Walking through the streets of Lomazzo is not very exciting. A provincial town around Milan Metropolitan Area with buildings and row houses big and small full of good people who never do anything. They are usually that kind of being who’s neither against nor in favour of anything, trying not to make too much noise.
I used to come here long ago because my high school was here in this small town.
At that time, I lived in a very unattractive town, ten minutes from here, which seemed to be quite miserable, at least to me during my childhood. The citizens, for no reason, were proud of their bell tower, claiming to be the tallest in Lombardy.
I don’t know if it was true, but even if so, it was also the saddest, so lonely and skinny up there in the sky, dull grey covered with aged plaster and muggy damp smudges, without any colour or decoration that could make you smile and feel good in some way.
Here and there are little churches hidden among trees under big leaves that make summer fresh and loudly crunch under your feet in autumn.
You know, that kind of place that makes you say, ‘Oh! Look how beautiful!’ with stupid sincerity.
It wasn’t that case. That bell tower was only high. If you noticed it passing close, you could also doubt if it was a bell tower, an old power plant of some forgotten company or something related to water distribution.
So many people are proud of things not made by them and enjoy competitions and comparisons, which wastes time. Better be proud of what you have done and try to compete with no one. It is useless in the end.
By the way, my art school was located in a building that tried naively to echo the austere warehouse that Gropius designed for the glorious Bauhaus. All the classes were inspired by the Bauhaus method. Still, my high art school lacked grandeur and had a solid provincial accent.
But I was 13 and didn’t know what the Bauhaus was and had no idea about Gropius, but it was just a new adventure full of fear and suspicion, but also fascinating and seductive.
Before high school, at the end of middle school, in a psychotic madness of which teachers showed evident signs over the years between nervous tics, too many cigarettes held with shaking hands, white hair for no reason and overweight given to all with democratic sharing, this group of guys advised me, after having thought about for a while, to go to some sort of computer school.
If I think about it now, I don’t know whether to laugh or piss me off, thinking that if I had listened to them, I would have ended up in front of a screen full of codes or a gutted computer full of greenish and filthy yellow intestines.
My father, on the other hand, in a moment of egotism with a touch of narcissism all drenched in nostalgia, took me to the Italian Air Force school where I would become a pilot and make a lot of money, I would have a nice white uniform with stars and flags pins, and I would have had the respect of everybody.
But discipline is not my thing, I’m not too fond of uniforms, and above all, I do not understand hierarchies. I’ve never seen Top Gun, and I still didn’t see the new one (but I will).
For me, people are all the same. I can learn and improve from some, and they are the ones I like and others I don’t—end of my hierarchy.
But I usually don’t listen to anybody; I don’t even listen to myself. Not sure if it’s a benefit or a weakness.
Whatever! In the end, I ended up at the art institute in Lomazzo, which, quite ironic, was not the school headquarters but the secondary building. The head office was in Cantù, a provincial town too, but bigger, which meant that my school was in the province of the province.
But I love it, and I enjoyed it nonstop for five years. We have done so many things that even today, it seems incredible to me today think of a teenager having access to so many workshops and practical and theoretical knowledge. There I fell in love with Kandinsky. And when I arrived for the first time in New York, I rushed to the Guggenheim to see him.
Then so many things happen, so many cities, so many works, so many people. And now, in July, I’m back from China in my old parent’s house in my high school town with 35 degrees sun burning my face and arms but fresh and breezy under some oak and oleander tree.
Nostalgia? I'm not nostalgic. I'm all about the 'wunderlast.'
