Infinite urban suggestions.

Five senses.

A flow of experiences.

Today the light coming in from the windows of my studio is very bright. The beam of sunlight lights up like a spotlight on the slow-motion dance of the dust particles. I stop to observe the movement and try to give it a different rhythm with the help of my palms. Then I look at my hands and the saying of the moon and the finger comes to mind. I stare at them and observe the details – professional deformation. The fingers: they are the common thread with the world. The phalanges: translate thought into movement. The fingertips: they are our signature. The knuckles are the promontories, the veins are the streams, and the palm seems to me a choppy sea. Through / touch / hands create, touch, adjust, love. So – now it is clear to me – hands are places and languages, they are caresses and fists, they are welcome and they are refusal, they are information and they are formations. Hands are a story, ours.

FLOW

/flow/

Strictly speaking, the flow of a liquid or other fluid on a surface or through a specific conduit and, with a concrete value, the same quantity of liquid, etc., which flows. In a figurative sense, continuous movement of people or things (including abstract ones) that arouses the image of flowing.

It was enough for us to see to recognize ourselves. It was you and me. Me and myself. It was us. Seeing is the action that arises every time we open our eyes. Seeing is also when we close those same eyes and start dreaming. We can delude ourselves but when we decide to see, we choose to mix with the world, to become part of it, energy, sigh, fear, feeling. We make an image of one with his self, one with his other. A small representation of reality that is meant to be part of something bigger. And then I can understand, how in a lifetime, our eyes are destined to look at the second, infinite and infinite quantities of particles. But of that multitude we will only be able to really see in the exact instant in which the / sight / and feeling will come together until we reach the left side of the whole.

I caught a glimpse of you, you know? Even if we are always in contact, sometimes I lose you and I don’t even notice it. You are neither more nor less than a lover. It turns out that I hate you, that I love you, that I ignore you, that I welcome you, that you burst inside me and cling to me like an ivy with its tree. You are the poison and its remedy together. But every now and then, when I’m more focused on myself and I lose sight of you, then I recognize you in the person sitting in front of me on the tram, in an exhibition, on a trip, in a song or in a book. I even find you in the words of a stranger, in the smile of a passer-by. I picked up a fragment of you in bar chat. If I’m not mistaken, I also recognized your scent in another city and you had the good taste of a cocktail. When I also recognize the traffic, convulsive and at times hysterical, it becomes comforting. If I get lost and then I write to you, I paint you, I photograph you, I finally find myself. You are my city.

We are the earth and chaos together. We are form and substance that run fast among the violent noises of this city. We are in the sounds of people who speak foreign languages. We are those same bodies kissing at the exit of the subway station. We are even in the storm that takes us home.

I have that feeling of constantly getting lost in a rhythm that is no longer mine but that gets tangled up with that of strangers. That going back and forth, with precise steps, which sooner or later seem to coincide with those of an entire city. I wonder what I will become. I don’t want to rot. I’ll wait for you across the street. I feel your breath advancing and shielding itself with mine. There are no certainties and no mistakes. It goes on in attempts, between falls and emergency exits. I’m the one that’s left, shattering. Who knows if one day you will recognize me in one of those brushstrokes on the canvas …

URBAN

Relating to the city and the city community || Urban furniture, set of objects and structures, fixed or temporary, arranged on public land and along the communication routes of a city, for signaling, delimitation purposes, or with other functions, such as traffic lights, fences, benches, clocks, street lamps and sim.

Incredible. A tight stomach. It is incredible how mysterious the olfactory memory is. Sometimes, smells and perfumes come straight to your mind pointing to the heart of memories: dense and full-bodied. I guess it is probably not the perfume in all its essence that arrives but the top notes are; I discovered that this is the name of the most volatile perfume notes, the ones that reach us first but that evaporate immediately. Then there are the heart and base notes, those that we do not hear immediately but that hide for a while and constitute the very essence of the perfume because they are the ones that remain once the top notes dissolve. I’ve always thought that it would be nice to be able to fix smells and perfumes and be able to reproduce them in some way, I’ve always thought that the volatility of a good smell is an unfair thing. Sometimes I get carried away by scents that unexpectedly take me back in time, giving me back faces, looks, colors, moments, details. You know this in the movies? When someone dreams or remembers and the image becomes blurry? I like to focus on that perfume to make the image as clear as possible and then put it back in my memory. Now I know where it is.

