LET IT HAPPEN, Magic Masha! ::: [PREPARATION FOR A VIDEO: BEG YOUR MUSE.]

These photographs were waiting in my hard disc. They are some experiments I had made out of a little session done for another purpose. They are extra-gifts of an afternoon.

I've just seen that the new single from Tame Impala came out––oh yeah, I'm a fan of them, I couldn't wait a single second to play it!

As I started to listen to it, closing my eyes, I've seen this my friend dancing, the unique, spontaneous, FREE, joyful, soft, a bit childish, so deep being so light, sweet, pure, original, playful, AUTHENTIC way she dances. So, it's much different from the moods you see here above, actually, but these photographs came in mind 'cause there is just her. Just her.

And as I had those visions, I felt like I HAD to make a video for this song, only with her dancing. Stop. I need to.

Now I'm begging her to do it. She's surely now sleeping and I'm looking for hearing her answer. It will be hard, I know, 'cause we manage to be too busy, already, fuck, all the time. But I hope we make it.

I'd need only one day.

Soon.

Please, Masha!

LET IT HAPPEN

Felice

The night of the 3rd of March 2013, I started to write a long private letter.

In a few lines, though, I realized that I wanted to share that with anyone, because what I was trying to tell had to do with the biggest lesson of my life, what I always try to share and what I see people appreciating the most from me as well.

So I kept writing, allowing myself to this spontaneous and naked flow.

As I understood that I wanted to make something out of those words and lines, that night, I immediately realized that it was going to turn into a bigger project: I had those pages, I had a theatrical monologue out of them and I had a series of illustrations around and inside them.

When I started to write I didn't know how long the whole work was gonna take, I only knew that I was stopping when I was reaching the end of the sketchbook.

The process took fourteen months, although in a few weeks I was further enough to say something here about it, sharing the Heidi Harris' song Nine Feathers, which has my voice reading some extracts of this words (and lines and colours and blank spaces).

Since last April, when I finished to write, I mostly worked on the performance for the monologue, which is the current step and the reason why I temporary left my Dutch home in July to come back in Italy for the summer: when I started to write that letter, I was writing in my native language – the language that I had to keep to write that way. Yes, though, I really really want to translate it all in English as well. But not now: now I came back in Italy to go busking around, with my backpack, my sleeping bag (well, actually isn't mine: thank you, Bard), my tent, the Death Tambourine I introduced you some weeks ago and, last but not least, a rainbow xylophone! Plus the letter, of course: Felice. That's the title of the book.

It means:

"happy".

shoot: Masha Rozhnova

So now what?

Now I'll leave for my trip, reading my love letter about the harmony in the streets and in the squares or wherever I'll feel, pretty much going random or visiting the several Italian cities and villages where I have friends waiting for me.

shoot: Veerle Van Harten

I'll also perform in some associations or so, plus, at the end of August, the Ferrara Buskers Festival (and that's a dream, let me tell you, my memories of that festival as teenager and visitor are really framed in golden tears of magic).

If you perhaps want to try to follow me, I "even" created a space on facebook.

www.facebook.com/eta.felice

shoot: Masha Rozhnova

shoot: Masha Rozhnova

shoot: Masha Rozhnova

shoot: Masha Rozhnova

If you're curious to have a look into this freaky psychedelic thing, well, you can read it all online.




More will come.

Later!

…Now I'm going to enjoy my trip. :)

Masha And Rudi Are Beautiful.

 –  Andiamo, Rudi!

Rudi is so sleepy that he doesn't understand Masha is telling him she's also tired and she wants to go home. He's already lost in the dreams, doesn't listen. She just tries to wake him up gently and sweetly.

Meanwhile, I contemplate the scene on my couch from my desk and I grab my beloved sketchbook.

A few months ago, Masha and Rudi did that thing, that double signature, you know, that thing that tells loud also to the law that two persons love each other and want to stay together.

All the thing happened in an unusual way. They didn't mind about the traditional huge parties which people feel kind of mandatory. They just wanted to make sure their union can't be broken by anything, no matters the nationality or the place where you live.

Still, I and their other friends wanted to celebrate such a wonderful love.

So we told them a nice bunch of lies not to let them organise anything at all, we blindfolded 'em and Michele drove them in a bakfiets, the typical Dutch cargo bike, bringing them in our favourite spot in town, where we gave them our gift and we finally partied.

