Field Notes - Porto, The Mountains, and Human Crossings
A friend came down from up North yesterday to see Victor Torpedo's photography exhibition Call of The West here in Porto. He had booked concerts for Tédio Boys in the US back in the 90s.
The trip itself was already complicated. No buses on time from his village. He had to drive to Braga first, then take a bus to Porto. I met him at Campanhã, the huge transport hub.
While waiting, I sat barefoot on the grass in the small green area behind the transport hub, trying to cool down from the heat and the strange weather these last days have brought.
Porto was overflowing. São Bento and Ribeira were packed to the point of becoming almost abstract. Tourists everywhere. Noise, movement, heat, bodies pressed together like canned sardines. The city feels different now. Sometimes I still recognise it. Sometimes I don’t.
The exhibition was beautiful though. And human. We met people we knew. We spoke. We remembered things.
Then, after leaving, something small happened. My friend asked an American couple if they had a lighter.
That was it. That was the opening.
The lady and I started talking. First casually, then about astrology, Human Design, energy, symbolic systems, life. Her husband turned out to be from the same Californian city as another friend of mine.
What are the odds?
People often assume projects like The Polymath or The Listening Room HQ exist somewhere “outside reality.” Too symbolic. Too interdisciplinary. Too strange.
But life itself is interdisciplinary.
A random conversation outside an exhibition can suddenly become: music, migration, memory, symbolism, geography, psychology, embodiment, weather, timing, coincidence, human connection.
None of these things exist separately from each other in lived experience.
We separate them afterwards.
What stayed with me most was not even the conversation itself, but the reminder that meaning often emerges relationally. Through crossings. Through movement. Through seemingly small interactions that open unexpected doors.
Later that night, after I returned home, I realised I could have gone back up North with my friend.
There was nothing physically requiring me to stay in Porto this weekend. Up there are mountains, lagoons, forests, musicians, conversations, and perhaps even future artistic possibilities beginning to open.
I only realised the possibility after I was already home.
Sometimes life is like that too.
The path only becomes visible once you’ve already walked past the turning.
In the middle of all this, I was also working on two collective birthday projects for Simon Gilbert, Suede's drummer, by two fellow Mild Ones, Melissa Waterfield, and Arin Zhang of Simon Gilbert Daily @simongilbertdaily
I'm singing Happy Birthday to Simon along the isolated drum track of Suede's The Chemistry Between Us — Simon's favourite song from Coming Up — for Melissa's project, and did an inventive photo series with my bass, street-found postcards, natas (pastéis de nata), drumsticks, toy instruments, and a few seconds of me playing guitar on a song I've written a while ago.
Small creative gestures made by fans from different parts of the world, assembled together into shared offerings. Purple paper found in the park gazebo ended up becoming part of one of them.
It struck me again how often creation emerges this way: through fragments, crossings, found objects, conversations, timing, affection, and people quietly contributing pieces of themselves into something larger than any one person could make alone.
[painting: Gustav Klimt - Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I, 1903-1907; photos: Victor Torpedo's Call of The West and one frame of my contribution to Arin Zhang' Simon Gilbert Foodie Party, 23.05.2026 © Raquel Pinheiro]]
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