#can you imagine if he could quintuple those beautiful blues?

[eleonora-casarin]

Commento di un giovane campagnolo/ a young farm boy's comment

🇮🇹

È una situazione quasi surreale.

Il caldo insolito e il fatto di essere quasi sempre a casa fanno credere al mio corpo che è già estate. Non avete idea di quante volte io abbia già involontariamente pensato al mare!

Le mie giornate sono come tanti quadri fatti con solo tre colori: il blu delle videochiamate (con scuola e altri attivisti XR), il verde del lavoro sui campi e dello smercio di verdura, il giallo delle scampagnate fatte in giro per i nostri ettari di campo e alberi.

In particolare, il nostro lavoro familiare (vivo in un’azienda agricola) è lievitato: la gente non si fida più di andare nei supermercati, preferisce chiedere la nostra merce anche se è più cara.

Dopotutto, però, frutta, uova e verdure bio e consegnate direttamente a casa sembrano valere molto oggi.

La richiesta è quintuplicata: in una settimana vendiamo quello che vendevamo in un mese. Abbiamo quasi finito anche le scorte, senza le reti agricole da cui ora compriamo dovremmo presto scegliere a chi vendere e a chi no.

Mio papà è preoccupato, dice che anche le reti stanno finendo le scorte. I migranti regolari, quelli che nelle grandi aziende forniscono la manodopera necessaria e in inverno tornano in aereo a casa, quest’anno sono rimasti nei loro Paesi perché vogliono evitare di venire contagiati e morire lontano dalla famiglia.

Poi sorride, dicendo che forse in futuro potremmo permetterci di aumentare i prezzi; dopotutto, “a fare i contadini non si diventa ricchi, ma neppure si muore mai di fame”.

Io capisco che un po’ scherza, ma non ignoro che stiamo iniziando a mettere da parte un po’ di zucche e patate, e a guardare se nel fiume di nuovo pulito di fronte a casa nostra sono tornati i pesci pescabili. È solo istinto, comunque.

Con mia sorella e il cane facciamo spesso scampagnate, perché anche se siamo sul confine della provincia la Polizia non sorveglia argini e campi. Neanche le autostrade deserte vicino alla nostra proprietà, se è per quello: ormai ci sono più animaletti in pista che macchine, e il Convolvolo esplora le strade. Specialmente qui in campagna, c’è un rivivere della natura che è fenomenale.

È bello.

Quasi non riesco, non oso pensare a chi vive in città ed è bloccato in casa tutto il giorno. Finita la quarantena, sarà psicologicamente stabile quanto i superstiti della Grande Guerra, secondo me.

I miei amici del borgo infatti sono già diventati un po’ lunatici, perché o sono tremendamente attivi sui social, o diventano semplicemente introvabili. Anche se di mio sto abbastanza bene, è come se mi sentissi addosso la cappa di una società cieca che soffre perché costretta a fermarsi e per una volta pensare, e pensare, e pensare.

E poi mi manca andare in giro, quello sì. La gente ormai la vedo tutta in videochiamata, ma non è la stessa cosa.

Lo pseudo-isolamento sta facendo affiorare dei difetti diversi ad ogni persona: c’è chi diventa intrattabile, chi si impigrisce malamente, chi rompe le palle su whatsapp, chi al telefono diventa estremamente locquace (come me).

Era psicologicamente inevitabile, e col senno di poi chissà quante risate.

Questo è un evento mai accaduto prima.

Quarantena mondiale.

Da vecchi (collasso climatico permettendo) potremo leggere dai libri di storia dei nostri nipoti, e ritrovarci in quella data a pagina 635 del libro di quinta.

Ma che ci sarà scritto?

Guardo le news: ovunque il sistema sanitario è in difficoltà, l’economia boccheggia, le bufale alimentano i rispettivi nazionalismi.

In futuro, per ricominciare a giocare a chi ha il PIL più grosso, le nazioni sacrificheranno i già pochi fondi per gli investimenti verdi, di cui abbiamo invece disperatamente bisogno per prevenire problemi ben più grossi.

Ma pensiamo anche ai lati positivi, perché (per quanto piccoli) ci sono: quanto stiamo imparando da questa esperienza?

Abbiamo imparato che le videochiamate sono dannatamente utili.

