Paola Turci
Stato di calma apparente

“It’s a state of apparent calm

it's a form of constant love”

From “Stato di calma apparente”

I head out, there’s a bit of snow and it's cold. I wander around Tiergarten, in this exquisitely desolate and deserted landscape. It almost feels like a post-apocalyptic world, with me and my phone (and the music) as the only survivors.

What am I listening to? I start scrolling and get to the icon of this Paola Turci album. “Ah, I love this album, why not?”. “Stato di calma apparente” is an album from 2004, part of that decade of change (2002-2012) that defined Turci’s career, elevating it and leading her to release a handful of albums and collections that are notably different from the first part of her career.

We are faced with a handful of tracks from the past of the beautiful Roman singer-songwriter, performed and sung live. When “Frontiera”, the opening track, starts, you enter a warm, human sound, a sound that, in this period, seems to come from another era. And indeed, it was another era; fifteen years, at the speed we currently travel, represent a 360-degree journey around the globe.

I continue listening, and as I move from the nostalgic “L’uomo di ieri” (a version which compared to the one presented at Sanremo is on another level) to “Volo così”, I realize that all these tracks speak of emotions, of our being human. This album, which for Paola Turci probably signified the beginning of a new chapter, seems to me a return to the past.

The record keeps spinning, “Ti amerò lo stesso” is a piano and voice gem that suits the snowy landscapes well, with lyrics I choose to dedicate to myself today (“I will wait for you, I will take you as a smile // Until home when you return disappointed // You will need care // Still too much time to pass // you wasted // Withdraw from the road you’ve driven // I will guide you now // I will love you the same”) while “L’ombra del gigante” is a political track, inspired by Sofri, which also sounds like an old, past politics to me, something far removed from the Sprea canal where I find myself today, in 2021.

When I get to “Questa parte di mondo” (one of the most beautiful pieces in Paola’s entire repertoire, from the eponymous 2002 album), I fully realize that the choice of this album wasn’t as random as I thought. I needed human warmth, guitar, and bass. Perhaps I needed to feel comforted, to rethink a past we always tend to romanticize and remember with disproportionate affection, to convince ourselves that somehow we’re right. I needed to feel alive, and this album, in all its humanity and warmth, has the virtue of being an album full of emotion and truth. I continue to wander for a while longer through these snowy streets of Berlin, enjoying nature and this state of (apparent) calm.