"In 2010, on the rocky beach in Sardinia, we spent days chatting about idle things: movie portraits, mullet kings, victims of the fashion system, happiness pills. The sun was hot."
Ten years after, a GPT2 neural network was asked to continue this story.
"Nel 2010, sulle spiaggie rocciose della Sardegna, passavamo i giorni sotto il sole a parlare di cose inconsistenti - ritratti in forma di film, persone con pettinature improbabili, vittime della moda e pillole della felicità ."
Dieci anni due, a una rete neurale GPT2 è stato chiesto di continuare questa storia.
The sun was hot, the water tasted green, lukewarm.
But nothing mattered more than our shared faith.
But nothing mattered more than our shared faith.
There was a holiness in sharing every common bond of life - food, clothes, a roof over our heads, sex - all things in which the state offers no protection, and only offers deceit and regulation. It's a shared Italian sentiment: the danger of pride is that it crowds out the heroic. And there is little heroism left in Italy.
Our point was this: happiness doesn't come from reading a New York Times magazine, meeting an ex-girlfriend, and settling for a low-key life.
"That's not what I want you to be happiest with," Silvia said. "You need to be happy doing something more fulfilling than that. And when you're happier, you have more energy, and you are in a better mood for life."
Happiness is never simple.
It's just hard, and that's okay.
There was a lot of that discussion, too.
The conversation shifted, gradually. Things like, "What's it like to be married to a dog?" or "What's the weirdest thing you can buy?" ("Everything, usually," would pop up).
Then one day, around lunchtime, we started talking about the amazing book by Natalie Angier, an American short-story writer, which had just been published in the U.S.A. called The Long Goodbye. This was a rare thing at that time: a single American book about the final days of a famous person's life.
We discussed romantic comedies, just not the same ones, my favorite of the bunch being "Love's Labor Lost," in which Joan Rivers explains her varied opinions on "happy" parties, grief, and the Tylenol commercial.
We talked about family, reality TV, travel, and how we knew we loved each other.
That same year, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
That same year, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The girls on the beach stared at us: I'd never seen so many young women smiling.
We were slightly more overeducated, perversely studious, and quite harried. We were precocious adolescents. But at the same time, we were the womanly type: dressed in a summer coat, flat-toed sandals, and hair pulled into a tight ponytail.
We also had deep, complex memories.
The girls on the beach were water-colored, so I was well on my way to seducing them. But only because I had been drinking wine. We kissed every day, and when I finally tasted a glass of Cabernet, which is what I had come to the place for, I started thinking hard: if I had really kissed the girls, what would the spirits of that beach look like?
The sun was hot, and when it rose we bolted to our tents, drinking lemonade from plastic bottles (if I remember right, those bottles were probably throwaway trinkets).
As we grew increasingly shy and cynical, we formed a kind of tribe with other idealists, eccentrics, escape artists, writers and artists.
The country we called Italy was quickly becoming a magnet for young, resilient, and creative souls. On our most extraordinary moments, we were a bit like Stephanie Meyer—but for three times the white-hot dopamine rush.
All together, it was a time to contemplate our place in the world. We let the audience in on our mess of reality—our confusion, our madness, our grief, our need for time—and we saw the place where that nervous warmth found its voice.
And in my memories, I'll always remember how strangely close it felt.
In 2010, on the rocky beach in Sardinia, we spent days chatting about idle things: movie portraits, mullet kings, victims of the fashion system, happiness pills, deep friendships, past traumas, current events, afterlife, and much more.
Our point was this: happiness doesn't come from reading a New York Times magazine, meeting an ex-girlfriend, and settling for a low-key life.
"That's not what I want you to be happiest with," Silvia said. "You need to be happy doing something more fulfilling than that. And when you're happier, you have more energy, and you are in a better mood for life."
Happiness is never simple.
It's just hard, and that's okay.
All images ink and watercolour on paper, 16x11 cm, 2010.
Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini is represented by Ligature gallery.
