Prejudices have more roots than principles.
Nicholas Machiavelli
Poetry does not hurt the brute. Even when used as a weapon of defence, of counterattack, of hope, poetry is harmless in the face of impervious minds and alienated bodies. These, perhaps out of pride or perhaps ignorance, do not see themselves as part of the whole; do not recognize in their pain the same root as that of their fellow man. They do not see themselves as fellows. Even in the daily interval between waking and sleeping, if the scenario and the characters are identical, the insensitive person will only recognize (his/her) truth in the mirror. This person’s hyper-filtered self-portraits on social networks, where one presents oneself to the other, not as one is, but as one would like to be is a sign of contemporaneity.
Quoting José Saramago, “History is so lavish, so generous, that it not only gives us excellent lessons about the relevance of certain events that happened in the past, but also endows us, for our government, a few words, a few phrases that, for this or that reason, would take root in the memory of peoples.” Poetry is necessary where we are afflicted by fear and anxiety. In times like now, it is a code for writing history, which, even if quietly silenced by the institutions of power, must be reviewed and told beyond Whatsapp groups.
For living many years in the bush
as birds do
The boy caught a bird’s gaze –
He contracted source vision.
For the way he saw things
as they are
as birds do.
Manoel de Barros
There are birds that land on cattle and generously feed on their parasites, throw seeds, fertilize the soil and generate life. Vitor faces poetically and metaphorically the harshness of our political and social reality with the subjectivity of strong drawing, with the sweet bonds of strong roots and the cunning of criticism dressed as beauty. The virtuosity of his artworks, at times, deceives the distracted gaze, which fails to perceive the delicate subversion of the academy’s values; the subtle poetry of the narratives; the still life as a metaphor; ancestry, and faith. Vitor Mizael sees as a bird, he sees things as they are. He informs us through his flight that it is necessary to see what has not been seen, to see again what has already been seen. To conclude – like Nietzsche – the higher we rise, the smaller we look in the eyes of those who don’t know how to fly.
Bruno Miguel