little red shoe

sei miliardi

2008-05-05T22:08:00.002+01:00

onethousand lines interweaving through walls and buildings, crossing and hatching new, speeding slowly to poke holes through bricks as paint crumbles. this is the image that comes to me as i walk off the 75 at piramide. this is all, and maybe it is the effects of a lingering (anthropoclaustrophobic) sense of disorder.

[he bops, he skips, they can't help looking, what are they thinking?]

the country has disappointed me, i refuse to be governed by a human joke.

rome, paper boats, aloe vera

2008-03-17T11:55:00.004+01:00

this is a cut out square of sky, one of the many because i have not seen the bigness of it in a long time, and to tell the truth i often forget to look, which is a shame. aloe vera signifies the coming of sunny days and the greeness of green. rome is a gigantic square mass of stone with soft corners. it is the humming of old men at 3pm, when bodies rest post lunch. rome is a complex network of messy lines that somehow makes sense, it is also the vaporous bleached hair of ucranian women on the train, the broken fiat that rests like an extinguished soldier at the end of my street, the even mat of pine trees above my head, the burning in my eyes. rome is dust and thickness of dirt like a carpet over everything, it is fluidity and stagnant water, it is open and indifferent, it is the aridity of cracked gesso and the whining of sickly love songs in bars, it is breathing and resignation, it is the wide stride of the evening and the bumping of bycicles on mosaic streets, it is a child and an old man competing in amicable insults. rome is unbearable and incoherent and a mother and a whore dressed up like a queen.
here is a paper boat floating in schweppes residues.

last week i exhibited in a place called lanificio 159, an old wool factory. the paintings will be posted here soon. here is the space.

an afternoon, a fiddle, an accordeon.

2008-02-05T15:25:00.001+01:00

blogotheque!

2008-02-05T14:56:00.000+01:00

a new project of (music video) director vincent moon, the 'concerts a emporter' (take away shows) presents a whole range of so very very great gigs in motion, music taken out on the street, and what pleasant music it is.

now you can find all your favourite indie bands AND the creme de la creme of the so very fashionable 'indie-balkanic love affair' bands like the great beirut on one fantastically conceived webpage!

here is the english version, take-away shows by blogotheque.
and up here is a video preview of what awaits you who enter this genius world of genius music videos, this video is by A Hawk and a Hacksaw, i like them a lot.

otro más

2007-11-28T02:47:00.000+01:00

tra stradine tortuose, si aggira.

a fearless green potential.
(tu vois? les signes du temps? c'est maintenant le temps!)
between twisted alleyways and dead ends
they ate cake
messily.
(verde que te quiero verde)

associazioni, rodari, settimana enigmistica

2007-11-24T16:19:00.000+01:00

Donne! E’ arrivato l’arrotino!
Arrota coltelli, forbici, forbicine, forbici da seta, coltelli da prosciutto!
Donne! E’ arrivato l’arrotino e l’ombrellaio!
Aggiustiamo gli ombrelli! L’ombrellaio donne!
Ripariamo le cucine a gas! Abbiamo pezzi da ricambio per la vostra cucina a gas!
Se avete perdite di gasse, noi le aggiustiamo! Se la vostra cucina fa fumo, noi togliamo il fumo della vostra cucina a gasse!
Lavoro subito e immediato! E’ arrivato l’arrotino!

Notte! E’ scoppiato l’accendino!
Colora stornelli, barbe, merendine, frappe di gaeta, pastelli da farabutto!
Nonne! Ho pranzato da Santino, Aldo e Caio!
Sospirammo tranelli! Il tabaccaio dorme!
Arrostimmo le galline al das! Pensammo sogni da marinaio per le morte galline al das!
Se amate i polipi di Grasse, ditelo a Giustiniano! Se la casta velina si tuffa, poi le diamo il grumo delle galline al das!
Sonoro e bulgaro il commiato! Fossi nato in un giardino!

2007-11-11T15:50:00.000+01:00

ma quale? QUALE???

boh, quello che costava di meno.

(quello li, proprio)

2007-10-20T13:32:00.000+01:00

her hands poised in the air around an imagined body, her body spun round and round upheld by the empty figure, shoes took the lead as they bent and unfolded and stretched along the floor, the music, the music. she liked to dance, alone, she liked to dance.
there were violins and cellos, how they filled the room! how they moved her feet that day, how everything was filled with oxigen and light, for that instant containing everything.

le mani circondavano l'aria intorno a quel corpo immaginato, il suo corpo ruotava e ruotava sostenuto dalla figura vuota, le scarpe guidavano, piegandosi e dispiegandosi e allungandosi lungo il pavimento, la musica, la musica. le piaceva ballare, da sola, le piaceva ballare. c'erano violini e violoncelli, come riempivano la stanza!, come muovevano i suoi piedi quel giorno, come tutto si riempiva di ossigeno e luce, in quell'istante pieno di tutto.

(from a) book of short stories

2007-10-05T15:27:00.000+01:00

Le ho scritto una lettera.
Mi e' sempre piaciuto scrivere lettere. le parole sono un corteggiamento violento. entrano dentro la carne di chi legge.
Le parole scritte fanno paura.
Ho sempre pensato che quando si scrive venga fuori il ritmo dell'anima; quando si parla si mente, quando si scrive no. Non e' possibile. E' come tirare fuori da se qualcosa di vitale e spaventoso, come un organo spiaccicato sulla carta.
Incartare un fegato e spedirlo, questo e' scrivere lettere.
(Simona Vinci)

I wrote her a letter.
I've always liked writing letters. Words are a violent courtship. They enter the flesh of those who read them.
Written words frighten.
I've always thought that writing releases the rhythms of the soul. When we speak we lie, when we write we don't, It isn't possible. It's like extracting from oneself something vital and terrifying, like an organ splattered on paper.
To wrap up a liver and send it, this is writing letters.
(Simona Vinci)

2007-10-03T11:30:00.000+01:00

burning bones

liquid lung

infection

silence

j'ai tout perdu.

the old kind of summer

2007-09-14T11:10:00.000+01:00

19/8

2,3,4

2007-09-14T10:59:00.000+01:00

peperoncino tegole e mutande. sant'agata di puglia.

ariano folk festival

2007-09-14T10:49:00.000+01:00

when one discovers that the accordeonist in one's favourite gypsy ensemble is also a student at one's english school one can be pretty excited.

nutella

2007-08-25T14:07:00.001+01:00

nanni moretti in what is probably the best scene in italian cinema. (from the film 'bianca')

one love, rototom reggae festival

2007-08-13T12:29:00.001+01:00

this space is currently serving as flickr i think. images, images, less babble.
one love indeed. this took place in the vicinity of udine, in the north of italy.

and yes, my boots were too heavy for reggae, for the first time.

la sicilia e' dei siculi part I

2007-07-29T17:08:00.000+01:00

i finally managed to develop the copious quantities of film from sicily. here it is, the south.
finalmente sono riuscita a sviluppare i numerosi rullini della sicilia. eccolo, il sud.

nella prima foto, il casco di manfredi in motorino a palermo, poi le barche di lipari, la sabbia nera di vulcano, la schiena nera di federico pidala'.
in the first photo, manfredi's helmet on a scooter in palermo, then the boats of lipari, the black sand of vulcano, the black back of federico pidala'.

e poi ancora i bimbi di lipari che pescano gli euri dei turisti, i mari dove si suppone sia passato ulisse nei canti odisseici, e i turisti pieni di fango sulfureo puzzante di uovo marcio. anche noi provammo il fango, quasi morendo.
and then there are the children of lipari fishing tourist's euros, the seas where allegedly ulysses travelled in the homeric tales, and the rotten egg smelling sulphur mud slathered tourists. we also tried the mud. we almost died.

la sicilia e' dei siculi part II

2007-07-29T17:00:00.000+01:00

nelle prime immagini, la vucciria di palermo, e poi foto dalla mostra dei ragazzi completamente pazzi del laboratorio saccardi.
in the first images, palermo's vucciria hood, and then images from the exhibition opening of the crazy crazy kids of laboratorio saccardi.

e poi c'e' il tuffo elegantissimo di federico, i nuovi amici di capo d'orlando, le trottole giapponesi, il teatro greco di taormina (dove si preparava per i negramaro).
and then there is federico's elegant sideflip, new friends from capo d'orlando, the japanese spin-tops, the greek theatre of taormina.

e poi, alla fine, capo d'orlando, il padrone di casa (questa e' la mia casa questo e' il mio paese), le ragazze belle alla mostra, i vecchi compagni palermitani dei tempi della francia e degli ostelli pazzi. questa e' la sicilia, un pezzo minuscolo, che mi ha fatto sentire a casa.

and then, finally, capo d'orlando (this is my home this is my country), the pretty girls at the opening, and old palermo comrades from the days spent in france and in hostels for madmen. this is the sicily, a small piece of it, that made me feel at home.

