Central argument
In a secular, materialist society, art is the only space left where we can have, even as non-believers, direct contact with magic, with the image that becomes real. Creativity and spirituality aren't opposed: they meet. The book isn't a memoir or a novel. It's an essay on artistic practice as a vertical search: not horizontal expansion (numbers, success, "does it work?"), but a descent toward your own centre and a climb back up toward the sky.
The thread running through it is the tension between discipline and doing nothing, which Brondi shows to be the same thing: both are "conquiste dell'inutile" ("conquests of the useless"), practices that have to do with being, not doing. Doing yoga, running, meditating isn't optimising your profile; it's remembering you have a body, lying in wait, getting ready to go deep without burning out.
The masters Brondi calls on, from the most imposing (CCCP, Murakami, Kerouac, Grotowski, Jung) to the quietest (his grandmother Cecilia, the woman in the Gospel), aren't there to lend authority. They work as an immune system: knowing that others have already put their hands in the fire gives you the courage to do it again.
Objections
- The book says it wants to "insegnare come essere poeti senza vivere come poeti" ("teach how to be poets without living like poets") (Bukowski), but it stays closely tied to the experience of an artist who has already made it: the freedom to step out of the market's logic comes after having dealt with it.
- The list of masters is endless and male (exceptions: Antonia Pozzi, Rosalía). Brondi himself names the risk of turning this crowd into a new theatre, but it stays open.
Examples / Notable passages
- Duende: the sound engineer Gigione after the gig at the centro sociale, "c'era la gente imbarazzata" ("people were embarrassed") as the highest compliment. Duende is connecting the artistic gesture to your own emotional centre, not the technical virtuosity of scales.
- The woman in the Gospel (Notizie di me): bleeding for 12 years, she touches Jesus' cloak and is healed. Jesus says: "La tua fede ti ha salvata" ("Your faith has made you well") (Matthew 9:22). The real miracle isn't the miracle, it's the faith. His debut in 2007-8 had the same structure.
- The Zen monks with the bell: they sit in a circle and may speak only if their voice trembles. Otherwise, silence. When the voice trembles, something that was deep down is coming out.
- The immune system of the soul (chapter on Murakami): writing means releasing a toxic substance in the body. To do it for 30 years without dying of it you have to build a strong body. Murakami runs; Brondi does yoga. It's the least romantic thing to say, and that's the point.
- Hara: in Japanese culture, the point two fingers below the navel where every artistic gesture has to start. Not from ideas in your head. Grotowski let his actors work on art only after 3 hours of exhausting physical training: "Ok, adesso siete più sinceri." ("OK, now you're more sincere.")
- Andy Warhol and grandmother Cecilia: the same bedroom, with crucifix, Madonna, rosaries, icons. Warhol went to Mass every day and volunteered in soup kitchens. He kept it all perfectly secret his whole life. The chapter is called Proteggere Dio (Protecting God): he couldn't put God on the art market because that value was too high.
- Lightning Field (Walter De Maria): four hundred poles six metres tall in a field in New Mexico that draw lightning. Art as an antenna, connecting sky and earth.
- Gianni Celati: he went out at 9 in the morning, walked the hills around Bologna until 5 in the afternoon, came back dead tired, wrote for half an hour and kept only that. He wanted to get away from the idea of being in total control.
- Shock telepatico (Telepathic shock, Kerouac): if you feel something deeply, a person with the same sensitivity will feel it exactly as you did. The courage to tell the truth passes on like a shock.
Synthesis
- Art isn't a horizontal search (expansion, numbers) but a vertical one: from your own white-hot centre upward.
- Discipline and doing nothing don't contradict each other: both are about being, not doing.
- Blind faith, against all odds, is the precondition of creative work.
- The immune system of the soul (a strong body, physical practice) is what lets you keep going deep without burning out.
- The masters aren't authorities: they're company. You don't do it alone.
- The unconscious comes up through practice (guitar, writing, running), not through telling it.
