My mom always tells the same story about the time when I was growing up: I was not even 5 years old when I used to go to my parent's room early in the mornings while they drank 'mate' and talked quietly about whatever things parents talk about. As the morning frost turned slowly into tiny drops of water on the plants of our garden and the orchard, I stood on an elevated platform in front of their bed and introduced them to my latest work: a song, most likably a love song, and a very romantic one. I normally proceeded to sing my song to them, and usually would get emotional and even cry a little during my performances. I guess that's how I became a composer. I am a musician and a poet, who makes art that deals with the testimonial, the suggestive, and the concrete. Through the intersection of narrative, composition, and improvisation, I generate experiences that aim to interact with urgent matters such as social equality, ecology, and the right to aesthetic rejoicing. My practice involves words, written, sung, spoken, guitar, a range of instruments, and field recordings. I am from the mountains of the South of Argentina, which I left due to political and economic reasons, and I have had an itinerant life ever since. I decided to leave my country in 2018, encouraged by the ongoing economic crisis, in a courageous attempt to carry a life in music, and I did so with only 400 dollars in my pocket, without a plan, and without any musical instruments. Over the past four years, I have had an itinerant life that has re-shaped the way I think about the world. I haven't seen my family in four years, and I suffer from a very unstable financial situation. Unbelievable as it might have seemed not too long ago, I have managed to return to my artistic practice, and I am currently pursuing a Master's of Music at the New School in New York, with the major being Music Performance and Composition. The program of studies is highly focused on my own work, which is allowing me to center on projects I had longly aimed for since even before my decision to leave Argentina. Despite all the struggle, I am currently challenging myself to the very edge by writing original music, songs, and arrangements for a string quintet for the first time in my life, with the mentoring of the great musician and producer Dave Douglas, which will hopefully end up in a new record. Besides being a musician, I am a published poet. I arrived a few months ago in the US after abandoning the homeland I was very lucky to build through patient dedication these past years in Europe, I am starting over again, with very limited funds, no family to receive me, the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application. For more information about my work, please, visit http://julianmuro.com

My dream life is a life where I can live from my music, maybe touring three months a year, and then spending the rest of the year living at a humble farm I would own near the mountains and the sea, with an orchard producing food for 2/3 of the year, surrounded by nature and wild animals. I would like to live a sustainable life, meaning a life that pollutes the less possible. Getting electricity from solar panels and wind systems, and gathering rainwater (certain studies indicate that gathering 100m2 of rainwater would supply 70% of a family's annual needs). My days would be spent between working on new productions, writing, gardening, chopping wood, harvesting, going climbing, snowboarding, and surfing. My nights would be silent and filled with stars, I would wake up listening to the birds. I would open the door and be in nature. A beautiful life indeed.

My dream life is a life where I can live from my music, maybe touring three months a year, and then spending the rest of the year living at a humble farm I would own near the mountains and the sea, with an orchard producing food for 2/3 of the year, surrounded by nature and wild animals. I would like to live a sustainable life, meaning a life that pollutes the less possible. Getting electricity from solar panels and wind systems, and gathering rainwater (certain studies indicate that gathering 100m2 of rainwater would supply 70% of a family's annual needs). My days would be spent between working on new productions, writing, gardening, chopping wood, harvesting, going climbing, snowboarding, and surfing. My nights would be silent and filled with stars, I would wake up listening to the birds. I would open the door and be in nature. A beautiful life indeed.

I was born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, the struggle to subsist in Argentina is constant and exhausting, even more so for artists, who do not only need to subsist but who also need to invest in gear, equipment, and hours of hard work. In 2018, after achieving undeniable milestones in my career, my country was once again going through a great economic, social and political crisis that continues to this day, and that left clear there was no place for me, encouraging me to leave for Europe with 400 euros in my pocket, without a plan, without any musical instruments, and without a family to receive me. In my travels, I've lived very hard experiences that have broadened my understanding of what it means to be a human being. But I also met wonderful people, and I now have a sense of home in broad Europe. I was able to prove my commitment to my craft and my resilience and I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted through an almost full Merit Award to The New School in NY, opening a new chapter in my life. I've recently arrived in the USA. I haven't seen my family in three years and nothing seems to indicate I will be able to travel to Argentina soon. I'm starting over again, with very limited funds and the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application.

I was born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, the struggle to subsist in Argentina is constant and exhausting, even more so for artists, who do not only need to subsist but who also need to invest in gear, equipment, and hours of hard work. In 2018, after achieving undeniable milestones in my career, my country was once again going through a great economic, social and political crisis that continues to this day, and that left clear there was no place for me, encouraging me to leave for Europe with 400 euros in my pocket, without a plan, without any musical instruments, and without a family to receive me. In my travels, I've lived very hard experiences that have broadened my understanding of what it means to be a human being. But I also met wonderful people, and I now have a sense of home in broad Europe. I was able to prove my commitment to my craft and my resilience and I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted through an almost full Merit Award to The New School in NY, opening a new chapter in my life. I've recently arrived in the USA. I haven't seen my family in three years and nothing seems to indicate I will be able to travel to Argentina soon. I'm starting over again, with very limited funds and the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application.

My dream life is a life where I can live from my music, maybe touring three months a year, and then spending the rest of the year living at a humble farm I would own near the mountains and the sea, with an orchard producing food for 2/3 of the year, surrounded by nature and wild animals. I would like to live a sustainable life, meaning a life that pollutes the less possible. Getting electricity from solar panels and wind systems, and gathering rainwater (certain studies indicate that gathering 100m2 of rainwater would supply 70% of a family's annual needs). My days would be spent between working on new productions, writing, gardening, chopping wood, harvesting, going climbing, snowboarding, and surfing. My nights would be silent and filled with stars, I would wake up listening to the birds. I would open the door and be in nature. A beautiful life indeed.

My mom always tells the same story about the time when I was growing up: I was not even 5 years old when I used to go to my parent's room early in the mornings while they drank 'mate' and talked quietly about whatever things parents talk about. As the morning frost turned slowly into tiny drops of water on the plants of our garden and the orchard, I stood on an elevated platform in front of their bed and introduced them to my latest work: a song, most likably a love song, and a very romantic one. I normally proceeded to sing my song to them, and usually would get emotional and cry a little during my performances. That is how I became a composer. I am currently pursuing a Master's of Music at the New School in New York, with the major being Music Performance and Composition. The program of studies is highly focused on my own work, which is allowing me to center on projects I had longly aimed for since even before my decision to leave Argentina in 2018, encouraged by the ongoing economic crisis, in a courageous attempt to foster a life in music. Over the past 4 years, I have had an itinerant life that has re-shaped the way I think about the world. I haven't seen my family in 4 years, and I suffer from a very unstable financial situation. Despite all that, I am currently challenging myself to the very edge by writing original music, songs, and arrangements for a string quintet for the first time in my life, with the mentoring of the great musician and producer Dave Douglas, which will hopefully end up in a new record. Besides being a musician, I am a published poet. Please, visit http://julianmuro.com

I was born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, the struggle to subsist in Argentina is constant and exhausting, even more so for artists, who do not only need to subsist but who also need to invest in gear, equipment, and hours of hard work. In 2018, after achieving undeniable milestones in my career, my country was once again going through a great economic, social and political crisis that continues to this day, and that left clear there was no place for me, encouraging me to leave for Europe with 400 euros in my pocket, without a plan, without any musical instruments, and without a family to receive me. In my travels, I've lived very hard experiences that have broadened my understanding of what it means to be a human being. But I also met wonderful people, and I now have a sense of home in broad Europe. I was able to prove my commitment to my craft and my resilience and I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted through an almost full Merit Award to The New School in NY, opening a new chapter in my life. I've recently arrived in the USA. I haven't seen my family in three years and nothing seems to indicate I will be able to travel to Argentina soon. I'm starting over again, with very limited funds and the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application. About my work: In 2015, I conducted my first solo musical project by the name of Dingungu. This project was the task of a giant, and I did it almost by myself, acquiring a 3-year debt. At 23 years of age, I devoted myself to the leading and production of the project, which involved nothing less than a 10-members band. Dingungu established me as a composer, arranger, performer, bandleader, and producer. Argentine traditional music, in its genes, saves the indelible trace of millions of people brought as slaves from Africa to America, and I believe it constitutes the main field of resistance in favor of the recognition of afro-Argentines in the history and present of Argentina. This record became a testimony-through-music about the history of slavery in Argentina, the historic invisibilization of afro-argentine communities, and their present. My most recent project, Mind Fields, combines poetry, field recordings, composition, and improvisation, as a way to interact and appreciate nature in a creative process in which the Earth is the main collaborator. My current studies at The New School have been an opportunity to immerse in aspects of the creative practice I had long been aiming for, broadening it significantly. As a migrant, I consider one of my main challenges is to build a musical community and a network. I know that continuing my formal studies is one of the strategies I have on hand to achieve this. Now, after a year of studies and after moving to NY, besides the many financial hardships, I know I made the right choice.

I am most inspired by the work of Joni Mitchell and Caetano Veloso, and also recently by Silvia Perez Cruz. But this past year, I enjoyed listening to the Turtle Island string quartet for the first time and I especially enjoy their record "Danzón" which features Paquito D'Rivera. I'm sharing the tune Wapango with you, from that record, that I find very uplifting and fun to listen to.

I am definitely inspired by the work and philosophy of Andy Goldsworthy. In his work, nature and time are explored in such a sensitive way it is most profoundly touching, and the way he uses his body in the land to create is wonderful. I have never seen anything that compares to his work. There's a beautiful documentary of his work called 'Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time', that I would recommend everyone to see.

I have a “crush” on nature. I was born and raised in a town surrounded by mountains and lakes in Patagonia Argentina and find much inspiration and ease in nature and outdoor life, I have been a gardener since I was a little boy, I have worked and lived in huts in the mountains of the Andes and the Alps, and I always find in contemplating or losing myself in nature a source of profound inspiration and happiness.

I am a musician and a poet, who makes art that deals with the testimonial, the suggestive, and the concrete. Through the intersection of narrative, composition, and improvisation, I generate experiences that aim to interact with urgent matters such as social equality, ecology, and the right to aesthetic rejoicing. My practice involves words, written, sung, spoken, guitar, a range of instruments, and field recordings. I am from the mountains of the South of Argentina, which I left due to political and economic reasons, and I have had an itinerant life ever since. Since I first started playing guitar when I was 14, I have always maintained a student mindset. I have had many private teachers in my life, many of whom I consider maestros and maestras; I have a degree in music from a university in Argentina, and I am currently pursuing my master's of music degree at the New School in New York City. I also have self-produced two records of original music and arrangements that have helped me shape my professional experience, and I have attended two artistic residencies at the Banff Centre in Canada, which were crucial for my understanding of the music scene in the developed countries, and where I established an important relationship with outstanding musicians that has been very instructive.

