Vision Divine
Stream Of Consciousness

A package of homemade cookies and a bottle of sparkling wine thrown into the back seat. My company on New Year's Eve. Looking at it from the outside, years later, this gray and nebulous photo is without a doubt the most depressing scene of my life. The infamous bottom. It’s not true that once you hit it, you immediately bounce back with a graceful leap as if there were springs: instead, you tread on the mud thoroughly and for a long time, staining yourself terribly.

A blade that enters, breaks, and marks the skin. The mark of that year is comparable to a deep scar. It forged my character with its rapid succession of burning disappointments. Tilted domino pieces chasing me and casting shadows. One after the other. I deliberately block and obstruct the escape valves behind a forced and painful swallowing; in the daily search for an Oscar statue to pretend something alien: normality. All this to avoid hurting her, who is sick and doesn’t need to suffer for me too. No, in such a situation, you can't afford to tell her that, despite having everything, you are rudely and deeply depressed. And so you harbor inside the apathy, the sloth that consumes you, the unhealthy and irresistible desire for pure isolation. To do nothing and throw away the days; tearing them off with a sharp gesture like draft sheets. You speak like this in two tones louder than what would normally come out. Really hurting, but pretending and showcasing serenity. This is what it means to truly care for someone.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

In those years, I really liked power and the intriguing concept album “Stream Of Consciousness” by Vision Divine was just perfect during the aforementioned depressing period: a bit like cheese with pears. Luppi's voice is adept at embodying the story described by the profound lyrics, capable of distinctly and clearly distancing themselves from the numerous texts by colleagues in the genre usually prodigious in producing fantasy banalities at the edge of shame and indecency. Here, instead, we speak and sing of a person gone mad searching for the truth, well represented by the hopeless cover that sees an angel in a straitjacket behind asylum bars. Recurring themes, therefore, are misunderstanding, desire for isolation, and repressed anger. I feel akin and let myself sink into the seat to listen to this work formed by a great sonic continuum of 14 pieces sewn with a good dose of sartorial mastery.

Halfway between an energetic sound (power) and strong prog brushstrokes, which see different melodic themes revisited as the work progresses, “Stream Of Consciousness” thus keeps me company between the end and the beginning of the year. It starts with a pleasant double bass drumming; that of the opener "The Secret Of Life": riffs and keyboards flow into an airy chorus filled with a delicious electronic break capable of maintaining high impact and attention. The overwhelming gallop with killer rhythms "La Vita Fugge", famous for its exaggeratedly long final high note, is somewhat enjoyable but at the same time quickly tiresome. The peaks of the work, in my opinion, are other: "Colours Of My World" and "The Fallen Feather" capable of moving with sinuous coils thanks to satisfying waits and quick restarts. More airy, pompous, and pop atmospheres characterize the melodic mid-tempo "We Are, We Are Not" with the best chorus of the package that flows like a spring river.

And now midnight has also passed. A glance goes to the sad and gloomy package of cookies, still crouched in the back seat. They would have deserved a nice dinner and some laughs, maybe a nice bath in a glass of sweet wine on a colorful and festive table. I'm tempted to open the homemade package and end their misery. I think about whether to devour them or not, but then I leave them on the ground just outside the door along with the bottle for someone who will come. There’s absolutely nothing to celebrate for me and hunger seems very distant, well beyond the horizon. With slow actions, in pure symbiosis with the delicate arpeggio and the plucking of keys of the moving "Fool's Garden", I re-enter and turn on the heater. In the pleasant warmth, I almost fall asleep, cradled in the wonderful interlude that launches the end of the album. Red carpet to the ballad "Identities"; those 300 abundant seconds that are capable of raising the hair on my arms every time. Piano and voice are the elements that take the foreground before the guitar enters, which, with a single solo in scale, slow and measured, chord after chord enters and digs into the ears. It undoubtedly displays my fragile situation: alone in the car on a night when everyone is celebrating together. I feel them come down naturally, without forcing. Warm and saline, they furrow and streak, and so I feel the masochistic need to listen to the track again and again.

Ilfreddo