"Italy is definitely where I feel most at home, or alternatively, living in total wilderness, in the bush in Australia"

Noah Taylor presents belonging as a spectrum stretched between two vivid poles: the warm, densely human fabric of Italy and the uncompromising solitude of the Australian bush. The pairing isn’t contradictory so much as complementary. Italy signifies cultural intimacy, streets that feel lived-in, rituals of food and conversation, a history that presses close and makes daily life feel storied. It’s home as a finely woven tapestry of art, habit, and community, where identity is reinforced by shared rhythms and familiar faces.

The Australian bush is the opposite frequency, yet tuned to the same inner need. Total wilderness strips away ornament and forces presence. It offers an elemental sense of truth, a place where meaning arises from weather, silence, and the discipline of survival. If Italy is a home recognized by the heart through richness and proximity, the bush is a home recognized by the nerves through exposure and simplicity. Both environments ask for devotion, one to people and culture, the other to nature and endurance.

This dual allegiance suggests a restless but coherent self: a person who feels most themselves at the extremes, where life is most tactile and unambiguous. There is a rejection of the lukewarm middle, of settings that blur into anonymity. Italy and the bush share a visceral authenticity; they demand attention and respond to it, rewarding presence with depth. For an artist, these poles can be sustaining, one providing the hum of humanity and beauty, the other the clarifying echo of solitude.

Ultimately, home appears not as a single geography but as conditions under which the self aligns. Belonging emerges where senses are fully awake, where time feels thick with meaning, and where the world, whether a crowded piazza or a sun-cracked plain, reflects back a version of oneself that is true, undistracted, and alive.