Traffic on Corso Vittorio, confused voices of passing tourists, some insults thrown into the air in the distance, I enter the side alleys. A passing plane, a siren, messy tables on Via dei Banchi Vecchi, a steering wheel, glasses and cutlery, a horn. Noises that surround me but amplify in my head. A glass door. Light comes out. It’s been a tough week and a busy day.
Within. Silence. The noise of Rome outside does not disappear but it is as if they had equalized the sound, as if they had cut the most annoying frequencies. It’s all sort of muffled. I squint. I cannot penetrate this unreal, metaphysical light. I understand that it’s not the gaze that has to be looked at, I necessarily have to stop frowning, find some different connection with space.
I observe from inside, as if the images were an external projection produced from within me. Time stops, breathing calms, vision relaxes. The nail in the center of my stomach that I have felt for some time, more or less since I was born, lightens its push. The black that I carry inside slowly clears up, as if it has been scraped away. From every scratch comes not blood, but gold.
I see. I am surrounded by a secular prayer, by a breath of profound spirituality. I am still but not immobile, I am shaken by a dynamic and a vibrant drive. Although I consider myself a fairly open person, evidently I am still not used to the beauty that comes from edges, from non-perfection, from margins, from darkness. Yet without the darkness there would be no light. Without pain there would be no joy.
It would be nice if in every moment of suffering we could remember that only by scraping away the black does the divine emerge. It would be nice if we could remember this even when the suffering is not ours. When we see it externally. When we perceive it as distant. When we feel it is unfair even if that injustice does not affect us directly.
It’s called humanity. It should be our calling. We should scrape the black more often to get the gold out. Perhaps to do this we should recognize that that darkness is a part of us. Maybe to do this we should accept it first. Perhaps to do this we should then recognize when the light comes out. Maybe to do this we should love each other.
Valerio Giacone
LUZ
Resurrection of light
FABER art gallery, Rome