"Come as you are" is the phrase I always think of when I am facing a situation in which things such as the Impostor Syndrome threaten my ability to enjoy. As a musician, you are constantly thinking about such silly things as the age of a performer or composer, how Mozart was 4 when he composed his first piece, how Pat Metheny was 21 or younger when he started playing with Joni Mitchell, and so on... Because I never gave up on my training and work as a musician, including managing myself and trying to find ways to monetize my practice, I am permanently besieged by the insecurity and the feeling of not being ever prepared enough for a certain opportunity. Whenever that happens, I remember the artists I admire, who are above all, sensitive, curious, smart, and hard-working people who never felt they were done preparing or learning. I always try to be the best possible person of myself so I can "go as I am", not worried about anything else than that.

My name is Julián Muro, I am a poet, musician, and performing artist. I was born in Argentine Patagonia. I am the son of an educator and an artist. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving. After 8 months of traveling Europe, I found myself broke and emotionally devastated. the world was not treating me as I thought I deserved, I didn’t seem to be able to achieve what I wanted and no one seemed willing to help me. Nonetheless, I invested the little money I had on a cheap guitar. In my family, there is a vast record of depression. And that came in very handy for me. One night in Spain, I had gone shopping for groceries, and I was returning home, when I stopped at some random place, looked across the street, and thought “It would be the same if I were dead”. I knew I had to change fastly my outlook on life. I told all my friends and my family about it, and that I was already taking care of it. After a few days, I was again at peace, and I did so by paying attention to the simple things. It wasn’t about recognition. It was about desire. Finding peace had to do with knowing the precise measure of one's desire. I even came up with a formula for it: one’s desire must be so synthetic as to meet one’s need. What I need is to be able to do what I love, and this is simple to achieve: I need a guitar, a room for my own, and time. My desire, then, became achievable. To have what I desire, this must be exactly what I need to have.

My dream life is a life where I can live from my music, maybe touring three months a year, and then spending the rest of the year living at a humble farm I would own near the mountains and the sea, with an orchard producing food for 2/3 of the year, surrounded by nature and wild animals. So my two main passions are music and ecology. I would like to live a sustainable life, meaning a life that pollutes the less possible. Getting electricity from solar panels and wind systems, and gathering rainwater (certain studies indicate that gathering 100m2 of rainwater would supply 70% of a family's annual needs). My days would be spent between working on new productions, writing, gardening, chopping wood, harvesting, going climbing, snowboarding, and surfing. My nights would be silent and filled with stars, I would wake up listening to the birds. I would open the door and be in nature. A beautiful life indeed.

The one thing that gives me hope for the future is to imagine a more conscious society in terms of the climate disaster that we are generating and the unbelievably harsh consequences it is having already in our lives. I expect that, with the effects of the climate disaster already being so evident, more and more people will become aware and demand governments and companies to take very clear and very fast turns in regulating excessive, non-necessary production, diminishing the waste to the minimum, and changing the ways of production to sustainable ones. I foremost expect people to become aware of their responsibilities as consumers and radically change their mindsets to a less consumerist one, less concerned about acquiring new products and cheaper ones, and I expect governments to strongly regulate production amounts and ways of producing. In my most hopeful dreams, I imagine global strikes for the climate to begin soon. There is no doubt that the biggest problem facing the world is the lack of consistent, radical action towards acknowledging the ecological disaster we are heading to and drastically changing our living standards to make it less damaging. I believe Mechanism could contribute to generating consciousness around this subject at a large scale. I also hope for the following policy changes to occur: - Banning plastic. A very easy and safe move, along with recycling and reutilizing the plastic that has been already generated in excess around the globe. I believe this could be backed by re-introducing old sustainable practices such as receiving our milk products in our homes from the milkwomen and men. - Reduce car transportation by bettering the railroads and generating a big net of bike rails as in many cities across the Netherlands. Electric cars should stop being called "ecological" when they really aren't, and much less should they be called "sustainable" when the primary products to create the batteries they use come from mining in underdeveloped countries. - Low-cost air transportation reduced to be focused only on trans-oceanic travel and flights that take a minimum of 5 hours. As in Spain, with the new low-cost "ave train" which connects the distant cities of Madrid and Barcelona in only 2.30 hours and for a very affordable price. Railroads should also be available for the traffic of goods, decreasing plane usage as well. - Food that is produced following organic and sustainable methods should be subsidized worldwide and be affordable to all human beings, while food that doesn't follow these principles should be less produced and less consumed, especially, meat that is produced by methods that contribute to pollution and are one of the main factors leading to climate disaster. Meat consumption should become more unusual. It is a fact that organic, sustainable productions could feed the world, contrary to what we have been taught.

I was born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, the struggle to subsist in Argentina is constant and exhausting, even more so for artists, who do not only need to subsist but who also need to invest in gear, equipment, and hours of hard work. In 2018, after achieving undeniable milestones in my career, my country was once again going through a great economic, social and political crisis that continues to this day, and that left clear there was no place for me, encouraging me to leave for Europe with 400 euros in my pocket, without a plan, without any musical instruments, and without a family to receive me. In my travels, I've lived very hard experiences that have broadened my understanding of what it means to be a human being. But I also met wonderful people, and I now have a sense of home in broad Europe. I was able to prove my commitment to my craft and my resilience and I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted through an almost full Merit Award to The New School in NY, opening a new chapter in my life. I've recently arrived in the USA. I haven't seen my family in three years and nothing seems to indicate I will be able to travel to Argentina soon. I'm starting over again, with very limited funds and the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application.

I was born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, the struggle to subsist in Argentina is constant and exhausting, even more so for artists, who do not only need to subsist but who also need to invest in gear, equipment, and hours of hard work. In 2018, after achieving undeniable milestones in my career, my country was once again going through a great economic, social and political crisis that continues to this day, and that left clear there was no place for me, encouraging me to leave for Europe with 400 euros in my pocket, without a plan, without any musical instruments, and without a family to receive me. In my travels, I've lived very hard experiences that have broadened my understanding of what it means to be a human being. But I also met wonderful people, and I now have a sense of home in broad Europe. I was able to prove my commitment to my craft and my resilience and I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted through an almost full Merit Award to The New School in NY, opening a new chapter in my life. I've recently arrived in the USA. I haven't seen my family in three years and nothing seems to indicate I will be able to travel to Argentina soon. I'm starting over again, with very limited funds and the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application.

My mom always tells the same story about the time when I was growing up: I was not even 5 years old when I used to go to my parent's room early in the mornings while they drank mate and talked quietly about whatever things parents talk about, as the frost outside started to become tiny drops of water on the plants of our garden and the orchard, I stood on an elevated platform in front of their bed and introduced them to my latest work, a song, most likably a love song, and a very romantic one. I normally proceeded to sing my song to them, and usually would get emotional and cry a little during my performance. That is how I became a composer. I am currently pursuing a Master's of Music at the New School College of the Performing Arts in New York City, with the major being Music Performance and Composition. The program of studies is highly focused on my own work, which is allowing me to center on projects I had longly aimed for since even before my decision to leave Argentina in 2018 in a desperate attempt to foster a life in music, during a big economic crisis that is ongoing and that took me to have an itinerant life that's not easy at all for the lack of financial stability, as I am absolutely autonomous, for my family and my country are not capable to finance me or my studies. I am currently challenging myself to the very edge by writing original music and arrangements for string quintet for the first time in my life, with the mentoring of great musicians and producers Dave Douglas and Jacob Garchik, which will hopefully end up in a new record produced by the school.

WITHOUT the silence of nature within. the power within. the power without. the path is whatever passes - no end in itself. the end is, grace - ease - healing, not saving. singing the proof the proof of the power within. This poem, "WITHOUT", belongs to Gary Snyder's "Turtle Island" which received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. This book has a collection of some of the most remarkable English poetry I've ever read, both in terms of the aesthetic and conceptual decisions, as for its personal, distinctive, and smart approach to the problem of the environmental disaster. The poetry seems to be highly influenced by Chinese and Japanese writing, and also elements from the world view of different North American indigenous people. As for the writing style, it seems to me that he takes the ambiguity of English words and language to places that demand several readings and even accepting a poem's multiple meanings. It also includes a segment in prose called "straight talk" at the end, where he addresses the issue of environmental disaster with such clarity that is still relevant nowadays, and sadly most of the things he proposes as ways to avoid it have not been taken into action by the political and economical powers that have ruled our world in the past 50 years. In Turtle Island, the great American poet Gary Snyder expresses some very deep notions about the world and the way we interpret our lives. In this particular poem, the phrase 'the path is whatever passes - no end in itself' affects me both emotionally and intellectually. This book has been with me for many years and I think it will continue to do all my life.

Being born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, Argentina, has made my professional development much harder than it would have been in a different context. The struggle to subsist in Argentina is constant and exhausting, even more so for artists like myself, who do not only need to subsist but who also need to invest in gear, equipment, and hours of mostly unpaid hard work. In 2018, after achieving what are undeniable milestones in my career, such as writing, conducting, producing, and recording my first professional record, which I financed through acquiring a 3-years debt, after my first international tour, after receiving a full foreign scholarship by a Canadian philanthropist to attend a prestigious art residency in Canada, and after earning my undergraduate degree, my country was once again going through a great economic, social and political crisis that continues to this day, and that encouraged me to leave for Europe with 400 euros in my pocket, without a plan, without any musical instruments, and without a family to receive me. Now, after years of traveling, I can say that the journey has been hard but generous to me, I have lived an itinerant life that has shaped my artistic practice into that of a contemporary troubadour, that took me to live in the most unbelievable landscape, at a mountain cottage in Italy, over a glacier at 3500 masl where I worked 14 hours shifts, learned to speak Italian and made dear friends who I now hold very deeply in my heart; I then left for Barcelona and managed to get by for a while but then had to leave because I could not find a job; I left for Germany, where a couple hosted me at their house in the fields in Lower Saxony becoming a fundamental part of my life now, where I learned about the simple pleasures of life and how to live a sustainable one; I then found a job in the Bavarian Alps, where I learned to speak German and made very dear friends; and I could go on forever, I still didn't mention the despair in the face of meaninglessness, nor the surfing and rock climbing, nor the nourishing loneliness living in a distant, isolated cabbin in the middle of the fields in Catalunya... In my travels, I've lived harsh experiences that have broadened my understanding of what it means to be a human being. I was able to prove my commitment to my craft and my resilience and I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at the mountain cottage in Bavaria. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted to The New School in New York City, opening a new chapter in my life. I arrived a month ago in the US after abandoning the homeland I was very lucky to build through patient dedication these past years, I am far from the woman I love who has been a very important part of my life in the past two years since I met her. I haven't seen my family in three years and nothing seems to indicate I will be able to travel to Argentina soon. I am starting over again, with very limited funds, no family to receive me, the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application. With best regards, Julián

