Over 30.000 with sound today

Today, and since its beginning, Inner Tour Blog reached over 30.000 visits from all over the world!

I have written about it before, if you're curious, check out a little bit of its story here.

Just since last year, people from 113 countries visited my blog.

Google Analytics Stats Map of Inner Tour Blog geographic provenance visits since last year, 2014. The Countries in blue are the ones from where the visits were coming from.

Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, French Guiana, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Servia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zambia - THANK YOU!

And also, Inner Tour Blog, and one of the portraits I did from Hermeto Pascoal were featured today at the Hermeto Pascoal Music Page.

You can also see it on his official website and here.

His music is a world landmark and an endless source of inspiration in my life. 

I leave you here some of my favorites...

Santo António (Saint Anthony) was Portuguese and is traditionally, the patron of weddings. He also happens to be Lisbon's city patron, where he was born. On his day, on the 12th of June, is held one of the biggest parties of this town and, in Brazil, it is celebrated as Valentine's Day. 

The Montreux Jazz Festival concert is one of his mythical performances. Great band & great sound! Also, on this event, Elis Regina and Hermeto Pascoal had a famous musical encounter. 

This last one reminds me when I was with Hermeto and Aline Morena in Brazil. Unforgettable time my friends! I love it! 

Hermeto once told me, Miles Davis gave an interview where the journalist asked him if he died and was reborn again who did he wanted to be. He answered "Hermeto Pascoal". 

No wonder why.

May his music brighten your day. Enjoy!

Detect languageAfrikaansAlbanianArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBengaliBelarusianBulgarianCatalanChinese (Simp)Chinese (Trad)CroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHebrewHindiHungarianIcelandicIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseKannadaKoreanLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianMacedonianMalayMalteseNorwegianPersianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSerbianSlovakSlovenianSpanishSwahiliSwedishTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduVietnameseWelshYiddish

AfrikaansAlbanianArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBengaliBelarusianBulgarianCatalanChinese (Simp)Chinese (Trad)CroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHebrewHindiHungarianIcelandicIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseKannadaKoreanLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianMacedonianMalayMalteseNorwegianPersianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSerbianSlovakSlovenianSpanishSwahiliSwedishTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduVietnameseWelshYiddish

Text-to-speech function is limited to 100 characters

Options : History : Help : Feedback

Pietà

Pietà (name taken from the Michealgelo's masterpiece with the same name) is the name I gave to this portrait. It is my grand mother.

She was a painter and a gallerist, and I had written before about her on this blog, here and here. She died with Parkinson and, at the moment this drawing was made, she couldn't move or speak, but she could see, hear and think.

As soon as I entered the room where she was, there she was, laying exactly in the same position as the Christ in Pietà, and hence its title, that totally suited the situation - Mercy.

The family already knew about her fragile health condition, and I went to the hospital to visit her, properly equipped with my drawing and painting gear.  I wanted to paint her as she did with me when I was a child, and I asked her permission to do so, although she couldn't answer.

The contrasted colors I chose, the type of nervous sketch rhythm, and the descendant diagonals in the black typography, reflected the violence of the emotional situation - she was dying.

When I finished the drawing I showed it ho her, and to my surprise, she firmly grabbed my hand.
I guess art's is about some sort of communication, and in that very moment that had never been so true to me. She got it all!

One day afterwords, she passed away and I keep this drawing as memory of that amazing moment.

It comes across to talk about this, also because yesterday I told this exact story to a class of medical related areas students from 3 different universities.

I was invited by the Faculdade de Ciências Médicas (Lisbon's Medical School) as a "creative advisor" on their Agedness Workshop.

It involved students from Faculdade de Ciências Médicas, Escola Superior de Saúde of Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal (Health Sciences Faculty from the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal) and Faculdade de Motricidade Humana (Human Kinetics School).

The aim was to think and produce material to raise awareness towards elderly falls. How to prevent them, how to inform people about it, how to manage it, how to involve and motivate the patient and its family, how to improve someone's life after a fall.

Having in mind that, each and one of us age, senescence and its meanders are a matter that many of us don't want to think about but that we should pay a little more attention.

Using the World Café method, the workshop ran into small groups of work that worked out different solutions for several given case scenarios. And as they came from three different areas (including myself), a multidisciplinary approach was used.

We listened to people that study these matters pretty seriously and it seems relieving that a good family support, a good physician, physical activity, good alimentation, and an active social network can do wonders. It was refreshing to me to know so many students so motivated and with great ideas to make a change in these peoples life's. They can transform the future of society.

From my experience, with elderly people - mostly with my grand parents and their cousins or siblings, I felt how important it was for them to feel creatively stimulated, apart from their physical disabilities. Meaning thinking out of the box. Some of them already died, but this drawing here, was one of the examples I mentioned in the class because I used Art as a mean of communication with someone whose sensorial perception wasn't completely damaged. My reasoning was to focus on the things she could still do and not on the things she couldn't.

So my question would be: don't elder people deserve - besides their medical condition, treatments, etc - to have a source of pleasure at the end phase of their lives? Wouldn't it make a difference if they felt still active?

Topics for us to think and reposition our place in the world.

In the end, it was a lot of fun participate on this initiative, thank you for inviting me. May it be the start for further investments and research on this area, including arts and design (this was a first at the medical School, I was told!) as a mean of improving one's life.