Short Story
The Posters at my Bedroom
An essay on the images we choose to ourselves
Due to the isolation measures, during the pandemic, my college classes were taught remotely — we watched the lecture via videocall. Before, I lived in São Paulo, capital; but now I came back to my hometown, Campinas. Every day over the last 18 months I sat before my desk (filled with piles of books, notepapers, and scattered pens) and looked directly to my laptop screen to watch the classes. During 18 months I studied at my childhood/teenagerhood bedroom and that was what I saw nearly every moment of my day.
If I turned my gaze upward, I would notice that this hole time she was watching over me; she, who is considered mankind’s greatest masterpiece when it comes to painting. A poster that reproduces in real size La Gioconda (known popularly as Mona Lisa), by Leonardo da Vince, hangs just above my eye level — enough to go unnoticed when one has other things on their mind.
I am looking at her now. And she looks back at me. I think she might be the only person that still looks pretty with their eyebrows shaved. Her half smile seems to say to me: “I know what you do those moments when you are alone.” How many times she saw me half-naked changing clothes…!
I bought this poster at “Leonardo da Vinci: the exhibit of a genius” in 2007 when it was displayed at Oca, at São Paulo. I was 9 years old back then. When it comes to decoration items, we tend to fill our rooms, our homes with objects that reflect our personalities, our personal tastes. The 2007 Pedro was obsessed by da Vinci and visited that exhibition twice (once with my school, then with my family — the second time I was able to reproduce by heart everything that the guide told us during the school trip). The 14-years-later Pedro still appreciates the work of the Italian master, but no longer knows if he would choose a reproduction of the painter’s work to hang in his apartment.
You’ll have to excuse me, but I wouldn’t really bother to travel to Paris just to see Mona Lisa in a crowded room — I think it would be nicer to appreciate calmly and with certain social distancing the other works exhibited at that vast museum.
I am actually certain of that. Because when I visited the exhibit “Tarsila Popular” at MASP in 2009, I was determined that O Abaporu was the last work that my eyes would gaze upon. When I entered the room in which the painting hanged at the backwall, I tried to avoid looking at it the best at could — when the time came, I closed my eyes and a friend of my placed me right in front of him. It was trully a once-in-a-liftime experience to meet that painting for the first time in it’s home country: that painting survived nearly a century of History and, know, it was just ahead of me — attentive ears would be able to hear the stories he told, anecdotes from before 1928 when he was conceived. A beautiful moment I keep in my mind and heart.
But I’d be lying to you if I said that O Abaporu was the most interesting painting I saw at that exhibition. The painting that most impressed me was crafted in 1941 and its called Procissão. It depicts a group of worshipers that carry a statue of some saint during a catholic festivity. It was that painting, not O Apaboru, that made me understand the genius of Tarsila do Amaral. Diagonal lines create lozenge patterns and, at the same time it geometricizes the image it also creates a double perspective. The technique is exquisite and when when combine it to the theme we can understand that only Tarsila, in her singularity, could have painted that.
That is why I’d rather much visit a small museum in some corner of Europe, to discover there a da Vinci’s painting that I don’t know yet.
Behind me, in my bedroom, there are other two posters, hanged above my bed. The poster from the BBC’s Sherlock series, and a poster where the characters from Friends reproduce the iconic photographs of the workers lunching on a skyscraper construction beam. Both posters hanged around 2014. The 16-year-old Pedro loved to watch both series. The 2021 Pedro considers the 4th season of Sherlock a huge mess; the 23-year-old Pedro cannot stand Friends any longer (for the love of god, millennials, the last episode aired nearly two decades ago, there are a lot of new thing to watch and obsess with; just let go!).
The truth is that our tastes change. If you entered this room to which I came back, maybe you’ll have a faint idea of who I was during my adolescence. Today, I wouldn’t pick just one movie or book as my favorite because there are a lot of cool and different stuff around that it makes it difficult to make such a definitive choice. I don’t believe in using one work of art to describe my entire personality because I’d change it all the time. So I’d rather decorate the place where I live with more neutral objects, preferably with ones that don’t reference any pop culture product.
Maybe that’s why I have never gotten a tattoo. What if my taste changes again and I dislike the scribble, and what it represents, that I’ve inscribed in my body?!
NOTE: This short story was originally written in portuguese for “A Escrita do Eu nos Detalhes do Mundo”, a creative-writing workshop taught by Davi Novaes at Núcleo Experimental.
You can read the original story in portuguese here:
