PROTEST AGAINST THE RISING TIDE OF CONFORMITY

I look down and see that I am the same as another person.  I see the same swoosh, the same coffee cup, the same telephone, the same ear phones, the same jeans and the same hair cut.  I notice that you and I are the same...  Exactly the same.
But then I look away and I feel a person that is not the same.  I look away and I feel a person that is different.  I see a person that comes from a place of love, in spite of fear.  I see a unique individual that loves difference, someone that isn't afraid of it.  Someone who can acknowledge it and cherish it.  Someone who is honest.
Then I think, why?
Am I the only one?
Am I crazy?
And then I realize, no.  It's just a hard thing to see.  We are evolving.  We are becoming more, better, stronger, faster, more connected...  Less unique, and less individual.
Protest against the rising tide of conformity.  

Lugano

I have been waiting for many years to see where my mother lived as a teenager.  Yesterday and today I was able to follow through on this when I visited her home in Lugano Switzerland.  I am left speechless, for what I didn't expect was to find another piece of myself in a land I'd never seen.  As I walked around the mountainous landscape it felt as though I had done so before.  I saw where she slept, studied, made friends and found love for the first time.  She spent the better part of her adolescent years speaking italian and living away from home at TASIS(the american school in Switzerland).  So much of my history was there.  From here I could see how she loved Telluride so much.  The two places are very similar.  During my look around her school I had a once in a lifetime encounter...  A miracle really!  I met one of her teachers.  He taught her photography.  For the next few hours we traded stories about life and art.  He just kept telling me how beautiful my mother was, how elegant she was.  I couldn't help but cry a little bit.  As I looked around I saw my mother everywhere.  Something about the way people walked, how they were forced to move according to the way the mountains wanted them to move.  It was as if I could see the knife that carved my mother into the woman she would become.  The grind stone that would sharpen her into the explorer she fashioned herself.  I could see her face in those  I passed and the warmth of her hands in those I met.  My mother was very human, she was flawed, and she was beautiful.  She was Lugano, and she was Telluride.  She was an explorer and a mountaineer.  What's left of Fran Distefano Arsentiev will live on in me.  I am now back in Zurich.  Tomorrow I will return to the stage with my colleagues to begin the rest of our performances in Switzerland.  This experience will provide me with a strength I thought died long ago, while my family, and Telluride will keep me humble in my craft as I take new steps as a man.
With love always
Paul Distefano

A long time coming

Well we're in Vienna now!  It's been a whirl wind tour through Germany so far, filled with every emotion you can imagine.  Life on the road in Europe is a dream.  I love moving so swiftly through the old worlds that are now new.  I was walking through Vienna the other day and I realized that at some point in my walk I probably stood on the same ground as Mozart or Johann Sebastian Bach.  This place is filled with so many secrets, but they are coved with a layer of new that strips away human emotion.  Still the old place is around, just harder to see.  If you look close though it pours from the cracks in the stone buildings and streets.  Lately I've been fighting a little cold.  It makes me feel sluggish, and my body doesn't hold any sexiness.  That will pass though.  My movement is by default very big and bold.  I would like to make it more direct and snappy (that's a strange thought).  The work is going well.  I am looking forward to doing more shows....  Ooh, got to go, life is calling
Ciao