‘Connecting the dots’ is a concept I knew through a very famous talk given by Steve Jobs in the year 2005 for Stanford University’s Graduates. In this speech, the co-founder and executive president of Apple, creator of the first PC, describes some events that were determining to his life and that, nonetheless, didn’t look to be so at the moment they were occurring. Through a simple racconto over some events that could have been considered to be absolutely trivial or meaningless at the time, he shows the definitive importance that these actually had for his future. The talk is profoundly inspiring and shows him in a much careful, generous attitude. I write a newsletter based on my experiences as a migrant who left his country in a very hard and audacious decision in the search for better prospects. Writing is for me a way of making evident one of my many privileges, which is the possibility of connecting the dots, this time not from the hindsight that someone like Jobs may have, in the peak of his profession, but from a minimum, cautious and somewhat reckless, distance. I believe this notion of connecting the dots is what really explains the importance of being patient and confident about one's decisions and one's life. There is one phrase from Steve Jobs' speech that is very touching: “You can only connect (the dots) looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your guts, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

Like many other people, I struggle with mental health issues. As a way to take care of myself, I found out that one of the main things is to speak with other people when I feel sad. I recently experienced something instructive in this sense, when I found myself crying and feeling sad about leaving my home in Europe towards the US and leaving my partner behind. I am used to crying when sad but this time was different, it just wouldn't stop; I didn't know what to do so I wrote to my family and friends telling them I was feeling tremendously sad. My dad called me immediately and I told him I would call him back when I felt balanced again, and two friends wrote to me and sent audio messages of support. I was amazed by how even before receiving my friends' messages I had already stopped crying. We know depression is something different than sadness but I now know that there's a strong belief in the scientific community that, in the latter, tears coming from a feeling of sadness serve a role in notifying other humans around us of our emotions, thus allowing them to relate with us and talk. This is why it is so important to find people, friends or professionals, to communicate with. In a society in which it is harder and harder to speak with one another, in which speaking to strangers in the street or at the grocery store is increasingly difficult but still we are permanently connected through our cellphones with people that is not by our side, and foremost, people we don't necessarily know and who don't necessarily care for us, I believe sincere talking is a revolutionary attitude and may help us substantially.

I was born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, the struggle to subsist in Argentina is constant and exhausting, even more so for artists, who do not only need to subsist but who also need to invest in gear, equipment, and hours of hard work. In 2018, after achieving undeniable milestones in my career, my country was once again going through a great economic, social and political crisis that continues to this day, and that left clear there was no place for me, encouraging me to leave for Europe with 400 euros in my pocket, without a plan, without any musical instruments, and without a family to receive me. In my travels, I've lived very hard experiences that have broadened my understanding of what it means to be a human being. But I also met wonderful people, and I now have a sense of home in broad Europe. I was able to prove my commitment to my craft and my resilience and I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted through an almost full Merit Award to The New School in NY, opening a new chapter in my life. I've recently arrived in the USA. I haven't seen my family in three years and nothing seems to indicate I will be able to travel to Argentina soon. I'm starting over again, with very limited funds and the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application.

Being born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, Argentina, has made my and my sibling's professional development a much harder experience than it would have been in a different context. The struggle to subsist in Argentina is constant and exhausting, even more so for artists like myself, who do not only need to subsist but who also need to invest in gear, equipment, and hours of hard work to come up with substantial pieces, a thing that often seems a chimera more than anything else. In 2018, after achieving what are undeniable milestones in my career and in my creative practice, such as writing, conducting, producing, and recording my first professional record, which I financed through acquiring a 3-years debt, after my first international tour, after receiving a full foreign scholarship by a Canadian philanthropist to attend a prestigious arts residency in Canada, and after earning my undergraduate degree, my country was once again going through a great economic, social and political crisis that continues to this day, and that left clear there was no place for me there and encouraged me to leave for Europe with 400 bucks in my pocket, without a plan, without any musical instruments, and without a family to receive me. Now, after three years of traveling, I can say that the journey has been hard but generous to me, I have lived an itinerant life that has shaped my artistic practice into that of a contemporary troubadour, a life that took me to live in the most unbelievable landscape I ever saw, at Rifugio Guide del Cervino mountain cottage, located over a glacier at 3500 meters above sea level in the border between Italy and Switzerland, where I worked 14 hours shifts, learned to speak Italian and made dear friends who I now hold very deeply in my heart; I then left for the city of Barcelona and, though I was broke, I could manage to get by and I walked and walked and started my universities' applications and then had to leave because I could not find a job, and I left for Germany, where a couple hosted me at their house in the fields in Lower Saxony and became a fundamental part of my life now, where I learned about the simple pleasures of life and how to live a sustainable one; I then found a job and moved to the Bavarian Alps, where I learned to speak German and made very dear friends as well, in the meantime I got selected for a second arts residency in Canada through a scholarship, and there I went, spent a few months traveling and playing and returned to the montain cottage in the Bavarian Alps; and I could go on forever, I still did not mention the desperate idea of ending my life, nor the surfing and rock climbing, nor the nourishing loneliness living in a distant, isolated cabbin in the middle of the fields in Catalunya, there's just so many stories to tell... In my travels, I've lived harsh experiences that have broadened my understanding of what it means to be a human being. I've met wonderful people, and I have a sense of home wherever I go in broad Europe, I was able to prove my commitment to my craft and my resilience and I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at the mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted to The New School College for Performing Arts in New York City, opening a new chapter in my life. I have arrived a month ago in the USA after abandoning the homeland I was very lucky to build through patient dedication these past years, I am now very far from the woman I love who has been a very important part of my life in the past two years since I met her. I haven't seen my family in three years and nothing seems to indicate I will be able to travel to Argentina soon. I am starting over again, with very limited funds, no family to receive me, the urge to find a job, and all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor and I sincerely hope you consider my application. With best regards, Julián

- I do not buy clothes much often and seek to use the ones I have until they are really worn out. - I avoid plastic as much as I can, especially when doing the groceries. - I try not to take planes for distances I can cover in 25 hs by bus, or by train. - I do not have a car and I ride my bike as much as I can. - I try to save water in daily activities such as washing my teeth, showering, or doing the dishes. - I buy mostly organic and local products. - If I need to buy new things, I try to find them second-hand first. - I cook every day and do not buy processed food. - For water, I use a metal bottle that I refill and bring it with me everywhere. - I buy every canned product in glass containers: beer, marmalade, peanut butter, oil, everything.

In 2015, I conducted my first solo musical project by the name of Dingungu. This project was the task of a giant, and I did it almost by myself, acquiring a 3-year debt. At 23 years of age, I devoted myself to the leading and production of the project, which involved nothing less than a 10-members band. Dingungu established me as a composer, arranger, performer, bandleader, and producer. Argentine traditional music, in its genes, saves the indelible trace of millions of people brought as slaves from Africa to America, and I believe it constitutes the main field of resistance in favor of the recognition of afro-Argentines in the history and present of Argentina. This record became a testimony-through-music about the history of slavery in Argentina, the historic invisibilization of afro-argentine communities, and their present. My most recent project, Mind Fields, combines poetry, field recordings, composition, and improvisation, as a way to interact and appreciate nature in a creative process in which the Earth is the main collaborator. My current studies at The New School have been an opportunity to immerse in aspects of the creative practice I had long been aiming for, broadening it significantly. As a migrant, I consider one of my main challenges is to build a musical community and a network. I know that continuing my formal studies is one of the strategies I have on hand to achieve this. Now, after a year of studies and after moving to NY, besides the many financial hardships, I know I made the right choice.

My dream life is a life where I can live from my music, maybe touring three months a year, and then spending the rest of the year living at a humble farm I would own near the mountains and the sea, with an orchard producing food for 2/3 of the year, surrounded by nature and wild animals. I would like to live a sustainable life, meaning a life that pollutes the less possible. Getting electricity from solar panels and wind systems, and gathering rainwater (certain studies indicate that gathering 100m2 of rain water would supply 70% of a family's annual needs). My days would be spent between working on new productions, writing, gardening, chopping wood, harvesting, going climbing, snowboarding, and surfing. My nights would be silent and filled with stars, I would wake up listening to the birds. I would open the door and be in nature. A beautiful life indeed.

Many years ago, when conducting our first record production with my sister, our brother urged us to keep a financial record and I've maintained this habit ever since. I know the budget of every project I produced, and I also keep accurate financial records of my everyday life. As a Master's student who has recently arrived in NY, coming from a lower-middle-class family from Argentina, keeping records has been really helpful to know where I am at and what my possibilities are, how much time do I have to look for a job I really like, or how much money do I need for a specific project. It definitely helps lowering anxiety and uncertainty. There are great tools like Google Sheets templates, where I keep an annual budget, my latest record's budget, and else, and even my own bank's website has a very practical tool for budgeting and controlling one's expenses.

WITHOUT the silence of nature within. the power within. the power without. the path is whatever passes - no end in itself. the end is, grace - ease - healing, not saving. singing the proof the proof of the power within. Gary Snyder, "Turtle Island", 1978. I feel that, in this poem, the great American poet Gary Snyder expresses some very deep notions about the world and the way we interpret our lives. Especially, with the phrase, 'the path is whatever passes - no end in itself,' which really affects me both emotionally and intellectually. This poem has been with me for many years and I think it will do so all my life.

