Sunday 16 May 2021

Zibaldone (Part 2)

"Zibaldone" is a term made famous by italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, who used it to name a collection of written notes, thoughts and reflections, kept for several years. It means "heap of things" and I like to use it as a placeholder for all my scribbles who I can't bother to better categorize.

The term was also used in the weekly (now monthly) sport magazine Guerin Sportivo for the 2-page spread dedicated to cartoons satyrizing the world of sports (it was the only section I used to read).

Thorugh the years I had different ideas about what this blog should be about, resisting the idea to turn it into a dump of personal art and thoughts because

1) I'm not particularly gifted as a writer,
2) nor as an artist;
3) I don't like vanity projects;
4) social media profiles seem better suited to that kind of simple 'content sharing'.

In a universe where I have little else to do, I'd love to produce longer pieces on topics that matter (at least to me) and leave a meaningful contribution, like i did here, here and here), but unforntunately I cannot afford that kind of time to spare.

But I don't want to discontinue this blog either, on the contrary : I'd like to revitalize it.

But lacking more substantial content, I think I'll go for the Zibaldone approach.

I do have heaps of pieces I wouldn't mind to share, and I'm not interested in using social media like Instagram or Facebook to do it  for a number of reasons among which:

1) The 'like' mechanism turns everything shared in a cry for attention while encouraging lazy interactions (rather than engage in commentary, people simply click on one option: Like, Love, Haha etc... also conforming to a very limited range of possible categories in reaction to something

2) Posting on social media platforms increase only the value of the company, but does not get me any piece of the pie. I suppose what I get in return are the services they offer, but although my personal contribution to the creation of value for Facebook or Instagram or whatever is of course absolutely marginal, still: I'm making money for them with my work.

3) Being active on social media is an invitation to other people to spend time there, which we all should do less.

ERGO

I'll just dump stuff here.
I hope you don't mind.

These are studies for a character in a story I'm currently working on. It's set in a Borneo-like environment, so I drew inspiration from this documentary:



and this is a piece of the final art




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