And then we just have to… make music.
I travel inside a Bologna that lives and makes me travel.
Making music, listening to music.
It had been a long time since I had taken a free evening to explore the ravines of Bologna to discover all those pulsating places that are not seen but, where you can breathe an infinite desire to play. Everything that is most natural has remained in this crazy age of ours in which it almost seems to experience moments of total glamor (just think of all those who remain glued in front of the television waiting for the umpteenth news of the massacre ) to experience moments of excessive intoxication in which you live, laugh, just enjoy.
I believe that the right is somewhere in between. Staying attached to reality by selecting the right news to keep up but simply live at the same time. In the past few weeks, I too have recovered quickly.
Bologna by night, view of Piazza Maggiore
Bologna at night has many faces. There is the Bologna of Piazza Verdi and Via Zamboni where young university students invade the streets and then get lost in a huge facet of clubs with an almost Irish flavor, the Bologna of Jazz, that of the Osterie, the meeting place in Piazza Maggiore and the long walks through the center to get lost… here I love to get lost in this city.
Getting lost in Bologna means discovering jealously hidden places that, if no one tells you that they exist, you could miss for years some evenings with an almost surreal atmosphere … and that’s how I got lost last Friday and discovered this Jazz club on Via Stationery that is called Take Five . Let’s go in. The entrance reminds me in my imagination of those places of the ’30s where before you paid for the entrance, you ordered something to drink and then you entered the concert hall by opening a red awning, where the only thing you saw in front of your eyes there were many tables and music.
Take Five Jazz Club in Bologna
Here we are, we pass the entrance, we order and we head towards a table in the front row that has remained incredibly empty ( it is no coincidence I say ). I look around and savor this beautiful atmosphere: no mobile phones on, all the people intent on listening and lots of good wine and typical cutting boards on the tables. For now, the world can remain outside and I begin to lose myself among the notes of a very traditional Jazz that ranges freely from some classic pieces of Manouche jazz, to the great tradition of African-American jazz with Ellington, Shorter, Monk …
In those moments my thoughts cannot help but linger for a moment at the massacre in Paris which took place only one night before. I find myself savoring music like the spectators of the Bataclan , life goes on anyway, despite everything that happens around you and that’s how a beautiful book I read last year comes to mind, it’s called Come to the World by Margaret Mazzantini; this situation of mine perfectly reminds me of a part of the book in which the protagonist tells of the dualism of the world, where on the one hand a real massacre took place (that of the siege of Sarajevo ) and on the other hand people continued to live their Roman life made of dinners and aperitifs with a lightness that is sometimes disarming … and then I wonder “What is the right thing to do or think about? ”
It is very difficult to find an answer but I will try to come to a conclusion. I strongly believe that our life is a paradoxical journey that we chose even before we were born and we are here to carry out a task, to elevate our soul; having said that, I don’t think there is the right attitude towards the facts that happen around you but there must be the right awareness in understanding that there are facts and events that are well above us and for which, often, we can hardly do anything if not, try to stop self-feeding this whole situation of terror and hatred that I see growing more and more around me.
Hate will always bring more hate. We cannot argue about this at all. So how can we stop feeding this situation of terror? Is simple. We seek happiness within ourselves, we look in the things that make us feel good and we turn off that passive world that is served up to us every day as if it were the absolute truth to pursue.
The passive world I am talking about is mainly composed of the media that feed our thirst for knowledge often made up of completely marginal facts of which we will never know the absolute truth because it almost does not exist. How many times have we been able to say that we know 100% what happened behind a news episode or a historical event? I never believe. Try to think about it. By this I absolutely do not mean that all journalists in the world are charlatans but that it would be much better to start facing life with a large dose of positivity which is all we need most in a historical period in which they want us to believe that it exists. a crisis that has magically materialized and is eating up our whole future. The crisis exists, it is before our eyes, but the crisis is the consequence of a great human loss of our nature.
Group of students on smart phones in classroom
From great enlightened human beings of history we have turned into avid consumers who find satisfaction almost only within the most extreme materialism and in drowning their days in front of the screen of a Smartphone: we are the zombies of the films of the 80s materialized and afraid .
Around us lives a wonderful world to be discovered and we don’t even realize it.
Some might look at me and say it’s easy to talk like that while living ” safe ” in our cities in the West. I think that’s not the case at all. No one is ” safe “, ever. It is our perception of the world that makes us such but here I should go into a discourse that could range from quantum physics to personal growth and I am certainly not the right person, my purpose is only to launch a reflection and my point of view.
I strongly believe in the existence of a collective consciousness that is influenced by everything that happens in the world. It is no coincidence that events such as the massacres in Paris cause a state of anxiety and fear never seen before and an increase in the level of crazy immobility. I hear from many people about trips canceled, postponed etc … this is precisely the wrong attitude I was talking about earlier. This is how hatred and fear win. The best attitude is to continue living positively and sharing love with others.
All this could lead our collective consciousness towards a state of common happiness. Do you think I’m a fool? Try to think of the people with whom you like to spend your time most: do you prefer to spend your days with people who are always depressed and complaining or with positive people with whom you live and give thanks for the life we have received? I have always chosen the latter. If you have never done it before, try to do it and you will see how much your life will change and consequently that of others.
In front of nature we will always be nothing …
At this point, finding a conclusion is not easy. We started with music, we went through the memories of a book and we reflected on a recent event. So we almost got lost right? Do you remember Bologna, the one where I often get lost?
Here, I invite you to try to do all this. Try to get lost. Leave your comfortable position that makes you feel so ” safe ” and try to get lost. Then you will be able to understand my point of view ( and that of many others like me ), on a world that I started to discover one piece after another thanks to music.
The curtain closes. The double bass gently rests on the stage and exchanges a chat with the guitar and sax of the T-Jam trio while savoring the slow flow of this energy that unites everything and nothing separates: the music .
DeLord
I leave you some links to learn more:
Take Five Bologna : http://www.takefivebologna.it/
Book Come to the World : http://bit.ly/venialmondo
Jazz Manouche : http://bit.ly/cdmanouche