2007-07-28T18:48:00.000+01:00

mi sono cotta una salsiccia grigliata col rosmarino e poi dopo una bottiglia di birra tedesca o ceca del todis mi sono fumata una bella sigaretta e adesso me ne vado a trastevere in bici che c'e' ancora la luce bella dell'estate e quando l'estate finira' cambiera' tutto fuori e dentro e la birra avra' un altro sapore piu' frizzante comunque si sentono voci che cantano fuori perche' e' estate e la gente d'estate canta d'inverno di meno e poi qui fuori dalla mia finestra c'e' un paese minuscolo fatto di cartone che si chiama garbatella e puo' esse pure che prima d'anna' a trastevere mi ci faccio un giro in bici cosi' saluto quello del bar che se chiama nanni ch'e' tanto bello nei suoi ottant'anni e comunque la salsiccia era veramente buona con la birra tedesca.

une raison c'est la musique

2007-07-27T15:35:00.001+01:00

2007-07-27T15:05:00.000+01:00

On peut pas vivre sans famille. Il y a une mot presente dans tous les films de gatlif, la musique tzigane c’est l’incarnation de ce mot. C’est peut-être pour ca que j’y suis dedans et qu’elle me saisit le coeur et me bouleverse les conduits lacrymaux. A chaque fois. Peut-on se sentir tellement chez soi dans une maison prive de murs, de plafond et de plancher?

Déraciné.

On a vu les Kočani Orkestar dans un parc, et c’etait toute une vie dans une note dans le marriage d’une trompette et un trombone dans les joues qui se gonflait et les ventres gros des musiciens souriants avec les yeux tristes.

…

one cannot live without family. There is a word present in all of Gatlif’s films. Gypsy music is an incarnation of this word. It’s maybe for this that I feel embedded in its core as it grasps my heart and overwhelms my tearducts. Each time. Is it possible to feel so at home in a house without walls or roof or floor?

Déraciné.

We saw Kočani Orkestar in a park, and there was an entire life inside a single note held in the wedding of trombone and trumpet in the curve of the air filled cheeks and the prominence of balcanic bellies of smiling sad eyed musicians.

fast window

2007-07-17T00:31:00.000+01:00

parte 1: 0
parte 2: il treno impone la nostalgia. Un bimbo urla ‘si! Ho vinto!’, fortissimo, violento, dal sedile vicino alla porta. Piedi attorcigliati l’uno dentro l’altro e una risata unica. E se passassimo tutta la vita a ridere? Con brevi intervalli di pianto esasperato?
parte 3: le fou (il pazzo).
parte 4: la muerte de Francisco Javier. [ti ho lasciato in un campo di fiori gialli ti ho lasciato nella terra rossa dove crescono gli ulivi non eri ancora]
parte 5: caramella di pasta di cacca. Piantatela, annaffiatela, vi rendera’ (in)felici.
parte 6: come diceva mio nonno, ting la pipa e nun poz fuma’ (ho la pipa e non posso fumare). Le case vecchie si ristrutturano o si buttano giu’.
parte 7: gli portarono un cuore di bue ma il suo corpo lo rifiuto’. Lei giuro’ che da quel giorno lo avrebbe seguito fino in fondo al’ade, per comprare un cuore nuovo con tre monete d’oro dall’orco delle cascate dell’ade che non hanno mai acqua.
parte 8: nelle scale sento l’odore di quando eravamo minuscoli e lo zio ci mandava a contare i sassolini in cortile, compito d’immensa importanza, sporchi di nutella.
parte 9: post-war.
parte 10: le sue ultime parole in quell’infinito quaderno a righe, la vita e’ bella perche’ e’ vita.

( english version in comments)

ninna nanna

2007-06-27T00:25:00.001+01:00

2007-06-26T23:49:00.000+01:00

e’ il tempo della pelle bruciacchiata e dell’odore appiccicaticcio e agrodolce sulla metro, delle facce che sembrano colare dalla struttura cranica. ci sono ragazze che si truccano al mare, credo per rallentare questo fenomeno che per alcuni e’ inevitabile.

la citta’ pullula di cosce e canottiere e paillettes luccicose e vecchi con pelle che sembra cuoio e americani paciocchi e poi tante luci con dentro altre luci con dentro altre luci. L’odore di pane abbrustolito la sera e di cocomero il pomeriggio.

…

c’e’ una pesantezza che a volte prende la rincorsa e colpisce, prima i piedi, poi piano piano sale su per il femore, l’anca, lo stomaco, il cuore, i polmoni, le dita, il collo e la trachea dentro, l’occhio, i capelli. e infine il cervello, soffice, si arrende anche lui.

camminiamo dappertutto, io e te.

c’e’ il fantasma di un bimbo che mi gira intorno stasera e mi dice le seguenti cose:
1. non dovresti scrivere i cazzi tuoi su un blog. (penso che ha ragione)
2. la fine dell’amore e’ RE. (sospiro di sollievo)
3. una volta ho sognato un piccione che parlava francese e quindi non ci ho comunque capito una mazza di quello che ha detto. (peccato)

c’e’ un bimbo che mi gira intorno stasera e ha gli occhi grandi e lucidi e stanchi e i capelli fitti che nascondono un mondo di parole mai dette. e’ la cosa piu’ bella che abbia mai visto.

…

you leave pencil traces around chairs and egg shells and bones. They crawl up my fingers and settle there, to remind me. I find myself completely unable to create.

Forgetfulness

2007-05-30T12:09:00.001+01:00

beautiful animation. i stumbled across this guy a few weeks ago. the monotony of the voice is kindofdisturbing, robotic. does it need to be? see his other animated poems here.

2007-05-23T14:01:00.000+01:00

sparklehorse are playing tonight!

AND THEN

THE DIRTY THREE will be playing the next day. yes, my friends, there will be fiddles and raggedy bushmen to be seen right here.

i'm too friggin excited.

2007-05-18T10:53:00.001+01:00

past a tiny gallery in via san calisto the other night, mika yamaguchi's images make one think of a solar eclipse, the city before it was a city, coconut milk, places that exist only in memory.

not so new novelties

2007-05-16T14:21:00.000+01:00

i''ve made another blog, because i don't know how to make websites, and because people keep asing to see paintings but don't want to read the ramblings.
so i've collected all the images already present in this blog and put them on another blog. you can tell by the header that i am not proficient in photoshop, but whatever. it's a start.

anyway the new site is here, and in the links. it will be updated, i promise.

moijeveux faire ça

2007-05-10T08:39:00.001+01:00

2007-05-02T14:44:00.000+01:00

The sky makes creases and it heaves and plops down its wetness in random outbursts of nostalgia. A realisation slowly creeps in that there has not been much thinking going on, and that is the moment where one suddenly wakes up feeling like a pregnant sky, heaving and puffing and full.

I head to work with golden flakes of paint on my elbow, forgetting to scrub it, thinking this is happening too often, and that i must somehow manage to make order out of it all, and the unlikeliness of that happening.

The process of producing paintings in chain, like a one woman factory, (initially for the pleasure of watching the colours extract new microcosms from my head, but now mainly to pay the rent) is beginning to grow tight, to make the limbs tired and the heart weary.

I had written this some time ago:

Cocoon part I
She makes a curve at the top of the kitchen table, her round head, her round shoulders, her round presence. skin stretches on her cheekbones like soft leather, her eyes kind of twinkle under the folds when I make her laugh. She picks up a red texta and draws a tomato on the blank page. She had never drawn before, when he was still alive. Now she does, and she begins every one like this: her name, maiden name first, first name second, on the bottom left corner. And then lines, tables and chairs, houses and puppets, stick figures dancing and copious quantities of small unspecified fruits and tomatoes from her husband’s withering vegie patch. Hair puffed like a cloud.

(his presence is felt in the empty suitcases in the dusty attic, leftovers from migratory journeys to germany. Broken dolls, wood chips and old bed frames, drawers and drawers full of their memories, a leather case, with inside a 50 year old swiss knife)

and then, upon visiting her again, decided to make a flickr site for all the pictures she had produced. Here are the works of my grandmother, her dotted abstractions.

I will sit and watch her draw, this peaceful potato of a woman, and envy the simplicity of that process. I will kiss her roundness and print her soft crackling laugh in my memory card.

2007-04-20T16:00:00.000+01:00

1. and then the internet was connected, and the phone, and subsequently a warm stream of information began to enter the run down shack of a house.

2. the sun is growing bigger, making brows translucid and armpits emotional.

3. amongst the useless information distributed en masse through the metro paper, a rectangle on the second page told the true tale of a japanese parrot who, upon losing himself one day, found his way home by telling a passerby his owner's address.

4. piers faccini.

The Best Audience

2007-03-18T14:36:00.001+01:00

2007-03-18T14:15:00.000+01:00

they stayed up a few nights, these kids, making this. one clicking away, the other sticking arrows in the back of a pianist. this place where people seem to never sleep, where plasticine moulds itself in dusty corners, where the odd ones hybernate from the normality of the outside, is becoming a second home, and i must admit it's kindofnice.

on the other hand, the city is gestating pollen and pink flowers.

requiem

2007-03-09T18:44:00.001+01:00

ten things, for now.

