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run

Posted on August 27, 2006 @ 9:18 am by massimo | Filed under: blog, people, travel, wordpress

bus coach lorry aynaku digital illustration adobe

For some reason I was always on the run in my wild, wild years. And I was used to buses and mini-buses, coaches, lorries and trucks to travel around. I travelled on the cheap -mostly- and often ran the risk to never get where I planned, safely and according to my schedule. In Africa and Asia there is a kind of contest between the carriers going to the same place, village, town, or beach: they actually run a race to get there before their competitors. And also, every cheap means of transportation never run on time! Sometimes hard rains make a main road devastated and every sort of coach packed by the common run of mankind, has to take off its usual run…Sometimes the roads are too bad for a coach to go, to force its driver to have the passengers getting off and all together hardly pushing, until the bloody wreck can go again. No matter if this motion runs some of the passengers into the ground, the expedition has to go on – you see. I wonder how many trips of the sort I did, but I am pretty sure that some of them have been really formative for me in the long run.
I learned to hold on, I learned that some people are forcibly on the run because of need, poverty or wars. I learned that those slow and wrecked coaches are always able to run passengers back home, despite their discouraging features. And the drivers, they really happen to be as decisive as soul-rescuing priests along the road: maybe that’s why they always leave their engines running!

Illustration Friday’s topic is: run

arakne

Posted on August 19, 2006 @ 9:27 am by massimo | Filed under: animals, blog, mythology, people, wordpress

pizzica taranta salento dancing aynaku illustration adobe

The pizzica (pinch) is the traditional expression of Salento dancing. It is a genre with a frenetic rhythm that is linked to the increasingly prominent revival of the Taranta, a traditional musical culture of southern Italy. Taranta receives its name from the black tarantula spider, a reference to the rapid leg motion the spider makes in order to hypnotize its victim before killing it. Legend has it that people bitten by this mysterious spider (whose existence has never been proved), could be only cured by frenetic music that send them into trance, dancing to exhaustion… Taranta and pizzica ritual dance are said to go back at least two thousand years and are the earthy expression of an universe of rhythm, myth and history especially in the area of southern Apulia (Salento) with traditions of Greek origin. Tarantism still exists in various forms in the rural south, and in the last few years the Taranta revival has been supported in Italy by talented musicians, musicologists, artists and by large numbers of young people for whom the music is simultaneously a stand against globalisation and a confident expression of their own culture. An huge festival is going on in Salento these days and a popular blog gets videos, pictures and comments posted by the festival guests…After visiting the impressive event I’m going to contribute to the blog with a little work of mine: a simple animation of this (e)pic, the dancing Arakne God, (arakne is the Greek word for spider) would be fine enough?

billiards

Posted on August 12, 2006 @ 4:17 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog, fun, people, philippines, wordpress

nine ball billiard philippines aynaku illustration adobe

Nine ball is a contemporary variation of billiards with historical beginnings rooted in USA and traceable to the 1920’s. The game is absolutely popular in the Philippines (a former American colony) and played almost everywhere in the archipelago. It is played in social and recreational settings of every sort, by any number of players (generally one-on-one). Rules are agreed upon beforehand in extemporary tournaments, in which the number of players and the rules are usually set by the participants… During much of its history, nine ball ( or pool, as people commonly name it), has been known as a “money game” in both professional and recreational settings. In major tournament settings the reputation of Pilipino players is well known for having made some of the most spectacular shots ever seen…And the best of them really became rich like movie stars.

Illustration Friday’s topic is: play

aquarium

Posted on August 5, 2006 @ 6:35 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog, japan, people, travel, wordpress

Ginza is a central area of Tokyo where many art galleries are. The area is more like a typical city centre: lots of big buildings, a bunch of department stores and several large corporations. I used to go to Ginza often, visiting dozen of galleries …