I would say that autobiography sometimes is the starting point, but during the construction of the work, everything becomes diluted and transformed into something that is no longer recognizable. Sometimes the starting point disappears even to me over the years of composition, so that something that was once a representation of a particular experience in my life becomes a shared experience. At the end of the process, one forgets the reason of the original inspiration. It’s like when you travel, at the end of the trip, the first train you took holds a new significance and you see yourself as a traveler in a new light, sometimes you look back at yourself with a certain sympathy, all of your original concerns, uncertainties… at all the useless things you carried. My most private and autobiographical work, I would say, is Pallido Pallido… where I started searching, where thoughts casually arrive… everyone would really like, when thinking of someone, for their thoughts to arrive precisely at the desired destination, however, as everyone experiences, even if I believe in the existence of the “materia” of thoughts, rarely do the thoughts arrive at our desired destinations, rather they decide their own path.
That’s true. When you compose a work, when you create a story, when you imagine the construction of something that is a story, normally you search within your own personal experience: the stories of your family, friends, and often stories that you’ve heard in every day life, and all of the chances that life offers. Life gives us infinite opportunities to be amazed. Up until a few years ago, I usually wrote short stories as a sort of caption for my photographs, I think we’ve already discussed this no? but in the past few years I’ve been focusing more on writing romance novels, and it is a new experience, in which I use a visually descriptive language.
When I tell stories, they can be, descriptions of real things or, at times, they are invented within my imagination, but in both cases, I write the stories using the same approach. I need to see precisely what I am writing about. This is not really a screenplay, I need to see the place, the light, the single jests of the characters within the story. I know what you are thinking, you are probably thinking that these stories could be similar to a film, but the meaning of time is, in this case, more like a photograph, as opposed to a film as with Moravia. I would say that any image within my stories is more like a still picture rather than an action. The visual impression is a description of single details that can compose the story only if you put all of these single precise captured moments, always with strong detail and never a simple outline. This is why I don’t like to use too many adjectives and I never want the subject in my stories to be left unclear.
In the late 90’s, I wrote a story “A Napoli gli amori sono precoci,” of a young Napolitan “scugnizzo” (thief) who falls in love with the movements and gestures of his friend’s hands and arms while driving on the vespa on one wheel in through the small streets of Naples during while they drove around steeling women’s purses. He falls in love, not with a part of the body, but with its movements and gestures. The gestures are very important in this short story, and the description is very precise. Just like a photograph, or a hologram, where the reader can actually see the repetition of the movement and action. For the rest of his life, he continues to internalize the gestures of those who capture him for better or for worse.
Writing permits me to move forwards and backward in time and space. Unfortunately photography is too locked in the present.
