MAGAZINEDIGITAL EDITIONFEBRUARY 2013

N4

MASNÀDA ASSOCIAZIONE

FOURTH EDIT ION

N4

February 2013

SPEIRSUOTIO 2012

Direction Felix QuadrosChoreography & Interp. Manuela Bernasconi

Live sound & music Gregorio di TrapaniViolin Rocco Schira

Narrator Elisabetta Rota GiliMusical frame themes Marco Fagotti

Lights design Luigi SalaCostume Nadia PelloniMake up Romina Kalsi

Image Jacob LogosGraphic design Forzano Gianocca

Production MotoPerpetuo

In collaboration with Masnàda Associazione

With support ofRepubblica e Cantone Ticino

Dicastero attivitá culturali città di Lugano

THANK YOU

Borino GurrieriCarlo Maria Bernasconi

Danya Di BelloDésirée Haupts

Dicastero Giovani ed EventiEmanuela GurrieriFrancesca SproccatiGiovanni Ghilgen

Ricardo TorresGrazia Bernasconi-Romano

Lorenza PorettiNonna MariaNonna Simira

Pablo Gianinazzi

And all of the kind souls that made Speirsuotio possible.

N4

General EditingFelix Quadros

Manuela Bernasconi

TranslationsItalian Manuela Bernasconi

Spanish Felix QuadrosEnglish Felix Quadros

Written CollaborationsManuela BernasconiManuela Camponovo

Grazia Bernasconi-RomanoFelix QuadrosMarco Fagotti

PhotographsDésirée HauptsFelix Quadros

Michele EngelerAntonio Demaldi

Masnàda Associazione+41 79 360 6579

editorial@masnada.orgmasnada.org

Poster image for “Speirsuotio”

by Jacob Logosjacoblogos.com

HOPSCOTCH

SPEIRSUOTIOWhen Mirandola climbed up into the attic to fetch the bed linen her grandmother had asked for, it opened before her eyes a forbidden world. Amongst the memories

of her grandmother, little girl, woman and aged in hope,Mirandola finds herself confronting a new and unexpected destiny.

1.3.2.

4.

PAGE 6

PAGE 7

THE TWO FACES OF ANNACARSI

RELEASE: CONTENTION & TARANTATT I

5. PAGE 9

6. 7.8.

9.10.

11.12.

13.14.

15.

BORGES’ ATT IC

by Marco FagottiCONFRONTING STAGE & WRIT ING

by Manuela Camponovo

A PAZZA (in french)by Grazia Bernasconi Romano

PAGE 12

PAGE 12

PAGE 13

AFFACCIARS I

by Melissa Malpignano(in italian)

WITH THIS EDIT ION:

PAGINA 8

PAGE 11PAGE 10

PAGE 14

PAGE 16

16. IN THE MEMORY OF THE

TEAHOUSE

by Joseph CambpellPAGE 18

PAGE 17

EDITORIAL

THE THRESHOLD& the tree of life

About one hundred and fifty years ago, out in the open of what today is the Argentine Chaco, a boy was born, under the southern look to a half-mast moon and a horizon populated of stars and fireflies. With time the boy will make his way to a seafaring capital where he will meet Bengala, a young immigrant, who will give him in faith the total of five children. In the long table of what is today his descent, dinners are eaten with taste and songs are claimed with such devotion.

Time beyond, 26th of February of 1900, at the back of a house in Craiova, Rumania, humble in its origins but abundant in the sap of life, Jean Negulesco was born. Later he will polish shoes to become a theatre player in Paris, and follow on as on of the great Hollywood directors of a generation now lost to time. It was Negulesco that, at a rosy party in Marbella, would walk to a young beautiful woman and whisper into her ear: “Why don’t you shout out and tell everyone to stop, that life is escaping them and they will never know why they’ve transited it?, changing for ever the sense of her destiny.

Not over a month ago a friend of mine confessed that his paternal grandfather was not the man that gave him his surname, but an anonymous vaudeville actor that passed through the village of his grandmother with a travelling show. One night was enough to unleash genealogies.

I have always been fascinated by the precise volatility that occurs in this that is our blood. How stories gear our life to accomplish a movement, from there to there, and how at the precise moment what is ours finds root in this world. There is an exact temporal affirmation: as pouring honey where there was water, caresses on effort, green on illusion.

Speirsuotio, in its small and gigantic gestures in which it all becomes present, expresses that our destiny is also the longing of our ancestors; that our wishes are also confidences with our grandmother; our surprises, the marvellous revision of a blood, that gets mixed and reduced, in the noble cadence of learning to be within one’s self, as a whole, everything that has created us.

Felix Quadros, Lugano, Febraio 2013

(above) a peak into the director’s notes.(left) Speirsuotio.Photo by Demaldi.

