INCIPIT
When I was very young and had just started mime and clown school, a close friend older than me, whom I felt was a sort of guide, told me: “The new Messiah will arrive unexpectedly, perhaps dressed as a tumbler riding a unicycle, and who knows… it may be that not only one will manifest itself but there will be many, so that their word can spread more quickly and it will not be so easy to crucify them all”.
This image/metaphor would have remained imprinted in my mind as a “young offspring”: perhaps because I wanted to be one of them.
BIRTHS
I am an only child born and raised in the central Italian province, in a hybrid, tangent, paradoxical port city like Livorno. A borderland.
I was lucky enough to have two loving parents, with a strong sense of humanity, two people born in the 1930s who have been through war, hunger and displacement, two people who had to save their lives first and then try to make it through. Both inevitably brought with them, alongside their gifts, also their “shadows”, given the difficulty in finding time and opportunities to “work” on themselves.
I, a hypersensitive and “polite” child, grew up playing soccer and with a love for animals, with the daily refrain of a pathologically apprehensive mother in the background who obsessively told me “don’t sweat“. For years I have tried to solve the conundrum of scoring goals while avoiding the sweat – without being able to solve it, of course. Next to her there was a wonderful father but with his own “obsession”: the judgment of others.
His catchphrase was “take it slow”. And I – kinetic, sporty child and in love with life – tried to keep my voice and enthusiasm quiet to respond to my father’s dictates. The fact is that all these compressions lead me in late adolescence to have a sort of personality split with panic attacks (the God Pan had finally appeared to get me back on track with my soul).
In this difficult and painful crossing, having met the madness of official medicine, a twist takes me out of the dangerous vortex of psycho-physicalenergetic imbalances.
THE TURNING POINT
The stroke of luck happened during high school, thanks to meeting wonderful classmates, evolved souls who indirectly contribute to ferrying me across the Styx. Today, several of them are successful, high vibrational men and women. I mention among all Federico Sardelli – great musician, composer, conductor – and Giovanni Avogadri – poet of quality as well as a learned professor.
Among other things I realize how much I like to laugh, have fun and entertain others. The five years of high school, with these traveling companions, were marked by “gore” of sweat under the armpits for the laughter that had to be at least partially hidden behind the backs of the companions, to be seen as little as possible. A hoot. Together with Federico we created two cartoon characters at school: “Il Sommo Poeta” (The Supreme Poet) and the “Mago Afono” (The Unvoiced Wizard) that a few years later he would make famous through the pages of the satirical monthly Vernacoliere (Livorno venacular magazine). I, on the other hand, will bring them directly to the scene “in the flesh and bones”.
With that creative and vital drive, we involved other students and during the breaks, almost every morning, we organized improvised mini-performances of a goliardic nature. From that desire to continue having fun, amusing and improvising, I made the decision to take a theater course.
Here is the the turning point: a pirate helped me!
In fact, during the rehearsals, playing an adventurer of the seas, I realized that I was sweating, ranting and sailing above the lines and above the judgments of the “world”, in a sacred space where no one could say anything to Stefano because it wasn’t me who acted but the pirate. Fantastic!!!
A new breach opens the “Porta Pia”.
The characters can do what Stefano still can’t afford to do. From there a long apprenticeship begins: to transfer the conquests, the researches, the explorations and the experiments from the scene into life. Theater soon becomes my profession. At the beginning they will be parties, animations, street shows or for schools. Then the rest will come, but these first experiences will give me the great privilege of making myself economically independent from my family.
A BRILLIANT INTUITION
Among my classmates at the School of mime and clown “Quelli di Grock” there was also a dear friend of mine, Lamberto Giannini, who would soon reveal himself to be a talent for practical production. One day, during the second year (the school lasted three years), he said to me with the expression of someone who has had an intuition: “Stefano, we must teach!” I took it philosophical and sincerely agreed with him, among other things I had already felt, albeit at the beginning of my journey, that I have that innate “quid” that makes you a good guide for others. However, realizing the misunderstanding, he promptly retorted:
No, no, not one day, but now, immediately!!!” I was astonished. What did now, immediately mean? How was it conceivable that two kids in the second year of the first school could teach? And then what? And to whom? He continued precise, concise, decisive: “Because it is only by teaching that one learns well”. I was kind of scared and didn’t want to see any further, too bold, too fast.
But then I closed my eyes… and I jumped like a roller coaster.
I soon learned that Lamberto was absolutely right. That was the right time. The important thing was to do it honestly: going to teach others what interested us most and doing it with love and humility. We started with children, then teenagers and then adults, non-professionals, who wanted to have fun. In this, yes, we were already “professionals”: knowing how to entertain and amuse. And, as I said, having the privilege of pocket money made all the difference.