At that moment and during most of the beginning of our surprise, I was so excited that my hands physically couldn't correctly handle the camera; I've been thrilling all the time.

And afterwards, I was so busy with having fun and with chilling out, that I didn't take the camera at all.

…So, well, forgive the quality of these pictures. Still, it's much pleasure to share them also on my blog. They come from a very precious and emotional day, so I wish you'll feel that as well.

Thanks again and again to every single friend who made real that afternoon.

At the end of the ride

Leaving the bakfiets

Entering our "secret" place

Opening the gift

Uncorking the bottle(s-s-s-s-s)

(go, Rudi, gooo!!!)

And enjoying it all…

*

This drawing was the sketch I made as crown of the pie made by Michele (our favourite cook ever…). As reference, I used a photograph which my dear friend Carolina Farina can recognise among hers… indeed it was a portrait she made of them during her backstage of Animal Insect, the video we made for Heidi Harris the past may. That videoclip has been basically the first reason we started to meet, also because after accepting the invite to act for me, Masha decided to help me on the set. But what first inspired me to picture them as characters was exactly their love, which hypnotised me when I didn't know them very well.


And, well, I can't tell how sweet has been being by their side during that afternoon…




* If you also wish to dance so passionately like Masha and me in that picture, here our secret!



Ops, no, wait. That was not our secret (also, you know, it's a secret, after all…).
Still, you better listen to that song and shake your ass, anyway.

Heidi Harris – Animal Insect /// THE MUSIC VIDEO

quando ti chiedono cos'hai fatto, non dire che hai fatto un video. perché sarebbe come se a uno scalatore chiedessero: "cos'hai fatto?"
e lui rispondesse "ho fatto un buco e ho spinto la bandiera più in giù che potevo".

when they ask you what did you make, don't say you made a video. because it would be as if a climber were asked: "what did you make?" and he answered "I made a hole and I pushed the flag down as deep as I could".

*

Working on this project, I often smiled thinking about how it was sweet that a song from the other side of the Ocean was making me discover so much more Utrecht, the town where I moved around one year ago and that I'm loving so intensely each istant.

Two nights ago, when Animal Insect was already going online, I was a bit contemplating on the Internet the place in which the inspiration found Heidi Harris when she wrote Animal Insect: Brooklyn. She lived on its roofs till some weeks ago (now she's in another zone of New York City). I already knew that first New York was New Amsterdam, well, this something commonly pretty known, as the Dutch people was among who started the city of the current New York, but I found out only that night that the etymology of Brooklyn is "Breukelen". I guess that for a lot of you "Breukelen" doesn't mean anything, but Breukelen is a small place right in the province of Utrecht.


So one day I'll go in Breukelen with the fish made of shells that found me some weeks ago in my favourite magic antiek, De Oude Pijpenlade. And with some white yarn. It could be useful.


Meanwhile, I'm glad to finally let run around our creature…

••••

Animal Insect is part of the new album by Heidi Harris, Cut the Line, available here.

Our deep collaboration has a lot to do also with the vinyl, for which I have the honour of seeing my artworks going around on such a lovely musical object.

••••

I would to thank once again here each energy that brought us here.


Thanks to Erica Lanzoni, that shared with me some of her visions, months ago.

Thanks to Vere Van de Meerendonk, for all the unbelievable intensity with which went into this idea, since the first time that I mentioned it to her. 

Thanks to Jul Jackalope, the custodian that guides my consciousness between all the different levels of reality.

Thanks to Dorotea Pace, that importantly fed the story and sweetly, patiently listened my brainstorming, even if it went like a psychiatrical examination («Doctor, doctor, I saw a strange creature and some yards and and and [endless mysterious vague gesticulate] and and I don't know maybe something else but I swear I see something more just over there keep letting me talk perhaps I'm gonna have I'm gonna have it I'm gonna see it wait wait wait Doctor here we go it's coming it's coming it's coming, Doctor Dò, I really some maybe mumble tomorrow a day and an eye and uh, a "rocket", did you say?»).

Thanks to Cornelis Plet, for the object number 890431, that I payed with the sticker of a Unicorn.

