creativity that I once doubted I had. And then I translated that to many posters, combined with a powerful fuel that is music. This album allowed me to reflect in a delightful and creative way over all my inner demons and that I ended up to mix them with the lyrics and feelings that those sung stories made my eyes see.

I transformed all my inner demons into my most vulnerable though genuine of self knowledge.

I started this project wanting to break the cycle of fatigue and creatively rediscover myself. I end it with teachings, desires and dreams that go beyond my being. Beyond all my creative rediscover. Beyond wanting to expand my potential even more. 

Beyond.