THE MAESTRO
In those years, in my early twenties, “chance” decided to also bring me the first extra ordinary meeting as a gift: Francisco Sirigu d’Intramontes, the Maestro.
He too seemed to play the role of the new Messiah, disguised as a paintersculptor-inventor, outside all schools, academies, currents, styles, directions, definitions.
The master of “being yourself”. An authentically ancient Soul, out of time. Today, after a lifetime, and after having had the privilege of meeting and collaborating with recognized Masters of absolute value, I can say without any doubt that Francisco was truly a wonderful soul, with exceptional qualities.
He took me under his aegis and began to guide me towards the dimension of the impossible.
The first sentence he said to me when we met was: “You are a swordsman. Come, I’ll make you a portrait” and on a tavern table in a few minutes with charcoal he created a version of me on paper with surprising quality and intensity. “You are made to invent poems” he told me “and recognize the soul through people’s faces. I can teach you but it is not easy to follow my path”.
He spoke to me about physiognomy, an ancient and revealing science, and for years he trained me without ever mentioning it again, only practicing, “words are useless, actions are needed”.
Indeed, my talent for both improvising poems and reading souls through faces soon revealed itself.
WRITTEN PORTRAITS
Many years later the Written Portraits would be born, a real invention born from a vision on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
I had been living between Madrid and Lisbon for a few years, working with the Compagnia Teatro Meridional, co-founded together with two Spanish actors and a Portuguese one, whom I had previously met at the Scuola di Commedia dell’Arte (Art Comedy School).
Our first show “Ki faxiamu noi kui” (What are we doing here) won the Casablanca International Festival in Morocco and from there came an immediate and progressive success with performances and performances all over the world. Other scenic creations then followed. After about three years of great artistic satisfaction, however, I felt that I “had” to return to Italy. Something was calling me, as if I had to continue a personal journey in the Bel Paese. After a long absence, however, I realized that for me it almost meant starting all over again. It just couldn’t be an immediate reintegration into the Italian artistic fabric. In the meantime, I needed to find a satisfying way to get a daily remuneration while waiting for the “New Course”.
I have an indelible memory of the image of me lying down in a room of Costa di Caparica’s house (near Lisbon, Portugal), a few days before returning, with my gaze lost on the ocean that opened up before me, thinking: “What do I do now? How can I earn this money? And how can I earn them with something I’m happy with?” At the end of that afternoon, I realized that the two “practices” I would have most willingly undertaken were: deepening studies in physiognomy and writing poetry. From this incipit, the idea of improvising poems by looking at people’s faces and making me pay for it took light.
In the following days I invented a portable small desk with a folding chair and a lectern with the inscription “Written portraits: poetic portraits on facial features” (later I had it written in beautiful calligraphy by my former partner and splendid artist Federico Sardelli).
That same summer I began to tour most of the theatrical-musical-cultural Festivals in the squares and the villages of Italy. It was an instant hit. Even today, after more than 25 years, it happens that I am still requested for it. For about fifteen years I did them continuously to then be “replaced” by the Reading of the Name.
DANCING
In Italy, in addition to the Portraits, I am committed both to my new artistic integration and to training. I am magnetized by the wonder of dance, especially contemporary dance and Contact, and I “throw” myself into this learning path even if I am no longer a teenager. I am lucky enough to meet souls and professionals of great value including, among others, Ornella d’Agostino, Raffaella Giordano, Inaki Izpillaga, Didier Silhol, Nicola Laudati, Ray Chung, who give me an indelible stylistic imprint. I have the confirmation that I cannot ignore the fact that the body is still “our only way we have to stay in the world” and I feel that I am nourished “in the round” when I enhance it and explore its expressive possibilities. The child who played soccer, ping pong, tennis and who excelled in many sports (despite the “sweat” issue) transferred his enthusiasm to other disciplines without however losing that vital energy which made him feel alive and present.
Dance and football were therefore two fallings in love which, as expected, could bring wonder and “pains” at the same time. As a child there had been the maternal diktat of “not sweating” to unleash “the shadow side”, later the discovery of dance will be associated with another word: breathlessness. In fact, starting to dance very late compared to the canonical ages, I had to conquer the so-called foundations “in the field”. In addition, I didn’t start softly, with a soft apprenticeship, but I immediately made the leap with the professionals.
Looking at myself from the outside, I think I looked like Alice’s White Rabbit, continually out of breath and chased by the ticking of its watch. I chased those who seemed unreachable: too advanced, too good for me. I often felt discouraged. The choreographers seemed icons of mercilessness. No one did slow down or stop to explain better to the late wretch. Their indifference to my struggles would prove very effective. Because just when you “leave the mind” and allow the body to act, the miracle happens: you’re in the right place, knowing what to do.
