WALTER FERRAIOLI - THOUGHT

The court recreates my thoughts and feelings while playing. By hatching, erasing, cutting and pasting narratives, it redesign my vision of a world in between dreams and reality. The ‘noises’ and moves veiling and revealing at the same time, the feelings which coexist in my imagination, and the thoughts both positive and negative.

The court forces me to explore thoughts that I would have otherwise avoided. I believe it is a constant discovery, requiring patience and consistency. The Game being consuming, intricate and ‘tiring’. The court possesses an indefinable charm, something special that people can feel. It is a place that either you love immediately or you detest. I belong to it when I play, and I move on it, and I find poetry and beauty where people usually think there is none.

I have always wondered how my life would have been different if I hadn’t 'met' the basketball court. Better here than dying inside. Here, there’s time for a new life. In a world where everything is dull and monotonous I have seen basketball make many people’s eyes shine, because sport, in general, is a producer of emotions, strong and true, and these are what make it special, vital. It’s telling human stories. Bringing to the centre those who are perceived as ‘other’ because of  a society unwilling  to entertain stories. Sports have the ability to boost people’s spirits and motivate them to believe in something or start again. The player’s role is important, just as an artist who has a diverse palette of colors at every court entrance. The Basketball court brings together the outsiders, minorities or those treated as ‘others’ because of their race, culture or way of life.

The basketball court teach us that we have another choice, the purpose. The purpose is the belief that you are alive to do something. It is an internally derived, generalized intention that is both meaningful to you and consequential to the world beyond you. In short, your purpose matters with you. It has intrinsic value to you. It’s bigger than you. And purpose has a future orientation. The tendency to believe that we’ve arrived at the person we are going to become has implications for our ‘sense of self’. The belief that ‘this is who I am right now and I’m a work in progress’ is qualitatively different than ‘this is who I am’. Keep trying until you succeed. This is the basketball court.

All stories matter and they are a representation of who we are, of our identity, of our culture, of our history, of our memories, of the place we come from and sometimes even of the place we are headed. There’s a need for these diverse stories, for the sake of the people who feel represented through them, and for the sake of being able to connect with one another’s experience.