It is not exactly speed racing through the fields, less so chasing the wind, that we notice the grain of wheat. Hidden within the spike that rocks it, the grain awaits.

Sicilian riddle:

I have seen a woman and she was fullGave birth, a male son she madeThen I’ve seen her beatingAnd a female name she grantedFrom female back to male it grewTo give its life to man and then to die

Giuseppe Pitrè – Uses and Customs – Belief and prejudice of the Sicilian population– Third Volume p 182.(spike – grain – flour – bread)*

1.

If one would ask nature why she produces her works, she wouls answer as follows - if indeed she conceeded to answer at all: It would be more fitting not to ask (i.e; not to probe with the mind), but to learn silently, even as I am silent. For it is not my way to speak (in contradistinction from the spirit who reveals himself in words). But this shalt thou learn, that everything that becomes is the object of my silent vision, a vision that is my original possession, for I myself arise from a vision (namely, the vision of the ‘universal soul’), which contemplates the Universal Spirit, even as the latter contemplates immediately engenders the object of its contemplation. Thus the mathematitians write down their figures as a result of their contemplation. I however write nothing down. I only watch, and the forms of the material world arises, as if they proceeded from out of me...The Enneads (III, 8) Plotinus

It’s in stupor and marvel, in the loyalty and in seeking for its truth that an artwork manifests itself: not merely a creation, but a discovery that acquires valour in so much as it reveals its autonomy and identity. The oeuvre exists already, before the author can write it, the interpreter could give it life. In order to talk about the acceptance of motherhood, about creation and simultaneously create the piece, Speirsuotio, it seemed fair to start it all through contemplation. Suggested in the dream of a director, the beginning of the performance should be a monologue in which the protagonist, still not in full mask, would walk on stage and beseech the audience to approach a contemplative predisposition. Thus, in the shape that Speirsuotio has chosen, we have started the piece opening our eyes. The actor himself, on stage but still part of the audience, is contemplating, performance after performance, the artwork that approaches its own fullness. It is in the acceptance of this work that we unconsciously sign a pact of truth and honesty in the caring for a creature that, although it seems small, young and formless, existed already before we were born.

2.

*note, spike in Italian is female spiga.Grain is masculine grano.Flour is female farinaAnd bread is masculine pane.

We look into the roots to find the sky. In the game of hopscotch, moving back becomes the lively possibility of jumping forward. In a vertical plane, stepping back down a way of climbing up a little further. It is an encouraging quality, therefore, to propose a creative process that claims to its structure the basis of a kid’s game in order to find its maturity. It happens one does not need to instantly know what is occurring, what movements are being accomplished, how to justify an act: we allow ourselves to be carried through till we find our destiny.

3.

7The threshold

MOVEMENT

THE TWO FACES OF THE ANNACARSI

Pure Sicilian

The Annacamento, a Sicilian term that has no translation in the Italian language, consists in making the maximum possible movement to achieve a minimum displacement. Often this activity contains negative connotations and it is used to indicate a Sicilian manner of gesticu-lation with the face when they are asked for matters of which the do not absolutely want to discuss. Thus they prevaricate with mimics, raising an eyebrow, taking their eyes to the heavens and declining a tad the angles of the mouth, then raising the chin with a flick of the tongue, draw the back of the fingers from under the chest casting them forward with a rapid gest that is immediately lost in the greetings from a passer-by; fortuitously the latter robs the imputed from interroga-tion and leaves the inquisitor with a handful of grimaces and very few answers. But the annacamento overly understood as a movement that carries you nowhere could also be expressed in the manner of a priest that leads the procession, passing weight from one foot to the next, keeping the rhythm of a litany seemingly eternal, or even in the manner a baby is swayed and put to sleep. The “naca”, in Sicilian, is also the cradle and the term “annacare” assumes at times the significance of rocking the cradle. We are told that for a baby the swinging of the crib reminds him of the movement inside his mother’s womb. The little one, still not conscious of his mother’s coming and going in preparation for his imminent arrival rocks within; the cradle is the memory of the motherly belly, warm and oscillating balloon. The cyclical movement takes us to a place of recognized security, because spinning we feel the centre as a strong hold and anchor; as the bell tower of a village that from the fields brings us back home; the apex of a spin, the Hebrew dreidel from which here and now, anywhere and at each moment there happens a miracle; the mandala, essential to life, it wholeness and roundness.

MOVEMENT

RELEASE: CONTENTION &

TARANTATISt. Paul’s day

It is in a small dark room into which light seeps through the windows and from the unbolted door the indiscreet eyes of an audience await in curiosity, in which the tarantata slides down from the inclined bed over onto white extended linen and begins the dance of purification. After a year demoted into suffering the pains and poison of solitude, it is during the festivity of San Paolo that the woman can finally liberate her instincts: before a spectacle of crowd and family that seem to pray in a manner of grace and inset concurrently. The dance is carried by a tambourine, a violin and an accordion that franticly comply with the requests of the tarantata and set prepared to spend the night on candles till the woman continues to discharge activity, trample on the white linen veld as if wanting to kill the tarantula that torments her. After eight endless hours of dance, after having toiled around the floor, of having shaken rhythmically the head, jumped and wandered around the room, after arching the pelvis to the heavens in a supplicant request of liberation, the tarantata finally looses her senses. The musicians find their way to the nearest table, and the old women sitting around, ankles, calves, knees and thighs in anguish, finally get up and move the woman back onto the bed. Leaving out in procession and dragging each on of them their own chair they are recomposed mute containers judging not but simply breathing in the fresh air of the night.

4.

(opposite page)Photo by Desiréé Haupts

Through the trimming of time, in the profit of a small maturity that does not hurl too much of a stretch to rest in this strange mix of what is work and personal existence, of one’s self with one’s self, our pathway takes us ever closer to mystery, to reason, to having to be certain. I sometimes believe that our artistic choices, if we can auscultate them with the closeness of the stethoscope in a prevailing present that vanishes towards the future, mark the beating of a way. What has been realized intimately frequents what will come.

5.

6.COLLABORATION

BORGES’ ATTICMusical fables

By Marco Fagotti

If Jorge Luis Borges contemplated the Aleph as the point in which we find all possible points on earth, the place where we can simultaneously see all the things in the universe, force a bit this concept we can hypothesise the existence of an attic from which it is possible to reach all the attics of the world (in this exposition, the meaning of attic, both spatial and symbolical, reaches the definition of a place with the utility of reordering and recuperating pieces of our past, lived fragments of our existence).

I have presented this premise in order to clarify the essence of an artistic process to which I ready myself to speak, that has served me in incursions in such solaria so as to reach a universe that, as in Borges’ tale, has all the characteristics of infinity, concept that appeared with lucidity at the moment of analysis between the synergic relation created between two consecutive works for which I have written material: Speirsuotio by Manuela Bernasconi and Felix Quadros, and Affabulazione #0 of my authorship.

In both cases the drama cantered in the symbolic world of the attic always coincides, incidentally, with the physical ambience; in both the stories develop in the room and at the same time in the psychological realm of the characters that move within, in a search both physical and metaphysical that, nourishing from past reminiscence, develops two prospective of narrative about the present, sharing still a fundamental element: sound.

I had been invited to enter the attic of Speirsuotio, and without making a single step found myself in that of Affabulzaione #0, wandering a sort of initiate trail of which I have been as much a spectator as a protagonist.

Without moving into the theme and narrative details of both pieces, allowing for these to be discovered by whoever has the will to do so, I do have an urge to place attention on the musical source that bonds them for it is thanks to this artistic experience that the “dimensional jump” has been possible. When I have started to write the music for Speirsuotio I could not of yet imagine that only a fraction of my work would make part on the actual piece, and reserving for the successive artwork its consistent presence. I find interesting to underline how the path through arduous tracts within the musical universe for Speirsuotio, made from sounds as gears and a sound texture fashioned from recorded toys and using the outcome as musical instruments, has revealed indispensable to the finality of the creation for Affabulazione #0. Because entering in the attic of Mirandola, protagonist of the first and having stayed in the room when she had already left it, has been as if involuntary provoking a change of scene / space / time / perspective using the same sound generators; sharing a good part of the sonority and several of the music pieces created dilate the score’s horizons and transform the writing work in something that has gone much beyond the initial task.

The music, one of the keys of lecture for Speirsuotio has become a medium and essence in the literal construction for Affabulazione #0, through a passage that displays more features in the sense of revelation than those incidental to a pathway. It shows, addingly, that we are part of an undivided aggregate, of an infinite whole and simultaneously particular, it’s boundaries visible only when, weighted upon our mental structures and cultural prisons, we decide to sketch its profile. In fact these confines do not exist and the realization of this, once and for all, is not owed to the logical speculation of the intellect but to the active experience of artistic creation. Back to the initial example I find it significant that the Aleph, first letter in so many alphabets and symbol to the number 1, number that in its own nature expresses and represents an origin, is also in Borges’ tale that the perfect image of unity or as “the point in which we find all point”: an indivisible universe of which we are all part of as artists and as living beings.

To listen to AFFABULAZIONE #1http://www.ossigenazioni.com

7.BR IDGE

CONFRONTING STAGE & WRITING Giuliana Pelli Grandini & Manuela Bernasconi

“In a time of speed and fascination, our remembrances pierce through the blanket of discretion, escape to the corners of memory, advance in the night and musicalize coarseness and torment.A black silk scarf cleans the palest face surges from deep sleep, release a look turned towards the static dimension, into which it is possible to believe and make believe that the sense of a life can be sounded again, always, as an Aria da Capo”. (from Aria da Capo).

Resonances calls Giuliana Pelli Grandini the affinity of the heart in which human beings meet and unexpectedly share emotions, sensations, feelings, and the symbolic significance art can assume in its most diverse manifestations. She writes. But different aesthetic dimensions, sonorous like music, visual as painting of photography, agitates as movement, impregnate her writing. But it is time, it could be said, here or there, the metaphoric measure of her narration.

Manuela Bernasconi is young, recently a mother, she is a choreographer and a dancer, but her dance does not look into limiting itself to an abstract dance. She feels the need to give it a concrete motivation, the telling of an experience, of qualities, of human sensibilities expressed through gesture but also through the word, in a sort of drama that swings between theatre and dance. In her latest show, till now her most mature, “Speirsuotio” capitalizes in the theme of time. On stage a small door constitutes that same ravine of the memory of which Giuliana Pelli Grandini writes. Memory is a place where we are taken by remembrance, the dream of dream, that lives in spite of ourselves, because that past is not only our past but also to all who have preceded us. Manuela goes back to the Sicily of her maternal origins, to a narration of family traditions, threading through that small door as the minute Alice and finding herself in a world upside down where precisely everything is possible and can start anew always again as in the stories.

Giuliana Pelli Grandini at times, draws upon the image of a dancer, of a dance. The shadows dance, lights dance, memories dance, because dance is not simply a juxtaposition of instances, dance is also a simultaneousness that holds it all and the opposite of it all. Exactly like the dream world possesses a special internal logic. Simultaneously one can be here and in another place. We need but a gesture to surpass epochs. Manuela becomes them all, the grandmother, the mother, the daughter.

“The immense linen, unfolded over coldness and solitude, swells into slow waves. Tinted stars whiten the days and nights of Past Ages (much over the years) that fantasize on imprisoned dancers held within the

mother-of-pearl coated by the withered violet silk of the deco hand mirror, appearing again from nowhere.(From “deco hand mirror).

So does Manuela Bernasconi extend her white linen, in a gesture that takes us to an ancient everydayness and very literally… in the act of hanging the clothes, as in washing them, a woman rediscovers an intimate confidence that perhaps today has transmuted into the superficial tattle at the hairdressers… but the linen covers, hides, divides and rediscovers other dimensions, closer yet further away from the limits of time that divide, but also unite the many generations and what unites if not the same memory? What can mankind dream if not its ancestor being that takes us into being unique and together representatives of all humanity?

“Shadows rustle within the mysterious cavity of dream and covered faces and white hands fluctuate in the darkened liquid of a spectral scene.They dance, melting in the vapour of misery and nostalgia.They dance in the archipelago of weep repressed, laughter subdued, passions, desires, hope.They dance as a small aria of glowing sweetness.(…)In my arms the little one runs to the sickle of the moon that rocks, rocks and ops, it turns hurling himself into the other side of creation. Irresistible silences musicalize the tight eyed flight over and below the celestial spheres and simple sounds, vibrate our souls in unison, recreate the small aria and we laugh a little, cry a little and a little I don’t know, dancing our strange and unique time in this turn of the waltz. The rhythm speeds, speeds and swiftly consumes its time that languishes and dies”. (From “the isle of time”).

Infancy is the capital time that marks and extends in the continuance of existence. There is a child also for Manuela Bernasconi, a cradle, a gesture of sway in which maternity finds its dance, a dance in time, for within it the woman can find her own child, in a spent welding of the past, present, future. Memory is transformed into a promise, exactly like the spikes, from an archaic memory, are transformed into a shower of grain.

*The stories quoted above are part of the unpublished collection “Le margunfole” to be published by “Opera Nuova” publishing house from Lugano.

By Manuela Camponovo

11The threshold

8. Contemporaneous to its ageing the world has changed. Sons are sons of no one. A rain of grain falls from the sky. Who are you son of? Who do you belong to? The old woman shakes her finger towards the grain sparse on arid pavement. No one answers. Trembling, her bare and hardened feed brace the earth. Her hand reaches out to glean the dispersed offspring and fatigue breaks the crust of time bent onto the fields and she spreads her back towards the heaven of spikes.

