Caffe Interactions

It’s been a while since I last showed up here, and that’s because I’ve been dwelling in other territories of creativity: reading a book I couldn’t put down (and its main character), and looking into another platform for the blog.

Let’s take them one at a time.

During part of this creative exploration, I’ve been digging into the value of the word as the source of every possibility of materializing the reality around us. Obviously, this is hardly news in the world of reading and writing, but I listened to a podcast that put the emphasis on conversations, as the spaces where we create and expand our (known) reality. From there came the value of friendship, as one of the first bonds where we build our way of conversing and our points of view on many things. But I’m going to stay with conversations as the main theme.

The reason I write and share what I do, in any field of creativity, is fundamentally to build what I consider bridges to an other. To someone else. With some luck, to many others more.

For me, writing is the chance to start a conversation, at some point or moment, unexpectedly. I also write THANKS to the conversations I have with others, as much as with myself. And I write hoping to replicate that effect in someone else. Writing is the language that powers all my forms of creation, and what powers that writing is conversation, conversations.

Internet platforms have given all of us creators the chance to spread and share our work and our conviction for making. And yet, despite the wonderful anonymity anyone can choose, in the back and forth of replies and reactions, it’s quite hard to create a real exchange with readers. Sometimes, in the best case, a few people dare to leave a comment of thanks or praise, which is beautifully received (of course), and that’s it. The most common thing is silence, then a private reply from my close circle (whom I also love and am grateful for), followed by the occasional Like and, though it hasn’t happened to me so far, we all know that hate, when it shows up, is fuel for a certain kind of feedback.

Last week Carlos passed away, an artist from Mar del Plata whom I never met in person, though we followed each other on Instagram, and thanks to whom I felt a lot of support and company in the practice of writing and publishing. Carlos always commented on whatever resonated with him in my texts, and he did it from his own way of seeing and his own life. That invited me to step closer to something of his experience, to converse, in a way, because the comments had a back-and-forth rhythm. It was an asynchronous dialogue, very, very valuable. A kind of dialogue similar to the one I’m used to with many of my friends, not only because I moved across continents, but because of the many cities I lived in across the province of Buenos Aires.

Those dialogues are constant engine and fuel, not only for the power to create (texts, ideas, artworks, images and more) but also for new ways of understanding and seeing life, the reality around us. And the value of those conversations doesn’t shrink because of the asynchrony. They find their place in our present and, even more importantly, WE MAKE ROOM FOR THEM.

Asynchronous conversation is a completely voluntary act, for which we set aside time, energy, presence and our truth of that moment, even if it later changes, inevitably, like everything.

Yesterday I finished The correspondent, by Virginia Evans, a beautiful recommendation I got very recently. It amazed me how fast I finished it, because although I’m a very slow reader, I couldn’t stop. I had a daily, recurring date, in which I immersed myself in the letters of Sybil, the protagonist, and her life. In the epistolary conversations (that’s what they’re called, I learned it there) she keeps up throughout her whole life, I witnessed all those dialogues, even the ones she has with herself. That way I could, of course, discover how the character’s story unfolds, but above all, remember the value of a form of communication I want to reclaim.

I still belong to the generation that kept up postal correspondence as a kid: I swapped letters with my cousins in Mar del Plata while I lived in Tandil, my aunts and uncles sent me photos and postcards from the United States, and I also remember the travel postcards from my grandmother Élida. As a faithful romantic of paper, printed images and mail art (which I met later, in college), I still tend to send postcards to mom and dad from the odd trip. And I love seeing that they pile them up in plain sight on a kind of coat rack we have in the quincho (the backyard grill house) back home. In an in-between period, in my teens, my school friends and I wrote each other letters telling who we had a crush on and who we were upset with. I even had a notebook with one of my friends, Tone, where we wrote to each other every so often or shared what we called «cartelitos» (little drawings), and the notebook would spend several days with each of us, no counting how many. Later, in college, Cami and I sent each other emails in which we called each other «colleague,» and the exchange was driven by a shared love for the way Julio Cortázar wrote. As remote as it all may sound, there’s something about the urge to exchange that is crystal clear.

What do I want to reclaim? Something many people already knew, and that we seem to be forgetting with the networks of immediacy: that exchanges, conversations and the things we tell each other are no less valuable or interesting for not happening in «real time.»

What is this «real time,» anyway? I once told a friend: «Just because I don’t answer right away doesn’t mean I’m not interested. It means that right now I don’t have the availability or the attention I want or need to answer you the way I’d like.»

Postal correspondence always took time, depending on distance, frequency and the means of transport needed to send it, and that didn’t make the conversation any less real or valuable. Obviously you don’t have access to the minute-by-minute of the other person’s reality, and many episodes of their life stay out of the exchange. But it isn’t real, or even possible, to have the energy and time to follow someone else’s life minute by minute, at least not without losing track of your own. And the richness of exchange lies in there being at least two people involved. At least two, with everything that implies: two points of view, two different realities with their circumstances, two kinds of frequency, attention, in short… two individuals, two lives, with everything that means.

I’m not trying to go against the immediate, but to make room for the possibility of a bit of everything. In the book, Sybil Van Antwerp drops a superpowerful statement about one of the hidden wills behind correspondence as an exercise: trying to reach a little beyond one or two generations after our death. It’s not that I believe in the value of transcendence just because (though the idea of simply disappearing TERRIFIES me). But a lovely take on exchange with others is that, in the exchange, we transform.

Hearing ourselves talk is often revealing, hence the value of so many forms of therapy. Talking with others opens us to new worlds and visions, experiences, and in the same way, asynchronous conversations, written or in audio format, transform us too. That’s why I don’t only love writing and sharing myself: I also want to insist on how much I always want to read you.

Here’s to bridges 🙂

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On a more mundane note, I’m considering moving the blog to Substack, to inhabit writing and exchange in a place where community is for everyone and among everyone. I haven’t decided yet, though, because I’m attached to the design, and to the time and work I put into the CaffeInteractions site on WordPress. Any thoughts or similar experiences?

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As I was saying, I’ve finished the book, and now I miss Sybil. Though I already have a new protagonist in a new book in my hands. It makes me so happy to have become such a reader in recent years. As a kid it wasn’t a frequent habit, and for a long time I wanted to make it one. Now it’s part of me and I love it. I dive into books and stories without needing a recommendation or knowing the author.

More next time.

A huge, ethereal THANK YOU, Carlos 🤍 I’m going to miss you too.