The Enchanted Glasses

At the age of 18 I had eye surgery, thus getting rid of the glasses I wore since I was a child.
But many years spent between books and laptops, for twelve hours a day, begin to take their toll, and now I’m back to putting on glasses again. I thus rediscovered an enchantment that I had almost forgotten.

Wearing glasses has a double advantage: you can put them on, and take them off.
You can look at things clearly when you need to. If, on the other hand, I take off my glasses and don’t try to focus, rather I relax the muscles around my eyes as much as possible, reality becomes an impressionist painting. The tiniest or most distant details merge into esoteric forms, the identity of which I delight in guessing or inventing, looking for the most implausible solutions (I know that indistinct shape looking out the window above cannot be a horse’s head, but what if it was?). While walking in the park, I can even pretend to be an explorer of an alien world, with my helmet visor fogged up!
In the twilight, then, each room becomes mysterious. My own collection — as I often change places for the various pieces — is no longer familiar to me, if I look at it from a distance. I no longer remember what I put on that shelf, but there’s an object that appears as a soft and uncertain, milky brush stroke… it would be enough to put the glasses back on to know exactly what it is, and it’s enough to not put them on in order to stay lost in the reverie.

Yet it is not just a game. Having these two senses of sight available gives access to two different sensitive realities. One is defined, and allows to be navigated in safety; the other is of an imperfect and wavering beauty, as if lit by a flickering candle. One is dry, the other soft. One is subtle and precise, the other full of nuances.
They are complementary perspectives, even on a philosophical level: seeing everything clearly is useful but sad, like always being sober; seeing blurred gives access to the particular poetry of the unfinished but it is incapacitating, like always being drunk.

In his book In Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki wrote:

Remove the lid from a ceramic bowl, and there lies the soup, every nuance of ist substance and color revealed. With lacquerware there is a beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its color hardly differing from that of the bowl itself. What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish, but the palm senses the gentle movements of the liquid, vapor rises from within forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapor brings a delicate anticipation. What a world of difference there is between this moment and the moment when soup is serverd Western style, in a pale, shallow bowl. A moment of mystery, it might almost be called, a moment of trance.

And finally there is one last wonder: without glasses, I can observe my own gaze. That is, I can concentrate on the “filter”, that slight blur that stands between me and reality and makes my vision so indecipherable. I am allowed to contemplate slight changes in the way the world presents itself: according to the light, to my own tiredness, to the dispositions of my heart.

This filter is the gift that time has given me, passing over my eyelids and depositing the patina of the past.

 

Two Appointments With Enchantment

This week you can come and meet me in two particular events.

On November 9th at 6 pm I will be in Bologna, at the extraordinary wunderkammer/library Mirabilia in via de ‘Carbonesi, to talk about my two guide books on Paris and London.
The library is called Mirabilia, my book series is called Mirabilia — you can’t go wrong.

The next day (10 November) I will move to Pescara where I have been invited for the annual edition of the book festival FLA.
At 22.30 at the aptly named Bizarre Club I will hold a talk entitled Un terribile incanto: il Macabro e il Meraviglioso tra arte, scienza e sacro (“A Terrible Enchantment: The Macabre and the Wonderful between Art, Science and the Sacred”).
I will be honest: talking about Thanatos in a night club dedicated to alternative sexuality and to the cultural implications of Eros, I think it’s an appropriate and remarkable goal for my career as a specialist of the bizarre!

Booksigning 2016

There will be plenty of opportunities to meet before the year is over.

His Anatomical Majesty will be presented at the University of Padova on November 22. Here are the event details:


But that’s not all. Besides the usual appointment at Lucca Comics & Games (tomorrow you will find me there, at the stand Logos, E137 Napoleone), I will also be in Florence on November 3 to converse with Claudio Romo, author of Nueva Carne — not to mention all the events of the Academy of Enchantment, taking place every Sunday in Rome.

If you want your book copy signed, if you would love to chat a bit about those topics you never get to discuss with anybody (because how-can-you-like-things-like-that) or even just to drop by and say hello, here is my schedule.
See you soon!

The Academy of Enchantment

The time has finally come to unveil the project I have been spending a good part of this year on.

Everything started with a place, a curious secret nestled in the heart of Rome, a stone’s throw away from the Circo Massimo. Very likely, my favorite haven in the whole city: the wunderkammer Mirabilia, a cabinet of wonders recreating the philosophy and taste of sixteenth-century collections, from which modern museums evolved.

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Taxidermied giraffes and lions, high-profile artworks and rarities from all over the world were gathered here after many years of research and adventures by the gallery owner, Giano Del Bufalo, a young collector I previously wrote about.

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This baroque studio, where beauty marries the macabre and the wonderful, has become for me a special spot in which to withdraw and to dream, especially after a hard day.
Given these premises, it was just a matter of time before the idea of a collaboration between Bizzarro Bazar and Mirabilia was born.

And now we’re getting there.
On October 9, within this gallery’s perfect setting, the Academy of Enchantment will open its doors.

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What Giano and I have designed is an alternative cultural center, unprecedented in the Italian scenario and tailor-made for the lovers of the unusual.
The Academy will host a series of meetings with scientists, writers, artists and scholars who devoted their lives to the exploration of reality’s strangest facets: they range from mummification specialists to magic books researchers, from pathologists to gothic literature experts, from sex historians to some of the most original contemporary artists.

You can easily guess how much this project is close to my heart, as it represents a physical transposition of many years of work on this blog. But the privilege of planning its ‘bursting into’ the real world has been accorded only by the friendly willingness of a whole number of kindred spirits I have met over the years thanks to Bizzarro Bazar.
I was surprised and actually a bit intimidated by the enthusiasm shown by these extraordinary people, whom I hold in the highest regard: University professors, filmmakers, illusionists and collectors of oddities all warmly responded to my call for action, which can be summarized by the ambitious objective of “cultivating the vertigo of amazement”.

I address a similar appeal to this blog’s followers: spread the word, share the news and participate to the events if you can. It will be a unique occasion to listen and discuss, to meet these exceptional lecturers in person, to train your dream muscles… but above all it will be an opportunity to find each other.

This is indeed how we like to think of the Academy of Enchantment: as a frontier outpost, where the large family of wonder pioneers and enthusiasts can finally meet; where itineraries and discoveries can intersect; and from which, eventually, everyone will be able to head off towards new explorations.

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In order to attain the meetings you will be requested to join the Mirabilia cultural association; on the Accademia dell’Incanto website you will soon find all about the next events and application methods.
The Accademia dell’Incanto is also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
“Keep the World Weird!”