I had spaghetti with tomato and basil in front of me. And the memory of
certain village festivals, the rolling Pupazza, the fireworks, St. Rocco’n’dog.
And the snakes intertwined around the Cocullo statues, in the middle of
the mountains, twisted among the dreadful stars. I had the heat of the
sun on my skin and the memory of salt water drying my wounds and the kindness
of gratuitous smiles in a popular narrowness, still there. I had the memory
of the language, that language I had never really learned (and yet belonging
to me), that language grown up among the rocks of poor mountains in the
middle of a boot empty of ground. Indeed, I never left my traditions,
in spite of the years, in spite of these arcades that hide the sky and
remove my dreadful western stars. So, far from truths, I went hunting
ways to regain a domain on my present time, not bearing the history of
fathers. I am longing to tell my Jacob fighting against the angel. That
is the genesis. I am longing to tell my country with the sun, high in
the blue and grey sky, with its myths, pizza, sex, misery, Claudio Villa,
Gabriella Ferri, spaghetti with cheese and pepper. I am longing to tell
the memory of my time through messages, splinters from a conflict joining
man and mass, up to the origins of identity. Nothing more.
Andrea Adriatico