9.I confess I enjoy stories: love stories, action stories, epic or fictionalized, with persuasion of the word exact, the impregnated moment, the frequency that reverbs in here also within to what is happening far out there. Juan Rulfo, Mexican writer, pillar to Latin American literature, used to say that in the history of mankind we only talk about three things: live, death and love; and it is in the shape and form and its handling to the present novelty that one can tell a story. In the undefined expression of our days, this new old world, taking a shape to tell a story, without know what that story will be, but with the forceful determination of what is ours is a stupendous act of faith.

Mirandola grasps a moment.

9.10.At dawn a fresh blow of air spells through

the fine curtains that open towards a terrace on a third floor over in the southern slopes of Marianopoli, and the town still in shadows. Bells. Towards the background, passing over through a sea of ochre tiled roofs, the bell tower opens to the first light of day. Further away everything is yellow. Golden fields rendered by the light of sun that already strokes the wheat, the olive trees, the macules of capers, and towards the margin of noon will fire up a land scraped of history and cultures.

For thousands of years hands have worked the same grain of “frumento” in this generous land. For the romans it was the granary of the empire. For the Greek, before, and indigenous settlement to be conquered. In the very centre of the island, province of Caltanissetta, the layered history of Sicily is like an onion drying up in the hands of its people, in their gaze filled with scrutiny, over a perennial concomitance with the sadness of a loss that will not defeat the constant migration throughout the last century.

In the anthropology museum of Marianopoli, part of this profound root is kept stoic behind the glazes shelves. We must understand we travel all the way back to the Iron Age. Settlements that distantly co-existed when the Aegean Sea cradled its myths. Small colourful instruments such as baby bottles made out of clay, kitchen stuff for domestic use, frame thus a history and its relationship with this land of over 5000 years. Lets say, since the beginning of our civilization. Known also for its hard-beating defence there are still remnants of fortifications on the brow of the mounts that circle Marianopoli, true to its myth as one of the most resilient during the First Punic Wars, III b.c. Known as the tip of Valle Inferno, now subjugated under the weight of a dozen or so power producing windmills that carry what is left of energy to the distant cities. As throughout its history, Marianopoli finds its riches still looking towards the earth in order to find the heavens of its ancestors. It’s in the earth where the story, the names, the formidable substance of this place exists.

13The threshold

(from abore)Rooftops of the village of Marianopoli,Sanctuary of Belice, the house at Curbu. Province of Caltanisseta.Sicily.

11.STORY

A PAZZALugano - Vulcano / Îles Eoliennes 1997-2004

by Grazia Bernasconi Romano

-Oh! Oh! a Pazza arrija cà jè?! s’exclama a nanna en sortant de l’étable et sa voisine, accoudée à la fenêtre, acquiesça à la manière sicilienne. Elle venait d’apprêter les stalles afin d’accueillir les chevaux qui auraient ramené u nannu et, vu que celui-ci ne revenait qu’à la nuit tombante de sa longue journée passée sur ses terres très éloignées du village, elle aurait eu quelques minutes encore pour s’adonner aux commérages de la rue avant de préparer le repas du soir.Santina, leur petite-fille, venait de sortir elle aussi mais de la maisonnette de jour juste en face où a nanna l’avait laissée sans trop lui prêter attention, à tel point que la fillette se demandait pourquoi sa mère insistait tellement pour qu’elle passât chaque jour chez elle après l’école. Elle tourna la tête tout en la levant vers le sommet de la rue très raide - le village étant adossé à une colline - vers le point visé par sa grand-mère; or, celle-ci, arrêtant l’élan des yeux de l’enfant, ajouta à son égard: - Chi tinni sta jnnu? Piglia di nantra banna, allura! Santina en déduisit qu’elle n’aurait pas dû passer devant la maison d’a Pazza étant donné que celle-ci s’y tenait. Un pourquoi résonna dans sa tête, mais il n’était pas question de poser... des questions! On n’expliquait rien aux enfants, et elle dut se contenter comme d’habitude de ces phrases elliptiques, subtiles ou allusives qui tout en aiguisant les oreilles aux propos des adultes alimentaient l’imagination diurne et la nuit les rêves, sinon les cauchemars! Comme cette fois-là où sa mère en parlant avec sa soeur dit la phrase “ Jachina si misi lu cintu” qui, à son avis, était désarticulée du discours qu’elles étaient en train de tenir, et qui lui revenait de temps en temps, incompréhensible à sa petite enfance tenue à l’écart des méandres du corps. Plus tard, quand Mère Nature se sera chargée par osmose de l’instruire, elle sourira en elle-même de sa naïveté sans pouvoir toutefois se défaire de ce voile rougissant dont ce monde pudique lui avait bardé à jamais la sensibilité.Santina descendit donc la rue et se dit que son chemin allait être un peu plus long jusque chez elle, mais de toute façon elle n’y tenait pas à passer par le haut de la rue à cause de certains curieux qui apparaissaient à l’improviste devant leurs portes entrebâillées sinon closes comme s’ils y voyaient à travers. Une dame qui avait deux filles jumelles, depuis quelque temps apparaissait subitement au seuil et l’appelait: - Attija vîni cà! Elle obéissait n’osant pas se montrer impolie et la dame la faisait tourner sur elle-même

