Rocco Fontana - Publisher

My name is Rocco Fontana, and I am a book publisher. As a good Trentino I am of few words, even though I have been working in communication and information for over thirty years. I began to deal with publishing, precisely to respond to a pressing impulse that had been urging me for some time; probably one of those motions apparently irrationals that Life imposes on us. Let's say I was chosen - I started backwards - and I had to respond to an impulse so pressing that I could not ignore it.

My father Nerio has always been a multifaceted artist and able to undertake any path with great quality and sensitivity: he was a painter, engraver, photographer and sculptor, without interruption. Luckily she passed her creative abilities to all 4 children - I always say it's a genetic factor -. Personally, I didn't feel the need to become an artist like him, but I certainly share his sensitivity and ability to imagine and create things; let's say mine is plus a artisan approach, with a good dose of healthy unconsciousness.

Work on yourself it is the most unsuccessful thing there is; expectations and illusions are constantly disregarded; it's frustrating. But when we tire of the struggle and give up, in surrender we can begin to connect with Mystery of who we are.

Working on myself has become an essential condition of life, it is the air, it is the discovery of my sense of living, it is the discovery of my courage. With the age of majority I began to feel discomfort and impatience with what life seemed to offer, and I have started asking me questions. Hence my encounter with the figure of Gurdjieff and his teachings, thanks to an interview with Franco Battiato, which I had read. After many years of work in a Fourth Way school (The Teca), I continued in a personal way, often disordered, but constant. Gurdjieff and his teachings have constituted a fundamental basis from which to start but also a burden to leave on the way.

Working on myself doesn't make me a superhero, but it makes me capable of that resilience necessary to go through life in a fruitful, interesting way and maybe it also makes me a good person. In recent years I have studied Zen meditation and Alchemy and I have a strong interest in everything related to energies, relationships between things and healing.

As I feel, being a publisher is a Service activity, both towards the public and towards my authors.

My mission is to spread esoteric and spiritual literature and practice, with particular attention to alchemy and new models of life.

The approach borrowed from Fourth Way it is very pragmatic and absolutely scientific, in the broadest exception of the term. Know yourself, doubt, investigate and verify for yourself - as well as sharing - are essential imperatives for a healthy and fruitful development of your self. This also applies to the more spiritual aspect of the path, it also applies to the meditation, the (non) thought Zen or devotional practices. The topics I deal with in my publications must reflect this line, because the purpose of these books is to provide useful tools for those who seek to work on themselves. I hope to stimulate questions rather than give answers. Alchemy, Spirituality, Science and Art, in my opinion, are faces of the same diamond: one is made up of the other three; how could one doubt, for example, that Alchemy is not made up of Science, Spirituality and Art? And how could one doubt that (integral) Science is not made up of Alchemy, Spirituality and Art?

I am personally interested in the alchemist's approach, which is lost and found through constant practice; a highly symbolic but at the same time absolutely concrete and practical doing. I am also interested in the modern and future developments of Alchemy, which has lost its mysterious and secret connotation and now finds expression in all that border science that is creating wonderful things and expanding the horizons of knowledge. With Leonardo Anfolsi, Zen monk and alchemist, we have created a magazine: Nitrogeno (in English), which deals with this. The magazine is currently under restyling, to be able to adapt to ever wider horizons.

And here I am, then, committed to producing and publishing ebook And books. A job that I have learning step by step and that I love more and more, just as I love the relationship withauthor, read between the lines of the text, understand the genesis and the personality of the writer, think about strategies.

I love the feeling from "little boat in the huge sea", when the fateful "OK" is given and the new book is published or when the first print copies arrive.

All this, for a small publisher, is a real one "message in a bottle".

After all, quality and commitment count, the desire to offer something useful to the people.

The already substantial catalog will now grow more slowly, but in a "continuous fieri".