It is wrong to assume that only powerful men should be feared. Weak men could be just as dangerous. They do precisely the same things, but out of weakness.

Generally speaking, everyone possesses some sort of absolute power, therefore everyone can heal or hurt absolutely. Victory, revenge, atrocity and failure come in all forms and sizes. Just like salvation.

PS: Serge Gainsbourg‘s “Cannabis“ is one of the best instrumentals I’ve ever heard.

PS2: This drawing I’ve made a few years ago (“The Secret”, ink and pen on paper, 18/24 cm.) inspired the painting I’m doing right now. I believe the outcome will be at least…perplexing.

I’ve recently realized that the older I get, the more I doubt people’s ability to stay (reasonably) sane. And thus, from the depths of my insanity, I’m saying that I don’t believe in innocence. I may believe in ignorance, ineptitude and imbecility, but innocence, my friends, it is a luxury state (of mind?) that no mature person is allowed to approach innocently.

The well-known prestige of innocence needs no further explanation. I guess it has always been intact. Even today, when nobody believes in moral values (or guilt, for that matter.)

The lack of knowledge of evil is one of the most visited topoi in religion and idealistic political/social systems. It is also one of the most used excuses we hear in educational contexts (fair enough); and, also, in infidelity contexts. In both the last two cases, the excuse goes like this: “He didn’t know what he was doing, he was just exploring the world and lost his way for a moment”. Right. You can’t argue with that, can you?

The “worst” thing about innocence is its being unable to question its own worth,  to justify its own merits, and  then use them as alibi. So once an innocent person claims his innocence, he becomes an impostor! Innocence does not and should not work as a firewall.

Innocence is not to be used by practical men. Innocence belongs to “another” world that still believes in meaning in general and in otherworldly models in particular. Otherwise it becomes not only superfluous, but also highly annoying.

We live in an insanely wrong world where even the fools are guilty. So, again, from the depths of my insanity, I would like to defend our right to be guilty, as a practical and honest solution for getting by in a hostile cosmos.

Less ironically put: a distinct guilt which is reasonably dealt with, is probably nowhere near innocence; yet it makes a lot more sense than sending “innocent inputs” into an non-ideal mechanism (like our world seems to be).

So don’t make it worse than it already is. Under earthly circumstances, just don’t be so indecent to play the innocent. If you let it be, then let it be guilty.

PS: Two of the four paintings in “The Comfort of Being Small” series are finished, as you can see above. The 3rd is in the work. The 4th is waiting patiently to be born. I’ll soon update the PORTFOLIO with high-quality images.

PS2: Tori Amos: the perfect blend between musical instinct and purposeful writing.

Anton Corbijn does something that, to my knowledge, no other rock photographer thought of doing: charging the individual (who, accidentally, has the apparent quality/qualification of being a rock star) with a new energy that pulls him off the limelight, de-constructs his notorious identity and rebuilds him anew on different premises, within a re-calibrated reality.

PS: if you find yourself near Fotografiska Museet in Stockholm, check out Corbijn’s “Inwards and Outwards” exhibition starting in 3 days from now (January 14) and ending in three months from now (April 2012).

Let me now write about nothing. I figure you will take care of everything that’s left.

This morning, for instance, I thought about  Erich Fromm’s “The Art of Loving”. So inglorious to mention it, and  what a bore for you to read about it. Yet, it remains an inestimable book with  everlasting pertinence. The wisest, the most comprehensive, and the most decent approach of love and loving I’ve read so far.

Claiming that love is too “mysterious” for being theorized looks like a comfortable perspective on human relationships. But that’s implausible; it’s like waiting cross-armed for a natural disaster to bind or unbind  what you have started “by mistake”, “by chance” or “by grace”. On the other hand, thinking that love is perfectly understood by having it studied, is wrong. No emotional crisis is ever solved only by understanding it.

Apparently, theory has never been so far away from practice as it is when it comes to loving and being loved.

We can safely say that failing is the most probable outcome of the loving process. We are always more incompetent than we thought. And, sooner or later, less in love than we admit. The most respectable father and husband, “the man of principles” himself, discovers one day how little he cared. The most dedicated mother and wife, the “woman” herself, discovers (rather sooner than later), how little she loved, and how vain her sacrifices were.

