A few nights ago I dreamed of walking in a forest when, under a giant oak tree, I found a book called “The Book of Books”. I was a little dazed and just thought it wasn’t easy to find a book that could interest me. A book that could capture your attention and keep you company, make you read it right through to the end. Intrigued, I skimmed through a few of its pages, trying to understand its contents.
Somehow, I was immediately seduced by it, reading of a “cage that contained dreams”, a quotation contained in a writer’s story, and I decided to browse through more pages of the book, of which I still remember a few words. An artist explained how “still life, in photography, is a means to elicit a secret from things and that a work of art should have the function of improving the world”. I now was beginning to feel at ease, to have the impression of being in the right place. I continued to browse through the book and, in the next pages, found a text by a great American innovator who “warned against the noise of the opinions of others”, opening a symposium with other authors who responded, in turn, regarding “human potential that often remains unexpressed”, the “search for a dogma compatible with the infinite possibilities belonging to us human beings”, and the “immaculate dress of Mong girls”. Beneath some of the illustrations, other artists wrote about the “thousand roles of a woman, which still allow us to dream”, about “Pinocchio, who gives space to his inner voice, and about seeing reality without perception being filtered by expectations”. I came across reading one of the final pages: “Dreams help us and transmit to us the purity of a figuration” and then I was attracted by some beautiful quotations from “Buddha” and the “Dalai Lama”. I recognized an image of Rome under which there was written “In a way, Piazza Navona is the theatre of the world!”, and that there are “treasures enclosed in a little patch of land within the city”. On other pages, I read with interest of the “stunning current relevance of Leonardo”, of the “American architect Richard Meier”, of the “Hand of Constanza De Cupis”, and also the description of a “light which illuminates the room in which a woman whispers sweet words”, written by an Italian film director. An American artist, at the beginning of one of the chapters, calls for “putting on paper what the eyes see”. A French artist echoes this by saying that he admires “those for whom a work of art is a mystery”. A little further on, an Italian philosopher tells of a woman who had lived as “a woman, although she was neither a woman nor a man”, and then the confessions of two great Italian women: “I have created a small empire, made of love, sacrifices, passion and work”, says the first, while the other explains: “We must teach girls to be bold rather than perfect”. An Italian artist is the author of the last words I can remember: “The photographer, like the poet, sees into the life of things”. At that point, I closed the book. I felt a sensation of amazement for that rare concentration of minds, souls, hearts beating to tell their stories, united by the pages of a book, by the roads they travel (the streets where they meet), and by their images (the images they create). On the book’s back cover was a thank you to the reader: “Roman Walks. With the courage and audacity needed to take a risk”.
Gabriel Rifilato
(caartstudio.roma@gmail.com)