SYNESTHETIC

Of synaesthesia, related to synaesthesia || Synesthesia. In linguistics: In the language of stylistics and semantics, a particular type of metaphor for which two words referring to different sensory spheres are joined in close relationship. In psychology: Psychic phenomenon consisting in the onset of a sensation (auditory, visual, etc.) in conjunction with a perception of a different sensory nature and, more specifically, in the onset of a visual image following a generally acoustic stimulus

Creative Brooklyn

I have been there, they have indicated it to me and I, curious as I am, I could not help but look for that place that is a city but at the same time it is not. Someone called it the Brooklyn of creatives, with good reason, for me it’s a place-non-place. It was an autumn afternoon and the air was not yet as moved as in winter: it was still. I also remember that it was thick and pasty, as if you could grasp it with your hands to feel its compact composition. The sensations took on bright colors as I walked and if at first I tended to the same gray as the buildings, then I began to shine along with the colors of the graffiti. I am surprised that a city, like a person, has so many personalities. A city, like a person, always has to fight with its thousand selves and contradictions to survive.

ART

Any form of human activity as proof or exaltation of his inventive talent and his expressive ability. Any set of techniques and methods concerning an autonomous implementation or practical application in the field of work and part of a profession or trade.

LONELINESS IN NY 

You know, I know loneliness well. Suffocating, odorless, colorless, cruel and necessary.

It takes you by the hand and crosses you even when there are a thousand people next to you. Sometimes you are looking for her, that dear old friend. Other times you think you are doomed to live with her forever.

You hear it with its silent voice navigating you inside, along with internal jolts and melancholies.

Between the ticking of the hands and the coffee machine at its last puff I look around and start inventing. I guess: storms, towers, streets, people, lights, sunsets. An urban ocean that keeps me company.

If I neglect you for a while it is as if you were going away. But it’s not true. Like the writer, he is never alone, not even when he writes, because that’s where he entertains with his characters, I also never feel completely alone. I just close my eyes for a second, take a brush and trace. And it is really true that in that emptiness, I feel so full.

MOUTH

Memories of when I was a child often come to mind, mostly flavors lost over time. I write about it every now and then. Sometimes I confuse them as well, mixed as they are with the stories that have been handed down to me. A perfume becomes a flavor, one takes the name of the other and they begin to make love, to declare it. It makes me smile to think of a metaphor so bold yet so full of love. Do you know that much of what we call taste actually comes from retro olfactory perception? So all in all I am not exaggerating to think of taste and smell as two lovers. The sensations become confused, they clump together in unique experiences of the mind and I can not help but concentrate on grasping them. I try to visualize them, but the senses are deceptive, something always escapes me. Luckily.

IMMERSIVE

In which you enter completely, remaining enveloped and captured.

EAR

His name is Fabien, the gentleman who sits on the bench of the Concorde metro station in Paris every day. He holds his record player on his lap and it is he who plays Stéphanie’s favorite song every evening at 10.45. They listened to it the first day they met and danced it the last night before Stéphanie greeted him forever.

I stop and stay with him to listen to their song. Inside of me I make those sweet notes, that subtle melody, that feeling so intense that I understand the profound reason that binds Fabien to his ritual. Over the duration of that song, Fabien is as if he is re-hearing his beloved once again.

Hearing / ear, therefore, becomes the perfect tool for re-calling oneself but also for re-seeing, re-touching, re-smelling, re-enjoying. That right key that harmonizes everything.

UNCONTROLLED CONTROL  

There are days so crowded with people and stories that I get an uncontrollable craving for control. Ironic that trying to be lucid you can get lost. In those days, I disconnect a little from reality and decide to take my own pace. I look out the window and see them: them outside, me inside. The city follows them, they follow the city. For a day, I decided to follow only me. To allow the heart to play its own music. To throw out what I have inside. To shape my rhythm. The city meanwhile plays its melody of hearts among strangers who do not listen to each other. No one is in sync with mine today, but I am in sync with myself.

FEELING 

Each state of consciousness as produced by a stimulus external or internal to the subject || The warning of a certain physical or mental state.

VERTIGO

Thinking is one of my favorite activities. I don’t think I ever stop thinking. Even when I fall asleep my mind takes me so far that it sometimes exceeds my own limits. If I stop or I’m moving or I paint, I think about the things that scare me the most. I have always imagined fear as an abyss, a black, desert space, so deep that it was lost. That feeling of bewilderment to the point of no longer being able to see the contrasts, the light and dark, the defined lines, the precise contours, the harmonic shapes, the intense colors. Yes, future so I think of you. And I am a tightrope walker poised ready to cross that vertigo to infinity.

SILENCE

Environmental condition defined by the absence of sound disturbances. || Abstention or cessation of speaking.