I started with Ornella d’Agostino’s courses in Cagliari who despite my trudging and my rigidity as a non-dancer, in the breaks stimulated me to continue and hold on. It was a great satisfaction when three years later I met her again for a specialization. In the meantime, I had undergone an intensive training course with several highly esteemed teachers and, seeing me dance, she said: “Stefano, what have they done to you, have they smoothed and smeared you? Fantastic”. And she took me to work in the Company with her.
Another image comes to mind about the issue around “struggling”, transferred in the theatrical field. I was between Bologna and Milan for theater Training with Ludwig Flaszen, a great international figure, a direct collaborator of the unforgettable Jerzy Grotowsky. We were about fifteen students from all over Italy, the characteristic of the rehearsal schedule was that we started at 17.30 and finished at an unspecified time – it could also have been the next morning. The initial training, very physical and very intense, lasted from two to three hours: it was so strong that it happened that someone fell to the ground without strength. Well, I won’t be able to forget that “elf” – then sixty-five years old – who several times in an Italian-Polish said to the person who was knocked down: “This very good moment, very good opportunity to learn without mind, immediately start working as a character” and began to give directives for the actor’s part while the little wretch, with his/her eyes still crossed and numb with tiredness, didn’t know whether to run away, cry or try.
THEATER
If dance becomes a kind of handmaid of mine, the theater remains the guide, the main road. Here the most intense professional experiences.
After the youth training at the “School of Mime and Clown”, at that of “Commedia dell’Arte” and the wonderful experience with Ludwig Flaszen, I will choose to experiment, produce and go on stage without further theatrical training.
I let myself be carried away by the “inside-out” flow and I experiment with everything, I only and carefully avoid prose theater which bores me a lot – both performing it and watching it.
Instead, I fall in love with the union of Theater and Territory and with my Bolognese company “Teatro Ferramenta” I will be able to create for years shows-events throughout the peninsula dedicated to places: scenic events, specific sites, studied and tailored to the place. A practical way to create an active bridge with my ancient passion for art, historical memory and the enhancement of our incredible heritage of wonders.
At the same time, I deepen and experiment in the context of the Storytelling Theater, bringing on stage many historical figures including Dante and Leonardo. Through a deep and light, amused and intense, cultured and popular language, I wish to highlight the human side, the biographical story of these extraordinary figures, often known only for stereotypes. This type of stylistic choice allows me to create a language capable of creating an “alive” theatre, to bring it closer to the people by removing that academic-nineteenth century halo of cultural rigidity that limits its scope and diffusion.
I am attracted by those hybrid-creative koiné where dancers, musicians, actors, singers, acrobats, animals, puppets, puppetry, extras coexist and collaborate. I find myself in harmony in circus situations, in the multi-disciplinarity of creation, where many languages are called to find expressive synthesis.
In this context of multiplication, two experiences deserve a mention: the Musical di Piazza and the Teatro Stalla.
In the first case, the collaboration with the Todo Modo Company of Livorno and with my dear friend Pietro Contorno, lead to the creation of this format that would have proved to be perfectly fitting: a street musical with a theatrical structure. Fifteen actors-singers and ten live musicians, a sort of blockbuster that has toured the squares of Italy with great transversal success with the public. Energy, irony, professional qualities, aesthetic beauty, in a sober and sustainable style, a large eco-show. We produced two of them between 2005 and 2010: “Pinocchio Superstar” (where you saw the events and characters of Pinocchio but told the life of Jesus) and “Alice di Carta” (an interpretation of “Alice in Wonderland” where everything, from the scenography to the costumes, was made of paper).
Teatro Stalla, on the other hand, is an experience born from the collaboration between La Città del Teatro in Pisa – where I worked for several years – and the Emilia Bosis Foundation in Bergamo, which deals with psychiatry. In their structure in Cascina Germoglio, in Verdello (Bg), they have a large number of animals that they use for therapy with patients, both in the care and training phases. The collaboration with the Bosis Foundation lasted for almost 10 years, during which circus shows of great value were set up with humans (artists, operators, patients) and animals together. Given the particular needs of rehearsals and spaces, the president of the Foundation, Piero Lucchini, decided to build the first Stalla Theater in Italy specifically used for events for humans and animals together. The inauguration took place at the beginning of 2014 with two shows, including “Zoologico” directed by me and one signed by Alessandro Garzella.