I cambiamenti radicali per salvarsi le chiappe sono ancora una cosa da utopie? A quanto pare, sono stati utopie solo nel nostro immaginario.

Le mascherine non FFX sono quasi inutili, ma alla gente l’avere qualcosa davanti alla faccia fa sentire protetta: la realtà e la percezione si detestano.

Quando non hai altro da fare, i flashmobs musicali e simili non sono poi così ridicoli.

La routine può essere spezzata, la vita può cambiare in poco tempo, anche se non siamo in un fiilm.

La natura, quando non la bastoni, è molto più bella.

Ma l’industria bellica è davvero un bene di prima necessità?

Lavarsi le mani bene, a lungo, con il sapone, ci sta sempre.

Siamo probabilmente neanche a metà dell’emergenza, ci aspetta molto altro.

Comunque, altro che laboratori e scemenze varie! Per me ci sono semplicemente gli sviluppatori delle app delle videochiamate dietro a tutto questo! XD

🇬🇧

It is an almost surreal situation.

The unusual heat and the fact of being almost always at home make my body believe that it is already summer. You have no idea how many times I’ve involuntarily thought of the sea!

My days are like so many paintings made with only three colors: the blue of video calls (with school and other XR activists), the green of work on the fields and the sale of vegetables, the yellow of the outings made around our acres of field and trees.

In particular, our family work (I live on a farm) has risen: people no longer trust to go to supermarkets, they prefer to ask for our goods even if it is more expensive.

After all, however, fruits, eggs and vegetables organic and delivered directly to the house seem to be worth a lot today.

The demand is quintupled: in a week we sell what we sold in a month. We have almost run out of stocks, too, without the agricultural networks from which we now buy, we should soon have to choose who we sell to and who we do not.

My dad’s worried, says the networks are running low, too. Regular migrants, those who provide the necessary manpower in large companies and fly home in the winter, have remained in their countries this year because they want to avoid being infected and die far away from their families.

Then he smiles, saying that perhaps in the future we could afford to increase prices; after all, "you do not become rich as a farmer, but you never starve".

I understand that he is joking a little, but I am not unaware that we are starting to set aside some pumpkins and potatoes, and to look if in the river clean again in front of our house the fishes have returned. It’s just instinct, though

With my sister and the dog we often go out, because even if we are on the border of the province the police do not guard banks and fields. Not even the deserted highways near our property, for that matter: now there are more animals on the track than cars, and the convolvolo explores the streets. Especially here in the countryside, there is a revival of nature that is phenomenal.

It is beautiful.

I can’t bear to think of people who live in the city and are stuck in the house all day. After the quarantine, he’ll be as stable psychologically as the survivors of the Great War, in my opinion.

My friends in the village have already become a bit moody, because either they are tremendously active on social networks, or they simply become impossible to find.

Although I am quite well, it is as if I feel the cloak of a blind society that suffers because forced to stop and for once think, and think, and think. And then I miss going around, that I do. People now see it all on video call, but it’s not the same thing.

The pseudo-isolation is bringing out different defects to every person: some become intractable, some become poorly stacked, some break the balls on whatsapp, others on the phone become extremely locquacious (like me).

It was psychologically inevitable, and with hindsight who knows how many laughs.

This is an event never happened before.

World quarantine.

As old people (climatic collapse permitting) we can read from our grandchildren’s history books, and find ourselves on that date on page 635 of the fifth book.

But what will it say?

I look at the news: everywhere the health system is in trouble, the economy is struggling, the buffaloes are feeding the respective nationalisms.

In the future, in order to start playing with those with the largest GDP, nations will sacrifice the already limited funds for green investment, which we desperately need to prevent much bigger problems.

But let’s also think about the positives, because (however small) there are: how much are we learning from this experience?

We’ve learned that video calls are damn good.

Are radical changes to save your ass still utopian? Apparently, they were utopias only in our imagination.

Non-FFX masks are almost useless, but people feel that having something in front of their face makes them feel protected: reality and perception hate each other.

When you have nothing else to do, musical flashmobs and such are not all that ridiculous.

The routine can be broken, life can change in a short time, even if we are not in a fiilm.

Nature, when not sticks, is much more beautiful.

Is the war industry really a commodity of necessity?

Wash your hands well, for a long time, with soap, always fits.

We are probably not even halfway through the emergency, there is much more waiting for us.

