The Talks
Marie-Louise Sciò: “It’s much more personal”
Ms. Sciò, as the CEO of the boutique luxury hotel group Pellicano and a celebrated lifestyle website, would you consider yourself to be a tastemaker?
I have a hard time saying something about myself, but I do love beauty. I grew up around it, not only in Rome, which is an incredibly aesthetically pleasing city, but also at the hotel run by my father, Il Pellicano. I grew up around beauty, so I want to nurture and keep doing in what I do in the various parts of my job; the interior design, the stores, the style. So yes, I guess I'll take that I'm a tastemaker!
You are involved in almost every part of these projects, right? Everything from design of your hotels’ glassware, to the music that plays in its lobbies.
The hotels are kind of micro worlds, right? There are so many different areas within it. It really involves all of your senses. So as you mentioned, I curate everything that's got to do with the senses, what you see, what you hear, what you smell and what you taste, all of that is something that I really have my hands on. I’m curating the goods in our shops and the products we have online. I do all the interior design for the hotels, I do the music. I curate every single kind of touch point that exists with our guests, and I try to make sure that it's all quality driven, that there’s a real sense of harmony.
“I think you know when you’re playing it safe, when you’re stagnating, and when you’re growing. It’s probably an ongoing thing for all of us — and a tricky balance. I try to learn at least one thing on every album, to reach out. I become my own teacher.”
“I’ve been through some incredibly tough times in my career but I persevered and came out the other side. And that teaches you strength, how to handle being put under pressure. Experience is a big thing — just knowing that you can pull yourself back up again.”
“I believe that you’re a result of the choices that you make. Each action has a reaction. Somehow it’s just all connected and I wouldn’t change any of it.”
“If you are ambitious, you are running in a tunnel that never ends. You will always find something new to go after.”
“I think you have to slow down a little bit. But I am just trying to make work; I am just out there making work. I take care of myself so that I can survive. I used to not take care of myself so well, but now I do.”
“It's just so boring listening to false modesty. I've worked for many, many years so I'm really enjoying that my hard work has paid off… I think you should know your worth!”
“My whole purpose in life is to communicate what I’m doing. I see myself as a modern nomad and a soldier at the same time. Being mainstream won’t change me because once I have something to perform, a task, then I’m a soldier. And I’ve always been a soldier.”
“I don’t regret anything. I feel that I’ve made what I would call mistakes. But everything you do is a part of you. And you get something from it. The idea and excitement of being in these situations and places — they are more than just memories, they inform your life.”
“I think my love of pushing the boundaries in film comes from my desire as a kid to do something artistic that would amaze people. I wanted to do nothing less than that. Those are the projects that I love: figuring out what might just be possible but hasn't been done yet.”
“The more experience you have, the more time you’ve spent on this earth, the more regrets you accumulate. It’s normal. You can’t do everything right, nobody’s perfect. But if you think too much about that, you’re not here. You have to make some efforts to stay open-minded.”
“I learned by doing. The rest is doing experiments and testing and not giving up. If something is not satisfying start again, turn everything upside down and find a new formula for printing. Everything is learning by doing.”
“I always say ideas drive the boat. Ideas are a huge, huge blessing. That’s the thing you try to catch – an idea that you fall in love with. The whole thing doesn’t come at once, but fragments of things come and these fragments form themselves into a script. It’s a process.”
“I think you get more confident as you get older. You realize what your strengths and weaknesses are and you’re more okay with your weaknesses and you value your strengths more. I look forward to being 50 and I’m hoping that I’m as confident as some of the people that I look up to.”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to stop wanting to see and experience things. I think the day that you don’t long for that anymore is the day you have kind of given up.”
“Having come out as a gay man and the self-confidence that gives you is huge! It affects every aspect of your life, including my work. People like honesty. They respect honesty. And my film career took off once I came out.”
“Belief is very important. It’s like when you are riding a horse and you want it to go to the left, you look to the left first and then pull the horse’s head. As a human being it is the same thing: wherever you put your attention is probably where you are going to find yourself.”
“Failure is more interesting. Success only comes in one form. It doesn’t teach you anything. Failure kind of comes in all sorts of ways, and teaches you all sorts of things. You learn by failing.”
“You have to open yourself. Just as in life you have to be open to other people, to other perspectives — it’s the same thing when you write. That’s what religion’s about, that’s what literature’s about, it’s what life’s about: the stories that you build.”
“Risks are very important to me. It’s the only thing that will define the next career move or else I’ll be plateauing. I’ll be completely stale if I don’t take risks. And that’s not just my career.”
“I think the key to having a successful career is to find the thing you do well and do it again and again for the rest of your life. But I’m interested in expanding my language as an artist and as a composer. And I try to expand it with every project.”