2007-02-13T21:24:00.000+01:00

1.it’s a sunny one, this thirteenth of february. the ground is scattered with coloured flakes from chubby children hands, they skip, post school, sporting the first costumes of carnevale.

2.this room is covered in blue squared wallpaper and the feeble light of a large orange and green lamp. there is an old wooden merry-go-round toy sitting on the wardrobe, red. it makes a crooked lullaby when it spins slowly on its axis.

3.we travel to Siena, where we discover, from a man who must be at least 1500 years old, the various intricacies of medieval tuscan families and the origin of the oldest bank in italy, monte dei paschi di siena (monte dei pascoli). The story is explained in a lengthy fashion, but worth inquiring about only for the joy of observing this ancient man, so keen to inform us on the ever so minute detail of the point in question, dates and all. In an ever so tuscan manner he tells his tales, occasionally turning to his wife, who sits by his side, white like a chinadoll, feet a few inches from the ground, smiling and patient, to touch her cold face, to see if she is ok. In Siena there is a wonky oval shaped square where horses run, once a year is all, but where today people are basking in the sun and children are throwing the aforementioned paper flakes dressed in clown and princess and cowboy suits. There are many banks and well dressed peeps. There is a church which is like an intricate nativity set, blown up to great heights, covered by arching vaults made of stars and ultramarine blue, pillars like alice in wonderland’s stockings, black and white. In Siena the streets are red, the houses are red, my friend’s eyes are red also, teary-tired.

4.i find my feet again in that trastevere i like to call home, in the dust of the cobblestone, in the embraces of the broken lives of the street, in that eternal sameness of rome.

5.Sunday morning calls for portaportese wonderings. Now, it is common knowledge that this infamous roman market is best tackled between the hours of seven and nine am. but it is common knowledge also that waking up earlier than eleven on said morning is a task of colossal proportions. hence, i resign to the letting myself be carried through the stalls by the slow but steady force of the mingling masses. dangling candelabras and vintage toy cars, gypsies selling pieces of plastic and humid rags on the sidewalk to god knows who. gypsy boys laughing hysterically, gypsy women with tattooed hands bearing hidden bundles of baby, chewing sunflower seeds. accordeon man, grubby black fingers, wrinkled.

6.anti vatican rally overwhelms the streets behind campo de’fiori where i am calmly sorting through second hand shops one day, disillusioned left wing middle aged man on a megaphone, close all the churches, he says. behind him a banner against fascism. they hoard past, a colourful mass of stereotypes and dancing dreadlocks, and the message is lost, rendered incoherent and unspecific by the mediatic plasticity of the image that is ‘the rally’. oh i don’t want to sound like baudrillard, but. even live, this phenomenon cant help but remain attached to its proper aesthetic. there is nothing worse than misconstrued philosophy.

7.my hair is matted beyond salvation. option one: fix the half-arsed dreads that have accumulated whilst sleeping in this beehive of a head I find myself with. option two: chop em off, leaving the possibility of holes exposing skull. option three: shave the whole thing off, sport a beanie until march.

8.the missing of certain faces is an arduous task, but kind of nice also.

9.jimi quinton has a blog. he’s an interesting one, our jimi, with interesting stories to tell.

10.vivement la fraîcheur des hautes eaux
que les algues se remettent à danser
et moi je veux bien nager
dans ces constructions enthousiastes et complexes
ces dentelles molles et caoutchoutesques
si les lourds savaient comme ici
tout est léger

(if the heavy ones knew
how here everything is light)

ah, Françoiz. you do it for me today.

2007-01-12T18:25:00.000+01:00

an empty playground.
three o'clock sun bangs its weary head on a pine tree, maritime pine. coriandoli per terra. i am barely here and already my heart is being drummed and pulled and twisted in ways impossible for cardiac muscle. ther are messages of hate on the ochre walls of a school. this jacket compacts me into a tube like thing, closed against the cold surface of benches and air and faces.

i paint round things in my head, mix colours there sometimes, when my hands are brittle. an eruption of thickness and it smells of dust and olive oil. my feet remember the crunching of shrubs and old walls and all those surfaces of the mediterranean. it smells of salt there, and crickets like choirboys, except softer, more like glass bells in my hair. it smells of ribs roasting on an open flame, and beer spilt on dresses and the clapping of hands. it smells of the south of the world. of things i cannot taste now.

there are places where love is not permitted.

(light)ness and weight exhibition: works

2006-12-10T06:08:00.000+01:00

twentyninth of may, twothousandandsix (oil on canvas)

floating cities, part I and II (charcoal, ink, watercolour, tea, paper on board)

l'orto di marcello (marcello's vegie patch), (oil and other media on canvas)

parentesi, terra, cielo

2006-12-10T05:19:00.000+01:00

parentesi (oil, acrylics, ink, tea, paper on canvas)

terra (oil, paper on canvas)

cielo (oil on canvas)

the weight of paper (tea, acrylics, pencil and other media on canvas)

the shortcomings of philosophy (oil on canvas)

detail (sopa de letrinhas!)

little story of a kitchen, part III (oil on canvas)

backyard studio I

backyard studio II

2006-12-10T05:00:00.000+01:00

so there you go. pictures of pictures. This is an example of Miss Emma's painstaikingly amazing work:

Fence II

Hopefully she will post her works on her page soon, so make sure to pay it a little visit.

A few words on the exhibition: simple, cocooned white space. light streaming and feet crunching floorboards. putty dust and empty bottles, decaying flowers. we did not expect so much. we were tired, we were angsty, we were protected somehow from the pretentious comments of critics. we were ultimately maybe a little proud towards the end.

finally, here is Giovanni's article: (ha!)

and now i will take a break.

opening night, 1st december

2006-12-08T03:53:00.000+01:00

un po' di foto per quelli che, per un motivo o per l'altro, non sono potuti venire.

to those present on the night, thank you for coming.

i know there are photologs for these kind of things, but bla.

for more images of this marvellous event, see monsieur jaques' much better photos.

setup

2006-12-08T03:37:00.000+01:00

2006-12-05T14:39:00.000+01:00

last friday we opened (officially) the show! and how! there are pictures of merryment and myrth and plenty of them, pertaining to this festive occasion, which will be posted soon. but for now a little rest for these red shoes which have been treading many a mile all day long.

mr shaun tan

2006-11-30T03:50:00.000+01:00

i found shaun tan's monsters, wobbling along market street in freo last sunday.
oh, how i love this man's pencil line. i kneel before it humbly every time.
here is one.

i know there is one person out there who will appreciate these the most.
so here is another.

per te che sei silenzioso.

uno mas

2006-11-29T02:03:00.000+01:00

there was a cake, to begin with, propped on the desk with a crown of burning candles, a plate of pringles mixed with timtams, a cup of orange juice, a strange looking rose with a bulbous chocolate head, and about fifteen giggly students, singing. there were photos taken by the latter, mainly of their teacher, sitting at the desk of the cake, with a curiously designed whiteboard behind (flowers and hearts and love radiating) and an expression a five year old at the circus would be envious of.

there were at least two emails sent by different people bearing photos of david hasselhoff in set ups i didn't think were humanly possible (in terms of the astoundingly large quantity of un-selfreferential kitsch embedded in each image. i mean if kitsch were energy these photos alone could have powered a large city). but the point is there are at least two people out there who thought it evidently appropriate to be sending me 'birthday' images of the hoff. who went through the effort of selecting the prime specimens of the hoff's photomodelling career. pure gold.

there was copious amounts of cooking to be done, crepes rolled and veal strips beaten and pumpkin chopped and pinenuts toasted and mushrooms peeled and wine to be just, tasted, to see, and then, and then there are four happy faces at the door singing, out of tune, a tune more like a christmas carol, bearing gifts and good times.

later in the evening mike is strumming bluesy which merges into a song about the hoff (because, recurring theme) and back again, and miss emma's head is dropping somewhere within the crevice of her neck, sleep oriented, and i manage to figure out skype, for the first time, with valentina, who is like a bubble made of pixels, who occasionally swills from an unspecified bottle, who is showing me pictures of meatballs she is cooking (because, is true, even after not having spoken for several weeks or even months, italians in fact tend to propel to talking about food upon meeting again)

as of yesterday i am twentyfive. i have little to no idea where i am going. i have the fastiduous remnants of year-turning nagging, slight auto-guilt trips about not being of more use to the world and do on and so forth, and i have about a million things that must be organised, altered, redirected, reconstructed, accepted and thrown out. but i am quite happy to be alive.

ps: i wanted to welcome mike officially to the links, because he is new, and i had forgotten to do so. and because he has recently made a collage that possibly confirms that he is in fact a genius. so yay to mike.
pps: i am aware of the repetitiveness of this blog, particularly when it concerns the words 'kitsch' and 'hasselfoff'. this is not intentional and will hopefully be reduced in better times to come.