Furthermore, how can we forget the Equus Travels with the variegated and circus caravan of the Bossi Foundation. Paths in the manner of sixteenth century itinerant companies. A convoy of humans, animals and carriages that left on a tour from Cascina Germoglio. A troupe of patients, operators, actors, performers who with carriages, horses, and bicycles, at a “human and animal” pace, made studied routes on the white roads of the Lombard territory and then – after about two-three weeks – return to Verdello. A gang every evening was welcomed and hosted in a different location, many times making a show in the square. A period reproduction in perfect style. An experience that needs a huge organization behind it, in this case ensured by the staff of the Bosis Foundation. We managed to export the format to France too, with a “twin foundation”, reproducing events and stages with episodes on the beaches of the North Sea among carriages, horses, oysters and music.
TRAINING
Thanks to the imprinting with Lamberto Giannini, over time I have enjoyed teaching in the most disparate places: and it worked! It’s not a matter of ego, but simply of doing it authentically and following deep feeling. I found myself comfortable teaching mime, theatre, body expressiveness, dance, bioenergetics, Commedia dell’Arte. I enjoyed making the actors dance and making the dancers talk. I don’t think teaching is the right term, the expression “acting as a momentary guide” resonates more with me: a sort of amplifier of aptitudes and talents.
I found myself leading courses and courses, often with happenings or final performances in the most disparate places: prisons, psychiatric centres, universities, theatres, holistic centres, monasteries, industries, gyms, dance halls.
I remember the wonderful human and artistic experience at the Gorgona Isola Prison (Li) where we produced, at the end of the training, both shows and valuable short films.
The only real constant unknown: the wind.
To reach the island, the classic ferry service was only once a week. So we traveled with the lookouts of the Penitentiary Guard – who left in the morning from the port of Livorno – but if by chance during our stay on the island for the day’s work the wind should have risen and consequently the sea had thickened, the lookout itself could not secure the return journey until nature subsided. So you left with no guarantee of when you would return. Spending days on an “isolated” and penitentiary island is a privileged experience, but not a “cheap” one. I discovered, for example, that in that context the real prisoners were the prison guards.
Another dive, but this time in the greenery, was the one at the Zen Sanboji Monastery in the high hills of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines (near Berceto). For about three years (in the summer time) I set up together with MasterTetsugen training courses defined as Actor-Zen, something between theater and practices of the ancient Japanese art-tradition. A sort of intensive immersion in the silence, in the greenery, in the dawns, in the invention, in the paradox of being there in that guise, in that hybridization.
OUR “TROOPS” ARE COMING
One evening I was at the “Teatro Del Porto” in Livorno to see a show at the end of the Workshop held by my friend and collaborator Michelangelo Ricci (director of the “Teatro del Porto”). There were about forty people of various ages on stage in an energetic uproar of bodies, words, songs and gestures. In that creative bustle, I noticed a student who had an expressive quality and a kind of energy out of the ordinary. After the show, a mutual friend introduced her to me and I sincerely congratulated her. A few months later, “Effetto Venezia” (the popular cultural festival par excellence in the Livorno summer) commissioned me to produce a rather large production and it was time to cast. I really missed the protagonist, we needed an actress-singer. Many tryouts and attempts but something didn’t convince me. At a certain point the girl from the “Teatro del Porto” came to mind. I said to myself: “She is the protagonist!” The voice of the left hemisphere told me: “You don’t know her”, “she is a beginner”, “you don’t even know if she can sing… how do you plan to make her the protagonist?” The voice of the right one, however, clearly told me to go straight. I tracked her down and called her, and I said: “I have a job offer for you: what do you do from June 30th to August 15th?” On the other side, a sort of stuttering and vague sentences. I immediately asked her. “Can you sing, right?” The answer was yes but emphasizing that there was nothing professional. She was just doing it for fun. “Okay, that’s enough.” And I gave her an appointment for a sort of audition the following week. The rehearsal meeting lasted less than half an hour. I made her move in the space, sing a couple of songs at will, make facial expressions and read a few lines. The intuition I had was absolutely right. It was her!
Beneath the veneer of inexperience and raw material, there was an enormous talent, even greater than the sensation I had. The show was a success with audiences and critics, and she was “incensed” as a young protagonist.
I later discovered that she was also involved in video and film-editing, so the collaboration expanded, to the point of expanding beyond the stage and scenes: the artistic spark became Cupid’s arrow with dart. Valentina Grig became my partner and we soon moved in together. We decided for the countryside, almost woodland, between the provinces of Pisa and Florence, in that of Marti, in the municipality of Monopoli val d’Arno.
A beautiful place: more than suitable for that new start.
