Play The Game

Any social network asks you to define yourself, to distinguish yourself and you better know which is your favourite movie, your favourite football team, your favourite pet, your own special favourite quote and obviously your favourite brand.

Perhaps you are already a bit beyond this level, but maybe you're a thinker, or a creative, then you could be obsessed by the need of defend your unique skill, your special talent, your genius.

The fact is that you shouldn't build a wall; we're all connected and part of the same flow.

The fact is that you should see how what they call "ego" goes through our borders, from you to all the multiverse.

Anyhow, if you open your eyes in front of a mirror, you usually see always your face. Awakening up, you usually see your hands, your legs, your belly, under your chin.

So, be conscious of the bigger cycle in which you breathe and be conscious of your specific ship for your life journey too:

welcome in the enchanted loom – play the game, here and now.

A playing-self-portrait

PS. A kind of not common song – almost childish, in a way – is being even too touching recently with me: Ode to the Brain!

I evoked the "Fishes of Pleasure" to fly at Goodbye Blue Monday

My lovely fishes from my new sketch are flying to Brodway to enjoy the concert at 11pm of the 20th of April with Heidi Harris, Tea Leigh and Jac, at Goodbye Blue Monday.

If, like me, you can not join them, you can watch the streaming here.

But first try to hitchhike with my flying fishes, they're pretty generous!

Pictures from the goodbyes

These portraits come from a nice goodbye gig at Boothill Saloon, that was created to jam the last time in Utrecht with Felipe Iturrieta (here above) before his departure for a long long trip through Asia. If you feel like to follow his strange adventure, he just created Welcome to my Trip, a blog that is supposed to be updated every Tuesday (but don't freak out if he doesn't, it's hard that something unlucky happens to that lazy asshole…). Anyway, watch out: his hope is right to infect you with his travel mania. But, after all, you're already on my blog, that could inspire a bunch of bad bad stuff too!

Sief Giltay and Virgil Smit

Virgil Smit

Peter Sonnega

Peter Sonnega

Felipe Iturrieta

Sief and Felipe again, both not that complete…

Caio, really busy with looking busy

 I add also other pages from my sketchbook that are not from the same event, but from the same period of goodbyes.

Jules, among the most psychedelic people I ever met

After so many pictures of humans, the drawings of Tesoro (what a cute Italian name for a dog!) are probably my favourites. I miss a bit the presence of animals around me. I started to draw when I was child with my Grandma's dog and horse, my muses Lampo and Zivago. Their beauty is still unreachable. This is not time to have a dog, for me. But maybe it will be soon time to enjoy more nature. (Ah, shit, it just sounds like that a travel maniac bit me!)

"Hildegard You Have My Heart"

This my new illustration comes with a new song by Heidi Harris.

Enjoy!

The Elf footprint and a message by Art

It's now about two months.
It can not be a scratch.
Do you see it?

There, on my ankle, I can easily recognise a sole and a heel.

It seems that my skin is burned, but I didn't made anything by intention.

To me it looks clear. An elf came by.

That's probably because it's now definitely too much that I don't visit the forest.

In the early December, I made one of my spontaneous sketch on my book that I enjoy so much because I don't ask anything to me, and they come just appear, random ugly or sometimes meaningful.

After some weeks, I made another one, that fits the empty space that the other one created, waiting for an answer.

My 2012 have been a revolutionary year, for me. Every detail of my life is been thought again and the top of my doubt, what's easier to see from a stranger point of view, is probably about making art… or not. All the year long I was always even too inspired, but the point is that finally art is not a need: I found a state of happiness that let me be fine, without such an interior shout that screams for express itself. Now art has conquired a total different role in my vision. Though I know that is extremely important in society, I'm honestly wondering about how much it really is. Meanwhile, something else is taking a place in my life. But all this is "only" about how I should manage my daily time, according the fields with which our society divides our knowledge – that is what actually catches myself, when I try to understand it and when I try to communicate it. What I'm looking for is the truth and what I'm trying to communicate is the harmony. About the hypothesis that the truth doesn't bring to harmony, well, then the question will be about the sense of the harmony, but I perfectly feel that, yes, truth and harmony are located exactly on the same spot of consciousness.

Do you feel it?

I'd pay one thousand of kites to know which is my way.
The point is not strictly about any skill of mine, the point is mostly about the sense and the power of the ways that I could adopt.
I'd pay one million of melting clocks to meet an elf able to show me my way, without letting me have any doubt about his words.
Instead, I keep thinking that one of the best virtue is always considering any possible theory, that means that any doubt can find its comfort in my psychedelic endless mind… That means that my honest interior pirate has a hard job if has also to carry on the fragility of my interior mermaid (yeah, I'm a pirate and a mermaid at the same, as some good friends told me).
So, here I am, pirate and mermaid, brave and strong and hyper-fragile, I know that my questions seem too big and I might change my mind one billion times again, but the current challenge is this one: try hard on art this 2013, seeing where I go with it and meanwhile decide if I really wanna start a new path.

*Thank you again, Scobo.*

What's exactly such a new path supposed to be?

If the idea resists still for a long time, I will tell it here for sure.