However, more than labs and miscellaneous nonsense! For me there are simply developers of video call apps behind this! XD

[b-radley66]

Also also also prompt: Nola sits herself down and makes a list of the ways she can do better by people without making it All About Nola.

The List

Thanks to my beta-reader @bow-weaver

Nola Vorserrie looks down at the three objects on the polished burlwood of the table. A gold brushed rank plaque, the seal of Alderaan etched into it.

Five dark-blue, almost black pips spaced evenly on it.

A symbol unique on Alderaan. One that she and Senator Organa practically had to physically wrest from the previous bearer. Even though he had eschewed the title for a civilian title that gave more power and prestige. A title that Nels Somar had managed to combine with the one associated with this symbol.

A unique symbol. Almost as unique as the man who would bear it, at least for awhile. Until he could help them identify the best candidate. The best candidate to wrest the two titles from each other.

Her eyes move to one other object. One that she and Bail had both joked about using when the negotiations to unseat Somar had taken a sideways turn. An item from the man’s heritage. A small Corellian blaster, issued from the Royal Armory. She grins. He probably already has a few of his own, but appearances must be maintained.

It is the third item that softens her gaze. A small, unobtrusive object. An object, triple, quadruple, and quintuple encrypted. Codes that can direct and protect the Fulcrum of Bail Organa’s and others’ hopes and dreams. Codes that she has guarded with her life for two years and more.

Her eyes tear as she thinks of what this means.

That Ahsoka’s chances of survival have increased tenfold with the skill of another Temple-trained protector. Even one whose connection with his mystical partner is spotty at best.

That his chances—the chances of one that she loves as much as her Fulcrum, have increased as well with the inclusion of his hunt-sister. Two warriors who had sworn oaths to one another in their youth. To fight with each other, not just for.

She thinks of what she owes him. Her freedom. Her very existence? A scared, fifteen-year old girl, a pawn for a Separatist general looking to add to his retirement plan.

Nola grins as she thinks of the snark and love from him, her Zeltron foster-sister, a Jedi master, pirates, various clonetroopers and an ex-Sith as they assisted her escape. She rolls her eyes, cursing herself.

No. They rescued you, No-no.

She reaches into the inner pocket of her business suit. She pulls out a fourth item. One that she carries next to her heart, but had not looked at for years. Since she had become the handler of a prickly, snark-filled warrior, whose own losses could be seen in her powerful blue eyes, when the snark faltered.

A warrior that she had failed, by following protocol, when she had known of another who had shared her former life. If the whispered words against the skin of her shoulder as Ahsoka slept, on the rare occasions that they had shared each other’s own light, were to be believed, the two Jedi had been something more to each other, before each was lost to the other.

Nola unfolds the worn piece of flimsi. Her dark eyes track on the childish letters from a decade ago.

Letters that made up the words of a list.

A list that was the product of her own mouth spending credits that her ass couldn’t back up, a common occurrence back then.

What do you mean, back then? This question is asked in a high, clear voice in her mind, with just a hint of dryness and that hunt-born snark.

Back then, this trait usually manifested itself with teachers at her school before she left for Handmaiden training. She remembers her father’s patient, wise eyes, eyes that she shared in color as he made her make this list.

“It’s not all about you, No-no. You’re concerned with your life and what happens to you. While that is important to protect yourself, it is not the only thing you should be concerned with. You have said how much you want to be like your mother’s cousin, Padme’. Think about how she does things. What her concerns are. The reasons that she does what she does.”

“Your teachers, who you probably think are stupid, are looking at a much bigger picture than you.”

She remembers agonizing over the words of this list as a ten-year old.

It’s not all about you. Written ten times. Others had joined the list as she was sent back to it, when she failed to live up to it. Sent by her father, her mother, even her cousin.

By another pair of Queens of Naboo as well. One living, one killed by the new regime.

She grins at one particular line.

Listen before you speak. Her grin grows bittersweet as she thinks of her nickname from that Corellian on her mind.

Last Word.

Her eyes fall on the last one written. Written after she had taken her oath, in the dark of Naboo’s moon, as a Handmaiden.

A part of that oath. A credo.

I exist to serve.

She looks up as she realizes that she is not alone. She hastily dips her head as Breha, Queen of Alderaan gazes at her. The Queen’s lips quirk up on both sides in a small smile.