In that house, in that magical place, about three and a half years later, Greta Elodie would be born: it was May 12, 2010. After a heavy storm around noon, the sky cleared up and then the sun shone. At 13.10 Greta made her appearance in the world. An immense joy. The set was already like a movie: we had decided to have her born at home, but there was no signal until the evening before… there were still 20 days left before the time decreed by medicine. From nothing to everything. Some small pains the previous evening had appeared negligible. No one would have foreseen that the waters would break the following morning at 8.30 with the relative rush of the two midwives who came from Pisa.
Greta voluntarily chooses to be born early, in the middle of Taurus and in the middle of the countryside on the kitchen sofa surrounded by cats, plants and post-storm scents: more earth than that! Her precocious talent and predilection for animals and their occurrence cannot be called “a coincidence”.
For logistical reasons, Greta Elodie will immediately follow us in our wanderings for travel and transfers with shows, courses, projects, etc. At three months of age, she will make her “premiere” in the theater in the arms of her mother and up to 4-5 years she will continue her periodic appearances on the scene. She then she will say: stop. And she will begin to reclaim her earth-taurus nature. “You travel too much, I want to stay at home”. With two parents like us had she been born Gemini (as she was supposed to) she would have risked being caught in the whirlwind. Instead, she “stayed”.
I only realized much later how much grounding my daughter gave me. For a For an Aquarious rising Leo, the earth is not taken for granted. In addition to the classic father/daughter love, there is a natural understanding between us, as if we had known each other for many lives in a relationship of mutual giving. I believe she chose me so that she could be given the tools she needs in this incarnation. Her presence gave me the opportunity to “land” my gifts, to give more peace to my breathing, more voice to my gestures with a great acquisition of quality of life in everyday life. The whole “family” experience also made us go through difficult areas, highlighting the organizational difficulties of everyday life and the basic differences of climate between Valentina and me. This gap gradually widened, leading us to the separation in 2017, which was very painful at the time but which then allowed each of us to be given even more space and freedom. The real conquest was maintaining a very good relationship between us and continuing to collaborate on a human, artistic and family level. A masterpiece.
SUBTLE WORLDS
This artistic journey of mine – to which my gratitude goes for having made me regain contact and familiarity with the needs of my deep soul – however, I felt that it was not sufficient to contain the extent of the curiosity that inhabited me, of the urgent and continuous need for further nourishment, of tools that would give me the opportunity to see beyond the visible, to discover the hidden paths of the journey. And so, in parallel to my professional career, from the mid-nineties, I began to be an explorer of subtle planes.
Once again, the encounters made the difference.
After Maestro Francisco decided to change dimension at the end of the second millennium, in a more than symbolic 1999, a magical synchronicity led me to meet and collaborate with Alejandro Jodorowsky, another great multidimensional Maestro.
In those years he, although already acclaimed filmmaker and global artist, was still, we can say, a niche author. Along the project-path, where I was able to follow him, we were about fifteen people and we met in small holistic centers or in the welcoming homes of some members of that group, between Bologna and Florence. A creative and exciting apprenticeship of the highest level, an opportunity to explore the hidden and the divergent aspects of the human soul through his teachings of psychomagic and psychogenealogy. How wonderful, I felt at home. During the first two days of that first intensive meeting of ours, I remember laughing or crying. It was so “strong” that at the beginning there was no room for half measures. “I want to study this, this is the way I want to live” I said to myself.
Curious that in all my school career, from first grade to the degree in Literature (18 years), I have never met a teacher: good people and good teachers yes, but no excellences. And instead, the “world outside” with great generosity allowed me to exchange with many extra-ordinary people. It can be seen that already from the end of the millennium the living vein of culture did not pass through the institutions.
With the wind at the back of the Jodorowskyan Zephyr, I dived whole into the ocean of the invisible. Within a few years I began training in dowsing and aura cleansing with Antonino Majorana and Emanuele Mocarelli (two great reference people), Angeology courses with Igor Sibaldi (extraordinary transversal scholar who would later become a dear friend of mine), the experiential study of the Toltec tradition with Maestro Omar Miranda Novales, first, and Marco Baston, later, the study and practice of Gurdjieff’s sacred dances with my friend Shurta, the discipline of Rebirthing through the activation of Alexander Berlonghi, the training in metamedicine with the great Nader Butto, the paths on channeling and dialogue with subtle planes, first with Stefania Croce and then with Sabrina Beretta, other far-reaching ones. Just to name a few of those experiences that have had more continuity over time.
This nurishing nectar has allowed me to begin to heal “the wounds of the soul” precisely (to quote Sabrina Beretta) and to feel like a researcher, a holistic explorer who tries above all to get on the path of awareness starting from the assumption that if you want to improve the world you have to start from yourself.