The one thing that gives me hope for the future is to imagine a more conscious society in terms of the climate disaster that we are generating and the unbelievably harsh consequences it is having already in our lives. I expect that, with the effects of the climate disaster already being so evident, more and more people will become aware and demand governments and companies to take very clear and very fast turns in regulating excessive, non-necessary production, diminishing the waste to the minimum, and changing the ways of production to sustainable ones. I foremost expect people to become aware of their responsibilities as consumers and radically change their mindsets to a less consumerist one, less concerned about acquiring new products and cheaper ones, and I expect governments to strongly regulate production amounts and ways of producing. In my most hopeful dreams, I imagine global strikes for the climate to begin soon. There is no doubt that the biggest problem facing the world is the lack of consistent, radical action towards acknowledging the ecological disaster we are heading to and drastically changing our living standards to make it less damaging. I also hope for the following policy changes to occur: - Banning plastic. A very easy and safe move, along with recycling and reutilizing the plastic that has been already generated in excess around the globe. I believe this could be backed by re-introducing old sustainable practices such as receiving our milk products in our homes from the milkwomen and men. - Reduce car transportation by bettering the railroads and generating a big net of bike rails as in many cities across the Netherlands. Electric cars should stop being called "ecological" when they really aren't, and much less should they be called "sustainable" when the primary products to create the batteries they use come from mining in underdeveloped countries. - Low-cost air transportation reduced to be focused only on trans-oceanic travel and flights that take a minimum of 5 hours. As in Spain, with the new low-cost "ave train" which connects the distant cities of Madrid and Barcelona in only 2.30 hours and for a very affordable price. Railroads should also be available for the traffic of goods, decreasing plane usage as well. - Food that is produced following organic and sustainable methods should be subsidized worldwide and be affordable to all human beings, while food that doesn't follow these principles should be less produced and less consumed, especially, meat that is produced by methods that contribute to pollution and are one of the main factors leading to climate disaster. Meat consumption should become more unusual. It is a fact that organic, sustainable productions could feed the world, contrary to what we have been taught.

I grew up in Argentina, a country with a public, free and universal education in all stages of a person's formation, from kindergarten to undergraduate, being compulsory through high school. I can say that this is undoubtedly one of the things that can improve education for future generations. It is a way of giving people who come from a context of poverty the possibility to change their personal history and become professionals in whatever field they want, and it is also a way of generating more conscious citizens through the exchange of stories and realities that occurs in such socially and culturally varied groups. Argentina is actually a very good example also considering the extreme economic disaster that has been happening there for decades, because, how else could a country that has 35% of people living below the poverty line continue to generate such relevant figures in various areas of knowledge, such as science, literature, and art? And how, if it were not for public education, could it maintain its status as a benchmark in science and social studies in Latin America and the world? I believe that, if developed countries like the US and Canada stopped considering schooling as a privilege and schools as businesses, the world would find itself facing an unprecedented revolution of knowledge. Which could at the same time, imply more people becoming more empathetic and aware of the multiple realities that co-exist in this world; maybe a more knowledgeable society could transcend the idiotic barriers of race, gender, and social status that are based on misinformation and a lack of actual human relationships between people. In my own personal experience, there are few things more enriching than spending more than 15 years of your life surrounded by diverse people with whom you need to relate and work together for a cause, even if they do not share your social background or if they live far from you, people that you end up knowing and understanding in such a way that you never forget it.

Although I cannot complain about my childhood, and though I have brilliant, highly curious, partially self-educated parents who taught me and my siblings fundamental things and shared with us an overall passion for learning, critical thinking, and experiencing life, I can say that being born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, Argentina, has made mine's and my sibling's professional development and learning take longer than it would have had in a different context. In 2018, after achieving what are undeniable milestones in my career and in my creative practice, such as writing, conducting, producing, and recording my first professional record, after my first international tour, after receiving a full scholarship to attend a prestigious artist's residency in Canada, and after earning my undergraduate degree, my country was, once more going through a big economic, social, and political crises that encouraged me to leave for Europe with 400 bucks in my pocket, without a plan, and without family to receive me. Now, after many years of traveling, I can say that the journey has been hard but generous to me, I have lived an itinerant life that has shaped my artistic practice into that of a contemporary troubadour. It was not easy, but traveling allowed me to deepen my sense of the human condition: although I lived the longer, harder, period of my life without music, I did surfing, snowboarding, and climbing; I was profoundly alone; I learned Italian and German; wrote poetry; I was broke and did gardening in exchange for food and a house in a paradisiacal land; I played concerts; recorded an album. I felt lost and was reunited. I believe that all this experience led me to become a better person, thus a better artist, and I am always concerned about becoming, in the first place, a better human being. In my travelings, I've met wonderful people, I have a sense of home wherever I go in broad Europe, I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted to The New School College for Performing Arts in NY. I am leaving in a week for the USA and will be abandoning the homeland I was very lucky to build these past years. Starting over, with very limited funds, no family to receive me, the urge to find a job once I arrive, all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor.

" I don't know if it's true, the story they tell in books, that in ancient days a monkey could have left Rome and skipped from tree to tree till it reached Spain, without ever touching earth. The only place so thick with trees in my day was the whole length, from end to end, of the gulf of Ombrosa and its valley right up to the mountain crests; the area was famous everywhere for this." Il Barone Rampante / The Baron in the trees This novel by Italian author, journalist and editor Italo Calvino is without hesitation the one book I think of when anyone asks me which is my favorite. The book describes the life of a person, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondó who decides to abandon his noble family at the early age of twelve to live the rest of his life on the trees. The story is a one of adventures but also about the sadness and loneliness that come with a non-conventional life. It portraits the love between him and the lovely Viola with such tenderness it makes one burst into tears. She is a strong woman, non-conventional like him, who rides a white horse while the air lifts up her blonde hair; he admires her beauty, unable to reach her from the distant trees. Set in the end of the 18th century in Italy, the author finds several opportunities to reflect upon the historical happenings of the time. Above all, it is a masterful writing which includes some of the most well written dialogues I ever read. It is a remarkable piece that I have read several times in my life.

It probably was from my brother Valentín who insisted that I should keep digital documents of my finances, where I could know how much were my average monthly expenses or how much did I invest in a particular project, and also that would allow me to project a rough forecast of my expenses throughout a year. This has been especially useful when facing financial challenges like the one I am currently facing, with my moving to NY to study for a Master's, which is one of the most difficult financial moves I ever did. I use Google Sheets and the platform has some great templates, if anyone wants to give it a try!

Although I cannot complain about my childhood, and though I have brilliant, highly curious, partially self-educated parents who taught me and my siblings fundamental things and shared with us an overall passion for learning, critical thinking, and experiencing life, I can say that being born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, Argentina, has made mine's and my sibling's professional development and learning take longer than it would have had in a different context. In 2018, after achieving what are undeniable milestones in my career and in my creative practice, such as writing, conducting, producing, and recording my first professional record, after my first international tour, after receiving a full scholarship to attend a prestigious artist's residency in Canada, and after earning my undergraduate degree, my country was, once more going through a big economic, social, and political crises that encouraged me to leave for Europe with 400 bucks in my pocket, without a plan, and without family to receive me. Now, after many years of traveling, I can say that the journey has been hard but generous to me, I have lived an itinerant life that has shaped my artistic practice into that of a contemporary troubadour, a life that took me to live in the most unbelievable landscape I ever saw, at Rifugio Guide del Cervino mountain cottage, located over a glacier at 3500 meters above sea level in the border between Italy and Switzerland, where I learned to speak Italian and made dear friends who I now hold very deeply in my heart; I then lived in the city of Barcelona and, though I was broke, I could manage to get by and I walked and walked and started my universities' applications and then had to leave because I could not find a job, and I left for Germany, where a couple hosted me becoming a fundamental part of my life now, I lived with them at their house in the fields in Lower Saxony, where I learned about the simple pleasures of life and how to live a sustainable one; I then found a job and moved to the Bavarian Alps, where I lived the longest, learned to speak German, made very dear friends as well, in the menatime got selected for an art's residency in Canada through a scholarship, and there I went, spent a few months traveling and playing and returned to the montain cottage in the Bavarian Alps; and I could go on forever, I still did not mention the surfing and rock climbing, nor the nourishing loneliness living in a distant, isolated cabbin in the middle of the fields in Catalunya, there's just so many stories to tell... In my travelings, I've met wonderful people, I have a sense of home wherever I go in broad Europe, I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at the mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities, something that was too expensive to do back home, and I got accepted to The New School College for Performing Arts in NY. I am leaving in a week for the USA and will be abandoning the homeland I was very lucky to build these past years. Starting over, with very limited funds, no family to receive me, the urge to find a job once I arrive, all while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor.

There is no doubt that the biggest problem facing the world is the lack of consistent, radical action towards acknowledging the ecological disaster we are heading to and drastically changing our living standards to make it less damaging. As for policy changes: - Banning plastic is a very easy and safe move, along with recycling and reutilizing the plastic that has been already generated in excess around the globe. I believe this could be backed by re-introducing old sustainable practices such as receiving our milk products in our homes from the milkwomen and men. - Reduce car transportation by bettering the railroads and generating a big net of bike rails as in many cities across the Netherlands. Electric cars should stop being called "ecological" when they really aren't, and much less should they be called "sustainable" when the primary products to create the batteries they use come from mining in underdeveloped countries. - Low-cost air transportation reduced to be focused only on trans-oceanic travel and flights that take a minimum of 5 hours. As in Spain, with the new low-cost "ave train" which connects the distant cities of Madrid and Barcelona in only 2.30 hours and for a very affordable price. Railroads should also be available for the traffic of goods, decreasing plane usage as well. - Food that is produced following organic and sustainable methods should be subsidized worldwide and be affordable to all human beings, while food that doesn't follow these principles should be less produced and less consumed, especially, meat that is produced by methods that contribute to pollution and are one of the main factors leading to climate disaster. Meat consumption should become more unusual. It is a fact that organic, sustainable productions could feed the world, contrary to what we have been taught.

In my own personal experience struggling with Mental Health issues, I found out that one of the main things to help relieve a person's emotional and mental state is to speak with other people. We know depression is something different than sadness but there's a strong belief in the scientific community that, in the latter, tears coming from a feeling of sadness serve a role in notifying other humans around us of our emotions, thus allowing them to relate with us and talk. I very recently experienced something very instructive in this sense, when I found myself crying and feeling sad about leaving my home in Europe towards the US and leaving my partner behind. I am used to crying when sad but this time was different, it just wouldn't stop; I didn't know what to do and so I wrote my family and friends on Telegram telling them I was feeling tremendously sad, my dad called me immediately and I told him I would call him back when I felt balanced again, and two friends wrote to me and sent audio messages of support. I was amazed by how even before receiving my friends' messages I had already stopped crying. In a society in which it is harder and harder to speak with one another, in which speaking to strangers in the street or at the grocery store or even at a concert is increasingly difficult because we are permanently connected through our cellphones with people that is not by our side, and foremost, people who we don't necessarily know and who don't necessarily care for us, I believe sincere talking is a revolutionary attitude and my help us substantially.