Her dark eyes move over the objects on the table. Two of them she nods at. The third and fourth, her eyes grow troubled.

She ignores the code plaque. Her hand moves to Nola’s list. Her smile disappears.

She looks up at her Hand. Her eyes are unreadable.

“You left one off, dear,” she says.

Nola’s breathing increases, the feeling in the pit of her stomach not unlike that of her ten-year old self facing those teachers.

“Those that you serve. Cherish them. Hold them close to you. All that I can say is, to make the rest of the list easier, is that you cherish them.”

“Cherish them as if every day might be their last. Or yours. Love them. Laugh with them.” She smiles mischievously. “Have ‘wrestling matches’ with them.” Her eyes twinkle at Nola’s blush.

She grows serious.  “Look at that as your penance, my Hand, if you feel that you have to punish yourself for what you did.”

Nola starts to speak, stops. Breha’s eyes sharpen. Nola finds that she cannot look her in the eye.

“Bail was ready to accept your resignation after you were shot.” She looks away, but Nola glimpses the powerful love for her husband before she does. “He felt you had given enough. We’ve talked about this before. In many ways, he may not be ruthless enough for what we are doing. It makes me love him all the more, because every decision he makes goes to his heart. Something that sets him apart from our enemies.”

She smiles. “He has me to help him be ruthless. As well as my Hand, even though she doesn’t realize it.”

Her smile fades again, replaced by the hardness. “I told him no. I wasn’t going to let you run from this. I have never seen you run before. I am not going to let you now.”

“I ran...”

“I am not going to argue with you, Nola,” she says, her tone brooking no discussion, as her words do. “This is where you are going to listen.”

“You are the Hand of the Queen. You give me cover for my decisions. But you are also there to tell me when I am wrong. You have carried out all of our wishes. I am not going to let you shirk your responsibilities.”

Nola looks defiantly at her. “I may have failed you already, Your Majesty,” she says. “I can see what is said in the Legislative Bodies. How much criticism you get for selecting me as Hand. A young, untried off-worlder. Nepotism because I am related to your dead friend.”

Breha does not let up. “Yes, and most of those whispers are led by Dorith Paneer. A man who wants your job. Actually, he wants mine in his family. Our Houses have been rivals for the Throne for thousands of years.”

“Maybe it would’ve helped if I hadn’t rebuffed his advances and married him, when I first got here from Naboo,” Nola says.

Breha rolls her eyes—almost with the power of Fulcrum. “Not that your charms aren’t irresistible, but he didn’t want you for you. He wanted you so he could get to me. To Bail.”

Her beautiful features twist with anger. “I will not let him any further into our affairs. He has made it clear that he believes our destiny is to be closer to the Empire. Could you imagine if he was my Hand? What danger we would all be in? Fulcrum?”

She calms. It is as if a switch is pulled. She is no longer the mother protecting her pack, but the powerful Queen protecting her nation-planet.

Some would say that they are one and the same.

“The most important aspect of that bullet I am adding to your list. Let them cherish you. Let them pick you up when you fall. Let them forgive you.”

She reaches over and pulls Nola into her embrace. “Forgive yourself. Hold yourself accountable, as you do more than anyone else, but forgive yourself.”

She breaks away. “His ship has passed the outer markers of the system. He will be here shortly. Make sure he knows why he is here. To make Bail’s job easier. To find someone worthy to replace him.” She smirks, an expression reminiscent of that warrior that they both worry about. “Don’t let the Corellian get the last word, Nola.”

+=+=+=+=+=

Bryne Covenant stands in front of her, the new symbol of his office on his chest. The blaster has disappeared to the back of his belt, much like she and her foster-sister carries theirs. She lifts his injured left hand and brings it close to her lips. She closes her eyes and focuses them on her list. Including the new words she has added after her audience with the Queen.

She closes his hand around the small code-chip. “She’s in your hands, now, Tal,” she whispers.

He smiles the crooked smile that makes Fulcrum’s heart flip. Hers ain’t the only one.

Her eyes widen as he moves the chip back to hers.

“Nope. Got a full plate with cleaning shit up here.” His eyes grow warm as he looks at her steadily. “She and I are in each other’s hands, No-no. That is what I have had to learn in all of this. But neither of us can protect the other without a conduit to each other. Someone who might be able to sort through our stubbornness and poodoo with no small amount of her own.”