Right now, the path is find the courage to leave my headphones with The Black Keys on, wear my loved pyjamas, don't laugh too much for how you English speakers say "pyjama", 'cause I actually feel like an imbecile putting such a weird stuff in it (you have just to be comfortable in a "pyjama", instead this word looks like a word with sunglasses!, in Italian we simply say "pigiama", fuck the hell!), and then roll on my bed watching an inspiring movie for my next videoclip.

…

Ok, stopping to laugh because of how you spell "pyjama" is still hard!

Maybe I should try to wear my pyjama even if I laugh… Probably starting to watch the movie I'll be able to be quiet. Yeah. That's brilliant. I feel so brilliant and cool that I could wear my sunglasses! Yeah, now it makes sense: pyjama and sunglasses.

B-)

The hand always goes in the backpack

These days are really full, somehow I'm keeping creating without a stop, even if still in a too confused way, many projects are starting and I'm trying to let collaborate my fuckin' inspiration with a kind of method. Despite that, meanwhile, I enjoyed some nights here in Utrecht. And even when I say to myself to just living the surrounding, every time my hand goes to pick up my sketchbook, or my camera.

This first sketch is from a presentation at ACU, the 11th of March. It's a very good project that I'd like to let you check out: Drawing Freedom shows drawings made by the refugee children of Syria and the reaction made by some Dutch artist. In my sketch you can see (or, well, just imagine) the children drawings on the right wall. On the left wall there are the photographs made by these two guys, the journalists that were there. In the photographs, I tried to sketch the women that they met, that are trying to fight, even if it is not allowed to them by the Muslim rules. As you can understand, this hot topic could bring several comments. Well, I appreciated really a lot that the journalists just put their energy to communicate what they saw, without too many opinions about – and with a lot of honesty.

Follow the project, folks, because it should grow and you could have new exhibition and appointment around in Nederland.

These second images are from some nights ago at Cafe Averechts, the hidden special cafe in Utrecht where many musicians and couch surfer often go, creating a very special and warm atmosphere. You can easily find an open podium, there.

(Sorry for the soul theft, man, but I'm sure you have at least a half-dozen bonus souls somewhere…)

I didn't finished this sketch, I started during their last song, so I made it in about three minutes… By the way, hey, everybody wanna know how much time I need to draw a certain stuff (many guys asked for it that night): that's a good reason to write now that the 23th of March I'll be at EKKO, they invited me to draw live all the night long. Come over and see what I'm gonna plan for it!

Sandra

Rock'n'roll!

tripmaitrop-etanonstop

Enda's home

The personal spaces are definitely one of my favourite territory, in photography.

This is the home of Andrea Riboni, aka Enda, in Cremona.

Thank you for letting me in.               #

"Cut the Line" is coming soon!

Some months ago, going through what they call "New Weird America", this kind of psych folk that I love to explore so much, once I found a lovely new yorker singerwriter, Heidi Harris, and I was glad to listen to her music like it is when you got a little discovery that for you it's so precious. You imagine that you're a collector of shells and you just stumbled in a very particular and rare one, thinking that you must be very lucky finding such a treasure that fits so well your mind… With these emotions, I seen that, somehow, through some social networks, she found me as well, probably scrolling her listeners, but the point was that after a while she shown many feelings for my art too. That's how we started to see how far was our reciprocal sensation that a magic connection was happening between our creative worlds. Exactly like the birth of a love, my creatures recognised themselves in her creatures. Obviously, an artistic collaboration seemed immediately necessary. So, as first step, now one of my illustration is the front cover of her new album, Cut the Line, that now is almost ready with her Canadian label, Inner Ocean Records.

When she told that this drawing of mine was the one that in the end conquered her, I was really surprised. At first because it's basically a self portrait and I felt a bit shy to be there, on her cover, with those my sentences included too (a rare extra text for any cover album, I guess). But above all I was surprised because that illustration is actually one of my favourites too, born just from my inspiration, but, "unfortunately", never used for anything. Now this work has its way and I'm pleased of it, still loving its charme, but also finally feeling really far from that moment (more then one year ago): now I don't have to try to be quiet – and if I look into my seascapes, after all… I go invaded from an orgy of happiness. But that's another story. That you will maybe enjoy in the second step of our collaboration –so, folks, stay tuned, as they say!

The Circle

«It's a flower born to die, don't worry if it does soon.   :)   »

Those were the light words that came with a delicate Orange Flower, the past Summer.

It did it, the gentle Orange Flower died soon (but not so soon).

It had been also an unexpected rebirth, during the early Autumn; its tender willpower was moving.

After a while, it took its right Death for good, but I didn't moved it from my shelter.

During those frozen days in which we were ice skating on the canal, the pot shown its new surprising new Oracular Spectacular beauty.

Now it's again on my backyard, drinking the new sunshine. I'm not waiting for another flower, but the Springtime is already back, incredibly hot, in this loved half-nordic land called The Netherlands. And that Orange is the good one.

I have been all the seasons.

If the flowers won't come out to say *hi, I am a flower and I belong to a gorgeous harmony* to the new year, the pot will have a special role, somehow, in Art.

Proost, to who have the consciousness to say simply the simpler          .

Don't stop to keep high your hopes and feel the Circle.

Do you feel it?

(If you don't, start trying to listen to Planet Gong and Daevid Allen.

The World is full of good energies. It is. I'm sure about it. So sure!)