Thanks to my chabbi, Carolina Farina, that came directly from Paris, taking many photographs (that will be around soon) and helped me with any kind of fuckin' bothering problem, also when I was losing a little little bit my focusing and I was probably sounding as a very annoying silly troublemaker. And letting me repeat all the time to everybody that we were basically celebrating our great meaningful 10th anniversary of friendship, tolerating my violent joy overdose. (No, unless that you met me, you probably cannot imagine how I can turn exactly in this kind of phenomena; I can be tiring for real.)

Thanks to Pema Tigelaar, that opened herself to all my requests and also helped me a lot – above all realising the old hope that I had when many months ago I secretly written her name on my ideas notebook.

Thanks to Dirk van de Veek, for respectfully letting me interpretate.

Thanks to Rudi Bonfiglioli, for that absurd moment in which I saw him so shocked contemplating the shootings with himself with Masha.


Thanks to Masha Rozhnova, that after fitting so perfectly the picture that I drawn for her, turned in one of the best art-mate of my whole life.

Thanks to Elodie Clemence Romero, for all her interior process and for that question for which I deeply wish a proper conversation together, one day… in Montpellier.

Thanks to Wilma Kun, for the rare calm seriousness with which she worked and, of course, for letting me freely film her artworks at her home. (And for the tasty launch!)

Thanks to Siggy De La Blues, because when I explained to him his role, he said «I knew».

Thanks to Iggy Antoine Fornerino, for his enthusiasm, his suggestions and his spontaneous reaction when I saw him watching the video still in the timeline.

Thanks to Patricia Elders, because after my tale to the phone about the concept, when I was still a complete stranger, she then just said «It's like my life». And, in the end, she loved our strange experience so much, anyway.

Thanks to Mechelien, even if in the end she missed the shootings. For her sparkling eyes in the basement of her shop, that unique afternoon.

Thanks to the best special guest ever, the random dog in the park! And thanks to Simone Franceschini, that tried first to finding a-not-so-randome-one.

Thanks to a kind of "reluctant messiah" with which certain concepts started.

Thanks to Cory Zaradur and to Inner Ocean Records – how couldn't I love a music label with such an evoking name?


A special thanks to the Municipality of Utrecht and to the artists Jan Hein Daniëls and Willem Hoebink, authors of the artwork that I filmed at the Pausdam, an installation part of the project Trajectum Lumen, that makes even more psychedelic and magic walking through Utrecht, enlightening some meaningful spots of this historical city.

 – The etymology of Utrecht, indeed, is the Latin word for "trajectory". And I smile again every time that I think about this, because totally looks like that this place is exactly supposed to be on the way, also the way of the bunch of people that comes from elsewhere and will go somewhere else again. –

So, in the end, thanks to Utrecht, this intense place where I'm finding so many inspiring homes.



And thanks to Heidi,
 for all her whole harmonically behave into an idea of creative process so nicely closed to mine, in which the art itself comes first;
 for deciding to share so much with me;
 for being able to see I what I see too.


Thanks to the magic;
thanks to the synchronicity.


And thanks to all of you, if you will enjoy the wave or if you won't at all, if you'll keep what it will generate for your inner world or if you'll creating a new sharing with it.

*

This was what Enda told me a few moments after watching the music video for Animal Insect.

This post isn't supposed to be my perception of the hole and the flag.

This would be eventually up to you, to let me see how they look from your point of view – because the art keeps to work and grow in the eyes of the watcher, to hopefully turn in something new.

Here I just wanted to whisper a few things about all the long tripping on the mountain and the friends that came with me – even if not the whole tale neither.

The whole tale is called "Life"

and I'm exactly wishing you enjoy it.

пока!

I finally just finished my last shooting day for the music video for Animal Insect by Heidi Harris. I'd have one thousand of bunch of things to tell, about it and a lot more, wow, but right now I simply feel like to share one fresh memory from my post-huge-easy-deserved-dinner after all the efforts, with Rudi and Masha, and take my good big sleeping time (yep, still so black, no way to have more energies now, can camin can camin, spazzacamin…).

«Today is a dream day.

Filming all the day in a forest, coming home hungry and eating a lot!»
Masha  said.

I already know that one day I'll look to this picture with the sweeter tears of that particular healthy nostalgia.

пока!

(Va be', dai, almeno la ghigna mo me la lavo. Sogni d'oro a tutti i fusi orari).