Self portrait - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: The artist who stole our hearts with his visions
BPP:
Identity: Who you are? And who you really are?
Conrado Rafael Maleta: I am a world citizen. A person that deeply
believes all the world is a unique home for humans. I feel like all people are familiar members of this big family for me. I dont have religion, i dont have any
culture, i dont belong to any political party, i dont have any nationality... because I
can have everything if i don't believe in stereotypes. To gain simplicity gin your life, offers you a wide horizon of possibilities.
"I'm telling you loud and clear, I give up!" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: But also i
am just a Cuban, a simple Cuban that has great limitations to move and share his ideas with the rest of the world. Even if i had been long time out of Cuba, still i am nothing but a Cuban.
"Far away of your imagination there is another you and other him. There is also a bird called Wisdom" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
"Ancients rocks and landscape. Thinking about life in Çatalhöyük"- Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
BPP: If you
could say something important you've learned all these years of your life, to
the other people and they were able to listen to you, what would you like to
tell them?
Conrado Rafael Maleta: I think i
will use the favorite quote of John Paul II: He loved a lot the small verse and
in fact he was the first who told the world at the begining of his mission
as a Pope: "Do not be afraid!"
"Even if tomorrow is the Day of the Judgement, today i will plant an apple tree" - Image courtesy; Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: The most important thing i can tell to others is a recomendation to be openminded , to be gentle, to be
honourable and don' t be afraid to love your self. If you love yourself in a healthy way, then you will be able to love the others. If you built you home strong than
you will be able to open the doors to the visitors.
"He is our Knight of Light".- Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: I must
remark that to love your self is not connected at all with vanity.
I think vanity and frivolity are just a way to cover your personal misery. As well i think today we are less educated; i found in my long walk on this planet, that each day people become less educated and every day people are more "happy" and tolerant with that fact.. i must tell to the people that when in XIX century the dandism appears, wasn't a frivolity, but it was discipline, a social and personal discipline and desire to educate the souls; later it changed to something else...
I think vanity and frivolity are just a way to cover your personal misery. As well i think today we are less educated; i found in my long walk on this planet, that each day people become less educated and every day people are more "happy" and tolerant with that fact.. i must tell to the people that when in XIX century the dandism appears, wasn't a frivolity, but it was discipline, a social and personal discipline and desire to educate the souls; later it changed to something else...
"A story about myself" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: To be
educate will be always more difficult than not to be at all. Also i think to be
bad educated is indicative of this loss of values and of love for the
human beings in general. It is a loss of love for yourself and of respect for others.
"I have Cuba in my Heart" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
BPP: What
is your real dream, the one that keeps you awake at nights and if one day it
will come true, you will feel your heart calm and peacefull?
Conrado Rafael Maleta: You are asking for the real dreams, not for the
surreal ones those we like to imagine with ourselves just for personal pleasure. My dream maybe is very
silly, but it reveals my life's main problems.
I need money! jajajaja ! I need a lot of money! jajajjaa!
Why? because only if i have a lot of money i will be "political" free.
I will explain: i had been an illegal imigrant for many years. Now i am not, but still i have many and very serious problems to stay in a place that i can call it "home".
As well I have so many other problems; for example to take an airplane and go to any place i want, or to meet my family in Cuba or my friends...
I need money! jajajaja ! I need a lot of money! jajajjaa!
Why? because only if i have a lot of money i will be "political" free.
I will explain: i had been an illegal imigrant for many years. Now i am not, but still i have many and very serious problems to stay in a place that i can call it "home".
As well I have so many other problems; for example to take an airplane and go to any place i want, or to meet my family in Cuba or my friends...
"I'm a human being" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: I feel like every year, all the countries had been rising up high, high
walls around their boundaries. A person like me can not destroy or push away those walls... But also i saw in my whole life those people who have a lot of money never had problems with boundaries or even of
social acceptation.
If you have money -a lot of money- than you can come from Cuba or from Kiribati Island and find yourself in the middle of Paris or in New York and nobody will ask you a thing. You can be muslim, jew, budist, animist...but if you have a lot of money, no one will judge that.
If you have money -a lot of money- than you can come from Cuba or from Kiribati Island and find yourself in the middle of Paris or in New York and nobody will ask you a thing. You can be muslim, jew, budist, animist...but if you have a lot of money, no one will judge that.
"Move out of your evidence" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: Perhaps it sounds a naive opinion, but these are my feelings about what i see around me in this world. One can tell me of course, that even if you have money , you can not be happy. for sure.. perhaps. but this is my real dream: to have money but not
for vanity. I need to "buy" security and "normality" for myself and for those i love.
"Never forget the light with the shadow, the wine with the silence, the you and me" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: If all is
about Power, Sex and Fear of Death, and Freud did the reduction to just one of
them: "all our life is a wish for to obtain and to get the Power..". mmmm
Than my dream to gain a lot of money comes from my desire to avoid those who want to gain power by taking advantage of my weakness.
