Sources of inspiration

Several people have asked me directly, or are indirectly wondering, why I publish on a venue's page words and images about more or less questionable figures, photos of faraway places, or take metapolitical positions that depart from the usual.

The reason is that Cascina Bellaria, even though it is and must be an economically sustainable concern, does not exist as a commercial enterprise. Cascina Bellaria is our imperfect attempt to put ideals into practice.

I can summarise these ideals briefly as follows: to express beauty that is not necessarily useful (escaping the slavery of utilitarianism); to celebrate the pursuit of wellbeing, which is not just sipping a cocktail in front of a sunset but above all the fruit of effort and physical suffering; to pursue the ideal of a visceral philosophy that belongs not to the mind (the Enlightenment) but to the whole being, and that includes, above all, the sacred and the spiritual.

All the figures I have written about in these months have been, and are, great sources of inspiration for me, and even when I don't agree 100% with what they said or did, that doesn't “diminish” them in my eyes in the slightest. I must confess that I don't agree 100% even with my own ideas, and often, here at Cascina Bellaria, we have and will have events bringing ideas, sounds or aesthetics that are sometimes far from mine.

What finds no place among our offerings here, for the simple reason that it finds one everywhere else, are the priests armed with groupthink and political correctness, banality expressed in fake ideas, or sounds and artistic forms that don't seek beauty but remain a mere outpouring of the author's own existential malaise or, even worse, the copy of a copy of the most banal tedium.

m.m.