2006-11-24T05:23:00.000+01:00

mi sono svegliata con questa frase nella testa, probablimente vagabondava nei cunicoli della memoria, o tra gli scarti di qualche sogno, e da sola, questa frase, ha deciso proprio oggi di riproporsi a livello conscio. a dire il vero non sapevo neanche di averla dentro. la frase era: porque yo ya no soy yo, ni mi casa es ya mi casa, dejadme subir, hasta las altas barandas. c'e' voluto un po' di tempo per rendermi conto che il pezzo appena rigurgitato apparteneva a Garcia Lorca, e quindi a un periodo della mia vita forse rimosso o comunque parecchio lontano. questa e' forse una delle sue poesie piu' conosciute. Qui c'e' la versione originale. quella in italiano non l'ho trovata e comunque meriterebbe impararsi lo spagnolo solo per leggersi Lorca.

here is the english version, which i don't recommend simply because of the fact that translations, particularly of poems, and above all of this poem, are like diluted wine. but if one must.

verde que te quiero verde! forse la frase piu' abusata della poesia castigliana.

it would be great to be completely saturated in a thick stratum of green, just green, abstract and unspecified. i would imagine the physical manifestation of green to be something akin to pollen or talcum powder, but less invasive, with the fluidity of olive oil. and of warm temperature, weightless. permeating pores and hydrating the walls of veins, it would have the atomic properties of helium, it would determine the exact space between the hairs on an arm, settle itself, a transparent film on the curves of bodies of skin and water.

it would exist in the process of breathing.

green breathing, verde respiro.

2006-11-20T13:28:00.000+01:00

i don't want to be one of those fatalistic proponents of the ails of 'postmodern' society. they have their allure, i must say, particularly when the proposed theory is at its most extreme. for example, Baudrillard's idea that everything has become aestheticized. the penetration of the image into all spheres of existence. the saturation of language, etcetera etcetera. i think the allure comes from the fact that people like to think they're living as close to the edge of an apocalyptic transformation of the world as possible.
but then i was flicking through time magazine's best inventions of the year and i came to the following conclusions:

a) if the same amount of energy and cash that was spent in the fabrication of (for the most part) futile gadgets was spent on the fabrication of inventions directed at the betterment of living conditions for the vast majority of the world's population... you know the rest.

b) the majority of these seemingly futile gadgets can be seen as doing nothing but reinforcing the aforementioned aestheticization of modern society, whereby we will witness the directly proportional rise of boredom and alienation in an individual who is progressively losing the distinction between reality and construct, particularly when it comes to relationships: thanks to the explosion of new technologies of communication, these can be seen as being built on nothing but a ficticious sense of interconnectedness 'with the world' , but really hiding a profound sense of isolation, inner fragmentation, and loss of relationship with the natural sphere. of course this is only the apocalyptic side of the coin. no one ever buys it. the other side of the coin is:

c) we will, god permitting, soon be able to rest our tired little bodies on levitating matresses, appreciate the helpfulness of the sauvignon bot (this squeaky voiced robot will analyse the components of your bottle o' red and suggest a complementary cheese), float through life on a motorised inflatable pool lounger with incorporated joystick (!) and more. if that's not exciting news, i don't know what is.

d) cynicism aside, the process of inventing is great, the generation of ideas is great. and the hug-shirt is great. the prototype probably makes you feel like you're in a straightjacket and will most likely induce breast cancer later in life (along with the reinforcement of the idea that no, in the future you will no longer need any real human contact to feel a sense of warm fuzziness and love, we will be self sufficient automatons with indestructible vibrating hugshirts, floating matresses and possibly arnie accents (why not)),
but. i want one for my birthday. i mean look how happy she looks.

2006-11-09T16:08:00.000+01:00

this little guy is apparently a round headed (?) katydids, or diddy for friends. he is also apparently not the fruit of nuclear induced genetic alterations or photoshop. i found him (or her) here. s/he comes from michigan and is quite the chunkster.

[i hope, miss emma, that you will not here comment on the little incident the other night, namely my hysterical hyperventilation upon discovering that a seedy cockroach-infant had been fondling my lower back for quite some time. had it been diddy, perhaps the initial horror or irrational phobia over the feeling of tiny insect legs on skin would have been replaced by a sense of wonder and astonishment. i'd like to think so anyway.]

flaky sunday

2006-10-30T06:05:00.000+01:00

disclaimer: the majority of the events presented are true but not textually accurate. the statement about milkless fridge is purely fictional, the author happens to think they are a really great band. tarek also does not actually endorse the watching of billy crystal movies. for all the kids who didn't make it to our home picnic yesterday, you missed out.

2006-10-24T07:32:00.000+01:00

on m’a dit que quand les larmes finissent c’est mieux de rester en silence, en attendant que la réserve se remplit encore une fois par le temps. parce qu’on a tous besoin d’eau, comme les plantes. mais moi je voudrais être un cactus ajourd’hui.

someone once told me that when you run out of tears it’s better to stay silent, waiting for the reserve to be filled again by time. because we all need water, like plants. but today i’d like to be a cactus.

{specks of dust, crumpled origami, discarded shoes and reverse cycle vacuums, building babelic towers to touch misplaced gods, je vous aime mademoiselle}

if an egg breaks you cannot put it back together again. but you can make an omelette. or a carbonara. or mix paints with it.

2006-10-21T10:40:00.000+01:00

[ image by namdo]
un piccolo spazio promozionale per indica sound, ovvero cañas e jahvi, che hanno fatto tanta strada e offerto tanto buon reggae principalmente alla popolazione andalusa. evviva i leoni, il sole e il roots.

a small promotional break for the kids of indica sound, who've come a long way and have provided copious quantities of good times and good reggae beats primarily to the people of andalucia. yay to lions, sunshine and roots reggae.

sketchbook

2006-10-10T09:32:00.000+01:00

sto un po' a corto di idee per questa mostra che in teoria dovrebbe essere gia' tutta pensata, organizzata, coerente. insomma l'opposto del mio contenuto celebrale in questo momento.

ricciolona! ti ho imbevuta di lipton.

non mi verranno mai ste cazzo di mani.

2006-10-05T12:43:00.000+01:00

here is a song, for those who don't sleep much, and for those who've been a little sad of late.

2006-09-30T12:46:00.000+01:00

ok, so images are up and runnin, runnin like an ant on speed, like a fat businessman on a treadmill on his lunchbreak, like a predator after its prey. and up! up! up! like the sky, like the space between fingers and unused words, like the screams of eagles fans round perth today.

also on the topic of the eagles' victory against the sydney swans, about which i care little except for the joy one gets in observing those who do care, and how! so anyway the best line that came out of the general yobbo cacophony reverberating around the tv today as the final minutes of the game drippled and fizzled was: "oy, that umpire's as soft as a fucken mocassin!"

and then there's been the sun and the shine and the first sketches of what is going to be a grand and productive season of beachbumming with all the kitsch that that entails, the coconut oil, the crosswords, and yes, even the occasional shakira on the way to the beach, because the summer, the summer! how it clears the mind and the blood of all unclarity! how it makes one even approve of the occasional tacky!

and my car, old rusty old pal, the ugliest object ever produced by man, got gleefully yellow-stickered by a couple o' cops late late night somewhere in the nedlands vicinity (which some like to simply refer to as 'the hood'): "you're a motorist's worst nightmare!" said one cop upon inspection of the greasy contents of the bonnet. and then the other, after repremanding me for my thoughtless flicking of a cigarette butt on the road, informed me that had i been in the state of colorado, i would've got a hefty fine for that. It's amazing how helpful the australian police force can be. now i know never to flick a butt in colorado. and i'm car-less.

2006-09-26T07:02:00.000+01:00

i am no longer able to post pictures. i am truly in mourning for this unexpected handicap (not mine, blogger's... ok, maybe mine.) and will attempt to remedy the situation.
parceque, bien sur, sans images j'ai plus rien a dire. jsuis devenue la fille aux images.
i am, needless to say, becoming quite skeptical of words, especially my own. and until i figure this out kids, until the images come back to do some justice to this otherwise brittle and ambiguous medium, i may be a little silent. or continue to not say much at all, like the fact that

it's a wonderful day today, and that a caterpillar is gnawing away at a chilli plant outside, creating a hole into the thick red skin of it and slowly engulfing the killer seeds. i have been anticipating some sort of quiet microscopic explosion, but so far there has been none.

finally,
here is a poem, because yes.