I have been reading about sustainability and I am very interested in re-shaping culture towards a different concept of development that is not related to growth and consumerism. I would like to study more about the actual possibilities in this sense, and I am also interested in learning more about naturalist philosophy. Among my favorite authors, there's poet Gary Snyder, and his book Turtle Island is a huge influence on me. As for policy changes: - I believe banning plastic is a very easy and safe move, along with recycling and reutilizing the plastic that has been already generated in excess around the globe. I believe this could be backed by re-introducing old practices such as receiving our milk products in our home from the same people that produce them and take our empty glass bottles in return to re-fill them. - Another policy would be to reduce car transportation by bettering the railroads and generating a big net of bike rails as in many cities across the Netherlands. Electric cars should stop being called "ecological" when they really aren't, and much less should they be called "sustainable" when the primary products to create the batteries they use come from mining in underdeveloped countries. - Low-cost air transportation should be reduced to be focused only on trans-oceanic travel and flights that take a minimum of 5 hours. As in Spain, with the new low-cost "ave train" which connects the distant cities of Madrid and Barcelona in only 2.30 hours and for a very affordable price, the same thing should be done worldwide to avoid plane transportation in short distances. But the railroads should also be available for the traffic of goods, decreasing plane usage as well. - Food that is produced following organic and sustainable methods should be subsidized worldwide and be affordable to all human beings, while food that doesn't follow these principles should be less produced and less consumed, especially, meat that is produced by methods that contribute to pollution and are one of the main factors leading to climate disaster. Meat consumption should be discouraged as well and eating it should become more and more unusual, only as special events. It is a fact that organic, sustainable productions could feed the world, contrary to what we have been taught.

To talk about mental health, I must then talk about my own life. I am a musician and a poet, born in a beautiful home in Argentine Patagonia. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big crisis that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving. After 8 months of traveling Europe, I found myself broke and emotionally devastated. the world was not treating me as I thought I deserved, I didn’t seem to be able to achieve what I wanted and no one seemed willing to help me. Nonetheless, I invested the little money I had on two months of rent, and a cheap guitar. There is a vast record of depression In my family, which came in very handy for me. One night in Spain, I had gone shopping for groceries, and I was returning home, when I stopped at some random place, looked across the street, and thought “It would be the same if I were dead”. I proud myself of being a decisive person, and, because of this, I knew I had to change fastly my outlook on life: it wouldn’t be too long before I decided to do 'something' about it. I told all my friends and my family about it, as my first step to take care of it. After a few weeks, I was again at peace. I realized that it wasn’t about receiving ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It wasn’t about recognition. It was about desire. Finding peace had to do with knowing the precise measure of one's desire. I even came up with a formula for it: one’s desire must be so synthetic as to meet one’s need. I don’t need recognition, what I need is to be able to do what I love, and this is simple to achieve: I need a guitar, a room for my own, and time. As for the last question, I started writing a bilingual Newsletter in 2020, called 'Message in a Bottle', in which I go through my diaries and memories, trying to find clues that might help others dealing with their own personal experiences.

My first encounters with the English language were my mom singing English lullabies and my dad playing music by The Beatles and Joni Mitchell; the film "Yellow Submarine" was our family cartoon when we were kids, and we saw it in the original language. Later on, my mom became the founder and principal of a bilingual school and, even though we could have never afforded it, my siblings and I were able to attend because of our mother's role. During seven years, from my 6 years to 13, I had 4 to 5 hours a day from Monday to Friday where I had to speak only in English even during breaks. I am a writer, and I have translated English poetry to Spanish, and also have been writing a newsletter since 2020 both in English and in Spanish. I believe my understanding of the language was one of the reasons why I could build a very strong presentation as part of my audition to the Performer-Composer Master of Music at The New School in NY, which was based on Story-telling and turned out to be one of the most powerful presentations, as several of the jurors have told me later. Because of this presentation -a 10 minutes talk&play solo performance- I was awarded an almost full Merit Award which allows me to be studying for the Master. As for my artistic practice, I am a musician and a poet, who makes art that deals with the testimonial, the suggestive, the concrete. Through the intersection of narrative, composition, and improvisation, I generate experiences that aim to interact with urgent matters such as social equality, ecology, or the right to aesthetic rejoicing. My practice involves words, written, sung, spoken, guitar, a range of instruments, and field recordings. I am from the mountains of the South of Argentina, which I left due to political and economic reasons, and I have had an itinerant life ever since. I released two albums: Dingungu, which is a testimony-through-music about the history of slavery in Argentina, the historic invisibilization of Afro-Argentine communities and their present, and Unterwegs, with songs from the Latin American repertoire. As a musician and spoken word artist, I have appeared on albums in the US, Canada, and Argentina, and a selection of my poetry was published in the anthology Breve Tratado del Viento Sur, in Colombia. I dream of generating consciousness and collaborating with urgent causes such as climate justice and the rights of the pre-existing nations in Argentina. I am working on several projects, and one of them, called "Mind Fields" or "La Tierra, una criatura", combines poetry, field recordings, composition, and improvisation, as a way to interact and appreciate nature in a creative process in which the Earth is the main collaborator. I am a naturalist, a traveler, and a contemporary troubadour. I have worked in the mountains of the Alps and the Andes as a porter and a hut-keeper, and have been a gardener since childhood.

I am an artist from Argentine Patagonia, In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that began to affect me and my artistic perspectives in different ways, and that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving for Europe with the goal and total commitment towards developing my dreams as a poet, creative musician, and researcher. I became a migrant and have been traveling since then. I don't have family in Europe, I left without any plans and with only 400 dollars, so things were very hard at times. During my travels and before COVID hit, I had lived in Germany, Portugal, Italy, Spain, and I went to Canada for almost 3 months to participate in the Banff Musicians in Residence program at The Banff Centre through a scholarship and to tour my latest record, Unterwegs, which I was able to finance through my full-time job at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. After that, I returned to Germany. And then COVID came. The Winter season was interrupted, leaving me jobless, but I had a very cheap rent to pay and I could receive financial assistance from the German unemployment office. I was living in a small village, surrounded by nature. We were allowed to do outdoor sports and I spent those two months biking, walking, climbing, and else. This taught me something I had longly been thinking about: the importance of a life outside of the big cities. In our privileged, humble home, we could go out and do what we had done otherwise without the virus, such as mountaineering and else. After the lockdown, the Summer season started, and we could work in an almost normal way, despite all the disinfection and cleaning. And this taught me yet how important it is to be in a country with a strong health system, is guaranteed to all its citizens, and how this was helping us move on. By Fall 2020, I should have left for the USA, to start my Master's at The New School College for Performing Arts, in New York City. I received a notification a month before saying that the classes would be conducted online and that I could not enter the US. This came as contradictory news: I could not go to this place and study in the way I was expecting to, but I was given the chance to stay in the place I had been calling home, with my people, a bit longer. Then the Summer season was over and I left Germany for Italy, where I could stay at a friend's house with no risk of spreading the virus and continue my studies. I expected to travel to the US in January but, again, I received the news that the studies would remain online and had to stay. I didn't know where, though. I talked with friends and I ended up living at a house in the fields in Catalunya, Spain. I am now living in this house, that has no drinkable water and is heated solely with wood, where I don't have to pay rent, there's nature all around me and I only have to take care of one lovely dog. COVID doesn't come by our door. Finally, I will be living in a week for the US. Although confusing and exhausting, I have learned many useful things during the pandemic.

Although I cannot complain about my childhood, and though I have brilliant, highly curious, partially self-educated parents who taught me and my siblings fundamental things and an overall passion for learning, critical thinking, and experiencing life, I can say that being born into a lower-middle-class family in Patagonia, Argentina, has made mine's and my sibling's professional development and learning take longer than it would have had in a different context. In 2018, after achieving what are undeniable milestones in my career and in my creative practice, such as writing, conducting, producing, and recording my first professional record, after my first international tour, after receiving a full scholarship to attend a prestigious artist's residency in Canada, and after earning my undergraduate degree, my country was, once more going through a big economic, social, and political crises that encouraged me to leave for Europe with 400 bucks in my pocket, without a plan, and without family to receive me. Now, after many years of traveling, I can say that the journey has been hard but generous to me, I learned Italian and German, I've met wonderful people, I have a sense of home wherever I go in broad Europe, I made my second record through the savings I did as a full-time worker at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps, and I attended my second artist's residency in Canada through a scholarship. Most importantly, I was able to apply to different universities and got accepted to The New School College for Performing Arts in NY. I am leaving in a week for the USA and will be abandoning the homeland I was very lucky to build these past years. Starting over, with very limited funds, the urge to find a job once I arrive, while studying full-time for a Master's Degree. This scholarship will be very useful to help me in this new endeavor.

I am a musician and a poet, who makes art that deals with the testimonial, the suggestive, the concrete. Through the intersection of narrative, composition, and improvisation, I generate experiences that aim to interact with urgent matters such as social equality, ecology, or the right to aesthetic rejoicing. My practice involves words, written, sung, spoken, guitar, a range of instruments, and field recordings. I am from the mountains of the South of Argentina, which I left due to political and economic reasons, and I have had an itinerant life ever since. I released two albums: Dingungu, which is a testimony-through-music about the history of slavery in Argentina, the historic invisibilization of Afro-Argentine communities and their present, and Unterwegs, with songs from the Latin American repertoire. As a musician and spoken word artist, I have appeared on albums in the US, Canada, and Argentina, and a selection of my poetry was published in the anthology Breve Tratado del Viento Sur, in Colombia. I am a naturalist, a traveler, and a contemporary troubadour. I have worked in the mountains of the Alps and the Andes as a porter and a hut-keeper, and have been a gardener since childhood. My poetical ideas, my musical ideas, my research in the social aspects of music, the exploration of the different ways of conceiving music, writing for a specific ensemble, or group of musicians are all born usually from intrigue and glare. Music is for me the most pleasurable game, the most fundamental and necessary craving, enough to justify the investment of all my time and energy in musical endeavors. Therefore, having the time and space to immerse me in musical exploration is one fundamental aspect of my creative process. My current studies in the Performer-Composer Master of Music at The New School College of Performing Arts have been an opportunity to immerse in aspects of my creative practice I had long been aiming for, such as the relationship between words and music, broadening it to reach different perspectives, like the performative (Spoken Word), but being particularly amazed by the compositional. I have recently started a series of Visual Poetry Scores, using poetry as the medium for creation and collaboration, which have been performed by my colleagues and mentors, that I find to be a very exciting field of experimentation. I dream of generating consciousness and collaborating with urgent causes such as climate justice and the rights of the pre-existing nations in Argentina. I think of my project "Mind Fields" or "La Tierra, una criatura", which combines poetry, field recordings, composition, and improvisation, as a way to interact and appreciate nature in a creative process in which the Earth is the main collaborator. Once I earn my Graduate degree, I have the project of doing an artistic intervention with activists, leaders, and collaborators in Argentina, with the main participants and leaders belonging to the Mapuche community and the movement for Indigenous rights, starting in my hometown in Patagonia and continuing in the rest of the vast region known as Wallmapu in Mapudungun, in which we would build letters and signs translating the indigenous terms to Argentine Castillian, and vice-versa, to add to the public lettering making it bi-lingual. I think of this s a way to familiarize the non-Mapudungun speakers with this language, reinforcing the awareness of the indigenous presence and fostering empathy with the pre-existing communities that live in these territories since way before the arrival of the Argentine conquerors.

