The Philosophy of the Phoenix Nest
The Phoenix Nest’s philosophy is a combination of looking outward towards nature and inwards towards the nature of men, its qualities, its faults, its weaknesses, its potentials.
Different cultures and civilisations have mapped all of that since time immemorial in a desperate attempt to produce a blueprint for the betterment of humanity.
Within this historical journey where people travelled, migrated, defended their land and traditions from invaders and violently enforced their beliefs against their own neighbours, ideas were shared, and knowledge was gained, accumulated, transcribed, sometimes shared and sometimes occulted.
Not everything we now call art had an initial artistic intent or was designed to be shared openly. Each civilisation had its secret rituals, its holy scriptures only offered to the initiated. We had the inner chambers, the Sanctum Santorum, the Devine relics, the mystical writings, the alchemic formulas, the magic spells but we also had libraries, universities, laboratories, wisemen, sages, bodhisattva, philosophers, teachers and institutions willing to propagate knowledge, wisdom, virtues and an administrative order for the good of humanity to protect it against its own destructive and evil tendencies and to nurture it towards greater heights.
The Phoenix Nest offers a glimpse into all that and creates the opportunity to explore the natural world and the frivolities of men with their portraits, palaces, jewellery, perfumes, gardens, fashion, wars, laws, scientific treaties and eroticism.
More than an aspiration to conquer the stars we all carry within us an insatiable quest to become immortal, to crack the code of the universe, to regain and preserve our own youth, to shape and expand the secret garden of our most hidden desires and to place it under high walls hidden and protected against the bigots, the extremists, the barbarians and simply speaking, the imbeciles!
This secret garden is what we all possess in our minds and hearts. It’s made of plants and animals, rivers, lakes, seas, plains and mountains. It’s made of colours, sounds, melodies, smells, flavours, dreams and memories. It’s a rich blend of emotions that can be guided and further developed through images, music, food, poetry and rearranged according to our individual tastes, needs, preferences and sense of aesthetic.
That’s why antique books carried illustrations and imagery even when they were music scores or scientific papers. That’s why, well before the invention of the photographic machine and the takeover of movies, the most descriptive novels in later editions had images added, like it was possible to condense in a single drawing a chapter from the Inferno of Dante, the Lost paradise of Milton, The Thousand Nights, Macbeth, or the Metamorphosis!
Today those illustrations can take us closer to nature and stimulate both our senses and our endless imagination. Imagination can turn the walls of our prison into the villa of Livia in Rome, where art and nature were brought inside and where loving freely required no external interaction.
And at the end, our biggest regret will be our unwillingness to love just because we wanted to be loved first!
Love, Davide
