Lisbon is
… beautiful. Just fucking beautiful.
Sometimes I get a random e-mail asking why JamesSong.com hasn’t been updated in a while. The answer is invariably, “because I’ve been too busy.”
Now “busy” can mean lots of things to lots of people: deadlines at work; messy divorce; violent masturbation. For me, it means I’m in Portugal — or was for the last week, at least.
It was Ben Shahn’s book, The Shape of Content, that taught me to open myself (creatively) by traveling the world. It’s not necessarily about moving, rather, it’s about transporting yourself to an alternate reality and thinking in whole new ways. Tokyo, for instance, is nothing like New York, even though Ginza can be likened to Times Square. The culture, the people, the vibe, the essence — it’s all different, a parallel realm. It is, then, about seeing with new eyes. Or, perhaps more accurately, seeing for the first time.