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Rating: "Sit by the river and wait. Sooner or later you'll see the body of your enemy float by."
(Chinese Proverb)
Generally speaking, I am quite pessimistic about the fate of the human race and consider the degradation and cultural impoverishment of our uncivilization as mad and unrelenting. Guiltily, I don't fight for environmental causes because I am resigned to the extinction of all species and a future where we'll all keep electric sheep on our terraces to proudly show off to neighbors when the evening comes. In particular, I feel that we Italians have lost our roots and our truest identity and that, even if there was a more or less short chapter in our recent history that hinted at possibilities and prospects for development and growth that aren't just economic—I consider this aspect only secondary and consequential to a moral and cultural growth of a country, especially a country that, all in all, at least for a good half, is doing fairly well and generally is doing very well by international standards, which are the only ones that truly matter from an internationalist perspective aimed at a correct redistribution of income across the planet—this opportunity has been missed and completely nullified by what has happened in the last twenty-five or thirty years of Italian and international history.
Hold on! Aware that this negative attitude of mine is absolutely detrimental, I still try in my small way to do "what I must do" and to live my life trying to pursue the strict moral and ethical rules I have set for myself, but currently, I don't see any possibility of change and improvement. The fate of all people and things seems to be marked, inevitable, already written and if possible catastrophic. In return, I read Asimov's texts as if they were a bible and imagine that one day man can once again emerge from his "shell" and grow, reach toward other planets, and perhaps start anew and maybe write pages of future history different from those we know.
But let's return to Earth. As I mentioned earlier, I usually don't partake in the affairs of human life and stay aside, sitting and watching with more or less interest the behaviors and lives of my fellow human beings. If I were old, I would spend my days sitting on a bench in the square watching everything that happens, spitting at pigeons and winking at some young girl bothered by my decaying appearance and the stench of my diapers, recording in my head the slow gestures and events of sad identical days and marveling at the futility of the repetitiveness of human actions. But I am not old, and many years will pass before I can be defined as such. Perhaps too many. Certainly too many according to the current and future Italian pension system. However, this does not discount the fact that I, an unsuspecting “voyeur”, cannot be already today an observer and interested spectator of everything happening around me when I'm outside. This interest, surreal and that I would dare describe as almost scientific, arises from two undeniable facts:
1. I rarely go out.
2. I speak even less.
2bis. Just kidding. In fact, my life is quite flat. Nothing ever happens to me, nor, as I told you, do I expect something to happen to me and there to be some sort of jolt in my life destined to change my way of living and seeing things.
It hasn't always been this way, of course. There would have been a possible turning point in my life, and foolishly I imagined this turning point could have taken the shape of a girl. So, at some point in my life, when it was completely derailing at a crazy and uncontrollable speed, I met a woman with black curly hair and large eyes in which I believe I am still lost and unable to find my way out. That's how it must have started. It was when she decided to leave me a few months after the beginning of our relationship that, trying hard to understand her reasons, I started a study of human beings, my fellow men, and their behaviors. That's how I began to wish I had never existed, but at the same time, I started to take an interest in life.
Now, I realize that many of you surely aren't passionate about festivals. I'm not either: in general, I avoid all opportunities for gathering and possible encounters with my fellow men. Moreover, casts are often generally subpar, and the beers, which always cost too much for my pockets, are nonetheless inevitable at the four-thousandth concert of 24 Grana and mediocre bands that hail video games from the eighties. Yet at the same time, festivals are an interesting opportunity. There's nothing better than sitting by the river and watching life pass by. Even better if it's of the female gender, young age, and good looks. But generally speaking, I'm not too picky and I'll take whatever the convent offers.
The Neapolis Festival this year headlined artists over two days that I couldn't care less about: Fatboy Slim, ultimately nothing more than a DJ, with all the evils that may entail ("Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ!"); Jamiroquai, whose melodies and funky rhythms from well-off kids in prosperous Miami would have turned the stomach of that old grump Philip Marlowe, already harshly tested by the decay of his Hollywood and its sad inhabitants, from too many years spent stirring in the muck of our society. Luckily, on the second day, among the groups forming the lineup of the two-day Neapolitan event, there were the Perturbazione, a Turin band I'd lost track of over the past few years and that I actually thought had given up and withdrawn from the scene.
Evidently, I was wrong. Perturbazione released a final excellent album, eloquently titled “Del nostro tempo rubato,” made up of twenty-four new songs the result of three years of life rather than work, just two months ago and, judging by their last performance, appear to be alive and kicking and confirmed for me as one of the best live acts in Italy and in general a band with a remarkable sense of melody and writing that is as intelligent as it is simple, sparse and even though it's unpretentious and artificial in form and aesthetic - see, for example, Amor Fou - emotionally engaging and impactful. Additionally, they are backed by a frontman, Tommaso Cerasuolo, as good and intelligent as few others of his Italian colleagues.
An hour of concert that was a pleasant rediscovery after too long since I last saw them perform live, on a scorching August evening a few years ago, in the lowlands of Emilia. Before my life fell apart and I started to waste away and curse, before I started to drag myself day after day waiting for the end of all things. It was an opportunity to look back and feel touched by all the things that went more or less wrong in my life, but, as always, even this time when I looked at the present and the future, I saw nothing. Because my pessimistic view of everything and my catastrophism don't allow for a future worth living for, besides this constant state of tension and dissatisfaction prevents me from enjoying the present.
But I don't complain. I believe, in recent years, I've gained some awareness of my flaws and maybe understood their mechanics. I hide from life because it's clear that I can't handle its continuous and repeated emotions. I have condemned myself to a catastrophic future, but I'd rather stay aside watching the lives of others than risk my own, or have it told to me by Perturbazione's songs. I'm not complaining, no, but sometimes I want to live in their lyrics and their songs. Perturbazione doesn't sing about the desire to live, nor do they offer easy solutions to everyday life's problems - but neither does Lou Reed in New York have easy solutions in his pocket. They are as scared as us by this world that seems to have gone mad, but nonetheless, they continue to chase the "sense of life" and invite us to enjoy every moment and every aspect of life to the fullest, whether good or bad, rather than always worrying about the consequences of every action, of what will happen tomorrow and stealing time from the time we have left.
I've spent my whole life sitting by the river and thought I was watching life flow by when instead, I saw my corpse pass by. Close to zero, now in life I'd like to be a premature ejaculator.
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