Love is a rather impossible blend of theory and practice, or, as Fromm puts it, an art (but what a  pathetic and worn-out word this is!).

Shortly, you can’t do it if you ain’t got the talent. And you can’t keep it if you don’t give a s**t about the theory behind it. It’s like you’re born with some kind of (un)natural inability of loving right, and, what’s even worse, with the very inability of ever being aware of what you’ve been loving wrongly.

These being said, I wish you all a splendid 2012 and a Boogie street to stroll on.

Knowing yourself very little is  an important precondition for well being. After all, who would bear the pain of knowing everything about one’s self and still enjoy a Christmas meal?

We, the late moderns, secretely believe that ignorance will, one day, save our souls. We also encourage “the superstition” that he who gives serious thoughts to everything  is more likely to be destroyed by his own snoopiness.

Curiosity, it seems, is a curse, never a blessing. And self-examination is, ladies and gentlemen, the worst kind of  self-abuse; obviously, an embarrassing vice not a meritable virtue.

Philistinism and denial are the two most natural man’s states. We never really undertsand why we should be brave, coherent and true to ourselves and to others.

Take this banal example: Have you ever counted how many times your friends contradict themselves during a single conversation? And have you noticed how little you are bothered by such little incongruities? And did you realize that you are unable to say what you really mean, while you have no problem with saying precisely the opposite of what you mean?

I know, how pathetic of me to write about all these! And how boring for you to read. But hey, everything sounds boring and pathetic in pre-Christmas times. So I couldn’t find a better moment to warn you about one thing: unlike the excess eating during winter holiday, an overdose of introspection could be lethal.  Merry Christmas! Eat more, think less.

PS: the second painting from the series “The Comfort of Being Small” is finally done. It’s a large canvas (120/140 cm) and it took me half year (on and off) to complete it. I confess I agonized over every spot and every line. It was tougher than I could ever have anticipated. One moment I was happy with the progress, a week later I was disappointed. It had nothing to do with swinging moods. It’s just that I”ve always had this weird “gift” of going from worst to best and back again; ironically, this is the only constant in my (scholarly and artistic) life. Everything I do, ends up as a severe, nerve-wrecking surviving exercise.

Sorry for the poor quality  pictures. I’ll take some decent ones (and a new camera…) in a week or so.

Oh, and by the way, in case you wonder: the comments on this post are from 2008. As you probably noticed, I’m in the process of re-writing some of my old texts.

December is crazy. Actually, if December was a person,  he would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Yesterday everyone was literally running on the streets; their glossy Christmas gift bags were held in very many different ways for very many different reasons; some like trophies, some like balloons, some like hand weights for power walking, some like dynamite.

And BOOM!!! I’ve seen men looking pale when leaving jewellery shops. Someone threw up just 10 centimeters away from my boot. A couple of horrific Santas insisted in handing me horrific flyers advertising faux-leather bags. A dog was eating a bird. A woman in a Range Rover opened the window and spat out a petrifying curse. Two workers were hanging twinkling red bulbs forming the word “MEAT” ( it’s absolutely true!). A bartender charged me a fortune for a honey’ed espresso made with tap water. And finally a bunch of teenage girls bought an awful lot of home-made red lollipops labelled “Organic Santa”, from a funny cross-eyed charlatan. Later, I’ve seen the girls jiggling in the bus station. Understandingly, they weren’t keen on actually eating the candies; they were using them for other, most improper, yet slightly hilarious purposes.

Don’t look around if you’re one of those who still believe in life and togetherness after Christmas; and in love beyond the gift boxes.

After all, you, lonesome ones, you should be happy. You, lonesome ones, you look serene and self-possessed. Now you can see the whole world shaking and collapsing behind you, like a huge bug that fell on his back.

PS: some bread and circus from Marc Almond to you all.

Men invented the myth, women invented the gossip.
But we all love a good story.

PS: Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake again in my iPod. Happiness Stan is my favorite character, and Marriott & Lane is my favorite combo.

Believing that wisdom and serenity are always in the hands of the old, is naive. Growing old has to do (at most) with 1. false hopes or 2. resentment. Some aged people seem to be perfectly equipped for the first; some others seem to be perfectly equipped for the latter.

Yet, most of the times, the old grow older in highly ambiguous ways.

Roughly put, the old age is a time that sets the source of three kinds of ambiguity: 1. the waste, 2. the chill, and  3. the absence.