My name is Julián Muro, I am a poet, musician, and performing artist. To talk about mental health, I must then talk about my own life. I was born in Argentine Patagonia. I am the son of an educator and an artist. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving. After 8 months of traveling Europe, I found myself broke and emotionally devastated. the world was not treating me as I thought I deserved, I didn’t seem to be able to achieve what I wanted and no one seemed willing to help me. Nonetheless, I invested the little money I had on two months of rent, and a cheap guitar. In my family, there is a vast record of depression. And that came in very handy for me. One night in Spain, I had gone shopping for groceries, and I was returning home, when I stopped at some random place, looked across the street, and thought “It would be the same if I were dead”. I proud myself of being a decisive person, and, because of this, I knew I had to change fastly my outlook on life: it wouldn’t be too long before I decided to ‘do something' about this thought I had. I told all my friends and my family about it, and that I was already taking care of it. After a few days, I was again at peace. I realized that it wasn’t about receiving ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It wasn’t about recognition. It was about desire. Finding peace had to do with knowing the precise measure of one's desire. I even came up with a formula for it: one’s desire must be so synthetic as to meet one’s need. I don’t need recognition, what I need is to be able to do what I love, and this is simple to achieve: I need a guitar, a room for my own, and time. My desire, then, became achievable.

First, there is the family. My dad, a visual artist, a fine listener. We read poetry and listened to a never-ending list of marvelous musicians such as Coltrane, Piazzola/Mulligan, Jarret, Caetano Veloso, Joni Mitchell. My mom, a teacher, has a sensibility towards songs. She sang in the afternoons while cooking; in the car when we went to school; while cleaning; she sang all the time, and still does. My sister, a delicate writer, introduced me to her poetry colleagues when I was 13. We share the laughs and the heat of dancing, the cheesy tunes, and everything that’s bold and fights. My brother, impressive mind, a polymath. A solicitous ally. He helps me persevere and always has an ear, an eye, a word for me. My grandmother, a funny, creative soul. She knitted colorful, sounding tights that my sister and I wore as footwear on stage on our first tour abroad. But my family is big, and the words are limited. A forest of coihue and ciprés between mountains is the scenario of my childhood elapsed in Argentine Patagonia. I have lived and worked at mountain huts in the Alps and the Andes. In my life, gardening and contemplation while mountaineering, are some of the things I learned the most from. The mountains, the woods, and the knowledge of a simple life help me decipher the world that surrounds me. Some time ago, after facing my reality as a third-world artist, I decided to leave my homeland with an uncertain fate, following my dreams of music and poetry. Now, three years later, even though the situation of the world makes it very difficult for artists to continue their creative work, I am very lucky of having been selected as one of the 7 candidates for the launch of the brand-new Performer-Composer Master of Music program at The New School College of Performing Arts in New York City. The Performer-Composer MM is centered in each of the participants' profiles, and the development of their own personal artistic projects. This program is helping me develop and enrich my skills as a composer, arranger, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. I think a lot about the difference between knowing something and practicing it. I had to learn to remind myself to be willing to enjoy. In my artistic practice, I like to think about the influence of music and art on the way we perceive the world and ourselves within it, and as a way to expand the way we relate with the world to its most complex aspects. It is my intention, as an artist, to generate art departing from this conscious approach, longing to affect the way people perceive the world, in aspects such as social equality, ecology, or aesthetical rejoicing. To think about the responsibility that this implies, which affects our craft, the way we think about our work, and the way we deliver art to the world.

I am an artist from Argentine Patagonia. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that began to affect me and my artistic perspectives in different ways, and that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving with the goal and total commitment towards developing my dreams as a poet, creative musician, and researcher. I became a migrant and have been traveling since then. I hold Italian citizenship, but I don't have family in Europe, I left without any plans and with 400 dollars to survive for a few weeks, so things were very hard at times. During my travels and before COVID hit, I have lived in Germany, Portugal, Italy, Spain, and I went to Canada for almost three months to participate in the Banff Musicians in Residence program at The Banff Centre and tour my latest record, Unterwegs, recorded in Germany and released in Dec. 2020. After that, I returned to Germany, to my work as a waiter and hut keeper at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. And then COVID came. The Winter season was abruptly interrupted, leaving me unemployed, but I had a very cheap rent to pay and I could receive financial assistance from the German unemployment office. I was living in a town in a region of fewer than 30.000 inhabitants, a small village, surrounded by forests, rivers, and mountains. We were allowed to do outdoor sports with another person, and I spent those two months biking, walking, climbing, and else. This made me come to a conclusion I had longly been thinking about: the importance of a life outside of the big cities. In our privileged home, we could go out and do exactly what we had done otherwise without the virus, such as mountaineering and else. After this lockdown, the Summer season started, and we could work in an almost normal way, despite controlling the customers and doing all the disinfection and cleaning. I thought about how important it was to be in a country with a very strong health system, that is guaranteed to all its citizens, and how that was helping us move on. By Fall 2020, I should have left for the USA, to start my Master's at a very prestigious university, The New School College for Performing Arts, in New York City. I received a notification a month before saying that the classes would only be conducted online and so, although I could study, I could not enter the US. This came as contradictory news: I could not go to this place and study in the way I was expecting to, but rather I could stay in the place I had been calling home for a while, in the mountains, with my people. The Summer season was over by Nov. the 1st, 2020, and I left Germany for Italy. There, I could stay at a friend's house with no risk of spreading the virus, and I could continue my studies. I was expecting to travel to the US in January, for the Spring term, but, again, I received the news that the studies would remain online and decided to stay in Europe. I didn't know where, though. I talked with friends and I ended up living at a house in the fields in Catalunya, Spain. I am now living in this house, that has no drinkable water and is heated solely with wood, where I don't have to pay rent, there's nature all around me and I have to take care of two lovely dogs. COVID doesn't come by our door. My Master's degree is a great opportunity to keep my career going, I live one hour away from the person that has been my partner for the past 2 years, and, although confusing, things are not bad at all. Besides COVID, our family house in Patagonia burned to ashes in February of 2020, and a year after that, very recently, I had a very strong car accident that affected me very deeply, luckily enough, although the car is destroyed, no one got too badly hurt, and my girlfriend, who was driving and broke her pelvis, is already walking again, and hopefully, soon enough she will get back to her usual activists such as climbing and mountaineering; we both managed to continue our Master's and did a great job. I appreciate all the people I met since I left Argentina, and all the help I received; without all these people my life would be meaningless. I've had a crazy set of years, COVID is just one more aspect of my recent experiences, and have to be honest in saying that I still don't know exactly how these events will end up transforming me, but I am sure the transformation is occurring.

The Zamba is an Argentine dance and song with the particularity of a slow tempo and a very spacious way of playing that makes one feel dreamy. It is lovely and gentle, nostalgic and bright as only natural things can be. The word comes from the term 'Zambo': the son of a Black and an Indigenous person; we could interpret Zamba as their daughter. I wrote this tune a while ago, and recently got back to it when I found myself among brilliant jazz musicians from Israel, which I knew thanks to the suggestion of maestro Dave Douglas. I wanted to hear these kind and sensitive musicians playing this very folkloric style. They did just wonderfully, it was immensely rewarding and I am very grateful.

My name is Julián Muro, I am a poet, musician, and performing artist. To talk about mental health, I must then talk about my own life. I was born in Argentine Patagonia. I am the son of an educator and an artist. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving. After 8 months of traveling Europe, I found myself broke and emotionally devastated. the world was not treating me as I thought I deserved, I didn’t seem to be able to achieve what I wanted and no one seemed willing to help me. Nonetheless, I invested the little money I had on two months of rent, and a cheap guitar. In my family, there is a vast record of depression. And that came in very handy for me. One night in Spain, I had gone shopping for groceries, and I was returning home, when I stopped at some random place, looked across the street and thought “It would be the same if I were dead”. I proud myself of being a decisive person, and, because of this, I knew I had to change fastly my outlook on life: it wouldn’t be too long before I decided to ‘do something’ about this thought I had. I told all my friends and my family about it, and that I was already taking care of it. After a few days, I was again at peace. I realized that it wasn’t about receiving ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It wasn’t about recognition. It was about desire. Finding peace had to do with knowing the precise measure of one's desire. I even came up with a formula for it: one’s desire must be so synthetic as to meet one’s need. I don’t need recognition, what I need is to be able to do what I love, and this is simple to achieve: I need a guitar, a room for my own, and time. My desire, then, became achievable. To have what I desire, this must be exactly what I need to have.