“Any kind of quest for achievement has some kind of a personal drive behind it. I'm sure some people would say that it's obviously about the ego, but on the other hand, it's not as if I'm competing against anybody. It's not as if I'm trying to outdo anybody. It's just me trying to do something to see if I can.”
“I think as you are growing up, deciding what you want to do is really the process of elimination rather than gravitating towards something until you land on what really makes you happy.”
“I think the best you can do for yourself is let your subconscious drive you, instead of doing things because you want to achieve some sort of glory.”
“Part of being a designer is to fail every day, to try things that don’t work out. In a way, every project fails every day until it succeeds! That’s what the iterative process of design is about. Timing in many ways is key.”
“Life is struggle. Life is about struggle. You’re not supposed to be happy all the time. It’s about challenging yourself and pushing yourself, you know? You become content. That’s not happiness.”
“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward! If you’re feeling that, maybe other people need that to.”
“It’s hard to watch the misses, it’s hard to be criticized. But you’re always trying to hit it into the rafters, and damn the consequences if you don’t make it.”
“In life it’s about opening yourself up. It’s about tapping into your instincts and your energies. I think I got very good at that. I have to be open and I have to be open to the possibilities.”
“If I knew that tomorrow a meteorite would destroy our planet, I would start shooting a new film today.”
“It’s important to say no – especially earlier in your career – because life is short and you want to be proud of things that you have done, not ashamed of them.”
“It’s a huge peace to allow yourself to be vulnerable. You gain a sense of freedom and understanding and forgiveness for being human. Instead of trying to control things and make it the way you want them, you have to be more open.”
“Everybody is amazing at something — some people write music, some people are leaders, some people raise children, some people cook food. If you find what it is that you can offer to your fellow.”
“The journey of an artist is a journey of discovery and some engagement with the nature of material, with bodily things and all that has led me to this place. I’m really interested in that as a process because the process moves you in directions that you couldn’t rationally put there.”
“It’s easy to have inspiration and have a vision and an aesthetic, but if you don’t have the execution and you don’t get it out there properly and on time, it doesn’t matter. It’ll sink.”
“One day I realized that it didn’t matter whether people loved me or not. I was released of all that insecurity when I released myself from that fantasy and came to the conclusion that I could be happy making music regardless of whether I was successful or not.”
“I don’t want to be pigeonholed — it’s important to keep evolving, experimenting and reinventing yourself, otherwise it’s like hitting a drum, the same note over and over again. I think you should want to change, to try different things.”
“I’m trying to not play it safe. I learn more when I fail than when I succeed, so if I push myself to do something that’s really difficult, I could fail and I’ll learn a lot. But if I don’t fail, then I’ll be in a great movie. I hope to be the kind of actor that isn’t always great.”
“We're not having to run from predatory animals like we did for hundreds of thousands of years before. So now we have to make up new activities to fulfill those emotional needs. There is a certain something about the ever-present danger of death that makes living so great.”
“My work is integrated completely into my life and vice-versa – I’ve been working since I was sixteen and my work is my life and my life is my work. It made me who I am.”
“I think an ambition as a performer, and maybe even in life, is to become less afraid. Some boundaries are necessary of course and some are accepted, but the ones that I don’t want, I want to remove.”
Stephen Fry: “It releases you from loneliness”
Mr. Fry, have you always known you were funny?
That was always a huge thing for me. I was so terrible at everything at school; I couldn't catch a ball, I couldn't even run without running into a tree. I was pretty uncoordinated. I couldn't paint or draw, I couldn't sing, and I thought I was just hopeless at everything. And then I discovered that what I could do was string words together in ways that tickled people. And the reward of seeing people laugh rather than sneer with contempt was beyond measure. It's the greatest gift that I ever had. Making people laugh just made me feel like a prince when otherwise I would have felt like a beggar.
And you were always funny with words in particular?
Yes, it was always language for me. You see, language was something that everybody else used in such an ordinary way. It struck me that they used it to say, “Pass the mustard,” or, “What time is it?” but they didn't play with words. They didn't have adventures with words. They didn't look up new words. They didn't search the dictionary for exciting new words. They didn't put words together in new ways that seemed to make no sense, but sounded wonderful or sexy or frightening or hilarious, and words can do all of that. When I found Footlights, the comedy troupe I joined during my studies, it was perfect because here was a group of people who all had this gift of laughter, but in different directions. And mine was very much verbal, and it fitted with Hugh [Laurie, at the time also a Footlights member] so marvellously, because Hugh is physically so funny. We complemented each other.
Nilüfer Yanya: “You want to feel something”
Darcus Beese: “Create your own luck”
Nicoletta Manni: “There’s always more to discover”
Cecilia Bartoli: “I am hopelessly curious”
Marin Alsop: “I bring the art to life again”
Kengo Kuma: “Light gives us a message”
Tyler Mitchell: “Art is meant to be visceral”
Crystal Pite: “The consonance rings true”
