Why make art? Why express yourself?

It is a question I don't often ask myself, but whenever I do, I am forced to see my own frailties. The first answers-which are not necessarily the right ones-are that "I do it for personal fulfillment," "to exist, to be recognized. To be loved." It is often said that artists (actors especially) are vain, narcissistic. Driven only by the desire to appear.

But is this really the case?

Perhaps not. At least, not all of them. I have realized that I do it for a living and to survive. To better cope with those difficulties that emerge during life, with different, more intimate, deeper, natural tools of awareness. Art not only sharpens such tools, it generates new ones.

Acting, for example, makes me experience dimensions that I would not otherwise know: "the life of another," writing allows me to investigate myself, my state, my life. In both cases, it is about sublimation.

"Sublimate" is a wonderful word, especially when related to the rot that lies within all of us. As De André used to say, "From diamond, nothing is born, from muck, flowers are born." Sublimate is that thing that elevates the inner magma to a diamond ready to be shown and worn.

Of course, the more people like that diamond, the more financial return the artist will get from his work. I do not deny that it is important, for everyone, even the artist, inflation is real. But making money through art is what is called a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, at least for me.

I believe that art should heal the soul. Bringing those who enjoy it and those who practice it on a common track, where by almost magical ways, the artist's sublimation allows the user to locate his or her own inner knots, like a mirror of the soul. For only in this way, by identifying them, can one confront demons.

How can one defeat what one does not know?

The artist immolates himself, guinea pig of himself, and digs inside himself to explore the unconscious, the subconscious, the noumenon, to find what simmers between demons and angels, in the land of blood. And then, with a principle that surpasses even alchemy, he makes little pearls out of them to be returned to those who will have the patience and desire to enjoy them.

This principle of seeking, which has nothing to do with the meditative awareness of knowing oneself, but more with the powerful experience of facing oneself and shaping with one's projections something manifest, true. This process is necessary. This process for me is art.

The rest, as someone would say, is just ditties .