(and i imagine
never mind Joe agreeably cheerfully remarked when
surrounded by fat stupid animals
the Jewess shrieked
the messiah tumbled successfully into the world
the animals continued eating. And i imagine she, and
heard them slobber and
in the darkness)
stood sharp angels with faces like Jim Europe
ee cummings

2006-09-17T02:50:00.000+01:00

This week, in the Theatre of the Absurd:

a bunch of people throw molotov bottles at a couple o’churches in nablus and burn effigies of an old german man in pakistan in order to defend the view that the very roots of their beliefs do not actually allow space for violence (what better way to make the point), and that this should not be misunderstood in any way.

paris hilton now also sings. ( i assume i'm quite late in finding this out, but better a late absurd discovery than never).

three things

2006-09-14T15:35:00.000+01:00

this one i will post, because i mean, come on, the genius. here are more of his pictures.

y este lo pongo aqui porque me acuerda del konso, y sus dibujitos malos. aqui hay mas [here is parskid's (a little commercial but nonetheless merit-worthy, for the illustrative-folk at least) space of pictures (can i fit in another bracket here? ) ].

and then, and then, this may interest people such as avi, people with cameras in their hands, people not afraid of people and so on, but mainly i link it, also in the sidebar, because it must be linked, and because this fella goes by the name of boogie, that to some has a special meaning, and because, the gypsy photos, the old man and the fiddle! i could not cut n paste so i propose that you, reader of this almost futile blog, have a look at boogie's pictures.
all this for now, ya esta.

ode to the moon

2006-09-05T15:52:00.001+01:00

ode number 1:
warm and strewn
with the same indi tunes
you've been a cocoon
during rainy afternoons.

and then, after a crappy happy poem for a crappy happy few weeks, here's the real thing.

and then, and then!

ode number 2:

the real ode to the moon (which would require an ode all to itself) i have pasted here. of particular suggestiveness are the last lines: "single vegetable, pure cheese, celestial cow, spilling udder, spring of milk, useful as the ear (of wheat), overflowing, reigning and necessary." it's my translation, so maybe a little dodgy, but... come on! celestial cow! vaca celeste! pure cheese! queso puro! the genius! oh it makes me weep.

disclaimer: there is little to no relation between the first and the second ode, not even the object the ode is oding (!) or maybe a little. it would be kinda funny if neruda's words were actually directed to the moon cafe. useful as the ear! reigning and necessary! so true.

2006-08-28T01:49:00.000+01:00

Thank god for the fishies. wasn't it in tim burton's big fish, that grand tale of a bunch of circusfolk and a crooked house and a dying man, wasn't it there where the story is told that, that... a goldfish grows corresponding to the size of the space where it is swimmin'? so that really a goldfish who grows in big spaces grows big? and what a great story! but isn't it a bit of a cliche' though, that small spaces limit growth, in every sense, and viceversa? but what do we mean by growth?

i once met a boy who had grown over two metres tall, he had, inside his mama's 2 bedroom apartment, squashed flat between the seventh and the ninth floor of a building squeezed between two others in a suburb barely made to fit within the complex tetris network of the city. but how he grew, this boy. his mental age never surpassed that of a child, however, whereas his emotive age had reached disproportionate heights by the time he turned twentyfive. so he would show me scribbles he had made with broken bits of crayon and such things, of dwarfs with carrot heads and flowers in imagined fields, and fish with pulsating aortas instead of fins, giggling with such a blank face you'd think he actually had no idea of the contents of his drawings. he was a happy one, this boy. his heart had in fact grown directly proportionate to his limbs, so that one day it actually surpassed the given space within the thoracic cavity, got stuck between two ribs, and stopped beating.

and then of course there is the story of the boatman who, having decided to continue his existence by feeding on the algae from the belly of his boat, had actually shrunk to the proportions of a small prawn. the boatman had, however, been able to figure out the origins of the universe and the mechanisms inherent in the theory some would refer to as quantum, all in rudimentary terms, of course, but more or less the same concepts. all alone, in the middle of the sea. he eventually threw himself off the stern and into the gaping mouth of a patagonian toothfish. the common end of all genius-like creatures, some would say.

the point of this story is that fishies are good, regardless of size. especially crumbed and oven baked.

2006-08-15T09:20:00.000+01:00

oh weather, why do you mock us so? upturning psyches and umbrellas?

rock and roll and hooka pipes

2006-08-12T07:32:00.000+01:00

the evening began with a bottle o' beer and some turkishbread, ripped in chunks from under tk's arm, dipped in runny hommus as we walked home from a sailor infested northbridge, shiny friday night people and puff daddy styled boys just cuttin loose on their free dress.

[there is an aircraft carrier parked in the port o' freo, gigantic in size, boasting flags and steel and enough power supply to run a small town, like freo, for example. but the lights are off and the sailor kids are out for good times].

after a little discussion about the middle east crisis (little did i know this was only a foreshadowing, a taste of what was to come) in the tiny kitchen, mainly between, of course, tk and G, we finally make our way to this opening party, rtr fundraiser at pica, where there are girls in stripes and dots and red shoes and faux leather belts and pretty faces, and boys with paint on jeans and fabrizio moretti facial hair and sometimes, both boys and girls, with quiffs. and there is good music and good vibes all round and rock n' roll antics to finish, an then we're out in the night air, arms linked, guided by the frequent explosions of D's contagious laughter down to the moon cafe, where there are coffees and chips, dipped in coffee, and milkshakes alternated with beers. where there is jenny who is flirtin with the cute waiter on our behalf, and there is bent over laughing and the boys shakin their heads.

and then, late into the night we find ourselves smoking an unspecified liquorice like fruit molass in a sheesha pipe, in the back of that egyptian place down the road, and there is more coffee, made with cloves this time and spices and sugar. a sickly sweet smell invades mouth and nose and there is a droning feeling, and the conversation quickly propels to politics once again, and even the bulgarian waitress feels compelled to join in [and maybe it is her accent, but mainly what she is saying, but i get flashbacks of that day, that 12th september 2001, when a few of us were sittin around the reid cafe discussing what had happened, over there in new york, and some of the serbian kids who had just joined us would smile and joke and give out high fives to each other] and suddenly...
my head is on the table and heavy and i listen to the circles of words and it seems they are coming from the hookah pipe, swirling and puffing above my head.
and i realise things these days, about politics and about justice, and think tomorrow i will write, tomorrow... but maybe some things are better left up in the air, swirling in circles.

2006-08-07T02:29:00.000+01:00

questo e' il tempo, questo tempo. e' fatto di luci calde e divani rossi, della piccola cucina di lidia e tarek, di serate passate a ballare o a mangiare o a bere vino, o caffe', a parlare fino al mattino nella macchina fredda, e' fatto degli sguardi sinceri di certa gente, dell'odore di vecchi libri e dell'erba dopo la pioggia.

e poi c'e' l'altro tempo-spazio, quello fatto di manifestazioni pacifiche ma piene di rabbia, quello coi bambini sul palco che innalzano cartelli scritti in arabo, non ucidete i piccoli, dicono. c'e' quel tempo, e questo, e in verita' sono tutt'uno, una continuita' di parole e immagini, di situazioni che bisogna chiarire.

[there is this time, made of coffee kitchen lights and red couches, wine and dancing and talking and talking and talking, and there is another time and space where children are holding up banners in the square, and there is anger in people's hearts and the urgency of clarification. and they are really one and the same, this time and that time, an extended continuity of words and images, of situations that need to be opened and examined and spoken.]

2006-08-02T14:33:00.000+01:00

there is an intense sadness to these days that is almost choking, thick and coarse in substance. i see it on the news, i see it in people around me, i see it in my slow dragging steps early in the morning and late at night, pulling of feet upwards and forwards. sadness contains in itself, by nature, the promise of eternity, which is why even the smallest suffering can crush a person who is already sad (because sadness can exist independently of suffering, although they may coincide). not many philosophers have written directly and explicitly about the nature of sadness, at least not any i've come across. that is, not many have spoken about it in terms that were not tied to psychology or psychoanalysis in any way. except maybe julia kristeva, who spoke beautifully about the phenomenon of melancholy as deeply connected with the process of mourning. that is, mourning directed to an unattainable sense of self or a lost identity. but, although she had detached from freud at that point, one still gets the feeling he lingers around, like he lingers around everytime one attempts to speak of complex psychological dispositions. see, i'm even using the same damn terminology. fuck you freud, chaining modern society to the shackles of explanations like 'neurosis'. when it comes down to analisys, everything is a damn neurosis. but i refuse to believe sadness is a neurosis, or purely physiological for that matter. it definately puts a veil in front of one's eyes though.

mio nonno sta morendo, ed e' pieno di gioia per la sua vita. there are some who die giving thanks for their lives, and some who live carrying death. philosophy could never explain that, but maybe a poet could say it much better than i.

