Chiara Barzini has spent her life navigating the literal and cultural fault lines between Italy and California. Today we will discuss her book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, and her life as an artist living between two countries. In her acclaimed 2017 novel, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, she wrote about arriving in the San Fernando Valley just weeks after a catastrophic natural disaster and the illusions of the '90s.

In Aqua, she examines nature, the California water crisis and the broken dreams of the Hollywood machine. We talk about family, film, art as an act of faith and our collective ecological coming of age, where the end of empire meets the end of abundance, and the consequences of hypercapitalism and colonialism. What does it mean to stare our illusions in the eye and find the courage to imagine a better future?

(0:00) Water as Power

(2:17) The Necessity of Illusions

(4:24) Aqua: A Reading - On Hollywood and Water

(7:51) The Edge of Apocalypse & Writing

(9:10) The Etruscans and the Art of Dying

(13:13) Translation and the Creative Spark

(14:38) Raising Children in a Crazy World

(16:18) Poetry, Ruins, and The Waste Land

(18:48) Scents and Sounds of Two Cities (Rome and Los Angeles)

(20:43) The Connection with Animals and Nature

(22:54) The Evolution of Love and Compassion

(24:12) The Memory Museum

(27:04) We are in this lifetime together

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast