Next steps for you?

It depends a lot on what's going to happen with all this Covid stuff. But the options are, continue in Portugal and try to work more with Fashion and Photography, and today I also decided that I want to make a new record next year, just two singers and Electronic Music. The other option is going to Paris or somewhere else, leave Portugal again, because it is difficult to work here, you pay a lot of taxes, you have no return, no support and no scholarships. It is super difficult. Next year I also intend to start my Doctorate in Aesthetic Philosophy. So these are the two options, stay here and do what I do more and better. Or to leave and start basically from zero somewhere else.

Best spot in Portugal for you?

Alentejo, Monsaraz. It's incredible. This area, the interior of the Alentejo is incredible. For me, more than the coast, I like the coast too, but it is already crowded, many tourists, even Portuguese. The interior still has that fucked up scene, you wake up at 7am and it's already 40 degrees, and it's incredible. 

What does style mean to you?

It's a tough question. But the experience I've had so far, and also maybe more in the last two years, because it is a subject that interests me a lot since I'm studying aesthetics in Philosophy, either in Architecture, Painting, Music... The question of style is basically the personification of the process that you use, which means that everyone incorporates things from the outside, we make a mix here inside us and then send it outside. Style is the way you have to improve that process. This process can go through several filters and when you decide "okay, it's this filter, it's this filter and this filter", what comes out is Style. It doesn't matter if it's your style to play, your architectural style, of making houses or designing chairs, if it's your style to dress and walk in the street, or your style to listen to music. It is always this process of assimilation, of transformation within you, and what you can send out next. 

Where do you find inspiration?

I became more aware of this process of inspiration in a documentary by a Pianist who is Keith Jarrett, he is a Classical Jazz Pianist, and he says he seeks inspiration in Poetry.  Because the inspiration of Music doesn't come from Music, it's the same thing as saying that babies come from babies. That would be a closed cycle.  With me it's in Literature and Cinema, above all, that's basically it. I'm not going to get inspiration from Music, nor am I going to get inspiration for Photography in Photography. What I feel in Literature is that when you read a book, you're the director of that film, but it's a book. I mean, you're reading a book and you're making a space in your head, you're listening to a dialogue, eventually a song, and it's highly stimulating. And above all it's an unconscious process. I don't realize myself at the moment that I'm doing that, but I'm falling asleep and going into a dream and hearing things that eventually came from there. But it's hard to find out from where things come from.

What do you like the most about Music and Photography? And for you, how do you think these two art forms connect in your life?

So what happens with Music is that of all forms of art, Literature, Poetry, Cinema, etc, Music is the least figurative that exists. That is, in a photograph, I say traditionally, I'm not talking about experimental Photography, you're capturing something that happened and that is quite real, has a form, has a subject, has a context. In writing the same thing, these are words that are also sounds but these words are linked to various connotations that you already have. And in Music that doesn't happen, because Music is not trying anything that exists in nature. In other words, Music is not trying to represent the sounds of crickets at night in Alentejo, it may be in a highly poetic and abstract way but you won't have an orchestra like "cri, cri, cri...". Obviously there are pieces that were written like that and were part of a time but in Music you don't have anything directly, that's basically it. The Music will trigger something inside you, it's like a trigger that's going to wake something up. When you see a movie there's clearly a story, a script, there's an action, which also awakens things in you, but it's something much more direct. And Music is the only thing that doesn't have that, that's what I like about it, the fact that it is so abstract, open and wide-ranging. The fact that it is not so direct and restricted to the reality we know, the visual or concept reality, or whatever. And at the same time it can mean so much to so many different people.

In Photography I haven't understood what it is yet. But it has always intrigued me a lot the way we deal with memories, for example, we think that an event was in a certain way and then it had absolutely nothing to do with it, it was something else but you, over time, have been shaping the memory. And Photography does not let this happen, at least not in a very radical way. I like that, it is something that pulls memory a bit to reality, not that it is necessary but I find it interesting in Photography. Apart from that I still don't understand what fascinates me most about it.

From what I have just said, these two Art forms in my life are only complementary. While one is abstract and completely open, letting  be whatever it is, Photography pulls you into a more concrete reality. And perhaps it is this balance that pleases me. But the process is more or less the same, the creative process, it is only the technical matters that are different.