I wanted to give to my solitude a physical place where it could have expressed itself.
Resonating and amplifying with what was around without feeling guilty.
I went to the only place in my mind where solitude is a condition and not a disgrace.
I went to Siberia because I felt so alone.
I needed to be solitary, on my own.
I hed to exile myself in order to find out what I was missing.
I needed to share an home intimacy with strangers and witness others people’s solitude to cure mine.
This was the cure I had in mind for me.
I travelled by train, I walked, I hitch-hiked without planning anything, trying to be as instinctive as possible.
I allowed my sensations and my fears to drive me up to remote and forgotten villages.
Direction did not even matter anymore.
I walked, and when I saw a lineament, a scar, a tattoo or a certain fatigue that transpired a story that scared or interested me I got closer and with a note with few words written in Russian asked for a place to stay for the night.
I never spent more than two days with the same people.
Every time I felt comfortable and safe in somebody home that was the moment to leave.
Be accepted once would not have been enough.
I often found myself, drunk with vodka to fall asleep staring at a wooden ceiling.
To scan this journey as a metronome, I had the pages of Peasants and Other Stories by Cechov.
Those pages could have been the caption of the situations I was living. They held the essence of what I was seeing and of the spirit of the people I was meeting.