2006-07-31T12:03:00.000+01:00

oh mah gawd. check out this germanic hotcake! it really can't get more metal than this. and halinka! hot! so hot! i'm speechless. not bad at all for a first videoclip.

theatrics

2006-07-30T03:39:00.000+01:00

so, friday night, in the moore's building in freo, vashti coordinated this precious little opening night for the mondi possibili design expo, from milan to little ol' perth, and it was ace. like stevo's bubbly foam and fibreglass table, and the floating clothes, like tibetan flags, and the copious amounts of wine and the progressively deteriorating wine serving antics and so on and so forth.

and then, at the end of it all, there was voyager's cd launch (great website buz), at the amplifier bar (where, according to dan, zinedine zidane was allegedly cleaning dunnies as part of his community service program). and oh, the theatrics! the hair! the emotion!

then came saturday, cooped up at home with brittle bones and emphisemic responses to the previous evening. and then there was sunday, the day of the sun because it actually has been, so far. one must take advantage of such short lived moments. to roll around in the grass and get one's hands a little bit grotty with paint and such. which reminds me, poppy, i hope you don't mind that i've added your site to the links because, despite your modesty, i really dug the photos.

little story of a kitchen, part II

2006-07-26T15:22:00.000+01:00

the window slowly acquires a certain thickness, a mixture of the darkening air outside and the vapour from the boiling pot of water. blue flames like a cupped hand, buzzing steadily. she takes a soft sheet of pastry and plops it in the water, patting its floating curve with the back of a wooden spoon. then another. her feet aching and rubbery, she becomes suddenly aware of her own pathos, the pathos of a 52 year old housewife. this makes her smile somehow, as though she finds comfort in the absurdity of labelling her own person.
(the small dialogue that took place that fateful day occurred around the hour of six, and in fact consisted only in a single impulsive exclamation directed at the gas-lighter. filled with grease and humidity, it had finally decided to stop working, so that the usual ritual of banging the battery head on the bench proved, despite extensive efforts, unsuccessful. ‘ma porca zozza!’, was the aforementioned cry, which perhaps requires no translation.)
years earlier, her husband had been rubbing the grease off a pair of work boots. he had looked at his wife, who was contemplating an old coffee stain near the sink. he had managed to muster together a last string of words, perhaps his most poetic: “you’re too fuckin heavy”. later that night he had walked out of the house with his last flask of home made wine. he had never returned.
she rearranges the faded postcards on the fridge door and folds her apron carefully. she puts her last dinner out on the tiny wooden table between the cupboard and the storage cabinet, on a white tablecloth, embroidered. (two ceramic bowls and two glazed cups). she listens, finally, to the imperceptible sounds of her kitchen; the creaking and weighing and humming of it. for the first time in what seems like years, she leaves this minuscule space (where she would listen to the flow of his veins, where she would –at times with a desperate resignation- look for noise in silence) knowing that it would also be the last.
there is a knock at the door. it’s time.

2006-07-21T12:44:00.000+01:00

for some reason, humans continue, in the most primitive and irrational fashion, to respond to violence with violence with violence with violence with violence with violence ad infinitum, that has no concrete origin, i think, except a deeply rooted and mistaken concept of justice.
the most current but not sole example of this ruthless idiocy, the israeli attacks on lebanon.
for those in perth wanting to voice their dissent in a less primitive (let's hope) manner, there will be, for the moment, three occasions:
1) Wednesday July 26, 12pm: outside the US Consulate on St George's Terrace (east of the mall)
2) Saturday July 29, 11am: protest outside Wesley Church on William Street.
3) Saturday August 19, 12pm: mass protest march through the city. (venue to be announced but possibly Forrest place or PICA).
thanks paisa` for the info.

2006-07-16T12:30:00.000+01:00

all of a sudden i seem to be surrounded by little ones, on an almost constant basis. there are so many little ones! everywhere! kids of friends and friends of kids of kids of friends etcetera. and sometimes, i say sometimes, it's lovely. and stories need to be told and music played and crayons dusted from boxes on shelves and bubbles popped.

2006-07-10T12:16:00.000+01:00

ah, prima che mi scordo,
romani de roma, guardatevi.

2006-07-10T11:15:00.000+01:00

i am not going to comment on the game, or say ha-ha to all those who have been criticizing the azzurri since this world cup began, i will not dwell on the tragic ending of zidane, or retell the celebratory antics of naked fans on fitzgerald street, perth.
all i wanna say though, my peeps, is it sure feels good. it sure feels good.
(last photo from giovanni)

2006-07-06T04:02:00.000+01:00

My lungs are freshly inebriated with the sweet smell of blue and green oil paint. The crisp crackle of turpentine on skin, the ruddiness of hands afterwards. And I wonder why people use acrylics. This picture is probably the last thing I will have painted (for a good while anyway) using this plasticous modern medium, so stiff, so brittle, so lenient to quick air drying. Makes me think of fat cheap brushes in kindergardengoers’ tiny hands, big tubes of bright colour, splattered on thin poster paper.

The necessity of colour, spread on white, thin here and thick there, to balance the necessity of not thinking. I wake as if from a long dream, and the air is round and new and the morning yellow.
Nights of non sleep, partly due to world cup induced psychosis, partly to the increasing schism between lightness and weight, as limbs and heart and veins adjust to new spaces, creaking into place like an old house. There are moments where one must live the heaviness, embrace it masochistically, let it weigh you down for a time. In order to put lightness into perspective again.

Kundera said that lightness is unbearable to being, not in the sense that we cannot stand it, but in the literal sense of the word ‘to bear’, that is: to carry, to sustain. lightness cannot be sustained, so that Being inevitably gravitates towards heaviness, in order to search for lightness again.

We are lava lamps.

2006-06-08T11:17:00.000+01:00

i have nothing more to say.

i think i might stop writing for some time, i feel like all major adventurings have kinda come to a standstill, and i need to process them in another medium. i was never good with words anyway.

vacation from blogging is what it will be.

the beginning of another winter

2006-06-04T08:09:00.000+01:00

back home.
australia is australia, it's the chipshop lady croakin over the speaker phone: two fish burgers an a bucket o' chips thanks (noelene), with such perfection that liam and i cringe over the wooden outdoor table, laughing. it's the drive up and back from murray river and the smell of wattle trees and salt. it's getting 'oy cunt' yelled at you affectionately, it's making pancakes on sunday morning (and no, we didn't put vegemite on them, this photo was a little aesthetic experiment-result of a brief comment on ethnic identity), it's waiting patiently for the first dole payment. yes, i say, use and abuse this glorious system. it's a lot of things.
right now it's very quiet.

last days in romeville

2006-06-01T09:49:00.000+01:00

so there, it's over, the sunshine, the peronis (italy's VB) on the cobblestone, the barefooted streetsellin, the scooter rides, the aperitivos downstairs, the murky catacomb smell of the cantina, the falling asleep with the nonsubtlety of traffic, the feeling of home, the appropriation of the square, my square, everybody's square...
fabian hands me a gift, a photo taken in india, with a story, and then santiago hands me another, he just crafted with his smiths hammer and an oxidated silver-copper plate.

[il mare dall'alto sembra carta velina, e poi un po' piu' in alto seta stropicciata, e ancora piu' in alto carta di riso, e poi infine le mani di mia nonna. si dilata, rugoso e gonfio, respira. 3256 metri. il segnale delle cinture di sicurezza si spegne]

and there is a slight sense, upon leaving all this, that i shouldn't be on this plane, not at all, not now, and that i haven't the slightest idea what i am doing.

2006-06-01T07:57:00.000+01:00

valentina piccolina che mi manchera' tanto tanto
so my dear, i think you might just make the subject of my next canvas squiggle.

lunapark e chitarre la sera

2006-05-29T09:55:00.000+01:00

piccola storia di una cucina

2006-05-23T18:21:00.000+01:00

ha uno sguardo lento che spesso si ferma per osservare l'andamento di una canzone, o la fragilità di una frase, o lo spessore di una circostanza inusuale, che si gonfiano nell'aria della piccola cucina dove sorseggia un tè tiepido. prende in mano una matita, 2b, gli affila leggermente la punta e, lottando contro quella familiare bolla fatta di nulla che ricopre come uno scudo lo spazio tra l'intenzione e il suo attualizzarsi (anche conosciuta come 'blocco creativo' o 'non-voglia'), posiziona infine la mano sul foglio bianco. la matita rimane galleggiante per una piccola eternità su quella piattaforma di non ancora delineato e poi, finalmente, si appoggia sul foglio. per i 4 o 5 minuti che seguono tutto il suo essere (coscienza riflessiva) si assorbe totalmente in quella forma emergente.
la persona che gli sta seduta davanti lo osserva durante questo tratto di tempo, instancabilmente. osserva il dissolversi e ricrearsi della bolla di nulla, osserva le dita e il braccio e poi l'occhio distratto e poi assorto, e la palpebra che fa ombra e che ricopre, e poi il percorso dall'orecchio alla base della mascella, lo spazio tra il naso e la bocca, e poi ancora il rivolgersi della pupilla verso l'alto e infine verso il foglio.
la cucina è ricoperta di piccole mattonelle verdi.
posa la matita, e l'essere dell'uno si rivolge inconsciamente verso la presenza dell'altro, finche' tutto diventa spazio e tempo contenuto ed esteso.
la persona che gli sta seduta davanti non ritira lo sguardo, e si rende conto che l'altro è ora cosciente di questo, anche se, forse per timidezza, evita di rivolgergli a suo turno gli occhi, che vacillano lentamente tra la finestra e una vecchia cartolina illegibile.
la persona che gli sta seduta davanti sorride, e sente il dilatarsi delle vene nell'avanbraccio. fa caldo.
la cucina si riempie della piacevole presenza del non detto.
- il disegno lo finisco dopo.
si fa una sigaretta, la accende, e infine alza lo sguardo verso la persona che gli sta seduta davanti, che ha la pelle morbida e gli occhi verdi e pesanti. sorride e le passa la sigaretta.
-non partire.