Here, I have “picked” on myself: not to target myself with harmful arrows and feelings of guilt, but to try to transform rigidity, obstacles and difficulties into learning opportunities.
I would also like to mention another “breaking” encounter that made me “reconnect” with Mayan culture. The intermediary was Stefania Marinelli, an expert astrologer and one of the greatest connoisseurs of the tradition of the “Galactic Maya” in our country. Through her I was able to meet two other founding souls: Antonio Giacchetti and Giovanna Battistini. Through them I then came to the tutelary deity: José Arguelles, the one who has re-coded in our era a series of mysteries buried for centuries. Again, going through the architecture and the texture of this wonderfully surprising system, I felt at home, even though I still know almost nothing about it. The dissolution of the Gregorian Calendar, artificial and inadequate, and the activation of the synchronary of the 13 moons, will, I believe, be one of the steps that will practically sanction the start of the new era.
There are many experiences and explorations that I have conducted and from which I continue to feel attracted to. It often happens to me, walking along the path, to feel a resurfacing of them in my eyes or hands and to feel resonance with others. However, what is truly extraordinary is that, at a certain point, the main paths that I was following in parallel began to intertwine. Without having looked for it, the two paths – that of professional activity and that of personal evolution – have come together in a single great course and they are now essential to each other.
MOVIES
There is also another branch of artistic production which, in the midst of exploring the invisible, has come knocking on my doors: movies. I have always had a strong passion for this art as a spectator. From a very young age, I loved the movies by Pasolini and Fellini, the new German cinematography of the seventies and then Buñuel, the Novelle vague and some great Americans. I received many suggestions from them which I then brought to the theatre. But only at a certain point, at the end of the 1990s, the vision from the camera did open up to me. I would soon realize that I had a great advantage: the innate familiarity with photographs. My father, a worker with eighth grade in the evenings, was however a man of great culture. He had an important library and was a very good photographer. He created his darkroom in the bathroom of the house, doing magic to my eyes. I was born in the midst of photos, developing tanks and fabrics (my mother was a dressmaker) developing an innate competence with respect to visions, shootings and costumes. When I decided to venture into making my first videos – and then documentaries and later films – I didn’t need to follow any school or training: I already knew, without knowing them, the notions needed to frame, shoot, direct.
I started with short clips, first for fun with friends, then with the inmates of the Gorgona Isola Prison, and so the first prizes and awards arrived.
A singular genesis came from the short film Guardàti, the first video production created on the island. After an annual journey, I had written, subjected and screenplayed for a short film, when after the first five days of filming the Ministry of Justice blocks all permits (previously granted) for the professionals and the machinery needed to shoot the work. The reasons will never be clarified. The fact is that everything blocks up.
A global discouragement comes over me. After a couple of nights spent meditating on what to do, I decide not to postpone, not to “give up” and to relaunch.
I still shoot: alone, with the small (non-professional) camera that I have with me on the island. I review the whole project, I adapt it to the new extreme needs.
I put my “makeshift” camera high up, in the filming spaces as if it were one of the surveillance cameras. Fixed camera with a single focal length. An abstract eye looking. I then change angles to have more observation points. I then made some inventions in editing with a good editor. Surprisingly, a work came out that was greatly appreciated, selected by the Bellaria Film Festival where it also received an award from the jury. But I think the real prize was getting to the bottom of it.
I immediately perceived that, behind the camera and behind the scenes on the set, I felt at home again.
A place where I wanted to stay and experience. I am very fond of the cycle of documentaries made with the Tuscany Region and with the Lunigiana Museum Network on the history and memory of that territory, artistic documentaries created specifically to promote culture and historical memory while having fun, with a type of stylistic cut capable of attracting even the imagination of children and young people. Francesca Guastalli – head of the Lunigiana Museum Network – with whom I have been collaborating for many years, an “ancient soul” in sensitivity and love for the area, after yet another work produced, said to me: “I think one day the opportunity will come to make you honorary citizen of Lunigiana and maybe ambassador”. I see myself in the role of the ambassador, especially for the costume!
Through commitment and artistic creation, we have been able to focus on many historical figures in the area and on events of formidable interest, not only local. In this regard, I am reminded of the documentary In search of Apua where the population of the Ligurian Apuans is taken into consideration, a very fascinating people of which practically nothing is known, because the information we have comes from “non-traces”. A people that has left no mark on the territory and no work how can you study? In this regard, for the making of the documentary, I took up the studies of my university thesis supervisor: Piero Pierotti, an expert in urban planning, history and territories who wrote the beautiful text Introduction to ecohistory, a line of research that is based on and draws hypothesis on the “non-traces” precisely.