Nola sees her father, her mother, her Queen in her mind’s eye, all holding a part of that list.

“What can I do to make it easier?” she asks.

[kmp78]

JL Article from WSJ, I´m copy pasting it here as per request because apparently the actual link is being a bitch.

The link is : https://www.wsj.com/articles/hanging-out-with-jared-leto-1504791535?mod=e2twmag

WHEN JARED LETO’S people say the plan is to meet “at Jared’s base,” I assume it’s a jet-setter’s figure of speech—as in, last month he was rock climbing in Menorca, next month he’s at Fashion Week in Milan, but Los Angeles is his base. But no—they mean an actual base: a decommissioned Air Force station tucked into the hills near Laurel Canyon, built during World War II to warn of incoming Japanese planes. The 100,000-square-foot compound, which Leto has called home since 2015, features 4-foot-thick concrete blast walls, a nuclear fallout shelter and a genuine air-traffic-control tower; it���s slightly absurd that it exists 10 minutes from the Sunset Strip, much less that someone lives in it.

On the other hand, if anyone’s going to inhabit a top-secret Cold War compound in the heart of Los Angeles, it’s probably Jared Leto.

Leto has a long history of outlandishness, whether it’s waxing his body and shedding more than 30 pounds to portray a transgender AIDS patient in Dallas Buyers Club, or sending his castmates condoms and a live rat while playing the Joker in last year’s Suicide Squad. Beneath the theatrics, he’s an industrious quintuple-threat: Oscar-winning actor, stadium-filling rock star (with his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars), digital-media entrepreneur, burgeoning fashion icon and—as if you don’t hate him enough already—successful tech investor, whose long list of winning bets includes Uber, Snapchat, Spotify and Airbnb. “I joke sometimes that I get more done on a movie set than I do when I’m off,” he says, “because I’m not as distracted.”

We’d originally planned to go for a hike today—Leto’s a big hiker—but it’s sweltering in L.A., 94 in the shade, and he’s been dealing with some back problems, so instead we’re hanging in his backyard, a shady xeriscape with a sadly neglected pool. To relieve his back, Leto is sitting cross-legged on the ground, dressed in a white Gucci T-shirt, green Gucci jogging pants (from the women’s collection) and a pair of worn-out gray Ugg slippers. His hair is its natural shade of chestnut, and his beard has achieved 1840s-prospector length. He also has the best posture I’ve ever seen. At 45, he looks almost exactly as he did nearly 25 years ago, when he first became famous playing the angsty heartthrob Jordan Catalano on My So-Called Life.

“I call him Babyface,” says his friend Alessandro Michele, creative director at Gucci. “He is timeless—it is almost impossible to give him age. If Visconti were still alive, he would love to work with Jared.”

Last night Leto was up late in the studio, working on his band’s next album. He woke around 9 a.m.—no alarm, as usual—and enjoyed his standard breakfast of muesli and almond milk, then spent some time tending to his back—heat, ice; meditation. But leisurely appearances aside, “it’s actually a super-busy time,” Leto says. In a few days he’s flying to Kazakhstan for a concert with the band; then he’ll start getting ready to promote his new film, Blade Runner 2049—the much-anticipated sequel to the dystopian 1982 sci-fi classic, in which Harrison Ford played an L.A. cop hunting down rogue androids.

Leto still remembers the first time he saw the original on VHS. “It was one of those films I just connected with,” he says. “I’ve watched it every couple of years.” In the sequel, he has what he calls “a small part” as a character named Niander Wallace, who creates said androids, known in the Blade Runneruniverse as “replicants.”

Denis Villeneuve, the director of the new film, says the inspiration for Leto’s character was David Bowie. “I needed a very charismatic, magnetic presence, someone with the aura of a rock star,” Villeneuve says. “But I also needed a great actor, because the lines he had to say were quite Shakespearean.” The character is also blind, and true to form, Leto��who once hung out with homeless junkies in Manhattan’s East Village to portray a heroin addict in Requiem for a Dream—dove in head-first. “We all heard stories about Jared, how he transforms into the characters,” Villeneuve says. “But even this didn’t prepare me for what was to come.”

