The Beatles
A Day in the Life

Marco is a friend who turns twenty today. To him, I dedicate A Day in the Life, a piece on which everything has already been written, of a group that isn't even among my favorites. The typical piece that regularly pops up in those silly little games like: vote for your favorite Beatles song!

But, oh boy, the notes and voice of John Lennon seem to come from another dimension, they keep spinning in my head, instead of leaving to return to where they came from. They leave a trail, somewhere, inside of me. Like the guitar riff, Ringo's percussion roll, and the orchestral track, in the interlude and finale, creating that famous vortex, climbing in volume from the lowest note to the highest one. And even higher, and higher still.

And that fragment proposed by Paul, which seems random, I’d love to turn you on, isn’t all that random. Yes, the Beatles achieved their goal, turn you on, and went even further. Perhaps they wanted to compose an anthem to nonsense, but the nonsense of the lyrics takes on a complete sense and everything resolves, as in the first verse.

The news in the newspaper. A car accident involving a lucky man. It seems that John knew the man he sings about at the beginning. The man who lost his head, his brain, his thoughts in the crash of his car. And he sings about it with a smile.

John’s singing seems to come from another dimension, the dimension where Marco passed through, exactly twenty years ago, on the evening of August 20, 1999. For me, it wasn’t necessary to read the newspaper. A phone call was enough.

When we went out on motorcycles, with Marco and the others, I was usually in front, being the slowest of the group. A bit like with ship convoys, the pace is set by the slowest one.

In those days, I was away. That evening, Marco was ahead of two others from the group. They said that at a certain point they didn't see him anymore. Because he was a bit further ahead, taking the hit from the car that crossed into his lane. The rescuers found the motorcycle inside the car's cabin. That's how Marco lost his thoughts along with three other guys. He wasn’t even twenty-nine, and he was the oldest. In the car, a twenty-two-year-old boy, and two sixteen-year-old girls.

Oh boy, my father accompanied his parents to the mortuary. Because that’s how it worked. They called from the morgue. It’s hard to explain the scene of that night when all the family members arrived. Or it's simple, because nothing makes sense. Simply one day in life you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The final vortex of A day in the life has this effect of bringing back the memory of Marco, along with all the other guys and girls I've known and who lost their thoughts due to an accident, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Roberta, Livia, Laura, Cristina, Liliana, Enzo, Giovanni, Federico. Nothing makes sense, except the names. You might not believe in anything, but you can't avoid believing in the power of names. Maybe another dimension doesn’t exist, maybe Marco doesn’t turn twenty, somewhere else. But names exist and carry memory with them, and even a song like A day in the life can help and is the only certain way to put it in its place to our dear old Thanatos.