The Act of Conscious Pastiche: a tale of growing and living everyday life

This year I turned 30. It is the first time I am actually feeling like an adult; this meaning in the way society constructed the term. I never felt my biological age inside, growing older always felt comfortable almost as if I am getting closer to where I was always supposed to be. But this year is different, 30 has a different connotation. 30 came with the annexed reflection upon my 20s and even my childhood and a need to take the time to evaluate my past to understand my future. So here we are, at 30, having to look for new inspirations, new directions, new goals. This is what being an adult means to me, taking the responsibility of our own life like never before. And this is where pastiche comes in.

I learned about pastiche at university while studying Proust and other modernist writers. Pastiche in literature like in architecture or art means to create a work of art imitating another work that came before. It is not a parody the purpose is not to mock the inspiration but to honor it and use it as groundwork for something new. Pastiche also means pasticcio, part mess part mash up of things that came before us, of ideas that are already out there but this time reworked and repackaged for a new purpose. Out of nowhere almost coincidentally around my 30th birthday the concept of pastiche resurfaced in my memory. It was almost as random as the idea of pastiche itself, and this fascinates me.

But then it came to me, pastiche is what growing is about; it is about living our life. It is about taking lessons, wisdoms, inspirations from what came before us, from the notions we learnt at school, from what we were told at home, from the culture we were born in and the society we are shaped by. Pastiche is often unconscious, it happens to us both my nature and nurture, I mean, the very act of being born is a genetic pastiche. So, what interests me is the concept of conscious pastiche. What was I influenced by, what gave me motivation, what shaped me?

In this blog, I will explore my journey of growing, what is creating my daily pastiche patchwork that is my life and how perhaps some of my fabric can become part of your own. I think that there is limit to contemplating and decompressing my own experiences on my own, there is value in sharing and in starting conversations.

My life if not that extraordinary but I am always pushing myself to do new things and often there is not a defined path I can follow or one’s specific roadway I can try to emulate. I had to study, research and get inspired by different people and contrasting situations along the way; that brought me to collect a lot of observations and insights. Rereading Proust’s Pastiche Theory I realized about the importance of being in charge of one’s own pastiche, to do it consciously and mindfully, but this is a new discovery, I never paid much attention into this, perhaps this is part of entering adulthood.

I hereby, welcome this new flow of consciousness, of experiences already lived, of prospects to be, of conversations to be initiated, of ideas to be formed. Welcome to Pastiche by Lulu.