« To whom do I owe my silence? » was one of my sentences in a 15 minutes length whatsapp vocal sent to Facundo. If he hadn’t picked it up, it would have stayed there, on a digital form in a mobile on the other side of the world.

That’s how poetry is, wisdom too. They fly between our lips without us really noticing. 

What were those 15 minutes about ? One of those memories we have but don’t tell for lack of space on the page, for lack of space in what we assume of other’s heart.

It started with: “I lack courage”.

It takes courage to recognize what we have.

I have words. 

I have that and not much more. A resonant cavity somewhere under my skin.

« To whom do I owe my silence? »

At this stage not many people, no one, to tell the truth.

So, first, I want to talk about André.

André  was my third father’s figure (after my biological father and my maternal uncle).

When he was 4 years old, the water in the bathtub became murky, the same color as the wine his father drank, probably just like his mother’s dreams. She had surrendered them on the razor’s edge .

On her side, Laura says I am among the first persons she talked about what happened in the desert. But there are things that I know only silence is big enough to hold.

This is what I particularly like about trees, their way of listening: silently, without shaking; their bark never refusing an embrace. Sometimes I am an apprentice tree, hence the number of confidences received, slowly returned to earth, slipped through my roots.

I know many people like Laura and André.

Carried to the edge, by life or death, who knows which of the two.

The image of the edge always calls forth the fear of falling, the question of jumping to the other side of the cliff. But there is a third option: in the firmament, infinite space, to explode, like a Super Nova, physical or psychic disintegration.

What we often don’t talk about is the journey back to the ground, after having recovered at least a few fragments of the Self.

But regaining those parts, or understanding that they can stay there, elsewhere, spin their own way in the void, is the work of a lifetime.

Resilience, it’s called.

Like love, if we say it is a state, then it is a state of constant rebirth, an eternal movement. If we say it is an action then it is a dance on a continuously changing ground. A ground that oscillates between one truth and a thousand illusions.

We recognize them by the way they dance, each time they write “Love is stronger than violence” in their own way, always with gentleness. A gentleness that for this world seems sometimes violent. A softness that is sometimes painful to carry.

Like each of these artworks that we naively create without being aware of what we are giving life to, “Safe” calls out to me.

Little by little this album reveals what it is about, for whom it speaks. And it asks me:

“And you, where do you stand now ?”

« Who do you owe your silence to? »

Recently, in an email to a friend, I wrote: “How much do we say? How much do we leave unsaid? For whom do we speak? For whom do we remain silent?”

Could it be that, sometimes, we keep silent to avoid being, on the shelf, the doll with less hair and this different look, as if it lacked eyelids to lower its eyes.

Angelo was the first from whom I accepted this kind of look. The first of several ones that helped me readjust myself to who I am now. 

Until the day when after coming home, I played a song related to a period of my life and I let it go. 

My tears were tears of freedom.

Because it’s over. Because I am today, and today is not yesterday. None of my yesterdays.

So to the question: “You, where are you now?”.

On my way.

Softness sometimes is hard to carry because it comes from strength. It takes courage to accept not being weak.

I know that collectively and individually we have all died enough times to assert human strength. Seeing life from the other side is perhaps what allows us to grasp the value of it. 

In Milan, I walk by beings blackened as with coal, curled up on the sidewalk. Have they reached an irreversible breaking point? Would they be proof that humans can be permanently broken?

We do not know. As long as we breathe we are made to regenerate ourselves.

So here it is, to the question “You, where are you now?”.

On my way.

Free, more and more, from the illusion of the abyss.

And when “Safe” asks me “So?”. So this album is for us. We whom life has taken by the hand once, a hundred times to the edge, until we realize that there is no ravine.

To us. 

Marian