comme une toupie pour mieux observer sa petite robe en dentelle rose ou l’autre d’un vaporeux bleu ciel printanier que maman, la meilleure couturière du village, venait de lui confectionner. Voilà! Elle pouvait repartir, mécontente de penser que dansquelques jours une petite fille noiraude et l’autre blonde porteraient des robes semblables aux siennes. Juré! Elle ne s’aventurerait plus de ce côté-là pour venir rendre visite à la nanna.Malheureusement, toutes les rues qu’elle prenait lui causaient des épreuves terribles à surmonter. En marchant alors elle essayait d’entrer en elle-même, de se tenir compagnie, de se tenir des discours, de se raconter des histoires pour ne pas voir les gens qui la regardaient passer. Dans un instant elle allait passer devant la zì Pippina, puis devant la zì Carmela, puis ... et il fallait échanger quelques propos ou subir des questions qui étaient déjà des réponses: - Chi jsti nti to nanna? Toutes ces dames âgées qui prenaient le frais assises devant leurs portes sur des chaises rempaillées, tricotant ou gardant les mains fainéantes dans leur giron, et les vieillards, le menton appuyé au manche arrondi de leur bâton, tous regardaient sans y paraître tout ce qui se passait et tous ceux qui passaient dans la rue. Certes, elle préférait ces gens-là aux voyeurs qui, installés derrière le voile d’un rideau, observaient tout sans être vus. Mais elle détestait surtout ces hommes, la quarantaine passée, assis à la terrasse des bars auréolant la place principale, qui s’arrêtaient subrepticement de philosopher pour pointer sur vous à l’unisson leurs yeux dardant jusqu’à votre souffle. Regardaient-ils de la sorte tous les passants indistinctement ou tout spécialement les femmes et les jeunes filles?Or, cette fois, c’était elle la curieuse et elle aurait donné dix bâtonnets de niculizia pour la voir de près, a Pazza! Ce sobriquet lui inspirait quelque crainte, toutefois elle n’avait jamais vu la folle faire de bizarreries, ni méchantes ni violentes. Alors, avant de tourner à droite, là où la maison faisait angle, elle se retourna comme attirée par un aimant. Et elle l’aperçut. On aurait dit que son corps criait: - Talijatimi tutti! Cà sugnu! Et elle la regarda. Une seconde. Puis elle s’en fut.En marchant elle essaya de peindre la vision dans sa mémoire: lumière éblouissante autour d’un coin de pénombre. Du noir et de la pétale de cerisier. Puis elle essaya d’y apporter les détails. Elle était debout sur des cothurnes qui l’élançaient en déesse grecque.