SENSITIVITY

I often ask myself what sensitivity is: it is such a nuanced and tense word between what is internal and what comes out. In fact, it is the aptitude to receive impressions through the senses, like a flow that goes from the inside to the outside and vice versa. To better understand what my tendency to perceive reality is, it is not enough for me to think, I need to create and materialize thoughts. The soul of an artist is constantly hungry and seeks material, colorful, formed compensation with a spirit. Apophenia: we look for connections and relationships to give meaning to reality. I have read that every work of art is the daughter of its time and, often, the mother of our feelings.

WORD  

Often in the singular with collective value, sometimes in the plural, in the sense of ‘message, speech’, ‘manifestation or communication of a thought or a feeling, an opinion or a precept’, ‘suggestion’, ‘conversation line’ .

I’D RATHER BE A COMMA

Of all the contradictions in life, the one I’ve always preferred is to belong to two cities, yet keep wondering where home is. I wonder above all who I am when I am in one or the other. Maybe it’s the particles in the air that fill up with different breaths and make me choose which personality to wear and when, maybe it’s the sky, maybe it’s the people. It will also be the fact of having roots on one side and having tried to put them on the other, of feeling myself a tourist in one and a town in the other. Strangeness and belonging: I can’t give them up at this point, I need both. For this I will never put a stop to my wandering, I will never decide who to be ultimately. I need a way to continue to dress up my thousand versions and make them express all of them, each in its own time or all together.

ENERGY

Strength, physical vigor. || In Aristotle’s philosophy, it is the “act”, the determining and implementing principle (as opposed to matter or determinable and potential principle).

FLUORESCENT

I lose you and then I lose myself. I reach out and forget. When it happens to me I get confused, I fall and annihilate myself, becoming part of something dark, impenetrable that hurts me but at the same time allows me to feel what others struggle to understand. Seeing things beyond what appears before us. Me and my opposite, me and my dissonant side, me and my enemy, who makes noise, who is rebellious, who is not silent, who reacts to any force. In that din of thoughts that travel at the speed of light, constellations are formed which cling to me and which eventually become images in balance.

CITY 

An inhabited center of considerable size, with buildings arranged more or less regularly, in such a way as to form cobbled or paved or asphalted streets of easy transit, equipped with public services and whatever else is necessary to offer favorable conditions for social life.

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY

You left to look for a new part of yourself. That unknown part that you imagined every time, when spring arrives after winter. The trees bloomed but you faded and remained hidden there among the ruins you carried inside. Then you finally decided to go. Snowflakes fell slowly on your shoulders. “Don’t turn around!” – you repeated to yourself, while the storm assaulted you around. You’ve gone far and further. The wind reached you and slowly you began to be afraid. You let yourself go to the icy waves of a sea where you finally recognized yourself as new, authentic, different. You got lost sometimes. Forgotten you took refuge absorbed and voiceless in your labyrinth. This time there were no new winds waiting for you, there was only the reflection of a tea crystallized in the ice asking to return.

SOUND

The cause of acoustic sensations, consisting of vibrations of a medium (mostly air, but also any elastic means), which can be excited in it or to it, transmitted by the vibrations of a body (sound source), and which in turn excite the ear.

BLUE HUGS

It’s not easy to define emotions sometimes, it’s not easy at all. You live them, intense as they are, and you can’t give them a name, an adjective, a side dish. Maybe because there is a time to continue walking without defining and a time to take stock of the situation, to put pen to paper. The moment when life stops you becomes all a game of opposites, you can not help but paint your canvas right or wrong, good or bad: white makes all other colors fade, makes them sick, while black it frightens and mixes sadness with others. Then there are those moments when on the palette the colored curls play to chase each other, to compromise: when this is the case it becomes difficult to distinguish them. During the time of the trip, I realized that her slightly grumpy grace shone through her eyes so dark and beautiful, but above all from those hugs that only one with the sea inside can give you. I call them blue hugs.

WOMAN 

In the human species, a female individual who has reached sexual maturity and therefore adulthood. As in other animal species, also in the human one there is a distinction between the two sexes based on the biological differences between the male and female organisms.

YOU’RE SOMEBODY ELSE

Fall. Losing your balance and letting yourself go into the void. Easier than dying, simpler than staying. Wounds form in you, some heal quickly, others will never heal. It is as if a part of you is gone forever, falls with you and shatters into invisible atoms, scattered in the deepest waters of the poison you have ingested. Every day it is as if I felt the pain of the blow for the thousandth time after that inevitable fall. Unarmed, you remain silent. The others keep walking and you lie there on the ground, staring at the glass wall that reflects you. The iris is dilated and it is then that you dive inside and look for new ways to rise to the surface.