Not content to simply act blind, Leto decided to become blind, ordering customized contact lenses that made his eyes totally opaque. “He entered the room, and he could not see at all,” Villeneuve recalls. “He was walking with an assistant, very slowly. It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe. It was so beautiful and powerful—I was moved to tears. And that was just a camera test!”

Leto stayed blind for the entire shoot, guided around set and never laying eyes on the rest of the cast. “That, for me, was insane,” Villeneuve says. “But he really created something. Every time Jared came on set, it was a boost of energy, tension and excitement.” (For his part, Leto says, he “didn’t dive as deep down the rabbit hole as maybe I’ve done before, but I stayed really focused.” Of course, he didn’t delude himself that he was actually blind. “I’m crazy,” he says, “but I’m not insane.”)

As he sits here in his garden, it’s easy to see the commitment that Leto can summon. He’s incredibly calm and still, with no extraneous movements, like some lizardlike desert creature conserving energy in the heat. He listens intently, with laserlike eye contact, and he barely seems to blink. (Says Michele, “I call him a monk sometimes, because he’s so concentrated.”) With his ageless physicality and otherworldliness, he could almost be a replicant himself.

Villeneuve agrees. “He has a kind of eternal youth syndrome. But the thing I love about Jared is that he’s really at peace with himself. He’s a perfectionist. And like all rock stars, he has a bit of narcissism. But it’s a narcissism that I can deal with.”

WE’VE BEEN TALKING a while when Leto hops up and starts doing a little shake. I tell him to feel free to walk around or stretch if he needs to. “No,” he says. “I was getting covered with ants. I’m going to make them work a little harder.”

We retreat inside the safety of the base, where Leto offers to take me on a tour. Although he moved in a couple of years ago, the place remains a work in progress, with dingy floor tiles, scuffed white paint and the distinct odor of midcentury bureaucracy lingering in the halls. “I’m going to redo it at some point,” Leto says, “make it nice. But I’m kind of just camping out.”

We start in his bedroom.“It’s fancy,” Leto warns. But he opens the door to reveal a glorified walk-in closet, maybe 200 square feet, with small windows, a loveseat and a mattress sitting right on the floor. “It’s amazing,” Leto says, smiling. “When it comes down to it, you don’t need very much.” The only hint of luxury is a portable clothes rack that holds what looks like a small fortune in high-end apparel—most of it from his friend Michele at Gucci.

Recently Leto has become the label’s face, both officially and unofficially, starring in a fragrance campaign and often rocking ensembles in public taken straight from the runway. The infatuation runs both ways: “I’ve been inspired by him many times,” Michele says. “The way he puts gym pants with crazy hats or something—it’s beautiful. He says, ‘I don’t care about fashion,’ but it’s not true. He’s like the most fashionable gypsy you can imagine.”

Leto seems amused that he’s become a style icon—“There was a period a decade ago when I wore Hare Krishna clothes”—but he does admit to getting bolder and more confident with age. “When I was younger I was like, ‘Give me something black,’ ” he says. “But now I love color. You know how you see old guys wearing loud Hawaiian shirts? If I walk off the bus, and the crew starts laughing, I know I put the right thing on.”

We proceed deeper into the bowels of the house, passing large metal tins labeled SURVIVAL CRACKERS (“I haven’t opened them yet”) and a few doors marked USAF TOP SECRET. After World War II ended, the base became a military film studio, churning out propaganda films hosted by the likes of Jimmy Stewart. “There are so many crazy rumors about this place,” Leto says. “Everything from ‘Part of the moon landing was filmed here’ to ‘They used to keep prisoners downstairs.’ They had laboratories. They were doing all kinds of God-knows-what.” He is clearly enamored by this.

In one of the building’s subbasements, we pass Leto’s home gym (with photos of Schwarzenegger and Bruce Lee) and then the garage where he keeps his vintage Ford Bronco—a metallic-blue beast with orange flames down the side, a birthday gift from his brother, Shannon. “He was like, ‘You can get it repainted,’ ” Leto says, “and I was like, ‘No way, man!’ I used to have a little Tonka truck that looked just like that.” The Letos grew up poor, on food stamps in Louisiana, with a hippie single mom who encouraged them to follow their artistic dreams. Leto studied film and photography at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan before dropping out and moving to L.A. in hopes of becoming a director. He started acting, and a few years later talked Shannon into moving out to start a band.