I’ll approach them one by one.

1. The waste is, in every respect, enormous. Illnesses wasting the body; nostalgia wasting the heart; those long, empty hours that waste the old man’s will and turn it into something arbitrary and, somehow, dispensable.

When neither the gain nor the loss makes sense, everything’s a waste.

2. The chill: the old body warms up slower, and chills down quicker. The shivering is its second nature; it’s also the closest answer to life, and the grossest hint to death. Growing old as growing cold…

3. The absence. As the world deflates becoming no more than a ghost army of forgotten names, the absence expands. Just try to picture this: the absence, unfolding itself like a blooming, inodorous, dark flower; first, obstructing the corners of the room; later on, covering empty chairs and dusty tables, shrouding faces and genealogies, and, finally, congesting the nostrils of the soul. The moment when an old soul is no longer able to breath in hopes and exhale promises, the absence comes to life for real; it turns from an insidious velvet flower into a lively beast: the shocking angel. Just like Jacob upon his return to Canaan, the old man struggles with The Absence itself, with the solid, dashing absence of everything he used to be, of everything that’s growing out of his reach.

But there’s no way for him to see “the face” of this Absence (his Absence), and live. He either lives on in a sanctuary of illusions, hallucinating by the edge of reality, or he dies. The moment he chooses to live sanely, the ambiguity creeps in. “Who am I?” Who is he, the man who won the battle with his own Absence? “Who am I?” Who is he, the man who trips on his shoelaces, drops the tea cup, and stumbles in everyday recollection? “Who am I?” Who is he, the man who has no social legitimation to be alive, and no existential justification to function socially? “Who am I to be?“

The old is ontologically distinct from the young. And nothing can fill up the gap between that which is ontologically desirable (because socially triumphant), and that which is ontologically a waste (because socially absent). The young is gold, the old is cold.

PS: And no, I’m not done with Olympia album yet…Check this out!

PS2: See above apiece from a series of charcoals I’ve made for someone’s office. Soon, my most…sophisticated and largest painting (not sure it counts as the best though…) will be completed. Watch this space, it’ll show up in two weeks or so.

There must be so many cowards hiding behind their dreams!…

A life full of dreams is just as full and just as empty as a newly-freed hotel room: thousands and thousands of absences floating around, filling the corners, thrilling the bed sheets. Everyone‘s in there, and no one‘s to be found.

“Never give up your dreams!” is a dangerous modern edict. And – as perplexing as it sounds – a humiliating ideology, an insult to our intelligence and adaptation abilities.

No, we cannot do anything. And no, not everything’s possible. There’s nothing positive about “positive thinking”, and the idiotically positive views on “personal growth” have made more losers than winners.

Optimism is not about ignoring the bad, but about acknowledging the slightest form of anything remotely good that comes your way. How can you detect it if you never pay attention to reality? And how can you pay attention (and respect) to what is yet to come if you’re too busy refining our dreaming skills, building up on air?

A most beautiful dream is no more than a very absence. The more extensively dreamt, the more absent and pressing will become. Till it’ll swallow you in. And then, it will no longer be you working on a dream, it’s gonna be the dream working on you, haunting your rooms, switching your lights off, sucking your powers, turning you into a zombie ready to throw himself out of the window for the sake of his master.

There’s no higher existential “savoir-faire” than managing our ideals; that is, knowing when and how to give up our dream for saving our reality. For a start, never check in a double room, if single. It will only double the absence.

PS: A musical update for this old post: yeah, again, it’s all about Bryan Ferry. It has always been him in the latest weeks. Olympia album: the most glacially vibrant music I’ve heard in a long time. No wonder it was made by a 60-something man. Don’t miss it for God’s (or at least for Kate Moss’) sake. There’s a sense of achievement and a sense of loss all over this album that makes every sound and every word sound gorgeously heavy. I tried to dig into the whole loss-and-gain game of the old age in my latest book on modern dying; not out yet, for reasons beyond my control. Anyways. Check out Ferry’s “Me Oh My”.

