FAITH

PLAYLIST: "FAITH” LINK

Text by Vincent Moustache with AI assistance for research, proofreading, and translation. Illustrations by Vincent Moustache.

Dear croissant,

I suppose faith is like riding the metro in a certain direction: the only certainty you have is that you are going to get off at a station. When you are an artist, life revolves around making decisions of this kind: your work only exists when you create it, and you cannot live - make money - until you make your work and share it with the world. But it goes even further: there are artists like Hilma Af Klint (LINK) who never show their work, they just live with it. Van Gogh never managed to make a living doing what he loved and it ended in suicide. He lost faith. They say faith moves mountains, it's true. We humans are capable of making some of them disappear if we believe their mineral treasures will make us rich.

THE ARTIST'S TRUE FAITH: WHEN THEY PAY ME

August is a weird month to talk about faith; Easter or Holy Week would fit better, even Halloween & Día de los muertos, why not Xmas? But for artists and freelance workers, it is the month of having faith. Summer, offices half-open—positive people—half-closed—negative people. Will they reply to that email? Will everyone who makes the final decision be in? Meanwhile, I wait and look at clouds while asking the cards and asking for loans from people I know. August: feeling guilty for working, feeling guilty for resting—in this equation, guilt is surplus to my requirements.

THE END OF DREAMS

I have 9 days left in the house I'm currently in, then a mattress on the floor at a friend's house, and after that, after that comes faith. Once in 2019, at a party, a woman who had barely spoken to me said: "Don't worry, I didn't get my own house until I was 40." I still wonder what I said or what she must have seen in me. She was a successful businesswoman; when she retired, she sold her restaurant, and the new owners kept her on as a star guest so the place wouldn't lose its charm. 40... I don't have much time left until then; the solutions are always ahead, and there is less and less time left to get there.

TRYING TO MAKE BREAD, I LEARNED TO MAKE CRÊPES (RECIPE COMING SOON!)

Trying to make homemade bread without an oven, I discovered how to make crêpes and pancakes. Now I am the crêpe king of the 11th arrondissement in Paris, at home and for my friends. My best friends from Valencia came to visit (I'm still emotionally hungover), and I made them crêpes every day: wheat, buckwheat, with cinnamon, with cocoa, super high-protein. From the moment I moved into this house, I wanted them to come so I could cook good things for them. Out of all the answers I will never find in life, at least I have one of the best: in this life, romantic partners and family don't matter—what you must treasure is a good friend. It is a relationship based purely on connecting, sharing, and caring; there is nothing else. It's funny, now that I think about it, it isn't institutionalized: there is no public ceremony for being friends, there are no friend mortgages or friend Christmas photos. Now I realize I found a truth, a treasure even greater than I thought. A good friend push you into the empty pool with no water for you, fills those holes in your soul that you don't even dare look at, and at the same time, you fill theirs. Having faith is easier when you travel in groups of two or three at least; that is why religions exist. If you don't see water in the pool, your nervous system won't take the risk; when you see that you can push someone else in, your nervous system gets playful while thinking, "Thank goodness it's not me."

TRYING, I FOUND FAITH

There are many self-help mug quotes, and one of the ones that bothers me the most is: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Fucking Samuel Beckett. I'd love to know how much money the family selling those mugs has. When you try so hard, a tiny entity appears that slowly grows until it takes over everything: frustration. It ends up devouring another thing you really need: self-esteem. They devour each other like plants in a garden, in a false symbiosis, in a constant exchange of spores that leads them to create new species over thousands of years. Meanwhile, you, your dreams, debts, and unpaid bills are caught in the middle of this internal struggle. Anyone looking from the outside would tell you it's all on you, that it's all "your stuff." The truth is that it is a personal dissociation that only a good friend can empathize with. In the face of all this, all you have left is: I'm fine, everything will turn out fine, dissociation from problems, and having faith.

FOR THOSE WHO LACK FAITH

This article isn't meant to sell anything: not a religion, not an astrology or self-help group (if I had one, I'd be selling it already—laughs), nor is it saying that having faith in something is necessary. Simply put, in my observations over these 38 years, I've seen that people who have no faith, none at all, are sad; and those who have blind faith in something are fanatics. As always, the gray areas are the kings of the world. It doesn't matter where you stand on a scale from -10 to 10: adding a few drops of faith, of believing in what you cannot see, of hope into your daily life makes life more bearable and beautiful. Conversely, adding a dose of reality to your astral travels is the only way to evolve in this cruelly 3D world.

HOW TO KNOW?