"What i know is that every mountain start as a hill' - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: I know that if i
have a lot money i will share them with others, because it is my nature to be like this... and as
usual... money will flow up out of my hands! jajajajjaa... ok, still it is a dream!
BPP: How is
life for the people in your country today? What do you wish to happen to them
and to the people of this planet at large?
Conrado Rafael Maleta: In my country (Cuba) life is hard, very hard. But as i think now, my people don't really know how good their life is there in such many other ways. I
mean: in Cuba perhaps you feel isolated from the rest of the world and maybe you dream about the rest of the
planet. But this is a dream, not something real. Than, suddenly, when you go out of Cuba, you discover that real
life outhere, is sooooooo much harder.
"Lady Zipor shel Dimdumim" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Lady Zipor shel Dimdumim - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: Because when you get out of Cuba, you have to learn how to do your life in a way
totally different and so hard and so lonely. There were so many times, that people here in Israel told me: "Hey! now is all better. right? It is so
good for you to be out of Cuba! Ii is great out of Cuba, no?".... and I always answered: "I
think you are wrong, out of Cuba is not "better than" is just
"different than".
"The dance of death in Machaerus" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: Another life, another reality, and different needs and
sorrows. I think all humans must learn that we can not comparε places between them. You need to see if a place is good enough for you or it is bad for you. If you are emotionaly
connected with this place or not but i don't like to think that a place could be bad or good ...maybe it is bad for you but it could be perfect for me.
"The last sun in the life of Marat" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: Now i live in
Israel. I can tell to everybody that i don't feel it like a home for myself; I dont feel well
here, but i must be careful with that because i know that this country is and
was the boat of salvation for so many people from all over the world. Not only for jews; i can see a large population of muslims from subsaharian countries here
in Israel. An they came here asking for help and for them this country is good,
even if for me it is not.
"Spain in my dreams" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: To the
people of this planet... First and first and first of all, above any other priority: "ALL of US need to learn to be HUMAN beings first, than just enities". We
need to learn what means to be a human being and why and how we can become humans. I think you can spend all
your life doing the attempt to learn which is the meaning of being a HUMAN...
and you can die without capture the whole meaning of it.
Conrado Rafael Maleta: Than: Why people want to be first something (christian, jew, muslim, left, right politic party, cuban, french, indian, chinese or.....), how you can be so sure that you are a servant of any religion or political party or philosophy, if you never asked yourself about the primary key issues. I met so many people in my life that never asked their selves: why am I born a Human being?
To be a human being is so hard. I found out during my life, that so many people refused to be human beings first of all. They are first of all so many other things...
"Speak about God" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
"Speak about your Mother" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: Than: Why people want to be first something (christian, jew, muslim, left, right politic party, cuban, french, indian, chinese or.....), how you can be so sure that you are a servant of any religion or political party or philosophy, if you never asked yourself about the primary key issues. I met so many people in my life that never asked their selves: why am I born a Human being?
To be a human being is so hard. I found out during my life, that so many people refused to be human beings first of all. They are first of all so many other things...
BPP: If you
had the chance to be a child again, will you choose to do the same life you do?
Conrado Rafael Maleta: Yes.
" Canticum" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
'Street opera for a worker" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
BPP: Which
exactly was the moment you understood what you want to do in your life? How
did you feel at this very moment?
Conrado Rafael Maleta: Still I dont' know what i want to be. I don't
need to think of it, i just do. I am who I am because this is my nature. I am just following my nature, my human nature. I am studing the wisdom that
History and Philosophy and Arts had collected all these millleniums of human civilization. I'm listening to the song of nature in the air and i just follow it.
"A Super Hero for a Super Metro" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
BPP:
Something yours: Do you want to tell us something we didn't ask you until now?
which is
your best memory? (the question was made by my wife)
"241 3205 825 21921+210 1200 120 00010= Una mujer que baila, que mueve su cuerpo al compaz de las olas de cierto mar" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
"As a real Queen, wait for the begining of the nights" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta:The Jasmine tree still is in the middle of the courtyard and it is so huge! So wonderful and always with hiperkinetics sparrows!. I use to come in the afternoon to sleep under the jasmine tree, when i was with the Stabat Mater of Pergolesi, i was reading some poems of Keats and i remember everything around me was so full of light, smells...
" Was the wing of the angel of God, was the storm, the wave of lights in the air "- Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta: My eyes follow the clouds at the blue sky and the 2 dogs, the cat and the parrot that sleeping close to me...It was like i was in paradise! i still close my eyes and i can see the clouds, smell the flowers, listen the sounds... But this was such a long time ago...in Cuba.
"Opus Nigrum" - Image courtesy: Conrado Rafael Maleta
Conrado Rafael Maleta's drawing for BPProject
If you want to learn more about Conrado Rafael Maleta, visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kohelet-ind...
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001370994076
Photos © by Conrado Rafael Maleta. All rights reserved
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