MUCH LESS
Parte I -Self-isolation-
After many perplexities, with the fear and confusion of the case, on March 23 I left London to return to Manziana, the village where I grew up north of Rome. From the airport I went to Bracciano to spend the two weeks of mandatory isolation imposed to all of those returning from abroad, I was lucky to have the chance to stay as a guest in a friend's holiday house, I decided at the end to stay there the whole month before moving to my parents’ place.
The house is in the small historical center, it’s composed of only one room and from the outside, it looks like one of those houses that are drawn by children, a rectangle with a triangle on the top. I felt home but finding myself overnight from a city like London, not yet in lockdown, to the reality of a village paralysed by COVID_19 destabilise me a bit, immediately sets in motion consideration and new unusual gestures.I begin to write a diary, every day I draw an imaginary figure of a woman that I hang on the wall to keep me company and to keep track of the days passing. I photograph the few objects I find in the house, to make them familiar, they are old tools, stones, a cow's skull, feathers.
This series does not arise from the need to be a testimony for the future, but rather has the task of deepening and meditating on my new present.
The silence was almost absolute, I spent a lot of time observing the spring and its changes in temperature and mood, I followed it with a few moments of solitude but mainly of gathering and calmness. Here life flows with slow rhythms, always. I gradually emptied myself of the accumulated anxieties.
Often I felt to be out of reality, it was for a long time that I wanted to go back to the countryside, my life in the city is very simple, but here finally the essential is not for me a choice of life but it is the life itself. I kindly reconcile myself to the sky and the horizon that I hardly ever see in London, as well as the wild nature that covers the moat below the house.
I've always tried to need just a few things, to have more time for myself. To add the power of nature, the moon reflected on the lake, the stars, and having only the essentials with me confirms that I need much less.
Could be this 'less' one of the main key to built a more equal, and sustainable society?