2006-05-16T13:49:00.000+01:00

¡goodbye españa!

and its transit again.

el chorro

2006-05-11T11:38:00.000+01:00

and then we went here to do a little camping, a little swimmin, a little hikin through rocky slopes and (almost)inaccessible pseudo-billabongs: and it turns out that this giant of a rock is known worldwide to rockclimbers, so the two dutch boys in the camping ground inform us, while we share bread and pasta and chorizo and beer through broken spanish, french and english. on the final day we hire a pedalboat, which we pedal to the middle of one of the lakes, to test the water at its deepest. skin toasting in the sun, ducks quacking on the side, seedy boat-rent guy stealing money from my wallet on the foreshore... mmm. but oh, the unemployed life, one must make the most of these short lived things.

2006-05-11T11:34:00.000+01:00

2006-05-11T11:33:00.000+01:00

when you find streets you never knew existed it can get kindof exciting, especially in such a small city.
francesco speaks spanish with a northen italian accent, he makes tea in his van, he also makes funny faces and juggling tricks in the square.

2006-05-08T11:18:00.000+01:00

lots of buses and trains cover the space of time in the past month, tudela, madrid, sevilla, small towns and big spaces. jimi finally makes his journey south, and we spend the weekend with marta dancing sevillanas and clapping palmas through dimly lit alleyways. there are photos of this, i don't yet have them as the computer which enclosed them has kinda crashed on us. so maybe later.

Title: Surviving on Little

2006-04-27T15:50:00.001+01:00

(To be sung in falsetto, of the ‘pink Floyd-Outside the Wall’ kind; supported by a small quartet orchestra of accordeon, cello, Tibetan string instrument of the scratchy painful variety, and a triangle).

Surviving on little is fun
because it pushes thought to extremes.
Surviving on nothing is funner
because the guilty first world whatsitsname
disappears to be replaced
by a sense of dread and anxiety
in turn replaced by resignation
in turn replaced by omnipotence
of the grass roots (I am human I am simple and human) kind.
Surviving on little to nothing is joy
because once transcending the shitty stages
you are no longer a bubble
but a porous thing
and ears function to listen
and hands to make
and heart not to fear fear.

2006-04-21T10:30:00.000+01:00

i have no words to express the greatness of vegemite and avocado on toast. except the minuscule souvenir jar i was forced to buy as a last, desperate resort at perth airport before leaving (for the meagre price of $4), has officially run out. i propose an online sponsoring program called HELP POOR LOST SOULS LIKE FE FIND VEGEMITE IN SPAIN.

2006-04-20T13:55:00.001+01:00

ma guardate un po' cosa combinano in piazza...
ancora una volta rosico per non trovarmi a roma in questo momento... anche se il fine settimana qui a cordoba promette bene, e ve lo faro' vedere. grazie valentina per il link.

check out what these crazy kids are getting up to in rome... i'm once again spewing for not being there on such an occasion, although there just may be some fun times coming up this weekend... sunshine paint and reggae for us stuck in cordoba i'm afraid. thanks valentina for the link.

2006-04-12T17:09:00.000+01:00

on saturday there is a handsome young man from the past with watery eyes, who is now rendered irrecognisable by the passage of time, who kisses his nephews on sundays, who tells old man jokes at the table, who staggers a little with his walking cane.
on saturday night there is the splendour of a volkswagen furgoneta, taking a bunch of us up the road, round the hill, past the town famous for building the largest nativity set out of chocolate, up the mountain, past the bridge and into a pueblo called iznajar, full of smalltown girls in miniskirts and into a club where cisco plays some reggae tunes, and we play a little
on tuesday there is a small table containing about 4 varieties of coffee beans. there is cisko and sisi, there is adri and la chata, there is the boy and there is me. there is talk of the election results in italy (cough, cough), and of arty projects.
all week there are little ones in the patio.

2006-04-02T19:29:00.000+01:00

oh my. and then people like kenichi hoshine make me beat my chest and kneel and say, 'i am not worthy' numerous times.

2006-03-24T21:14:00.000+01:00

new painting.
(l'ultimo quadro).

2006-03-17T18:00:00.000+01:00

have you ever eaten paella in a nightclub? well, its an exhilerating experience i must say. dark ambient lighting, funky jazz, standing up by the bar with a plate full o rice and a beer, whilst in the corner, like an altar, stands the gigantic pan on the gigantic gas stove, a couple o lads throwing in more sausage and fish, a great pillar of warm paella smoke reaches the darkness of the roof. its the 'jam-on' session at metropolis, and guille, aka harry palmer, is fretting about on stage with the loose band members as the sound guy seems to be lacking somewhat, in soundguy talent. they finally get started, a jazz piece on 7 instruments replaces the 30 year old record. just when i think it can't get any better, up goes cristina, a little one with big hair, and starts belting out some improv lyrics to the jazz. this is followed by some roots flamenco, her jazz voice transforms into that raucous chant ive come to love, and i think i might cry because she is amazing.
the night is followed by a coming and going of random musicians, the music flows in a harmonious stream of completely different pieces, jazz funk reggae flamenco, spontaneous shouts and singing from a guy with gypsy hat and walking cane, harmonized with softer voices, rap, a violin and cello duo and the rhythmic clapping of hands.
oh!

2006-03-14T20:46:00.000+01:00

a monday night.

the house is quiet, it's 9.30 pm and i have, considering an obvious lack of friends or aquaintances, 3 options:
a) start preparing the short course in aesthetics that i should alledgedly have completed by may, b) start uniting brush and canvas for the alledged shared exhibition next month, or c) hit the town on my lonesome, looking for adventures.
considering i haven't done anything productive all day i figure it's pointless starting now, when really my desires at the moment are grossly focused on appeasing the void of an empty house and a diminishing social agenda. so, option c.
but oh, the streets echo with my footsteps and its actually almost as bad as perth on a monday night, but the air is balmy and there is smell of rice and fish frying up on the first floor of a house. i realize an insurgent necessity for spending a considerable amount of time on the street, where there are lights and there are people, and that maybe that has become for me a freudian uterine comfort zone. but alas, tonight cordoba offers little to adventure seekers, or maybe im a little too tired.
a swarming mass of tourists float by, hands in back pockets, bearing the obligatory beige cargo pant. (why oh why must the northen europeans on holiday adhere to such predictable fashion gestures? "jan, have you packed the cargo pants for the weekend in spain?" "yes but i couldn't find your third pair, you know, the cutoff ones in case it gets warm!").
i circumnavigate the great mosque-turned-basilica, sparkling gold doors and intricately sculpted arches, and visualise the moors some centuries ago, when the city was theirs, up on scaffholding, chipping away their patterns on the yellow rock. i turn left on a dimly lit alleyway, then right, then up until breathing gets difficult, then left and left again until i am lost in the winding juderia, between two houses leaning towards each other at the top. i see a dog and a fat gitana with black socks and long plaits wobbling past. after some geographic contorsions i'm out on the main street again, where the people are, and i feel a little sad. people are piling into a tiny bar, a group of boys stands outside, there is one long stare from one but i dont want thatkindofadventure. so i sit a while in the square, hand out a couple of rolie papers to an anxious kid, smoke a cigarette and head home.
aleida feeds me chicken and rice and we talk for some time about the spanish subdivisions, and if the basques and the catalunians should have their own private country, and about nationalism and patriotism and intra-national racism, and i wonder a little naively perhaps why intra national differences must be considered a reason for separation. or maybe its really just a money problem, like in italy. the north doesn't want to feed the south and so demands autonomy. i don't know. all problems seem to have their roots in money somehow.
stupid money. but its a happy night up here on the balcony, with a choc-vanilla giant sandwhich and the company of a tiny colubian and a super loud boy from bilbao.

2006-03-11T15:36:00.001+01:00

to friend dave, who recently left this world

ink paper door enter
cigarette hall smoke and time
of ancestral novelty
of clichés and tales
of beer drunk footsteps
echoing on bridges
of hands clapping to
improvised poetry
of breathing white
inside choked laughter
and then
One day after
a minuscule epoch
we hear you’ve left
behind
a trail of light right (there)
and it’s all so (simple).
big heart
this is for you.

2006-03-03T17:47:00.000+01:00

so here are the photos from madrid 2 weeks ago, on the weekend during which:
a) i gave jimi the infamous indonesian pimp 'leisurewear and/or karaoke' shirt
b) jimi talked at length about a) philosophy, but really only about adorno; and b)how cute spanish girls were
c) we listened to neil young and made pasta brought all the way from rome italy
d) rated girls in a nightclub
e) had a few heated discussions about a) moralism and bigotry and b) whether during the pasta cooking procedure salt should be added in the water or after, directly on the pasta (there is no question as to who won that one).
f) i think i hit jimi a couple o times
g) jimi spent a lot of time dissin my wog accent, hence justifying point f).
h) jimi promised in his jimi way that he'd come visit me in the south of spain.

so there, more or less. also added photos from tras a bit further down, with the streetsellin posse.
also, i have a new pad, its a lot better than the last, it came with an ace columbian housemate.