La lumière intense du soleil enlevait tout damassage, toute couture ou boutons à sa robe endeuillée, la rendant uniforme, presque veloutée et saupoudrée d’or. La robe lui découvrait les jambes d’une chair jamais exposée au soleil jusqu’au-dessus des genoux tout en étant plus basse derrière, ainsi soulevée par un ventre rond et énorme. Autour du ventre, toutes les autres rondeurs du corps. Des cheveux bouclés définissaient le visage grand aux pommettes hautes; la bouche et les yeux réfléchissant la paix du ciel conjuguaient la douceur de son sourire. C’était la femme qu’elle avait entrevue. C’était bien a Pazza qu’elle avait imprimée dans sa pensée. Toutefois, son portrait à elle résultait exempt de folie. En outre, sa mémoire s’acharnait à refeuilleter au rythme de ses pas le calendrier antonien de sa nonnò chérie pour lui ramener l’image d’une vierge raphaëlienne toute en tissus dont les bleus, les ors et les pourpres nocturnes accentuaient la grâce féminine et les gestes maternels. Quel lien? Une fois à la maison, elle lança un hameçon à sa mère: - Mamà lu sa ca a Pazza jè arrija cà? Elle lui répondit distraitement: - E allura?! lui laissant croire que cela ne la touchait aucunement ou comprendre qu’une fillette de son âge n’aurait pas dû prêter attention à de pareils événements.Elle dévisagea sa mère du coin de l’oeil et remarqua qu’elle n’avait rien d’une méditerranéenne ni d’une vierge raphaëlienne, ce qui pour elle revenait au même: haute, élancée et élégante; pudique et séduisante; et l’orient qui brillait dans ses cheveux soyeux de jais. Et son visage? A peine si le soleil s’amusait à le clairsemer d’une poignée de taches de rousseur! Elle n’aurait jamais pu devenir une matrone trinacrienne au lourd chignon de cheveux aériens s’échappant de toute part en arrache-baisers et au sein débordant comme un berceau douillet et embaumant. Na mammuzza aux yeux tour à tour punitifs et câlins. Non, sa maman à elle avait le regard tourné vers l’intérieur: tout ce qu’elle voyait ou vivait allait se cogner au fond d’elle-même dans les méandres les plus reculés de son être et, très souvent, cela restait enfoui sans pouvoir trouver de faille afin de ressortir apaisé à la lumière du jour et lumière sur les autres.Jamais son corps sans excès et d’une rigidité statuaire n’aurait pu ressembler à a Pazza, femme aux cris trop aigus ou aux paroles trop mielleuses; et là, sur le trottoir, corps offert au ciel embrasé, ou à la terre qui s’étalait à perte de vue en petites collines desséchées ayant tout donné; ou encore, exposé au vent dont les caresses sahariennes allumaient en lui simultanément le désir et l’indolence.Pourquoi donc cette autre comparaison? Fine et intelligente, sa mère. Fragile, quand en public un rien la faisait tout d’un coup rougir; n’osant rien demander pour ne pas affronter le dialogue ou le regard de l’autre posé sur elle, se sentant subitement démunie comme un soldat désarmé face à l’ennemi. Oui l’autre, tout autre avant d’être une personne était un rival à dominer. Elle ne connaissait pas la liberté de son geste, de sa parole, de son regard, l’offrande pure de ses sentiments. Elle étouffait tout en elle: être pour elle signifiait ne rien paraître. S’imaginait-elle peut-être que c’était cela être noble? Interdire toute lecture de sa personne? Malheureusement, elle n’y réussissait que jusqu’au moment où, perdant immanquablement son autocontrôle, ses yeux rencontraient la vérité dans le regard d’un semblable : son visage embrasé dévoilait alors tout l’acharné labeur intimement enduré.Est-ce que les enfants d’a Pazza percevaient-ils la folie de leur mère? L’avaient- ils vue faire des bêtises, avaient-ils subi ses gestes insensés? On l’avait enfermée et plusieurs fois : - Arrija avait dit a nanna. La folle avait deux enfants: l’aîné, un adolescent desséché comme la terre qu’il allait piocher avec son père; le cadet sevré mais qui ne marchait pas encore quand elle avait dû repartir une deuxième fois et, d’ailleurs, pour lui, sa maman c’était sa grand-

maman. Et son mari? Paraît-il qu’il n’était allé qu’une seule fois lui rendre visite, quelques mois avant son retour.Rien n’échappait à Santina quand elle allait chez sa grand-maman, écoutant tout ce qui se faisait ou se disait dans la rue. Elle voulait comprendre pourquoi a Pazza partait et revenait continuellement de sa folie car elle voyait le visage de l’étrange femme devenir toujours plus lumineux, sa parole plus tendre, ses gestes doux.Un jour de grand silence, a nanna dès le seuil de la maisonnette annonça la nouvelle au nannu qui, presque affaissé de fatigue sur la table encore dressée, sirotait de temps en temps un verre de vin nouveau:- A Pazza accattà!- Echijè?- Un masculu.- Ora picca dura...La petite fille tenant compagnie à son grand-père s’amusait à réentortiller la pelure d’une orange qu’on avait entaillée en spirale; celui qui avait mangé l’agrume avait bien recomposé sa forme pour attraper quelque nigaud. Elle était tombée dans le piège et, en outre, dans ses mains la pelure s’obstinait à rester pelure. Le silence de la fillette continuait de s’inscrire dans le jeu de la spirale encore parfumée, cependant elle mémorisait chaque son, chaque mot, chaque point de suspension échangés par ses grands-parents.En marchant pour rentrer à la maison elle essaya de percer le message. Accattà....picca dura... Quoi? Qui? Toujours ces discours allusifs, ce langage codé. Une pierre c’est une pierre et elle se plia pour en ramasser une qu’elle lança aussitôt au loin. Elle ne lâchait pas sa réflexion, pas même la nuit dans son lit avant de s’endormir.A Pazza, son nouveau-né accroché au sein, se promenait continuellement et du matin au soir. Elle ne faisait rien d’autre, elle ne s’occupait pas du ménage, ni de ses autres enfants. Elle trouvait sa seule raison d’être en son enfant, qui, collé à elle, prolongeait toujours la génitrice silhouette.Mais le bébé ne voulut bientôt plus de lait maternel et tendit la menotte vers le morceau de pain offert par une voisine. Puis, un jour, il glissa sur les genoux de celle qui le promenait de long en large dans le village, et une fois au sol, il se releva s’efforçant de rester debout sur ses propres genoux encore peu sûrs et tremblotants. Et le voilà maintenant qui marchait et s’aventurait dans la rue pour attraper un petit chaton dont la queue lui faisait signe. Le ventre mou, les bras ballants, a Pazza resta quelques jours sans comprendre ce qui lui arrivait. Elle ne courait pas derrière son enfant pour lui éviter de petits malheurs. Il n’existait plus pour elle. Sa robe désormais trop large, aplatissant encore plus le sein vidé, pendouillait sur ses jambes presque jusqu’aux chevilles. Ses yeux devenaient ternes et son sourire une grimace de souffrance ou d’hébétude. Immobile, elle regardait vers l’horizon, ne bougeant plus de la chaise qu’on lui plaçait dès le matin sur le trottoir.- Chi c’è ? demanda la nanna sortie dans son balcon au crépuscule et faisant semblant d’arroser les innombrables plantes qui cachaient sa petite corpulence.- Nenti. Si stannu purtannu a Pazza. U maritu stamattina jè achiamari l’ambulanza.La voix de l’invisible voisine avait filtré à travers la fine dentelle d’un rideau jusque chez Santina; celle-ci, assise à même la rue, jouait toute seule à petra a pigliari: elle faisait brièvement virevolter, avant de les attraper sur le dos de la main, de petits cailloux plats que son imagination, en interceptant la voix, métamorphosa en yeux et oreilles. Cela ne dura qu’un laps de temps. Soudain, l’ambulance assourdit la rue apparemment déserte et passa devant une petite fille qui, revenant à l’insensée réalité, salua a Pazza d’un geste silencieux qu’elle ne put voir.

