One Giant Leap
1 Giant Leap

"Leaving. Selling everything: the furniture, the house. Leaving friends, siblings, parents. Changing to leave behind the safety of the everyday, and throwing yourself into the new, the unpredictable with only one certainty: your strength in believing in love. The fear you feel in not knowing who you face, the headache you get in front of supermarket shelves filled with things you don't know, the dictionary in hand continually translating colorful labels, behind which who knows what danger might be hiding. Taking the car and after every crossroads wondering if you're driving in the right lane; crossing the roads and automatically looking in the wrong direction and narrowly avoiding the motorcyclist with a helmet over his turban...
Then one day, when you think perhaps you made a mistake and the nostalgia for friendly voices is stronger than the scent in the air, turning your gaze because you feel watched, because you know you are different: in colors, too blonde, too white... Here, feeling the warmth penetrate your soul and melt the cold barrier of distrust, forever. Two big black eyes surrounded by thick velvety lashes in the middle of a chubby little face, with the mouth open in a curious, conspiratorial smile... You dive into that innocent abyss, sharing his amusement as he hides among his mother's skirts and you find yourself laughing at yourself as an adult playing hide and seek in a supermarket with an unknown child of perhaps four years old...
And from then on, do not be afraid anymore, be aware of your diversity and laugh about it with those who scrutinize you so insistently. Feel at home, and make your home in a foreign land, and believe in it so much as wanting to give birth to a child in that generous country, among those people because whatever it may be, however it goes, they can remain in your life.
And then comes the last day to live in that land. The last night spent inscribing those scents, those colors, those voices into your soul... Feeling the irresistible flow of time in the sound of the crashing waves of the Adamantine Ocean and your soul that cries, yearns, and merges into its warm breath... And you think: "You're part of me, you're in me, you will always be with me, you will never leave me." And the muezzin sings that it is four in the morning and speaks of how great God is, but you already know because you are feeling all the love in the world; all the suffering of your spirit dissolves allowing the wet embrace of the tropical rain to wash it away, taking it with it in the great ocean that surrounds everything, that touches everything..."

Just as scents evoke memories, certain sounds have this capacity as well; like the automatic dancing to certain ethno-tribal rhythms: ancestral traces of ancient memories synchronizing your vital vibrations to the pulse of everything... Feeling no differences but being equal in your diversity in a unique oneness...

Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman, combining their artistic-musical abilities, succeeded in their endeavor: "They embarked upon a global journey that included Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, India, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, America and Europe, equipped solely with a digital video camera, a laptop and a vision - to capture and weave together a unique fusion of sound, image and spoken word from some of the world's most happening musicians, authors, scientists and thinkers and to explore The Unity in the Diversity. Giant Leap has become a unique DVD/LP project for the 21st Century which fuses spoken word, sounds, rhythms and images from around the world to celebrate the creative diversity from different cultures."

To write this review, I promised myself not to want to know the titles of the individual pieces, but to follow the wave of emotion that the music alone evoked in me; and I was quite surprised when I later discovered that the intent of Catto and Bridgeman matched exactly what I had perceived: "Unity in diversity". For this reason, I opened up the ties of the diary of my memories, and I decided to share them with those who will read this one of mine.