Cesare Pavese’s The business of living: Diaries 1935-1950: thick, uneasy, imperative. Unlike Julien Green’s, Pavese’s diary ideas, intentions and interpretations cut like a knife. The whole book is bleeding. Even his theoretical thinking (the art of translation, philological reflections, writing tricks) reveals a kind of neurotic excitement of the mind that – usually – one saves for life matters only. I’m under the impression that Pavese had the talent – the rare talent – of making everything sound complicatedly alive; then he panics; and turns everything (himself included) into a safe, sad story.

PS: The DJ in me thinks you should start your Friday afternoon with this track. (Exquisite booklet, by the way…)

What do we know about the precise nature of our goals and ardent expectations? Not much, I’m afraid.

In fact, the most comfortable expectations are the general ones. The precision of our destinations, desires and ambitions is a bravery that borders on barbarism. It scares everyone away; and we’re always the first ones to run off.

PS: Try Bryan Ferry’s new album Olympia and you won’t regret it. It’s sophisticated, seductive, gracious, complex, not dated yet not trendy. This man and his music are effortlessly timeless. Check out “Reason or Rhyme” for a start.

Very quickly, as I child, I understood that prudence is the stepsister of vigilance; “the cheaper” sister of discretion; the bigger sister of timidity; and the twin sister of hostile suspicion.

I knew, for what concerned myself, that my friends from kindergarten would never tolerate “a prudent behavior” and would call it instead “chicken” and “girl” and “wussy” and “baby”. Later on, in school, they’d called it “pussy” and “bitter” and  “mouse” and “aloof”.

However, these days they call it “thoughtful”.

The difference is vast.  And the meaning of this difference, immeasurable.

The hiatus between “chicken” and “thoughtful” never gives rise to questions in an adult mind. Who would ever suspect a prudent man of lacking wisdom??? Who’d call a suspicious man a bloody coward?  Who’d be, after all, circumspect about circumspection? If one, only one of these questions would pop up in someone’s mind, the whole world could collapse in chaos and confusion.

For practical reasons, we just can’t afford to seek proof for a prudence claim. We just can’t afford to acknowledge that a prudent person is often nothing more than a labyrinth of interrupted reactions, distrust, vanity, obscure retreats, secret ambitions,  intimidation, and self-unconfidence.

Exercising good judgment is an engaging and uncomfortable act of courage. If prudence is a part of it, that’s only because any proper adjustment to reality implies a reflexive distance taken from daily harassing circumstances. Good judgment is sometimes nowhere near prudence. It is instead all about “fighting cheerfully” (as Shakespeare put it), here and now, with outrageous incidents and  mindblowing temptations.

If you’re incurably prudent, you’re not well. You’re in a secret battle with reality. And you’ll never win.

PS: I bought some old music scores from eBay. All for the great design of the covers. Forgotten  silly hits like “I Love The Sunshine Of Your Smile” from 1951, and, above all, April Stevens‘ “Teach Me Tiger” from 1959!!! One has to hang it on one’s wall in spite of everything! Do you remember the song?

Fascinated by Pär Lagerkvist’s Dvärgen (The Dwarf). This is stark, hard-core prose. I couldn’t find one single mediocre sentence, I couldn’t sense one single fall out of rhythm. There’s a quintessential abyss behind each and every single (simple!) remark.

I am SO sick and tired of all those twisted words that keep most of the contemporary writers busy! The samples of human disintegration, in all its arrogant self-denial and trivial knavery, gets irrelevant whenever the writing is anaemic, diluted or overstyled. Lagerkvist’s elegant precision cuts like an exquisite knife. Personally, I see no other way of hinting at the grand truths of human littleness.

PS: lovely piece of music you surely know: Small Faces, “Afterglow (of your Love)”. And one of my all time favs, “Tin Soldier” live. Years pass, but Steve and Ronnie have never been more actual.

There’s something engaging about Mondays; something adventurous and crazy and sparkling that cuts through the illusion of the amorphous, fluid-like week going down the sewer.

There is – or there should be – a special chemistry between humans and Mondays. They legitimate each other symbolically. They are partners. They negotiate sweat, blood, tears, and time.

You could kill a Friday, a Sunday, or a whole weekend. Or two weekends. Or you could kill three of them in a row  if you’ve really got the talent to. But you’ll never put a Monday down. So better come to terms with it.

He who raises hand against a Monday, is, by all means, a man divided against himself. By next Monday, he’ll be on Prozac.

PS: Leonard Cohen: a stranger and  a friend; no, correction: a stranger is a friend.

