SS_12/14 → Notes from Conversas Vadias #12 – Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Manuel António Pina
Notes from Conversas Vadias #12
Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Manuel António Pina
Originally broadcast by RTP on 24 May 1990.
Available through the RTP Archives.
We’ve narrowed the meaning of the word poet far too much.
Today, we imagine someone writing verses.
Publishing books.
Winning literary awards.
Agostinho means something much older.
Much simpler.
He reminds us that the Greek origin of the word poet simply means:
The one who creates.
Not the one who writes.
The one who creates.
That changes everything.
A carpenter can be a poet.
A scientist.
A teacher.
A parent.
An entrepreneur.
A gardener.
Creation isn’t a profession.
It’s a way of inhabiting the world.
Agostinho goes even further.
He argues that every one of us is born with that capacity.
Creation isn’t rare.
It isn’t reserved for gifted people.
It is our natural condition.
The tragedy isn’t that some people aren’t creative.
The tragedy is that many lives never create the conditions for that creativity to emerge.
That idea stayed with me.
Because we often ask children what they want to become.
Very rarely do we ask what wants to emerge through them.
Later in the conversation, Agostinho returns to another recurring theme.
Authorship.
He says he doesn’t really consider himself the author of anything.
We’re merely antennas.
Ideas arrive.
Sometimes we’re attentive enough to receive them.
Sometimes we aren’t.
Whether you interpret that spiritually or metaphorically almost doesn’t matter.
The invitation is the same.
Listen more carefully.
Reality may already be speaking.
Towards the end of the episode, he says something that feels increasingly difficult in our time.
Never believe that what you think is the truth.
Run away from certainty.
Stay available.
Stay curious.
Stay unfinished.
Perhaps wisdom isn’t accumulating convictions.
Perhaps it’s becoming increasingly comfortable living without them.
I also found myself thinking about another sentence from the conversation.
Every person we meet, no matter how insignificant they may appear, could be a disguised muse.
I love that image.
It changes how you enter a room.
How you start a conversation.
How you listen.
Perhaps the next idea that changes your life won’t arrive through a famous book.
Or a celebrated thinker.
Perhaps it’ll arrive through someone you’ve almost overlooked.
Maybe that’s what Agostinho spent his whole life trying to teach.
Not how to think.
But how to remain available to thought itself.
Original source
Conversas Vadias — Episode 12 → https://www.fernandomoreira.me/conversas-vadias-episodio-12-com-manuel-antonio-pina/
Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Manuel António Pina.
Broadcast by RTP on 24 May 1990.
Available through the RTP Archives.