I am a musician and a poet, interested in an art that deals with the testimonial, the suggestive, the concrete. Through the intersection of narrative, composition, and improvisation, I generate experiences that aim to interact with urgent matters such as social equality, ecology, or the right to aesthetical rejoicing. My practice involves words -the written / the sung / the spoken-, guitar, a range of instruments, and field recordings. I am from the mountains of the South of Argentina, which I left due to political and economic reasons, and I have had an itinerant life ever since. My work occurs at the intersection of words and sound, resulting in songs, instrumental music, poetry, sound art, and everything in between. Exploration is a fundamental aspect of my creative practice, which is based on collaboration, improvisation, story-telling, and research nourished by the traditions of America in their convergence with classical and jazz, among others. My constant travels have affected my practice bringing it closer to that of a contemporary troubadour, broadening it, and diversifying the origins of my collaborators. My published discography includes elements of Argentine popular music, afrobeat, jazz, and songs from the Latin American repertoire. My poetical ideas, my musical ideas, my research in the social aspects of music, the exploration of the different ways of conceiving music, writing for a specific ensemble, or group of musicians are all born usually from intrigue and glare. Music is for me the most pleasurable game, the most fundamental and necessary craving, enough to justify the investment of all my time and energy on musical endeavors. Therefore, having the time and space to immerse myself in musical exploration is one fundamental aspect of my creative process. I have several ongoing projects waiting for funding: - Discurrires. ​Sobre una idea de Verdad: a series of albums thought of as volumes in which I aim to raise questions about what songs are, what they are not, and why, while referring to the difference (or not) between poetry-the written or spoken word- and song-the sung word. Each album features unusual approaches to songs, in terms of structure, arrangements, and instrumentation. My tune "El amor llega como tiro en el ojo", featuring Caroline Shaw and available on all streaming platforms, is part of the work-in-progress Songs for string quartet and voices, one of the volumes of this series. - My most recent project, Mind Fields or La Tierra, una criatura, consists of field recordings used to create soundscapes that are combined with visual poetry as a starting point for improvisation and collaboration. Since my childhood in Argentine Patagonia, I have been closely linked to natural environments. Concerned as I am about environmental issues, I think of this project as a way to interact and appreciate nature in a creative process in which the Earth is the main collaborator. Some musicians that participated in this project are viñu-vinu (Canada), Magnus Løvseth (Norway), Ches Smith (US). - I also dream of doing an artistic intervention with activists, leaders, and collaborators, with the main participants and leaders belonging to the Mapuche community and the movement for Indigenous rights, starting in my hometown and continuing in the rest of the vast region known as Wallmapu in Mapudungun, in which we would build letters and signs translating the indigenous terms to Argentine Castillian, and vice-versa, to add to the public lettering making it bi-lingual. I think of the intervention as a way to familiarize the non-Mapudungun speakers with this language, reinforcing the awareness of the indigenous presence and fostering empathy with the pre-existent indigenous communities that live in these territories since way before the arrival of the Argentine conquerors. I would like it to be a coordinated, multitudinary action.

My name is Julián Muro, I am a poet, musician, and performing artist. To talk about mental health, I must then talk about my own life. I was born in Argentine Patagonia. I am the son of an educator and an artist. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving. After 8 months of traveling Europe, I found myself broke and emotionally devastated. the world was not treating me as I thought I deserved, I didn’t seem to be able to achieve what I wanted and no one seemed willing to help me. Nonetheless, I invested the little money I had on two months of rent, and a cheap guitar. In my family, there is a vast record of depression. And that came in very handy for me. One night in Spain, I had gone shopping for groceries, and I was returning home, when I stopped at some random place, looked across the street and thought “It would be the same if I were dead”. I proud myself of being a decisive person, and, because of this, I knew I had to change fastly my outlook on life: it wouldn’t be too long before I decided to ‘do something’ about this thought I had. I told all my friends and my family about it, and that I was already taking care of it. After a few days, I was again at peace. I realized that it wasn’t about receiving ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It wasn’t about recognition. It was about desire. Finding peace had to do with knowing the precise measure of one's desire. I even came up with a formula for it: one’s desire must be so synthetic as to meet one’s need. I don’t need recognition, what I need is to be able to do what I love, and this is simple to achieve: I need a guitar, a room for my own, and time. My desire, then, became achievable. To have what I desire, this must be exactly what I need to have.

My name is Julián Muro, I am a poet, musician, and performing artist. To talk about mental health, I must then talk about my own life. I was born in Argentine Patagonia. I am the son of an educator and an artist. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving. After 8 months of traveling Europe, I found myself broke and emotionally devastated. the world was not treating me as I thought I deserved, I didn’t seem to be able to achieve what I wanted and no one seemed willing to help me. Nonetheless, I invested the little money I had on two months of rent, and a cheap guitar. In my family, there is a vast record of depression. And that came in very handy for me. One night in Spain, I had gone shopping for groceries, and I was returning home, when I stopped at some random place, looked across the street and thought “It would be the same if I were dead”. I proud myself of being a decisive person, and, because of this, I knew I had to change fastly my outlook on life: it wouldn’t be too long before I decided to ‘do something’ about this thought I had. I told all my friends and my family about it, and that I was already taking care of it. After a few days, I was again at peace. I realized that it wasn’t about receiving ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It wasn’t about recognition. It was about desire. Finding peace had to do with knowing the precise measure of one's desire. I even came up with a formula for it: one’s desire must be so synthetic as to meet one’s need. I don’t need recognition, what I need is to be able to do what I love, and this is simple to achieve: I need a guitar, a room for my own, and time. My desire, then, became achievable. To have what I desire, this must be exactly what I need to have.

My name is Julián Muro, I am a poet, musician, and performing artist. To talk about mental health, I must then talk about my own life. I was born in Argentine Patagonia. I am the son of an educator and an artist. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving. After 8 months of traveling Europe, I found myself broke and emotionally devastated. the world was not treating me as I thought I deserved, I didn’t seem to be able to achieve what I wanted and no one seemed willing to help me. Nonetheless, I invested the little money I had on two months of rent, and a cheap guitar. In my family, there is a vast record of depression. And that came in very handy for me. One night in Spain, I had gone shopping for groceries, and I was returning home, when I stopped at some random place, looked across the street and thought “It would be the same if I were dead”. I proud myself of being a decisive person, and, because of this, I knew I had to change fastly my outlook on life: it wouldn’t be too long before I decided to ‘do something’ about this thought I had. I told all my friends and my family about it, and that I was already taking care of it. After a few days, I was again at peace. I realized that it wasn’t about receiving ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It wasn’t about recognition. It was about desire. Finding peace had to do with knowing the precise measure of one's desire. I even came up with a formula for it: one’s desire must be so synthetic as to meet one’s need. I don’t need recognition, what I need is to be able to do what I love, and this is simple to achieve: I need a guitar, a room for my own, and time. My desire, then, became achievable. To have what I desire, this must be exactly what I need to have.

I am a musician and a poet, interested in an art that deals with the testimonial, the suggestive, the concrete. Through the intersection of narrative, composition, and improvisation, I generate experiences that aim to interact with urgent matters such as social equality, ecology, or the right to aesthetical rejoicing. My practice involves words -the written / the sung / the spoken-, guitar, a range of instruments, and field recordings. I am from the mountains of the South of Argentina, which I left due to political and economic reasons, and I have had an itinerant life ever since. My work occurs at the intersection of words and sound, resulting in songs, instrumental music, poetry, sound art, and everything in between. Exploration is a fundamental aspect of my creative practice, which is based on collaboration, improvisation, story-telling, and research nourished by the traditions of America in their convergence with classical and jazz, among others. My constant travels have affected my practice bringing it closer to that of a contemporary troubadour, broadening it, and diversifying the origins of my collaborators. My published discography includes elements of Argentine popular music, afrobeat, jazz, and songs from the Latin American repertoire. My current studies in the Performer-Composer Master of Music at The New School College of Performing Arts have been an opportunity to immerse in aspects of my creative practice I had long been aiming for, such as the relationship between words and music, broadening it to reach different perspectives, such as the performative (Spoken Word), but being particularly amazed by the compositional. I have written a series of Visual Poetry Scores that have been interpreted by my colleagues and mentors, that I find to be a very exciting field of experimentation, and I would love to try it out and develop it with the ICE. In this line, my most recent project, Mind Fields or La Tierra, una criatura, consists of field recordings used to create soundscapes that are combined with visual poetry as a starting point for improvisation and collaboration. Since my childhood in Argentine Patagonia, I have been closely linked to natural environments. Concerned as I am about environmental issues, I think of this project as a way to interact and appreciate nature in a creative process in which the Earth is the main collaborator. Some musicians that participated in this project are viñu-vinu (Canada), Magnus Løvseth (Norway), and Ches Smith (US).

I am a musician and a poet, interested in an art that deals with the testimonial, the suggestive, the concrete. Through the intersection of narrative, composition, and improvisation, I generate experiences that aim to interact with urgent matters such as social equality, ecology, or the right to aesthetical rejoicing. My practice involves words -the written / the sung / the spoken-, guitar, a range of instruments, and field recordings. I am from the mountains of the South of Argentina, which I left due to political and economic reasons, and I have had an itinerant life ever since. My poetical ideas, my musical ideas, my research in the social aspects of music, the exploration of the different ways of conceiving music, writing for a specific ensemble, or group of musicians are all born usually from intrigue and glare. Music is for me the most pleasurable game, the most fundamental and necessary craving, enough to justify the investment of all my time and energy on musical endeavors. Therefore, having the time and space to immerse myself in musical exploration is one fundamental aspect of my creative process. Through my current studies in the Performer-Composer Master of Music at The New School, it is my intention to develop and enrich my skills as a composer, arranger, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Because of the wide range of my interests, it is not always easy to find a place to study and relate to people that are in a similar search or mentors who are able to cover all my needs and help me maximize my efforts. In this program, which I started in the fall of 2020, I found exactly what I was needing, and I am very grateful for the opportunities it has given me so far.

First, there is the family. My dad, a visual artist, a fine listener. We read poetry and listened to a never-ending list of marvelous musicians such as Coltrane, Piazzola/Mulligan, Jarret, Caetano Veloso, Joni Mitchell. My mom, a teacher, has a sensibility towards songs. She sang in the afternoons while cooking; in the car when we went to school; while cleaning; she sang all the time, and still does. My sister, a delicate writer, introduced me to her poetry colleagues when I was 13. We share the laughs and the heat of dancing, the cheesy tunes, and everything that’s bold and fights. My brother, impressive mind, a polymath. A solicitous ally. He helps me persevere and always has an ear, an eye, a word for me. My grandmother, a funny, creative soul. She knitted colorful, sounding tights that my sister and I wore as footwear on stage on our first tour abroad. But my family is big, and the words are limited. A forest of coihue and ciprés between mountains is the scenario of my childhood elapsed in Argentine Patagonia. I have lived and worked at mountain huts in the Alps and the Andes. In my life, gardening and contemplation while mountaineering, are some of the things I learned the most from. The mountains, the woods, and the knowledge of a simple life, help me decipher the world that surrounds me. Some time ago, after facing my reality as a third world artist, I decided to leave my homeland with an uncertain fate, following my dreams of music and poetry. Now, three years later, even though the situation of the world makes it very difficult for artists to continue their creative work, I am very lucky of having been selected as one of the 7 candidates for the launch of the brand-new Performer-Composer Master of Music program at The New School College of Performing Arts in New York City. The Performer-Composer MM is centered in each of the participants' profiles, and the development of their own personal artistic projects. This program is helping me develop and enrich my skills as a composer, arranger, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. I think a lot about the difference between knowing something and practicing it. I had to learn to remind myself to be willing to enjoy. In my artistic practice, I like to think about the influence of music and art on the way we perceive the world and ourselves within it, and as a way to expand the way we relate with the world to its most complex aspects. It is my intention, as an artist, to generate art departing from this conscious approach, longing to affect the way people perceive the world, in aspects such as social equality, ecology, or aesthetical rejoicing. To think about the responsibility that this implies, which affects our craft, the way we think about our work, and the way we deliver art to the world.