“How do you study what isn’t there?” From this incipit, the story of the documentary unfolds, even going so far as to hypothesize that Apua – hence the Apuans – was not a classical city located in some specific place in the area to be discovered, but was instead a system of villages that were assembled and disassembled every three-four years and moved place to exploit new land, given that crop rotation was not used. A sort of global village, with no impact on the territory, without environmental modifications, but adapting life to the environment: a reversal of the modern paradigm that would have much to suggest to us today.
Then, I had an important experience as a leading actor in the film “There’s Nothing Left to Do” (Non c’e’ piu’ niente da fare) by Emanuele Barresi, flanked by highly professional actors including Alba Rohrwacher and Rocco Papaleo, a sort of ironic and committed comedy at the same time had good national exposure.
However, this “important” role as a film actor made me understand that this art calls me above all from the other side of the camera: with the eye and active gaze of the director. In the following years, in fact, I dedicated myself to the direction of cinematographic works that could be defined as docu-films, whose intent is to use the language and the filmic pacing to tell the story of a new humanity in an era of transition.
The latest creations in a chronological sense were: “Quarantine”, filmed precisely during the period of the so-called “pandemic”, and “I am in Need of Myself” (Ho bisogno di me) which is the biographical story of a living person (Paola Valeria Jovinelli) who through this film, as in a sort of Jodorowskyan psychomagic act, made a path of self-healing and existential transformation by talking about herself. Now the script for the next film is in progress. The shooting will happen between September and October 2023, and the release by Spring 2024.
NAME READING
This ongoing drive of mine to cross border territories, this disposition to travel in the dimensions of “magical realism”, has brought me other synchronic events over time, which herald creative innovations.
In the early 2000s, I lived in Bologna where I worked with my theater company. At that time, I was following a training in “dowsing and cleaning the aura” together, among others, with a close friend of mine: Serena Tracchi.
One day she phones me and tells me that she has to talk to me and that we have to take at least one afternoon off. She lived in the hills, so I take a train and join her. The revelation was important and would prove to be even more so many years later.
Near the lit fireplace she tells me that during that same week she had had three dreams on three different days which were, surprisingly, one the precise continuation of the previous one. During these lucid dreams the symbolic meanings of all the letters of the alphabet had been dictated to her (each one had a unique and precise symbolic meaning) and then she had been taught a simple mathematical count with which the four cardinal letters of names and surnames. Each of these letters/dots had a symbolic meaning. With every dream she had had the strength to get up and systematically take notes.
I had her “night” notes in front of my eyes.
He had called me as a friend and traveling companion. Given our friendship and sharing paths out of the ordinary, I was the right person to talk to about such a powerful revelation. I thanked her from her heart and at her request I copied all the notes from the original.
We knew we had received a great gift, but we didn’t have the faintest idea of the deep meaning and why it was given to us. We both thanked each other for the value of each other’s presence, grateful to the universe for the gift received, with the good intention of making good use of it. That good intention remained so for a long time because we did not find a way of practical application and finally decided to leave the material there to settle. Those notes remained to decant in a drawer for about fifteen years, like an elixir.
We did forget about their existence for long periods of time. However, I had memorized both all the symbolic meanings and the rules of counting the cardinal letters. Something was calling.
In the late spring of 2017, I was in the province of Lucca, in Capezzano, during the Summer Festival of the beautiful magazine Terranuova, called by the organizers to set up my banquet of Written Portraits. I spend two and a half days writing and dedicating flying poems to people’s faces with an “assembly line” rhythm. On the third day, during the evening, while I was taking everything apart, an acquaintance of mine arrives breathlessly and asks me for the portrait. I apologize and point out that I have already put away the materials and that I have exhausted all resources of time and attention. He insists with a request for a favor and earnestly begs me to do it for him. I’m sorry to displease him, but I feel that my portrait hand has said stop. Then I make him an unexpected proposal even to myself: “Look, I really can’t do the portrait for you, but if you want, I’ll make you the Reading of the Name”. Without any doubts and without even knowing what it was about (and neither do I) he says to me without hesitation: “Yes, very well, it’s fine with me!”
I don’t know where that crazy proposal came from during teardown time. In a low voice I said to myself: “You are out of yourself! You ran out of creative energy and instead of closing gracefully you’re going to get stuck in a mess?” But by now the famous omelette was done. So, strong by the memory of over 15 years of notes in a drawer, I begin this adventure entrusting myself to a sacred protection. I don’t even remember what came out on that first trip, I know he was happy in the end. I can’t say that I felt satisfied, but amazed yes and also surprised.
Why?
I became aware of an anomalous fact: while I was speaking and trying to interpret the Letters and their relationships, some unexpected windows opened up, some surprising ways of interpretation presented themselves to me, some passages clarified for me without my knowing exactly how. I also happened to know things I didn’t remember knowing. What did this feeling mean that it wasn’t just a feeling?
