OBSERVATIONS & OTHER ACCIDENTS

Calm the fck down.

We were still inside the studio, Lea and I.
Make-up scattered across the tables, brushes left behind, the warm lights slowly dimming after the shoot. Our bodies tired, but our minds finally light. One of those loose conversations that only happen when work winds down and no one is in a hurry to leave. A cigarette halfway through, right there, as if time itself had decided to pause for a few minutes.

At some point, we laughed — that complicit laughter of people who have lived enough not to dramatise everything — and realised we had arrived at the same place through similar paths. We both lived very “rock” lives. Intensity, long nights, a certain chaos, poorly thought-out choices and a constant urgency to feel everything, as if life had to be endlessly proven.

Today, curiously, we want very simple things: peace, quiet, and a cigarette now and then.
And that’s perfectly fine.

We live in a curious era. Everything is bad for you.
Breathing is bad for you. Eating is bad for you — but not eating is too. Drinking alcohol is bad for you. Going out at night is bad for you. Not going out is depressing. Sleeping too little is bad for you. Sleeping too much as well. Sugar kills. Fat too. Stress is deadly. Excessive calm, apparently, is also not ideal.

We live in a curious era. Everything is bad for you.

Living, in short, seems to be quite bad for you.

A kind of elegant hysteria has formed around perfect health, optimised longevity, a life without flaws. As if the body were a machine that allows no deviation. As if pleasure always had to be justified. As if every choice needed to come with guilt, a chart or a scientific study.

I have never been hysterical — neither about health nor about life.
I believe in consistency. More than in any form of extremism. Consistency doesn’t make noise, but it builds.

I have taken care of myself for over twenty years, regardless of life’s circumstances. I have rituals. I look after my skin. I drink water. I exercise — moving between yoga, ballet and walking — not in phases, not following trends, but as something built over time. Not because I’m obsessed with longevity, but because I like feeling good in my body.

And perhaps that is precisely why I feel no guilt when I eat everything, drink wine or smoke a cigarette from time to time.
This is not neglect.
It’s called balance.

Anything hysterical eventually becomes unhealthy. Obsession, excessive control, the constant anxiety of doing everything “right” also wear you down. They inflame. They exhaust. There is a quiet fatigue in trying to live without flaws.

Anything hysterical eventually becomes unhealthy. Obsession, excessive control, the constant anxiety of doing everything “right” also wear you down.

A body that is cared for consistently can withstand imperfections.
Daily discipline gives us the right to imperfection.

I’ve lived fast enough to no longer be in a hurry.
I once confused intensity with vitality. Now I know they are not the same thing.

At this stage, true luxury is no longer the night or excess. It’s silence. It’s quiet. It’s the peace of coming home and not wanting anything more. It’s the freedom of not having to prove anything to anyone — not even to ourselves.

I continue to take care of myself.
I continue to choose consistency.
And I continue to believe that a balanced life has room for discipline — and for pleasure.

Even if, sometimes, that pleasure comes in the form of a cigarette at the end of a good conversation, inside a studio, when the lights go out.

And that’s perfectly fine.