Open Your Eyes
a film photographic series by Lulù Withheld about finding inspiration and making art
First there’s Water.
Which is like an image inside my mind, in which I know I can hide. To dive in.
This is something I’ve learned, to survive. Going underwater even when there’s no water.
So that’s what I do. I put the world on mute. My soundproof mind, I’m diving in and I’m going down to the bottom.
I’m going. Just small stuff, just a few seconds, I never had a lot of breath.
There’s still that moment when you touch the dust at the bottom, with your hand with your fingers in the sand, like moments go on, and you go back up to the surface following the gleam. This is the moment, this one moment, in which ideas shall be reached. It is only a moment, just one. Losing it, would be a disaster. Losing it, it’s like you’re out of breath, when you’re underwater, but you can’t go back up to the surface. So you breathe.
Underwater, you breathe. But we cannot breathe beneath the water.
Anyway, it looks like this is all a matter of breathing. Of pace. Of self-knowing. And to wonder how far you can go, down there, without dying.
This is the moment right before artistic creation. Moments of thought, of seeking the truth.
Your own, I mean. It is just the moment shortly before the creation, they call it inspiration, it’s within you.
Within me.
This is something that floods your heart, overwhelms your mind, destroys yourself. You’ve got to let it flow, you need to loosen up. The water all around. You’re soaked to the bone.
Then you get back, you always come back.
And then there is the Fire.
Which is like that image inside my mind, like a room.
The sun comes and floods this empty room. I call it my room.
Something like a room of my heart. Where I can come back, whenever I want. It is the place where I come back.
That’s what I call home. A place in my head, no doubts.
There’s something you feel, that is excitement, the itch, the moment when you have to act, you have to do. You have to show, you need to tell, you get to live it, you make art of all you’ve achieved throughout your own death. You have to. You’re out of breath, the impetus is so intense, what you’re saying goes crazy. Will you do it? So is that what you’re gonna do?
You can feel it in your shaking hands. You can feel it in your heart which is going to burst.
Can you feel it? You keep trembling. Like after sex.
This is the moment, just this one. When you know that fire (stolen from the gods) won’t last long, it won’t burn forever. You have to hurry. It’s time. Now you have to do.
I have to do.
And there’s this amazing fire, it’s all on fire all around. That’s burning like a dance inside me.
It’s the pleasure, absolute complete essential. Orgasm of the Creation.
So, now, open your eyes.
Lulù Withheld is an Italian film photographer