Lucio Dalla
1983

LA RECENSIONE

I didn't think it would happen, but it's actually happening. 1983 is about to end and I'm counting the minutes. It's been a tough year: my son is increasingly separating from the family, my daughter is living her teenage years and is less inclined to spend time with the family, and my husband is traveling for work like never before. So I'm left alone all the time in this small Florence apartment that doesn't seem to have changed in a year. I try to alleviate the loneliness with reading, but nothing, I try cooking, but my head is still full of thoughts. However, 1983 has given me something, something that will probably last a long time: boredom and loneliness have given me the chance to discover the world of music, singer-songwriters who have been filling music stores with their works for fifteen years now. In this disastrous year, I discover real artists: Battisti, Fossati, Venditti, Guccini, and Dalla, who recently released his 1983. Before giving it one last listen, I prepare a chamomile tea that will keep me company. Tonight is a celebration, my kids are out partying, and my husband Roberto is in Lugano. There's no one here, it's just me and Dalla. The record spins, the needle lands, silence and then... the sound

Waking up at home, with only an old photo and strange animals filling the void. Silence is everywhere, time becomes a misleading concept: the past is already past, these words are past, and in the past it often happens that we get lost. You go back forty years, in '43, the war is over, there's celebration throughout the country, freedom has finally returned to our hands, we can finally look forward. Forty years later that freedom has faded, in 1983 we celebrate "on no one's shoulders." That's how it went. I hope it won't be like that for another 40 years but that someone finds the courage to reclaim that sense of freedom. I hope my children's children will be better than all of us.

After a declaration of pure love and solitude comes the landing: small existences of ordinary people, all in solitude, all enclosed in their own tiny existence. All so close yet at the same time opposite, like a gigantic office where there is no chance to talk to anyone, only devote oneself to one's duties surrounded by many small everyday objects. I don't think this feeling is a coincidence: it's almost the dawn of 1984 but it seems like we've been living in a skillfully masked dystopia for a long time. Before flipping the record, I open the door for the cat, prepare dinner, and clean the rooms.

On the other side, I got lost some time ago: a song of suffering and love named Camion, a musical ointment that alleviates the pain. "It takes courage to trust you". Always the solitude, the eternal journey with one's other half that implies many stops, accidents, the search for means of fortune for...who knows. To reach the destination? To surrender before? But in the end, of how it will end, I couldn't care less: what matters is the experience made, it doesn't matter how we might come out of it, we will always come out different anyway

After this painful journey, one needs to return to confront those who have been swimming in the world for a long time, return to talk with those who "who knows how long we'll still be here" and leave behind old memories and stories. But, after a little useful Bastard, the finale: Solo. Despite the efforts made, solitude remains. That's how it feels: like a harmonica without a mouth, like the sleep of children. I feel Lucio's suffering in these words, in these notes: he too feels alone, he too feels abandoned and adrift. Perhaps all of 1983 lies here: not a year of collectivity and cooperation, just a sum of small solitudes forming something collective but that has very little collective about it. The fireworks go off, the needle returns to its original position. 1983 vanishes. The new year begins. A new beginning starts.

-Nonna Martello

Happy new year guys.