A great deal of our thoughts will forever remain prisoners in our heads. Jailed for life.

There’s a forbidden circus secretly going on in our head, risking, at any  given moment, to become banned: clowns doing mortal jumps,  hippos eating dwarfs, illusionists fixing word-and-image cocktails consisting of elaborated suspicions, anticipated scenarios, outrageous reasonings, intolerable fantasies, lies we’d never dare to lie, truths we’ll never dare to tell, heartbreaking farewells and dazzling proposals we’ll never say out loud, curse words and petting words that won’t make it to anyone’s ear.

I believe that our head becomes, with age, a glorious and frightening place filled with everything that’s extreme about us; a concentration camp for  the highest hopes and for the most miserable cowardices, for our lowest and most sublime reflections, for all the stuff we couldn’t imagine to live on. Funny, we do act and look like living on bread, but we’re essentially enlivened by circus; that circus of it all.

Some say I shouldn’t have blogged that much about various kinds of stupidity . Some even say I shouldn’t have  blogged at all (I hear you, be patient!). My online presence is basically puzzling to many people who know me personally. I got friends telling me I’m not made for blogging,  blogging spoils my “image”, wastes my time etc.

And perhaps they’re right; what do I know? Or how should I know? I should first learn how to properly care about it. So far I haven’t heard one single vigorous reason against online spreading of my (or anyone’s) reflections on stupidity.

As a matter of fact, if each and every person you know would make an effort to circumscribe one or two sorts of stupidity, we’d live in a better world.

Some things annoy us only because they’re confusing, whirling round and round in our heads, without ever being formulated as distinct statements. Once spoken or written, they become “tamed”, easily manageable, harmless.

Some other things are simple; rock-hard-certain and taken for granted as such; but once spoken out loud, they become problematic, irritating, inscrutable.

Generally speaking, there must be lots of everyday issues we need to look at. And none is  ”hot”.  Writing books about daily little annoying things – unless you have a Balzacian talent for observation and a Dostoevskian talent for deep psychology – is slightly ridiculous, and somehow arrogant. BUT knowing how (and why!) we’re supposed to approach – our and others’ – daily moments of stupidity should be on everyone’s agenda; unless we enjoy being the victims of n+1 imbeciles who try, day after day, to take over our lives…

And all these  should be done not for the sake of “culture”, but for the sake of our living existential standards. Even if we don’t plan to write a study on stupidity or give postdoc lectures on this  fascinating topic, we should still reserve our right to circumscribe it, challenge it, or complain about it. Around the kitchen table, on the phone, on Tuesdays, on line, on and on and on.

PS: Regina Spektor’s album Far is growing on me in unexpected ways. Why haven’t I learned my Regina-lessons better? It happened just the same with all her previous releases. My favorite so far is “Genius Next Door”. Faultless, classic Regina track!

People’s faces in September. Have you noticed them? They’re glowing, confident, snappy!

The extravagant summer tan is slowly fading, leaving all those cappuccino-coloured spots on foreheads, shoulders and necks. The eyes are back in action, there’s no more summer lust running down the cheeks like half-melted strawberry ice cream, no. Watch closely! There are perky eyes, not dilated pupils behind those September sunglasses.

Mouths are talking into phones so the lips look thinner as they move faster; the smiles are a lot cleverer and less cheesy, the collars are stiff, the neckline is high, the hair gets darker, the brain gets excited.

All these supernatural, smooth faces walk up or down the streets, looking like heading somewhere and necessarily believing they are going to make a big difference.

They feel transfigured by their future, they believe in transactions and ideal customers, they believe in transparent markets and they believe in low rents, they believe in communication, ecology, in peace,  love and understanding. They believe in all those things that seemed unbelievably funny during summer.

Heaven knows, this city has never been more optimistic and the sun has never been kinder and more patient with all these faces. Of course, the sun is still the ideal client to work with. And here we are, completing the brightest deal and thus making our personal contribution to the well-being of the universe.

Under September sunshine, everything turned to heavy gold bars; just reach out and grab one, they’ll be all gone by Christmas.

PS: And then get your teenage kicks right here. I will never stop falling in love with this song, year after year after year. So honestly-built, so cleverly-arranged, so genuinely-catchy, so impossible to recapture it in today’s writing and producing habits without sliding into a cliché…