With Eros complete, I have spent a lot of time wondering about art. Eros truly felt like an art piece to me, different from the other films I created, which feel like pure entertainment.

This caught me off-guard. Just like a journalist is different from a writer, an entertainer is different from an artist. My films have been, in my mind, for entertainment. I wanted to make people laugh, to tell a good story.

Then something happened that made art seem a little less cryptic. It starts in the summer of 2005, when I saw someone get raped in Sofia. I was sleeping on a couch with the windows open to a 7 story balcony, I heard unmistakable sounds and saw what was going down on the street below. There were many offenders, and I did not do anything… no calling the law enforcement, no waking anyone else up. I just paced.

So, in my high school Philosophy class a few days ago, I brought it up, leading to fresh thoughts on the matter.

Many people say art comes from such experiences; or indeed, the only way you can create good art is if you have experienced a great amount pain. While most of the time I wave this idea off as silly and insist that most of my “art” (it always sounds so pompous to call yourself an artist, no?) does not come from pain. I realized that much of my memory of that night comes not of the event but the fact I convinced myself to make a film about Sofia, and as the sun rose, made a time-lapse.

That film, the first one I made, was unintentionally born from that experience. But watching it again, my Impressions of Sofia were pretty favorable. Though the will to make a portrait of the city was fueled by what I saw, but the portrait itself is almost optimistic. Check it out; the first scene is from said balcony, on that morning.

I’m amazed that my own art could come from this, without even making the connection. All of a sudden, art makes more sense. What a wonderful feeling.