Next we walk through a hangarlike storage room Leto calls “the warehouse,” full of Thirty Seconds to Mars’s road cases and gear, and from there emerge onto the base’s old soundstage, which Leto has repurposed as a recording studio and rehearsal space. “We had an acoustician come by, and he said we have the same reverb as Abbey Road,” Leto says. “Isn’t that wild?” In the control room, an engineer is going over mixes from last night’s session, tweaking the vocal tracks for the band’s new single (“Walk on Water,” released in August). “I’d say we’re 80 percent done,” Leto says of the album. He smiles: “But I’ve been saying that for two years.”

Back upstairs, Leto starts to grow a bit bored. “I can show you more, but it’s really big,” he says. “It just keeps going and going and going.” He knows it’s kind of silly for a bachelor pad. “But it works for me,” he says. “I can do creative stuff here, I can live here. And I don’t have to sit in traffic.”

There’s one last oddity he wants to point out: a skylight in the middle of the floor that peers down into a small enclosure, maybe 8 feet square, with no discernible doors. It looks suspiciously like a dungeon. “Weird, right?” says Leto, grinning. He slips into a pitch-perfect impression of Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs: “Put the lotion in the basket!” he booms, cracking up. I point out that at least the skylight unlatches from the inside, leaving open the possibility of escape. “Yeah,” he says, “but you’d have to get up there first”—a sheer 10-foot climb with no holds. He smiles deviously. “Give ’em just enough hope to keep ’em alive.”

IT’S NEARING TIME for Leto to say goodbye: His next appointment is already waiting, some people from a tech giant. At the moment, Leto is looking for a buyer for his digital streaming platform, VyRT, a company he started in 2011 to live-stream his band’s concerts. That was his second foray into the tech world; previously he had launched a digital-marketing company called the Hive, and over the past decade has become a serious tech investor, backing more than 50 startups including Uber, Snapchat, Reddit, Spotify, Slack and Nest.

“He’s very different from the normal cats from Hollywood and L.A. I see playing around the Valley,” says Nest co-founder Tony Fadell, whose company Leto invested in three years before it was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion, in 2014. (Leto didn’t disclose the size of his investment, but Fadell says for “an individual, it was a significant amount of money.”) “A lot of people from that world say, ‘My manager’s gonna take care of it, my agent’s gonna take care of it’—they don’t worry about the details,” Fadell adds. “And a lot of people are meddlers or know-it-alls who want to lead from the bench. That was not his thing. Jared is very curious, very detail-oriented; he really gets involved, and he really understands. He only added value.”

“I was actually really impressed,” says Stewart Butterfield, a co-founder of Slack, which Leto invested in in 2014. “Jared gave a lot of feedback, and all of it was very practical, specific, concrete feedback about usability and improving the platform. He found the right balance,” Butterfield adds, “between persistent and irritating.”

When it comes to his investing philosophy, Leto says, “I like to learn. So if I can be involved in a company that teaches me something, I’m happy.” There are also a few deals he passed on and still kicks himself over. “Oh, my God, are you kidding?” Leto says. “There are some doozies. I can’t [talk about it]—I’ll have to call a therapist.”

All these side hustles aside, Leto’s not giving up his day job anytime soon. He’s attached to play Andy Warhol in an upcoming biopic written by Terence Winter (The Wolf of Wall Street), and he’ll soon be directing his first feature, a police thriller called 77 with a script by L.A. noir legend James Ellroy. Leto—a devoted rock climber who sometimes posts his best ascents to Instagram along with a monkey emoji—has previously directed a documentary series on America’s national parks called Great Wide Open as well as several music videos.

“Always when you are around Jared Leto, you are in Jared Leto’s theater,” Denis Villeneuve says. “It’s like a play—you become a character. But he’s having fun with it, and he brings you in his game. You just fall in love with him.”

If there’s one thing Leto hasn’t done but would like to, it’s a comedy. Sadly, no one ever asks. “I might not be at the top of the list for, like, a funny dude,” he says. “But if someone is dying or suffering greatly, I’ll get a call.” He laughs ruefully. “I got calls about [playing] Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, David Koresh and Jim Jones, all within two weeks. I’m not doing them,” he adds, “but I thought for a second, ‘Oh, my God, I should do them all.’ Just put them together like a Criterion Collection box set. And then retire.”