2006-03-03T17:12:00.000+01:00

2006-02-25T13:42:00.000+01:00

today in the
Theatre of the Absurd:
multicultural australianess
In an attempt to redefine 'multiculturalism' and detach it from what would otherwise be a 'confused, mushy, and misguided' version, the Howard-Costello pair state the following: "when you come to this country, you become Australian"; and "Before becoming an Australian, you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objections to those values, don't come to Australia."
But really, if we want to give examples of eloquent speech, how about this prime specimen of verbal dexterity by lady Pauline: "he (Costello) needs to throw these people out of this country who do not embrace Australia".
yeh. fuckn them people. get out if ya dont like it. fucken.
also worthy of reflection is the berlusconian type hero-shot of mr. howard in the very same article.
good to know our leaders are clarifying the issue for everyone in simple terms.

2006-02-25T13:28:00.000+01:00

so
cordoba retains its unique small city inside a big village feel, and it feels life runs in circles. spanish girls are crazy. beautiful, and with this i agree with mr mitchell, but completely insane. spanish boys, contrary to common stereotype, are not that crash hot. comparatively speaking that is. ah, the numbed brain.

donde estas, grande ciudad? con tus callecitas y tus ojos anonimos?

2006-02-15T19:43:00.000+01:00

reading the life of pi. makes me think of vashti, makes me think of ketelsen.
i like pi. when i have a pet tiger, i too will name it richard parker.

2006-02-13T12:38:00.000+01:00

the sound of my little cart on the cobblestones echoes down via della paglia, where a little group of street sellers is huddled. its sunday afternoon. what happened? i ask, since they all seem quite flustered about something. adel the moroccan tells me the police has come sweeping through rome, on its latest power trip, confiscating all material sold on the street, be it illegal or handcrafted. some have had days worth of craft shoved in a van, to be dealt with only at the hands of a merciless beurocracy.
where are the others?
santiago has gone to ponte sisto, to see if its safe there.
i waddle on with my cart, until i run into oscar, from cordoba, guitar on his back, and we're off to ponte sisto, beer in hand.
on the bridge a few have opened up. there's nura, and gaia, and here comes edgar the mexican with his jester's head, dreads boppin and arms open, and valentina with her dog frida. i set up and we're off, people stop but its a little cold, and bridges you see, are made for passing over things, so we sit, and chat regardless, and watch the world take its stroll. the sun is fading and the vespertine haze of the evening envelops the first lights over the tiber.
at eight we decide to try piazza sant'egidio again, although we are warned the cops might make another appearance around 8:30. so we decide to get some chinese. carts echoing together on the cobblestone. i ask nura, what happened to mustafa?

mustafa is from senegal. he's been here for four years or more, works his ass off, like many others, as a street seller, in limbo between the impossiblity of a permit and the absurdity of returning home. he sends most of the money he makes from burnt cds to his family back home. the people know him, he is among the many recognizable faces of trastevere, the cops know him, and despite the many confiscations he keeps coming back to his spot, to do the only work he can do.

nura tells me they came undercover, everybody thought they were tourists. they pulled out their badges and then, instead of simply telling everyone to leave, which is the ususal style, they went about tearing down tables; jewlery and scarves flying into bags, sellers with no legal rights standing back to watch their work being tossed away. they even confiscated the inflatable bunnies from the guy in the square. when it came to him, mustafa didn't run, so the young policeman decided to spray his eyes with the pepper spray. he went home that he could barely see. nura tells me that once, because he resisted slightly, they sedated him with a needle, so that for a week he would come to work wobbling like a sick dog, barely able to stand.
he has no rights, he is among the millions of faceless immigrants who stick out like a sore thumb in berlusconi's empire of bullshit. i feel a rage surge, but it stops there somewhere between trachea and aesophagus, creating a bubble of heaviness. she tells me the old man from the apartment on top opened his window to tell the cops to stop breakin everybody's balls they're just kids they don't bother anyone. we represent the law, says one. i don't give a fuck! yells the pensioner before slamming the window shut. at least we got street solidarity.

eventually we open up again on the thin street that connects the two squares, michel is already there, chatting up italian girls, with that ecuadorian charm. i manage to sell the first painting in two days, the others clap, at my disbelief mainly. then we sing a little something, echoes of the previous week's improvised folklore, boy with accordeon, boy with guitar, a bunch of us dancing the tarantella arm in arm, and rome becomes a village again.

2006-02-12T13:07:00.000+01:00

why did i not know about this film? only a few nights ago it was revealed to me and oh, the pure creative genius, really, i have no words.
AMERICAA! FUCK YEAH!

2006-02-07T17:02:00.000+01:00

a monday night spent in the company of agnese, under a woolen blanket on her bed, reading each other fairy tales, except not in the real sense of the word, in that they didnt involve fairies, rather strange characters and situations that would only be considered un-absurd in the mind of a child. in fact, these are probably the best tales (minus the linguistically useless fairy) one could ever write. i will transcribe one, but only in italian, as this one in particular, at least under my humble skills, is untranslatable. it's called 'lets make up numbers', and its by gianni rodari.
...
ho passato il lunedi sera in compagnia di agnese, sotto una coperta di lana, sedute sul letto a raccontarci le favole di gianni rodari, così, perchè a volte è bello ascoltare le favole, a volte è bello leggerle agli altri, e questo lo si dimentica. insomma ne allego una che mi piacque in particolare. si chiama 'inventiamo i numeri'.

- Inventiamo dei numeri? - Inventiamoli, comincio io. Quasi uno, quasi due, quasi tre, quasi quattro, quasi cinque, quasi sei. - È troppo poco. Senti questi: uno strabilione di biliardoni, un ottone di millantoni, un meravigliardo e un meraviglione. - Io allora inventerò una tabellina:

tre per uno Trento e Belluno
tre per due bistecca di bue
tre per tre latte e caffè
tre per quattro cioccolato
tre per cinque malelingue
tre per sei patrizi e plebei
tre per sette torta a fette
tre per nove scarpe nuove
tre per dieci pasta e ceci.

- Quanto costa questa pasta? - Due tirate d'orecchi - Quanto c'è da qui a Milano? - Mille chilometri nuovi, un chilometro usato e sette cioccolatini. - Quanto pesa una lacrima? - Secondo: la lacrima di un bambino capriccioso pesa meno del vento, quella di un bambino affamato pesa più di tutta la terra. - Quanto è lunga questa favola? - Troppo. - Allora inventiamo in fretta altri numeri per finire. Li dico io, alla maniera di Modena: unci dunci trinci, quara quarinci, miri miminci, un fan dKs. - E io li dico alla maniera di Roma: unzi donzi trenzi, quale qualinzi, mele melinzi, riffe raffe e dieci.

2006-01-30T14:20:00.000+01:00

emma is drawing trees and lights and things, fillin her journal with these images, while we freeze our butt on the cobblestone, rakin in the money. well, not really.
and then there is a lot of talking, about the time spent away, and other things, and a lot of sillyness.

latest additions to the theatre of the absurd:

1. in america, homeless people get tickets for being homeless. (hewitt's report)
2. at the Stadio Olimpico yesterday, to commemorate the deportation of the jews from Rome all those years ago, and in occasion of the Roma-Livorno soccer match, a gigantic group of Rome ULTRAS hang flags of swastikas and mussolini's face, saluting their team with outstreched arm. jews assisting the game complain to authorities, who of course do nothing.

wooh.

2006-01-24T12:55:00.000+01:00

influenza!!!

aaah, so weak and withering in a puddle of sore bones, moulding and fusing with the couch.
10 hours of television cannot be good. especially tv of the italian variety. oh, the highlights... emilio fede (berlusconi's good mate and director of channel 4 news) gets interrupted in the middle of a half-arsed news story by two long-legged ladies blown out of proportion on the screen behind him, they just thought they'd say hello, he starts flirting, news is over. and then theres all these glorious repeats of walker texas ranger and other 80s memorabilia, and then the talk shows! aaah, the talk shows! so much talk, so much show!

numbed brain
questions
the need to lead
a normal life when there (really)
is all this abundance of
visual stimuli, all this
information!

miss emma arrives tomorrow, and then its off with the tv.
OFF WITH THE TV!!!

2006-01-16T20:07:00.000+01:00

ok, so here are some little things, made of cardboard boxes and newspapers, some i have already sold, and made more, and i feel like a factory but it beats workin nine to five, or not doin anythin at all.
and then one day i meet gustavo el chileno and we eat peanuts and drink peroni and he shows me a book he's rented from the library on the history of hip hop or rap or whatever, and we revel a little in the pictures of public enemy and mc hammer, and feel a little old, and then he sells a painting or two, and we chat some more.

apart from tout ça, i must say its all pretty crazy at the moment.