The art of desire · July 2026
Stairway to Heaven
How to turn sexual energy into poetry and art
They lied to you about art.
They made you believe that to be an Artist you needed Technique. The years of study, the perfect rhyme, the hand that doesn't tremble, the right pitch. And since you didn't have that technique, you convinced yourself you weren't an artist. You sat down in the audience and left the stage to others, for your whole life.
Art is not technique.
It is Feeling that has found a form.
I know, it sounds too simple to be true. So I won't explain it to you: I'll let you feel it with your own hands, with something that happened to me a few days ago.
I was at the sea. I was telling two friends that this article — the very one you're reading now — was missing something: I didn't feel it alive, I didn't feel it mine. And instead of going on talking about it, I made it happen. The beach was full of sensual, attractive women, the kind that stop your thoughts — charge everywhere. I chose one from the crowd who set me alight. I didn't approach her. I took that attraction — raw, animal Desire, the kind that usually ends up wasted in a discharge — and I let it out in words. Without thinking. Without looking for the rhyme.
As I watch your round behind
I vanish, I die, I am no more.
And do you know why? Because I love you,
and love is killing me:
you are the most beautiful assassin in the world.
It's not Dante. It was born in three seconds, looking at a stranger. And yet it's alive. Because underneath there's no technique: there's real Fire.
Then I asked my friends to try. And here is what opened my eyes. The moment Desire rose, they burst out laughing. The poem turned ridiculous in their mouths — not because it was bad, but because they couldn't hold the tension. The laughter was an escape. The quickest way to discharge, in a hurry, a charge that burned too much to stay inside.
Laughter, porn, social media:
different names for the same escape.
Discharging what you don't have the courage to hold.
Then, slowly, they stopped laughing. They stopped looking for «the right poem». And they let Feeling speak. And the words took on a body. Small, crooked, without rhyme — but you could feel them. You didn't hear them: you felt them. They arrived in the belly before the ears.
True art is not heard.
It is felt.
There's only one enemy in all this: the mind. If it gets in the way, the poem doesn't come out. If you set out to make «the right poem», the perfect one, nothing will come — the mind acts as a brake: it corrects, it judges, it deletes the word before it's even born. Feeling wants to flow; the mind wants to control. And here, control is death.
If you chase the right poem, it won't come.
The mind is the brake, Feeling is the engine.
And here lies the secret no technique teacher will ever tell you. To be an Artist doesn't mean being trained. It means letting Feeling pass through without brakes.
Technique helps, I don't despise it. Learn the rhyme, the rhythm, the pitch, the brushstroke: they are tools, and a sharp tool cuts better. But technique is an ingredient you can even do without. Feeling is not. That one is indispensable. And there — right there — almost everyone gets lost.
Technique is the chalice.
Feeling is the wine.
No one was ever thirsty for an empty chalice.
Think of music, which never lies. How many times have you heard a piece performed to perfection — every note in its place — and nothing reached you? And how many times has an out-of-tune voice, off the beat, but singing from the heart, turned your head along with the whole room? The heart pierces technique. Always.
And the technician who is afraid to truly feel will have his criticism ready, around the corner. «He's off-key.» «He's not on time.» «He knows nothing.» I know that poison well. But that criticism is not judgment: it's envy. Whoever utters it feels, deep down, incomplete. He has the chalice, and not the wine.
The technician's criticism is his confession:
he is telling the world what he lacks.
Now let me tell you something that happened not long ago. At a wedding I met a woman, and between us the Fire flared up at once, impetuous. But we lived far apart, and I was still burned from my last relationship: I didn't feel ready to start another. So I understood the most honest thing was to end it right away — so as not to fool her, and above all not to fool myself.
And yet that Fire was real, and I didn't want it to go to waste. I knew music made her melt, and that this would be the last evening. So, instead of taking a last night to forget, I picked up the guitar and sang to her. My voice trembled — not from technique, but from the melancholy of what was ending as I sang it. I looked into her eyes and sang the goodbye, live. It was all there: desire, tenderness, the regret for a story that could not be. All squeezed into a few crooked notes.
She left; the serenade remained. Desire, instead of discharging into some ordinary night, had taken Form.
Because it holds for everything, not just for a poem tossed out on a beach. It holds for painting, music, dance, words — for whatever Fire you have inside. If you're all technique and no heart, throw the heart into your Work, even at the cost of failing — and be ready to work on the frustration: wasting time, ruining the brushstroke, singing off-key, missing the rhyme. That's the price, and you pay it without running away. If instead you're all heart and no technique, sharpen the instrument — not to become cold, but for the exact opposite. Study technique until it becomes spontaneous, until you no longer have to think about it: only then will Feeling be able to pass through it without deviating, without error. Precise and in flames in the same instant.
The aim of technique is not perfection.
It is being able to forget it, and remain only with the Fire.
So do this — now, or at the first chance. Look for the person who sets you most alight. Don't touch them. Don't conquer them. Look at them, and let the attraction speak through you: in a word, a note, a gesture. The troubadours knew it. Dante reached Paradise by looking at Beatrice and never touching her. Every time you turn that Desire into Form, you climb a step.
That is the stairway.
And every poem is a step toward your paradise.
You don't need technique. You don't need to have arrived. You only need the courage to hold Desire without discharging it — and to let it sing in your place.
Look for the person who sets you alight.
And let them sing through you.
Onward.
The invitation
In September I'm bringing this work to life: I'll be holding a workshop on how to turn sexual energy into art at the Kama Etna Fest, in Sicily. You're all invited. Message me privately for a discount code.
If you want to go deeper into these themes,
the book Sexual Intelligence — The Way of Fire explores them chapter by chapter.