Parlarne tra amici: Una puntata spirituale con Vasco Brondi
Watch on YouTube: Daria Bignardi with Silvia Righini and Stefano Sgambati. It's the first time Brondi talks about the book, "la prima copia che vedo" ("the first copy I've seen"), and you can tell: he's as nervous as for a record, more than he expected.
Cringe vs. duende. Brondi notes that in today's alternative scene there's "un'estetica del carino" ("an aesthetic of the cute"): you have to believe in it, but not all the way, otherwise it's cringe. He grew up with things that "erano una questione di vita o di morte" ("were a matter of life or death"), which is cringe by definition. When fashion houses start bringing you in for their shows, he says, "stai facendo tappezzeria" ("you're making wallpaper").
Daria on the book's structure. She calls it "un saggio che si legge come un romanzo sulla creatività, la meditazione e soprattutto la spiritualità — il corto circuito e armonia tra creatività e spiritualità" ("an essay that reads like a novel about creativity, meditation and above all spirituality, the short circuit and harmony between creativity and spirituality"). A dense book, which she read stopping all the time to look up the things it cites. She ordered at least four of the books it mentions.
Daria's question about fear. She notes that Brondi always surrounds himself with big references: first CCCP and Luigi Ghirri, then meditation masters, Gandhi, artists. Then she puts it more precisely: "Sembra quasi che tu abbia paura di qualcosa di te stesso — come se ti circondassi di angeli e artisti che ti sostengono per non guardare, o non riconoscere, qualcosa che è tuo." ("It almost seems you're afraid of something in yourself, as if you surrounded yourself with angels and artists who hold you up so you don't look at, or don't recognise, something that is yours.") It isn't just shyness toward the outside: it may be a defence against something inside. Brondi admits the fear but puts it differently: "La cosa di cui ho paura è la solitudine nel fare questa cosa. Non mi ci metterei da solo." ("What I'm afraid of is being alone in doing this. I wouldn't take it on by myself.") The masters as company, not as a screen.
The mountain refuge. Daria picks out a scene in the book where Brondi can't finish a record and moves everything to a mountain hut: "Non lo citi, ma ho immaginato che fosse casa di Paolo Cognetti." ("You don't name it, but I imagined it was Paolo Cognetti's place.") Brondi confirms. There were nine of them in the hut at 2000 m, and they went walking in the morning and in the evening. What they lost on the technical side (the studio, perfect sound) they gained by being there, with the trees, the mountains, the deer, the right feeling of being fragile and passing through. "Ti rimette nella giusta proporzione." ("It puts you back in the right proportion.")
Daria on her own meditation. "Sai cosa ho capito da questo libro? Che io medito a modo mio, medito anche parecchio." ("You know what I understood from this book? That I meditate in my own way, and quite a lot.") Not formal meditation with postures and rituals, but the quality of listening that people who already lean toward introspection practise without knowing it. Someone who meditates an hour a day and then scatters the rest doesn't necessarily get more than someone who already lives with a certain attention.
Sgambati builds the bookcase. He tells how he put a bookcase together until midnight while moving house, with Brondi's songs in the background. At one point he took three "consapevoli" ("mindful") breaths: he didn't really know what that meant, but he did it. The annoyance was "spazzato via" ("swept away") by the feeling of being a privileged person putting up a bookcase for his own books in a new home. "Non so se è meditare. Ero sporco, dolorante. Ho pensato che era successa una cosa bella." ("I don't know if it's meditating. I was dirty, aching. I thought something beautiful had happened.")
Antonia Pozzi, read by Sgambati:
Ho tanta fede in te. / Son quieta come l'arabo / avvolto nel barracano bianco / che ascolta Dio maturargli l'orzo / intorno alla casa.
I have so much faith in you. / I am quiet like the Arab / wrapped in his white barracan / who listens to God ripening his barley / around the house.
Two remarks from Daria at the end of the episode:
- Songs born with no commercial aim (folk songs, Tu scendi dalle stelle) are priceless precisely because nobody knew they were making them or was looking for approval: "Una cosa così preziosa e importante che mi ha commosso solo il pensiero." ("Something so precious and important that just the thought of it moved me.")
- There are two kinds of artists: those who let the torment of creativity destroy them, and those who found a spiritual way out. "Forse la spiritualità è un tipo di salvezza." ("Maybe spirituality is a kind of salvation.") Brondi: "Non so se è una via di fuga. Forse è semplicemente cercare anticorpi per riuscire a continuare ad andare lì — in acque profonde." ("I don't know if it's a way out. Maybe it's just looking for antibodies so you can keep going there, into deep water.")
The ending. The episode ends with Daria insisting and Brondi singing Tu scendi dalle stelle with the others. "Una cosa spirituale l'abbiamo fatta." ("Well, we did do a spiritual thing.")
Important lines / passages
Introduzione: Cose che non sono cose (Introduction: things that aren't things)
La creatività è da sempre una cosa spirituale, un cortocircuito nell'epoca del materialismo. Una cosa che non è una cosa.
Creativity has always been a spiritual thing, a short circuit in the age of materialism. A thing that isn't a thing.
Shock telepatico (Telepathic shock)
Nel canto il vero virtuosismo non è andare su e giú per le scale musicali, ma connettere la voce al proprio centro emotivo, alla parte piú profonda e buia di noi, quella che abbiamo in comune con gli altri – al di sotto delle maschere e delle sovrastrutture sociali.
In singing, real virtuosity isn't running up and down the scales, but connecting your voice to your own emotional centre, to the deepest and darkest part of us, the part we share with others, beneath the masks and the social superstructures.
Esperimenti con la verità (Experiments with truth)
Mi sembra che tutta l'arte possa essere un «esperimento con la verità». Quando mi blocco, o sento che sto andando fuori strada, mi dico: «Semplicemente di' la verità». Fa sempre succedere qualcosa, è sempre destabilizzante. Anche se ce la diciamo da soli, manda all'aria ogni esercizio di stile.
It seems to me that all art can be an "experiment with truth". When I get stuck, or feel I'm going off track, I tell myself: "Just tell the truth." It always makes something happen, it's always unsettling. Even if we only tell it to ourselves, it blows apart any exercise in style.
Notizie di me (News of me)
Pensavo che le esperienze vissute attraverso gli schermi non fossero davvero esperienze, invece, scrivendo o suonando, emerge Gaza rasa al suolo, sento canti in strada per la fine di un regime, pianti sepolti. Rivedo un orso che cammina in un vialetto tra le case o immagini satellitari degli incendi a Los Angeles. Di recente mi è tornata in mente questa immagine del terremoto in Emilia del 2012, un uomo che chiama un nome, cercando a mani nude tra le macerie di una casa. Chiama a voce alta: «Claudia, Claudia!» Anche se l'avevo dimenticata, questa immagine si era conficcata da qualche parte, e con la musica in sottofondo è riaffiorata.
I used to think that experiences lived through screens weren't really experiences; instead, when I write or play, Gaza razed to the ground comes up, I hear singing in the streets for the end of a regime, buried cries. I see again a bear walking down a path between houses, or satellite images of the fires in Los Angeles. Recently an image from the 2012 earthquake in Emilia came back to me: a man calling a name, searching bare-handed through the rubble of a house. He calls out loud: "Claudia, Claudia!" Even though I had forgotten it, the image had lodged somewhere, and with the music in the background it came back up.
Abbiamo introiettato cosí tanto il modello delle macchine che crediamo di poter e dover funzionare allo stesso modo. Essere produttivi in maniera costante, indipendentemente dal fatto che sia notte o giorno, estate o inverno, che abbiamo appena avuto un lutto o una grande gioia. Premere il pulsante on e iniziare a creare, premere il pulsante off e smettere. Invece i nostri ritmi assomigliano di piú a quelli misteriosi dei temporali improvvisi e della lenta perdita delle foglie, del cambio delle stagioni e dell'alternarsi delle maree. Possiamo sintonizzarci anche con le leggi dell'universo, non solo con quelle della città.
