Paolo Benvegnù & Nicholas Ciuferri
I racconti delle nebbie

THE REVIEW

Moths fly desperately in search of light. A door, a comforting glow. Come in, welcome stranger.

Since the dawn of time, men have told stories to seek a respite from the daily gymnastics of obedience. The world ferociously flows, whoever stops is lost; a desperate poet sang «there’s no room for the weak, no room for the weak». Stories to soothe daily struggles, skimming over the miseries of life; «a chance to watch, admire the distance».

«Because this world that seems to us something made of stone, vegetation, and blood is not at all a thing but is simply a story. And everything it contains is a story, and every story is the sum of all the minor stories, yet these are the same story and contain everything else within them. So everything is necessary. Every little detail. And this, in the end, is the lesson. We cannot do without anything. Nothing can be despised. Because, you see, we do not know where the threads are, the connections. The way the world is made. We have no way of knowing which things we can do without. What can be omitted. We have no way of knowing what can stand and what can fall. And those threads unknown to us naturally also form part of the story, and the story has neither dwelling nor place of being except in the narrative, there it lives and thus we can never be done telling. There’s never an end to telling» (Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing, trans. it. by R. Bernascone and A. Carosso, Einaudi, Turin, 2014, p. 123; original ed. The Crossing, 1994).

* * * *

Nicholas Ciuferri marks the stories, Paolo Benvegnù accompanies with the guitar. Lives of men running along the edges drawn from the recent «I racconti delle nebbie» (2018): gigolos, primitive women, homosexual loves, bags of shit on the table, cars in flames under the rain, and liberating laughter. The voice lowers, or it rises; the notes chase each other sweetly, or pitilessly; an orgy of the senses. The images overlap in the mind and, in the meantime, thrown among a ramshackle humanity, we feel less alone. Liberty, equality, and fraternity; above all, fraternity.

Fragments of life interspersed with some songs by Benvegnù; among them all, «Il sentimento delle cose» (from «Piccoli fragilissimi film», 2010) and «Avanzate, ascoltate» («Hermann», 2011). Chills.

«Ships without wind in the endless ocean ask the stars to find position ships without wind in the endless ocean ask the stars to return to sail.. To delude oneself of learning the truth from men, to delude oneself and defend against the craziness of men».

The end has come and without much ceremony, it is time to set off again. Raising the collar, the moth ventures into the night; one step after another, one, two, three, four... Ships without wind in the ocean ask the stars to find position.