It’s easy for a lot of us to forget that we are currently living on a giant sphere of molten liquids, rocks, oceans and large expanses of land. This place we call home has provided us with everything we have utilized to fulfill our passions. Life is subjective, of course, and your ideas aren’t the same as someone else’s and your goals could be far different. On that note, allow me to introduce the term known “Asolare.” More than just a restaurant, this Italian word means, more or less, to spend time in a meaningless yet delightful way. It is great to have your goals, your dreams, your aspirations, and it is wonderful to pursue them. But, sometimes it can do you well to do something delightful and not constructive at all. Nothing is arguably more delightful than listening to music and losing your sense of time dancing with friends.

A project that I was apart of a few years ago took this principle, along with this pass time, and combined them to create a video for the city of Philadelphia. And here you go…

If you watched close enough, the kid who did that cool spin kick in the middle of the video, that was me. No beard back in them days.

I was lucky enough to become apart of this project by being in a film class at my after school program YOACAP in downtown Philadelphia. The program’s primary focus was to get teens dedicated to their education through plenty of different means. The film class was one of many ways we were engaged in our community whilst still obtaining experience in a practice that wasn’t totally academic. Our teacher, Walter Wimberly, inspired my brother and I to take him up on the offer to join the production and even be on camera representing the livelier side of the population. In a somewhat ironic fashion, we spent the day trying to capture the right shots and gather certain people which really made for a stressful task. But, it was worth it to see how everything played out. 

Anyway, I don’t personally think that we were not brought to life just to always stress about what we have to do; it’s important to focus on what we simply have. A lot of us who do not live in poverty or suffer from hardships like war or widespread disease tend to focus our energy towards our day to day lives and struggles. It would do us well to take a step back from it all and just have fun in a way that doesn’t need to have meaning. This video project was the perfect representation of Asolare in my eyes; what we were able to accomplish in this day long project was that we brought together complete strangers in a happy environment, we livened up the streets with song and dance, and we did it all for the fun of it. Yes, this day had meaning, but it didn’t feel like it at the time, and that was okay.

Another blog that I came across spoke on this same topic and I wanted to share it here.

Asolare… figure out what you would like to do today and do it because you know that you have a lifetime to handle work and responsibility. Make good decisions, of course, but never forget to take a break and breathe every once in a while. Life will still be here when you get back.

Many times before, I have been called a “Renaissance Man.” This term mostly refers to those who have many talents and are well rounded as individuals. Before I knew the term even existed, I had a good understanding that I had a diverse set of skills and abilities that allowed me to amaze my friends. As a kid, we all know how great it feels to show your friends something and they actually like it. So, one talent in particular that I developed with the purpose of showing off a bit was the ability to write backwards.

     Here we see a picture characterized not only by its super stylish depiction of a flying machine, but also by the script printed below it. That is Ancient Italian written backwards, it was a way for Leonardo da Vinci to keep his notes from being read and duplicated. This kind of writing only allowed him to decipher the meanings of the strange looking words and, upon first hearing about this style, I began to practice the method myself.

Da Vinci was definitely a Renaissance Man in many aspects. His artwork is still some of the greatest examples of human creativity to date. His name speaks of illustrious pathways to history and artistic expression. I barely care about any of that. I just wanted to learn how to write like he did. What ended up being a night full of poetic bliss and success started out as a frustrating mess. I scrawled all over my books and random papers, trying to dot every i and cross every t, backwards. It puts a strain on your hand unlike any other.

When I got down to actually developing my own font and shorthand weeks later, it became as easy as writing forwards. Now this may not seem too interesting, but I found beauty and a sort of enlightenment in this practice. On one hand, it did serve as a useful tool in assuring people wouldn’t read personal things I wrote during classes. On the other, it garnered the attention of people who were simply unaware that this was even a thing. People who usually paid me no mind during classes were now staring over my shoulder, watching every stroke of the pen and saying things only slightly more intelligible than “Ooohh wow!” What an amazing feeling it was.

If, for any reason, you find useless (and I say this with love) talents to be interesting, I will provide a link to a website that talks about this style a little more and has a tool to show mirrored text. But, trust me, nothing is better than learning on your own. Using a couple nights to practice all the while planning to propose to a prom date would’ve been a great idea in hindsight.

Let us delve into the way in which I decided that art was the right creative path for me. When I was a young boy still learning how to operate in the world of first grade, I had a very enlightening experience that awoke within me a skill that I cannot imagine living without. My dad had recently purchased a painting that depicted a man looking into the viewers eyes. The painting had a clean modernist style, its colors were bright and vivid and the dimensions were perfect. It had shapes colored in nice oranges and reds, and the man’s face, though not detailed delicately, was very intimidating. Almost enough to scare my brother and I every time we entered the bathroom.. because yes, that’s where my dad decided to put it.

It was very hard to use the restroom late at night with a scary painting hovering over your shoulder. Many months passed like that until we got acclimated to the image. What I found after those months was that the painting, though still a little creepy, was actually very interesting to examine. I liked to look at its angles; the style was alien to me as all I was used to was my own childhood sketches. They were very personal images I would make about things I wanted or ideas I had about life. To me, they were pieces of art truly. To others, the random doodles of a child. Regardless, they were the same as the painting in essence because they were images I held dear to me, just as the artist behind the creepy painting probably felt about his piece.

As I grew older, I was accustomed to the fact that every person would have their own opinion of art and we had to live with those differing views. I took inspiration from the concepts other artists embodied while the kids around me were used to simply recreating whatever images they saw. My work was characterized by the many styles I used in one piece, a good mix of clean line work and messy detail. The more I practiced and hatched ideas, the more subtle the meanings of the work became. Words in my brain turned into pictures that only I could understand.

Although I never was able to draw human faces well, I felt that all of my artwork had a way of looking back at me. The closest I ever came to creating something as beautiful yet intimidating as the painting I grew up seeing was this piece I made a few years back. It’s called “Eyes.”

Maybe it could be someone’s inspiration one day.