Instead of guessing too much, I felt the only real way was to try again. I needed trusted friends to act as my “guinea pigs”.
It wasn’t hard to find them. And so I began the experiments. The more I went on and the more these phenomena amplified, the more information arrived, the more clarity emerged. An incredible world was opening up and expanding.
I went on for a year making more and more frequent and more in-depth experiments until I could say that I had developed an interpretative system or at least the solid foundations from which to start. I felt that the time had come for a quantum leap. It took determination, courage, audacity and lightness together. I decided to consult three very powerful Souls that I trusted and still trust today, who have, let’s say, “a privileged channel” with the subtle planes. To all three I told the story and the genesis of the whole system and asked the same question: “What should I do with it?” And all three of them (without knowing about each other) answered the same thing: “You are called to bring this interpretative system into the world. It has been given to you because through this in a simple and direct way, with the energy of the masculine, you can help many people. However, you have to value yourself. This must have a price. It needs to become your business and people themselves need to give value and energy to what they do and choose”.
So, I prepared a presentation, I articulated a practical way to do them. While experimenting, I realized that the Reading needed an hour to be able to take place. In a few months without having made a concrete advertisement, the news began to spread by word of mouth until many requests arrived. Most of the Readings took place online with video calls, sometimes instead they organized whole days for me in cultural spaces: people alternated, from hour to hour, from morning to evening. To my great surprise, at the end of the day I wasn’t tired, despite the enormous effort of concentration, as if this gift could also recharge my energy instead of wasting it.
The more I did readings, the more new discoveries came and the more effective they were. Gradually, the time of one hour proved to be inadequate and then reached an hour and a half and then two… up to gradually reaching three. The field of discoveries and sharing was constantly expanding and independent of my will. Today we are at two meetings of an hour and a half to be able to complete the basic reading.
It is almost impossible to explain in a descriptive way what it is: it is like a dance that can only be danced and not analyzed. I had to summarize, I would say that it is an energetic activation through the vibration of one’s name surname, which, in terms of frequency and sound, is like a mantra that resonates in our daily dimension. A crossing that allows you to see and get in touch with your own talents, with the codes that show us privileged paths to take and directions to avoid.
Just like a natal chart of the sky, with its geometries and its transits, gives us an image of our natal plane and of our soul texture, so through the name we have a symbolic plane of the same texture: the addends change but the result does not. It is one of the variegated possible forms for Reading our embodied plane with its subtle stratifications.
In this case, the Name Reading also introduces us to an openly practical part which can be summarized as “practical advice for everyday life”. So, nothing academic, philosophical, sapiential, but a concrete interpretative crossing, connected to our nominal theme. In fact, it is no coincidence that changing the name changes the frequency and therefore the path. It should be remembered, for example, that many artists have achieved success not by chance with a pseudonym. And many Masters, especially of non-European traditions, often used to change the names of their followers to detach them from the “matrices” of very heavy genealogical memories.
I repeat, words cannot do justice to the system, the only way is to try it out.
Although I continue to often use the simplified formula of Name Reading, an abbreviation that defines this practice more completely has come to me, it is the acronym TALKeys: Transformation Activation Liberation Keys.
This is the introduction of the official presentation:
“Keys to transform knots,
activate energies, free talents.
A conversation starting from one’s name
in order to translate the grammar of the soul
and receive maps and practical suggestions
with which to rewrite the newspaper “
PROJECT 20+1
I conclude the review and the excursus with a project that is very close to my heart and which I hope will soon see its beginning. I called it today “20+1”. A creative architecture that brings together many aspects of my artistic and holistic interests: cinema, geography, beauty, art, healing, new medicine, territory, nature, ecology, excellence, maps, unknown paths, energetic places.
I would like to create new terrestrial geographical maps of our wonderful country, new paths to follow that are good for body and soul. For each of these a specific study of the territory is foreseen, a mapping of places, paths, people, souls, excellences, possible encounters, opportunities for amplification of the Self and connections.
For each stage there is a sort of documentary episode that tells the characteristics and wonders of that place-route-territory in images and in a synthetic, amused, profound and light way. A multidimensional work that needs many people who collaborate in its realization and patrons and benefactors capable of feeling its authentic value: souls who choose to invest in public health projects. A value and cooperative rewriting of our territory.
For the continuation of this and other projects, I give you an appointment along one of the trajectories outlined. At the pace that best matches your pace. In the meantime, I thank you for your attention, for your patience and for your listening. And as the great Leonardo says… “rarely does fall who walks well”.
