About awakening the artist within

                                Cittadella            

                                  

In a couple of weeks time it'll be mid summer;

the night of which, here in the Sibillini mountains, a strange and fascinating ancient ritual is repeated, where young men climb up to the top of Mt. Sibilla for a rendezvous with young maidens.

whose beauty is a wonder to behold and whose powers of enchantment and seduction are befitting

of the fairies or witches (which they secretly are).

And thus follows a night of revelling and love which leave our young men in a delirium of exhaustion, waking at sunrise to find that their beauteous maidens have vanished from the mountain top.

Legend has it that, unbeknown to the young men, the maidens were in fact fairy creatures, half human and half goat, with goats legs, and that this is why they disappear before the break of day, to avoid their treachery being discovered.

And that they, before the coming of the following summer, give birth to girls with goats legs who almost immediately, magically, grow to maturity and beauty to then practise their fairy like powers readying for the next mid summers night revels.

The old Nature religions still flourish in this part of Marche and I could tell many a tale of healers who would be first call for folks with wounds or sickness; amongst even doctors, judges, caribiniari, builders, farmers, whoever, even those who had a curse put upon them (myself included)

I'm linking here a blog about Cittadella, our creativity playground beneath the majestic mountain of Vettore. It might inspire those of you who are searching for the artist within yearning to be awakened, or practising artists who might like the idea of working with others is this extraordinary part of Italy

https://www.michaeleldridgestudio.com/workshops/

On this site you can also find  pages about my work and dozens of blogs I've written pver the years of living here in Italy. At the top of each page there is a translation button which switches the text to Italian

Su questo sito potete trovare anche pagine sul mio lavoro e decine di articoli che ho scritto durante gli anni trascorsi qui in Italia. In cima a ogni pagina è presente un pulsante di traduzione che permette di visualizzare il testo in italiano.