15The threshold

13.An old Arab proverb tells the beauty of man lies in his intelligence, and the intelligence of a woman in her beauty.

14.The theatre. In the beginning there was the word: a text and space defined. It is the word that carries the body: a mirror easier to be seen, to precipitate in. A book and a story to tell and express the elements with a ready at hand substance: to know where to go and how to imagine. With Speirsuotio, the beginning was a sack of grain and the need to work.

12.And every time I’ve said it I’ve felt the need to remain fixed on the stage, breaking into thought. That question asked by the old folk of the village, as a spittle to the young that they can’t recognize and that spears through my mouth, hits the black space out into the audience and comes back, slips right under my white mask, under my night gown and

finds me there again: wordless.And that is the door at which I’m knocking. “Excuse me, may I come in? I am looking for

a house.”A house that opens onto a street where I will play till sunset and beyond until my mother calls, it’s bedtime. Then to that street I will belong, as I will have left the skin of my knees.

“Who are you a son of? Who do you belong to?The question is thus. And I would make it burst into a cry for revolution, with tight fists

and a multitude to follow!Yes, I want that piece of land, even if minute and small. I want a piece of earth to which

to belong to.

In finding firm roots in order to create the world for Speirsuotio and launch it into infinity, I have robbed my mother of some of her short stories that have found their way into the Mirandola’s life. Only know, however, I discover with marvel A PAZZA: one of the many texts that adolescence had not deemed it of importance and that unconsciously, and without the need to prove a theft, possesses me since long; me and to a great extent

the work that I have put on stage on this occasion.

detail: view from the western ridge. Acrylic & Eucalypt wash on canvas. 190cm x 270cm 2012Jacob Logos

17The threshold

16.From “The heroe of a thousand faces” by Joseph Campbell

…The tea-room, called “the abode of fancy,” is an ephemeral structure built to enclose a moment of poetic intuition. Called too “the abode of vacancy,” it is devoid of ornamentation. Temporarily it contains a single picture or flower-arrangement. The teahouse is called “the abode of the un- symmetrical”: the unsymmetrical suggests movement; the pur- posely unfinished leaves a vacuum into which the imagination of the beholder can pour. The guest approaches by the garden path, and must stoop through the low entrance. He makes obeisance to the picture or flower-arrangement, to the singing kettle, and takes his place on the floor. The simplest object, framed by the controlled simplic- ity of the tea house, stands out in mysterious beauty, its silence holding the secret of temporal existence. Each guest is permitted to complete the experience in relation to himself. The members of the company thus contemplate the universe in miniature, and become aware of their hidden fellowship with the immortals.

RESEARCH

IN THE MEMORY OF THE TEAHOUSE

the attic of Speirsuotio

Mirandola strikes a pose.

MASNÀDA ASSOCIAZIONE

CONCEPT & EDITION

V ia Gugg i ro lo 46962, V igane l loSWITZERLANDeditorial@masnada.orgMASNADA.ORG

N4