We have absorbed the model of machines so deeply that we believe we can and must work the same way. Be productive all the time, whether it's night or day, summer or winter, whether we have just lost someone or had a great joy. Press the on button and start creating, press off and stop. Our rhythms are closer to the mysterious ones of sudden storms and the slow falling of leaves, of the change of seasons and the turning of the tides. We can tune in to the laws of the universe too, not only to those of the city.
Ho tanta fede in te (I have so much faith in you)
tutto è sempre uguale, poi tutto cambia all'improvviso.
everything is always the same, then everything changes all of a sudden.
Città contemporanee e foreste primitive (Contemporary cities and primitive forests)
Guardandomi attorno nel bosco pensavo che nello zen il maestro osserva il suo allievo come un giardiniere osserva un albero, desidera che il suo allievo si comporti come un albero, che abbia cioè «un atteggiamento di crescita senza scopo». Senza fretta e senza scorciatoie, perché ogni tappa del cammino è tanto un principio quanto una fine.
Looking around me in the woods I thought that in Zen the master watches his student the way a gardener watches a tree: he wants the student to behave like a tree, that is, to have "an attitude of growth without purpose". Without hurry and without shortcuts, because every stage of the path is as much a beginning as an end.
per Thoreau c'è «una foresta primitiva» sotto ogni città, che oltre ai frutti può generare poeti. Per lui la salvezza di una città, ma anche la sua creatività, dipendeva da queste foreste sotterranee. Potevo sentire le leggi dell'universo anche nel bel mezzo della metropoli, come Battiato nel parchetto al tramonto, prima di tornare a registrare.
for Thoreau there is "a primitive forest" beneath every city, which besides fruit can produce poets. For him the salvation of a city, and its creativity too, depended on these underground forests. I could feel the laws of the universe even in the middle of the metropolis, like Battiato in the little park at sunset, before going back to record.«Non esiste alcuna fretta, perché il mondo non procede verso nessuna meta. Si può benissimo "vivere a proprio agio" come la stessa natura […]. Questo è un primo principio nello studio dello zen e di qualsiasi arte dell'Estremo Oriente: la fretta e tutto ciò che essa comporta, è fatale. Non esiste infatti una meta da raggiungere. Nell'istante in cui si concepisce una meta, diviene impossibile praticare la disciplina dell'arte.»
"There is no hurry, because the world isn't heading toward any goal. One can perfectly well 'live at ease' like nature itself [...]. This is a first principle in the study of Zen and of any art of the Far East: hurry, and everything it brings with it, is fatal. For there is no goal to reach. The moment a goal is conceived, it becomes impossible to practise the discipline of the art."
Semplicità (Simplicity)
Rendere semplice è un lavoro ulteriore, artigianale e trascendentale, una battaglia interiore per non strafare e per sparire.
Making things simple is extra work, both craft and transcendence, an inner battle not to overdo it and to disappear.
L'animale che mi porto dentro (The animal I carry inside)
Nelle tradizioni contemplative non si chiede di smettere di essere insaziabili, ma di trovare un cibo degno della nostra "insaziabilità". Cosí come nella vita creativa non si chiede di essere sempre e solo travolti dalle passioni, ma di riuscire a veicolarle, sublimarle, usarle per accendere un fuoco che faccia luce anche per gli altri. Molte tendenze autodistruttive (e romanticizzate) degli artisti nascono dall'indirizzare male queste grandi forze, che possono bruciare invece che illuminare.
Contemplative traditions don't ask us to stop being insatiable, but to find food worthy of our "insatiability". In the same way, the creative life doesn't ask us to be always and only swept away by our passions, but to manage to channel them, sublimate them, use them to light a fire that gives light to others too. Many of artists' self-destructive (and romanticised) tendencies come from aiming these great forces badly: they can burn instead of giving light.
Urlare senza suono (Screaming without sound)
Mi sono sentito quasi in colpa per i miei lunghi silenzi tra un disco e l'altro, come se questo tempo di attesa rischiasse di farci sparire.
I felt almost guilty about my long silences between one record and the next, as if this time of waiting risked making us disappear.
