I’ve got a big heart, with thick mare walls

Another some self portraying going on – in the middle many other subjects passed by, especially bears, a certain coyote, elks, elks, elks and elks again, but for now I keep them breathe in the crazy laboratory. This can come out, instead, fiercely.

«You’ve got a big heart, Eta, with thick mare walls».

Sometimes precious creatures tell me how they see me and, as they do that, a new golden key falls in my hands, just shaped to open the door further there, after the labyrinth.

Stuff that happens when a friend drops a flame in a volcano

  

«A vertical flame on a blue field. That's how I saw myself.»

The Ballad of The Fears And The Exhaustion

/

Kind of warm up, breaking ice – warming ice. Sometimes I need to make self-portraits, to tell myself how I'm doing, and sometimes it feels like it's worthy to share it.
Warming the ice with exorcisms.

/

I had found fears. The fear not to know how to draw. To be able to draw only certain hugs.

I start from here: from drawing this again.

/

Sometimes I've been feeling too tired, missing the world that I dream. But I want to keep having visions, and to share them. This is why I'm here. To tell about another world.

I belong to this generation. I found this. We're here to talk about love. That's why we're here.

/ / /

(The spectrum of emotions that intertwine in my drawings always involves many hearts. Right now, because of this bundle of hours, I want to send my thanks to two people: to Bogdan and to Micheal.)

★ And I'm Not Against It ★

Something happened on the day he died.

So many of my dear ones grown with a specific devoted love for Bowie. I open my heart to a collective virtual hug for all of their pain. A special thought goes to my friend Caterana Tonnē Fleur, as in the last years she fell into a giant obsession which surely changed her spirit and taught her many things. I believe that, for her, this loss is actually the departure of a spirit master. I need to tell her that he gave to her one of the most precious things: the opportunity to prepare herself to any bigger loss ahead, or any kind of approach to the death. His parting gift is to help facing the death and our days' carnage – hi, Cancer. He recorded his own death while happening. I believe that that's one of the most beautiful Death in Rock, Art, and maybe History.

"I'm A Blackstar" / And I'm Not Against It

Holy Thanks, Blackstar.

Death is beautiful. Embrace Death.

Rib, gather yourself, start the trip and hold the treasure in your heart for ever. That's the way. Do not fear.

Remember Remember ☉ IV.ii

 

…Remember Remember…

Alba

After three years, this time I was again in Italy for the First of January. Which is also my Grandma's birthday. I was with my mom at her home – one of the  most sacred place of my memories – and, as usual, I was devoured by her beauty intertwined with my struggle to let her see it. She was used to be an incredibly beautiful woman, incredibly charming and strong in her firm gaze, dressed in great unique and bizarre style, always walking next to her equally stunning husband. But aging, for her, is anything pretty. She never accepts nor understand all the compliments I and my cousin Mary try to give her – not for kindness, but for our own need: as beauty lovers, we can't handle how she's blind to her own light. Yet, part of her charm totally comes from her severe and constant judge on everything, starting from herself.

She is the Empress of her complete, authentic Ruin *

and nothing can change her mind

(so far).

But I can't give up, and I tried to sketch her essence. After my whole life trying to portray her, that's my best attempt. And it finally satisfied me. She also saw herself there, which is not an easy result. I think I got that her so severe gaze, but, at the same time, all that Whiteness I love so much. Her inner child I connect with and I need to stand up. She often wears white, her hair are now white as the snow, with some pale blue fading out, and all her energies have this acid yellow purpose knocking in. It is so tender, to me, to look at this flower of my life. So, so severe, so angry and disappointed by anything nature arranged, yet so sensitive to tenderness in any non human creature she meets, but so, so blind to her own fantastical, tender, sweet, magic-cotton-purity forbidden smile greeting from any curve on her.

There's only one moment when she share her magic-cotton sweetness of spirit nudity: when she smiles. Which is the rare gift I always look for when I'm with her. Talking with her may almost turn in a videogame, for me, where each smile is my score.

But after having shown her this sketch, I actually got one of her best smiles, one of those come together with total surprise and emotion, as something in herself is whispering "hey, perhaps reality is a bit nicer and sunnier than how you see it". One of those smiles which is almost more a wide open mouth with wide open eyes because of that part of herself that is intrigued by starring at magic and yet slightly disappointed by the suspicion of being wrong about finding everything so negative. And that's how I got that smile on her, on the First of January 2016: while drawing her, my shoulders suddenly jumped, remembering out of the blue that as that was my first drawing of the year, my first drawing from 2015 happened as I woke up at my dear friend Jessie's place, on her couch, in the urge of picking my sketchbook and sketch my Grandpa Carmine (as a tree), while thinking of a huge painting to base on it. As I told her this – that she and her husband had been my first drawings of 2015 and 2016, by chance – she got this wide open eyes and wide open mouth.

I'd just want so much

to finally let her suspect a little bit that

"the Universe is a conspiracy on her behalf",

 

and not the complete other way around.

Her name is  Alba .

and it means :

Sunrise  * * * *

I'll be back on this.

________________________________________________________

* Ma la vecchiezza è una Roma senza burle e senza ciance che non prove esige dall'attore ma una completa autentica rovina.

Andrea Pazienza che cita Boris Pasternak, Pompeo