We have talked a lot about IMAGINTATION here (LINK), and in practice, it is another plane of existence—visitable, intangible, and practical for solving problems in this real-life plane. A wonderful place to send your worries on vacation. We artists navigate well over there, on the other side, and we come back to explain it on this side. There are spiritual theories that say we exist in infinite planes where your problems are already solved; you just have to channel that solution, talk to the versions of yourself that have the answers. As I write this, it sounds absurd, yet it brings me peace. I don't know if that's what it is—how could anyone know?—but writing and drawing bring me peace, especially writing fiction: explaining how "the happy ending" is constructed calms my vagus nerve. I suppose I'm giving a response, even a temporary one, a theory, to the puzzle. Ins’t that faith? The only answer is looking for the answer. Great.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

It is completely normal that spirituality and faith are trending. There is no money—there just isn't enough for everyone. We live in a bathtub that is slowly heating up, literally due to climate change, but also in our day-to-day lives. We don't have, by a long shot, the life choices our parents had. Before, it was eccentric not to have children; now, having them is a test fit for demigods where, no matter what people say and even with family support, you find yourself alone. Jobs, kids, objects, good food, good house, cars, vacations, going out to dinner... We have turned the world into a playground for the rich that you can only access when you dress up as a tourist. SAD. We swapped buying and owning things for subscriptions —not even renting, because renting comes with rights; subscribing is just pay-to-access, end of story. DANGEROUSLY SAD. Then people speak ill of communism, but this is exactly what we have built inside capitalism; the difference is that the state doesn't own things, corporations do. How could we not be spiritual? That and friendship are the final frontiers, the last spaces—for now—free of advertising: purely altruistic relationships and another plane of existence that cannot be quantified, valued, bought, or sold. That being said, you can buy friend mugs and give money at church, but not everyone does it, at least for now. Not me. Faith is also believing that you are not that version of yourself that you would dislike, deeply dislike.

I FUCKING LOVE LIVING FOR BREAKFAST !

SPEAKING OF SUBSCRIPTIONS

I've started a SUBSTACK channel, a network for writers where you can read their content via subscription. I don't know where this adventure will lead me or for how long, but for now, I feel like visiting that country. See you over there too (LINK).

TRYING TO REPLACE FEAR WITH CURIOSITY

As I write today’s newsletter—which is beautiful, unexpected, mystical, and chaotic (I actually thought about launching my Substack subscription today—loud audience laughter)—a friend texted me. We are living through a similar situation: our comfort horizon lasts for just one more week, and we have no idea what our lives will look like come September. As I was typing and thinking about how to support them, a beautiful concept popped into my head that I want to explore over the coming months: replacing fear with curiosity. It's a mechanism psychologists recommend to stop judging people—"replace judgment with curiosity." Instead of saying "what a terrible person they are" (which they might well be), change it to "what motivates them?" When you find yourself in a loop of no money and no stability, escaping it is remarkably tough. Your horizon of well-being is radically short, your mind mounts the runaway horse of survival, and you ride across the barren plains of adulthood without knowing why all this got any sense. Whenever I find myself in these situations, I look for the other door. At the bottom of the well, there are always more doors—it’s just dark, so you don't see them. If you soothe that runaway horse, if you manage to make it stop, if you stop listening to negative voices and take control, if you start asking yourself the right questions, the light comes out and the landscape transforms. What if, instead of blindly listening to the voice of fear, you question it? "Okay, maybe you're right, but what can I do right now to get out of this? What can I do to feel better right now? Who can I ask for help? Should I stop for a moment and rest? How do I truly disconnect and recover?" If you replace fear with curiosity, suddenly, life becomes something else entirely. The sun comes up, you become your own hero, and you actually come to love your chaotic, bizarre life. Everyone seems good. Everything turns into opportunity and personal growth. What an August—and yet, it’s still better than previous ones. The truth is, I am very happy. My fear this week doesn't stem from having nothing; it comes from the dread of losing what makes me deeply happy. My fear comes from the fear of letting go. Even though traveling without luggage—light, on a train through the clouds—feels so good.

Philosophical Commentary: Hume, the Future, and the Illusion of Certainty

BY AI

Yes, you are thinking of David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher!

Hume is famous for his Problem of Induction and his critique of cause and effect, which directly tackles how our minds construct the idea of "the future."

Hume pointed out that we have no rational, logical proof that the future will resemble the past.Just because the sun has risen every day of your life doesn't mean you can logically prove it will rise tomorrow; you simply expect it to because of habit and custom. For Hume, the future is fundamentally unwritten and unknowable—our anxiety about what happens next (like what September will bring) is just a mental projection, a trick of imagination rooted in past habits.

Your text intuitively hits on a brilliant Humean shift:

* Fear demands certainty about a negative future. Fear assumes the worst-case scenario will inevitably happen, acting as if the future is already written and terrifying.



* Curiosity embraces the unknown nature of the future. By switching to curiosity, you align with Hume’s core truth: you do not actually know what comes next.



When you replace prediction (fear) with inquiry (curiosity), you break the mind's rigid assumption that the future must mirror your current stress. Instead of treating September as a guaranteed drop into the void, curiosity opens up Hume’s empty canvas—a space where unexpected doors, light, and new landscapes can actually appear.