Glitter, iron and salt

Hormuz Island, January the 8th, 2020

I write this letter because at the moment I detached from the group. I am in a sort of desert, or at least what in the past was a salty river and now is what remains: wet sand, salt, scarse vegetation around. I am in Hormuz Island: tonight there is a possibility of bombings, of war.

Earlier today we went to the sacred salt mountain: the closest place to mars. We discovered the tomb of three forgotten jews, resting on top of a isolated hill, cover with shells and with view to the vasteness of the sea. We entered into a rainbow cave, and by the time the sun set we went for a cup of tea.

The Night Shift

Shiraz, almost midnight, firsts days of january, 2020

After days of national grief in the city of Hafez: rain, markets, nighty roamings, hashish smoker who panhandle fire and bread.

We are three, we thought about going to Kerman but there the funeral of General Soleimani is going to take place.

We are somehow atracted to the idea of sumerging ourself into the crowd and be part of a cause that does not belong to us, just to taste the course of the events that, with passion and without regards for what the future will actual think, are considered historical.

After a quick reflection, and a brief discussion we thought that was wiser to avoid following the sorrow and turn our heads to the sea.

We want to reach Hormuz island.

We are improvising, we try to book last minute three seats on a night bus but everything is fully booked to virtually anywhere: we are not dissuaded, we are convinced that directly in the bus station we will find some last minute seats to Bandar Abbas.

Watcher

Tehran, 22/12/2019

To observe Tehran, as if I were behind a window: disguise as myself: absent amongs the city’s entropy.

A breadmaker has his mind away from us, he is not aware he’s being spyed on. Dressed as an unripped thinker who can’t ever take off his pijama, he lays down the dough on the hot rock of the oven. Behind us only the cold night, the closed walls of the other shops, the curb of the street.

Another night will end in Tehran: like a smoked sigarrete in a furtive alley.

The Yalda that was not

Tehran, 21/12/2019

To describe Persia it is not an easy thing nor a granted one: is easy to enter its borders, easy to interact with its inhabitants, easy to be moved and stounded by its martian geography, easy to be engulfed by the weight of a civilization that centuries before being seduced, forced and covered by Islam was – and to some extend still is – the bellybutton of the world and the obsession of every cultural and military power of its own time - nihil novum sub solem.

What is that fascinates to such high degree?

What lies behind all the insidious propaganda and delusions we have to cope with in our current era of intense [mis]information?

Is reality still stronger than any ideas or we have failed to create a proper division between the objective reality and the virtual ones: are we ought to dig into the details to find the underlined coherence and contradictions?

My iranian adventure was a deep trip into a country that appears more like a piece of acid jazz: non estatic, convulsed, to be redifine, changing skin, chaotic, noisy, unpleasant (at moments), mesmerazing, inspiring, fermenting, enthusiastic, melancholic, and in conflict within itself and within the power that dominates its demons.

A trip into the stomach of the ancient and current world to see and admire the patina that men from other centuries and millenea ago fell for.

Japanese memory collection

I met a japanese jazz drummer in Tbilisi, we talked about jazz, about his projects, he was a writer altought a very obscure or shy: he does not translate, he writes for some peculiar magazines.

I undusted my japanese memories from some years ago.

When I was away from my dear friends in Tokyo I indulged myself in jazz bars and whiskey.