Adrian told me to meet at NOBLE Gallery around 7pm. So we did.
He was wearing a T-shirt with something written on it:
I told him that I was working through a dilemma connected to a new piece I’m currently developing, and that I would love to talk to him about it.
He said: Come to my studio next week so we can speak.
So I went. 16pm, Via Scevola. Monday.
His studio is so far from where I live that, by the time I arrived, I felt as if I had been riding for a hundred years on a good horse.
Then I finally arrived.
Adrian opened the studio door with the sun in his smile, together with his assistant, Francesca.
I entered, but from the other side, because I had to go into the courtyard first to lock up my horse, meaning my bicycle.
The first thing I noticed, and immediately loved, was that the studio has two entrances.
I love that kind of spatial possibility: when a place has two ways in and two ways out. Energy can circulate. It doesn’t become stagnant.
I always feel something similar when I meet Adrian. There is always a sense of circulation between us. Whether our conversations are short or long, there is movement in them. Nothing gets stuck. That is why I consider our relation valuable and important.
I told Adrian about the dilemma I was having.
And he resolved it for me in about two minutes, the way a cleaning lady comes into your house and cleans it in two hours. Adrian did the same thing to my mentally polluted space, except in two minutes.
And, as a bonus, he poured me an essence, as if I had just completed four years at Brera. He somehow saved me four years of my life and four years of tuition fees.
Instead, I received the extract of the knowledge in one afternoon.
What a blessing.
I consider this good karma. Who knows what good thing I must have done in a previous life to receive such an essential piece of knowledge today, completely as a gift from Adrian.
After he had cleared my mental space, I said to him: Adrian, you are my cleaning lady. Word thank you can’t cover my gratitude to you.
and Adrian turned to Francesca and said: This is what she thinks of me.
We all started laughing.
Then we started talking about mothers.
The work I am thinking about is connected to mothers and lullabies. I have recently started collecting lullabies, and I have developed this habit of randomly ambushing people I meet with a question, completely out of the blue:
What is the first memory you have of your mother and her voice? if they can’t remember I asked them:
What did your mother sing to you when you were little?
I actually like catching people this way. Because they don’t have time to prepare an answer, to perform, to postpone it, or to construct something clever.
They simply remember or not.
Most people immediately remember a melody, a lullaby, something their mother used to sing to them when they were very young.
Francesca remembered what her mother used to sing to her and sang it for me.
Then Adrian said: Since we’re talking about mothers, I actually have something related to my mother too.
He unpacked a new work for us.
It was a ceremonial white garment, made of pure white fabric, embroidered with all the drawings he had made as a child.
His mother had embroidered all his childhood drawings onto the fabric.
It was incredibly poetic and moving.
I think one of Adrian Paci’s greatest strengths is that he is a real.
I believe him everything, he is an artist.