Gratitudine (Gratitude)
Essere contenti è anche un atto politico nella società dell'insoddisfazione permanente, della corsa senza fine e senza senso, di necessità in necessità, di ambizione in ambizione. Essere perfettamente soddisfatti nell'insoddisfazione generale è un atto sovversivo.
Being content is also a political act in the society of permanent dissatisfaction, of the endless and pointless race, from need to need, from ambition to ambition. Being perfectly satisfied amid the general dissatisfaction is a subversive act.
L'arte di risorgere (The art of rising again)
A volte è come se – grazie alla creatività – il trauma non si conficcasse nel corpo, ma venisse espulso prima di incarnarsi. Vomitato splendente al mondo intero, rimesso al mondo. Anche qui non è solo una questione tecnica. La carica emotiva di un'esperienza ci spinge alla condivisione ma – come per un'imprevedibile vendetta, come per ribellarsi al destino – possiamo restituire al mondo che ci ha offeso qualcosa che sia il piú bello possibile.
Sometimes it's as if, thanks to creativity, trauma didn't lodge in the body but were thrown out before it became flesh. Vomited out, shining, to the whole world, given back to the world. Here too it isn't only a technical matter. The emotional charge of an experience pushes us to share it, but, like an unexpected revenge, like rebelling against fate, we can give back to the world that hurt us something as beautiful as possible.
Tutti assieme (All together)
Secondo Jung, la piú grande allucinazione degli esseri umani è l'illusione di essere separati dagli altri, dai propri simili e dal resto dell'universo. L'arte può essere un antidoto a questa illusione, in quanto capace di far saltare i confini immaginari che ci dividono.
According to Jung, the greatest hallucination of human beings is the illusion of being separate from others, from their fellow humans and from the rest of the universe. Art can be an antidote to this illusion, because it can blow up the imaginary borders that divide us.
Quando non succede niente (When nothing happens)
L'arte e la meditazione hanno in comune la possibilità di essere celebrazioni dei momenti trascurabili.
Art and meditation share the possibility of being celebrations of overlooked moments.
Proteggere Dio (Protecting God)
In qualche modo Warhol proteggeva Dio — ha tenuto perfettamente segreto tutta la vita che andava a messa tutti i giorni e faceva volontariato. Non poteva mettere Dio nel mercato dell'arte perché quel valore era troppo alto.
In a way Warhol was protecting God: all his life he kept it perfectly secret that he went to Mass every day and did volunteer work. He couldn't put God on the art market because that value was too high.
Attirare i fulmini (Drawing lightning)
Lightning Field di Walter De Maria è un'installazione di Land art che consiste in quattrocento pali di metallo alti sei metri, piantati in un terreno di tre chilometri quadrati nel deserto del Nuovo Messico. Si chiama «campo dei fulmini» perché, in caso di temporale, i fulmini sono attirati verso i pali creando uno spettacolo impressionante. Anche solo vedere le foto di questo fenomeno mi ha dato l'impulso per provare a scrivere di cose spirituali, di questa possibilità umana di creare antenne per comunicare con il cielo, per provocarlo.
Lightning Field by Walter De Maria is a Land art installation made of four hundred metal poles six metres tall, planted over three square kilometres of ground in the New Mexico desert. It's called "field of lightning" because, during a storm, lightning is drawn to the poles, making an impressive show. Just seeing photos of it gave me the push to try writing about spiritual things, about this human possibility of building antennas to talk to the sky, to provoke it.
Racconta la figlia Gret che prima di morire era rimasto immobile per ventiquattro ore e che i suoi respiri erano cosí «meravigliosi e liberi» che lei non riusciva a provare tristezza: un quarto d'ora dopo la sua morte, con un boato spaventoso, un fulmine a ciel sereno ha lacerato per tutta la sua lunghezza uno dei pioppi del giardino.
His daughter Gret says that before he died he had lain still for twenty-four hours and his breathing was so "wonderful and free" that she couldn't feel sad: a quarter of an hour after his death, with a terrifying roar, a bolt from the blue split one of the poplars in the garden along its whole length.