I am an artist from Argentine Patagonia. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that began to affect me and my artistic perspectives in different ways, and that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving with the goal and total commitment towards developing my dreams as a poet, creative musician and researcher. I became a migrant and have been traveling since then. I hold Italian citizenship, but I don't have family in Europe, I left without any plans and with 400 dollars to survive for a few weeks. Although It was not easy, traveling allowed me to deepen my sense of the human condition: although I lived the longer, harder, period of my life without music, I did surfing, snowboarding, and climbing; I was profoundly alone; I learned Italian and German; wrote poetry; I was broke and did gardening in exchange for food and a house in a paradisiacal land; I played concerts; recorded an album. I felt lost and was reunited. I believe that all this experience led me to become a better person, thus a better artist, and I am always concerned about becoming, in the first place, a better human being. In the last 3 years, my life has become a strange, hard but beautiful and powerful thing, the path has been generous to me. I look at my life and think about this kid that wanted to live a life like one of those that Jack Kerouac describes in novels such as 'Dharma Bums'. And it occurs to me that that is exactly what I did. I am enthusiastic to further this search in life and arts. I am strong and confident that I will find a way to foster my creative work and develop all the projects I have in mind. Through my newsletter "Message in a Bottle / Carta en una Botella" which I write both in English and Spanish, and to which I invite people to subscribe through http://julianmuro.com/links I have the beautiful opportunity to share my journey and the experiences that are occurring all the time in what I find to be a fascinating life, with other people that might find in my words a source of inspiration and the notion that they are not alone. I actually received a message some time ago, saying: "But I appreciate the reminder that the written word and the poetry it can create are an incredible way to quell heartbreak and misgivings. And if I write in my diaries again, it is because I read you and I thank you again."

I am an artist from Argentine Patagonia, In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that began to affect me and my artistic perspectives in different ways, and that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving with the goal and total commitment towards developing my dreams as a poet, creative musician and researcher. I became a migrant and have been traveling since then. I hold Italian citizenship, but I don't have family in Europe, I left without any plans and with 400 dollars to survive for a few weeks, so things were very hard at times. During my travels and before COVID hit, I have lived in Germany, Portugal, Italy, Spain, and I went to Canada for almost three months to participate in the Banff Musicians in Residence program at The Banff Centre and tour my latest record, Unterwegs, recorded in Germany and released in Dec. 2020. After that, I returned to Germany, to my work as a waiter and hut keeper at a mountain cottage in the Bavarian Alps. And then COVID came. The Winter season was abruptly interrupted, leaving me jobless, but I had a very cheap rent to pay and I could receive financial assistance from the German unemployment office. I was living in a town in a region of less than 30.000 inhabitants, a small village, surrounded by forests, rivers, and mountains. We were allowed to do outdoor sports with another person, and I spent those two months biking, walking, climbing, and else. This made me come to a conclusion I had longly been thinking about: the importance of a life outside of the big cities. In our privileged home, we could go out and do what we had done otherwise without the virus, such as mountaineering and else. After this lockdown, the Summer season started, and we could work in an almost normal way, despite controlling the customers and doing all the disinfection and cleaning. I thought about how important it was to be in a country with a very strong health system, that is guaranteed to all its citizens, and how that was helping us move on. By Fall 2020, I should have left towards USA, to start my Master's at a very prestigious university, The New School College for Performing Arts, in New York City. I received a notification a month before saying that the classes would only be conducted online and so, although I could study, I could not enter the US. This came as contradictory news: I could not go to this place and study in the way I was expecting to, but rather I could stay in the place I had been calling home for a while, in the mountains, with my people. The Summer season was over by Nov. the 1st, 2020, and I left Germany for Italy. There, I could stay at a friend's house with no risk of spreading the virus, and I could continue my studies. I was expecting to travel to the US in January, for the Spring term, but, again, I received the news that the studies would remain online and decided to stay in Europe. I didn't know where, though. I talked with friends and I ended up living at a house in the fields in Catalunya, Spain. I am now living in this house, that has no drinkable water and is heated solely with wood, where I don't have to pay rent, there's nature all around me and I have to take care of two lovely dogs. COVID doesn't come by our door. My Master's degree is a great opportunity to keep my career going, I live one hour away from the person that has been my partner for the past 2 years, and, although confusing, things are not bad at all.

My name is Julián Muro, I am a musician, a performing artist, and a published poet, currently a candidate to the Performer-Composer Master of Music at The New School in NY. A forest of 'coihue' and cipress between mountains is the scenario of my childhood elapsed in Argentine Patagonia. In my life, gardening, and contemplation while mountaineering, are some of the things I learned the most from. Some time ago, after facing my reality as a third world artist, I decided to leave my homeland with an uncertain fate, following my dreams of music and poetry. I have lived and worked as a porter (sherpa), and hut-keeper in mountain cottages in The Andes and in The Alps. in my hometown Bariloche (located in the The Andes) I worked and lived in cottages such as Refugio López (1650 masl), and Refugio Agostino Rocca (1450 masl); in The Alps, I worked and lived in Rifugio Guide Del Cervino (3500 masl, Matterhorn, Italian-Swiss Alps) and Kreuzeckhaus (Bavarian Alps, 1650 masl). The mountains, the woods, and the knowledge of a simple life, help me decipher the world that surrounds me. In my life, I think a lot about the difference between knowing something and practicing it. I had to learn to remind myself to be willing to enjoy. In my artistic practice, I like to think about the influence of music and art on the way we perceive the world and ourselves within it, and as a way to expand the way we relate with the world to its most complex aspects. I am striving to generate art departing from this conscious approach, longing to affect the way people perceive the world, in aspects such as social equality, ecology, or aesthetical rejoicing. To think about the responsibility that this implies, which affects our craft, the way we think about our work, and the way we deliver art to the world.

My name is Julián Muro, I am a poet, musician, and performing artist. To talk about mental health, I must then talk about my own life. I was born in Argentine Patagonia. I am the son of an educator and an artist. In 2018, my country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving. After 8 months of traveling Europe, I found myself broke and emotionally devastated. the world was not treating me as I thought I deserved, I didn’t seem to be able to achieve what I wanted and no one seemed willing to help me. Nonetheless, I invested the little money I had on two months of rent, and a cheap guitar. In my family, there is a vast record of depression. And that came in very handy for me. One night in Spain, I had gone shopping for groceries, and I was returning home, when I stopped at some random place, looked across the street and thought “It would be the same if I were dead”. I proud myself of being a decisive person, and, because of this, I knew I had to change fastly my outlook on life: it wouldn’t be too long before I decided to ‘do something’ about this thought I had. I told all my friends and my family about it, and that I was already taking care of it. After a few days, I was again at peace. I realized that it wasn’t about receiving ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It wasn’t about recognition. It was about desire. Finding peace had to do with knowing the precise measure of one's desire. I even came up with a formula for it: one’s desire must be so synthetic as to meet one’s need. I don’t need recognition, what I need is to be able to do what I love, and this is simple to achieve: I need a guitar, a room for my own, and time. My desire, then, became achievable. To have what I desire, this must be exactly what I need to have.

Upon returning to Argentina after my first experience as a Banff Musician in Residence In 2018, the country was experiencing a big economic and social crisis that began to affect me and my artistic perspectives in different ways, and that encouraged me to make the difficult decision of leaving my country with the goal and total commitment towards developing my dreams as a poet, creative musician and researcher. In this sense, now that I am a ‘citizen of the world’, I consider one of my main challenges is to conform a musical community. I know that continuing my formal studies is one of the strategies I have on hand to achieve this. Now, three years later, even though nthe situation of the world makes it very difficult for artists to continue their creative work, I am very lucky of having been selected through a full Merit Award as one of the 7 candidates for the launch of the brand-new Performer-Composer Master of Music program at The New School College of Performing Arts in New York City. The Performer-Composer MM is centered in each of the participants' profiles, and the development of their own personal artistic projects. Through the Performer-Composer MM at The New School, that I already started in the Fall '20, it is my intention to further develop and enrich my skills as composer, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist. Because of the wide range of my interests, to which I should add my poetical background, it is not always easy to find a place to study and relate to people that are in a similar search or, in the teaching sense, qualified enough to cover all my needs and help me maximize my efforts. The Performer-Composer MM is exactly what I needed.

In the first months of 2018, I had just turned 26 and I was back in Patagonia after many years of unstopped creative work and a tremendous personal growth. I had so many projects and was enthusiastic about their realization. I thought that my country, like Canada or Australia, could help me achieve these projects, and I applied to as many grants and subsidies I could, that is to say, maybe 5 options a year for a country of 44 million people. None of this worked. I was living in my beautiful hometown, that has no theaters, no arts universities, and a very frustrating cultural life. All my recent achievements seemed to be irrelevant. To add to this, the country was, once more, going through one of the most complicated political, social and economical crisis in the last years, with money going half its price in just a month. I looked around me, I looked at my very cheap gear, my very few prospects, the impossibility of accomplishing my dreams, and, in about a week, I decided to leave. But, this time, I was leaving the country. Although It was not easy, traveling allowed me to deepen my sense about the human condition: although I lived the longer, harder, period of my life without music, I did surfing, snowboarding and climbing; I was profoundly alone; I learned Italian and German; wrote poetry; I was broke and did gardening in exchange for food and a house in a paradisiacal land; I played concerts; recorded an album. I felt lost and was reunited. I believe that all this experience led me to become a better person, thus a better artist, and I am always concerned about becoming, in the first place, a better human being. In the last 2 years, my life has become a strange, hard but beautiful and powerful thing, the path has been generous to me. Last September, I did a record of songs that is my most spontaneous record to date, that I made through the savings from my full-time job as a waiter in the Bavarian Alps. I was selected again for an Arts Residency at The Banff Centre, and this time, thankfully, I could pay for my plane tickets to get there. Since Fall 2020, I am one of only 12 candidates for the launch of the Performer-Composer Master of Music at The New Schol in NY, through a full Merit Award. I look at my life and think about a kid that wanted to live a life like one of those that Jack Kerouac describes in his novels. And it occurs to me that that is exactly what I did. I am enthusiastic to further this search in life and arts. I am strong and confident that I will find a way to foster my creative work and develop all the projects I have in mind. I want to do the second record of my project Dingungu, concerned about the African presence in Argentine traditional music, and also write for String Quartet and Voices, and unusual formations. I want to keep learning. I didn’t come all this far for nothing. But now I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for this opportunity of sharing my history with you.