“Rapidità, Rapidità … la prima nata dall’arco teso che si chiama Vita”
Gabriele D’Annunzio, Alcyone, 1902 and inscription at the base of the Coppa dell’Oltranza.
“Zang tumb tumb … words in freedom”! As Filippo Maria Tommaso Marinetti and all the Futurist Group of a hundred years ago declaimed with enthusiasm and eagerness, worshippers of a new fascinating divinity: speed, but what would they say today in front of the disturbing world of the “Web”, the virtual friendships, the demented yellow emoticons replacing feelings, the age of television and obsessions, an increasingly hasty and decadent culture that now grips our lives and that of a humanity perpetually connected.
Stress increases and memories are lost; the codes of relationships and personal relationships change, more and more marked by hyper-speed and carelessness. Large cities and equally major loneliness to which the Web brings reference and relief.
Milan Kundera claims that speed is the form of ecstasy that technology gave man. It seems to me, however, that I am not very ecstatic and that I no longer have a time. Where is my time? Here it is, it is here but it is already gone; today you live it, you do not perceive it and you forget it; it is fragmented and overlapped with and among thousands of things; I only read the headlines, I pass by, I do not stop, I do not look, I do not live …. but while I am driving my car, even better if it is a vintage car, inside its exclusive cockpit, I hear its sounds and I appreciate its values. The streets flow in front of me, like trees, emotions, and thoughts. Far from the Web and the pressing e-mails. I talk to my wife, I share emotions and feelings, we look at the world around us and we enjoy our time. Time that is way too short.
But how did I manage to know by heart the telephone numbers of all my friends or the number plates of their cars? The poems of Pascoli and Carducci, the dialogues of Luciano and even entire chapters of the Promessi Sposi. Now I read a book and after a while I do not remember it anymore. Maybe soon I will no longer have the brain or even the body to go so fast but how much I love experiencing countryside living, with the long, quiet and “traditional” time, when perhaps suddenly there is no light, everything is turned off, and even the phone is silent, and so I can be with myself and I enjoy my time. And “m’arricrìo” [I rise again] as they say in Sicily. Or it is raining heavily, suddenly and violently, as in this strange unusual summer, and in my heart I feel pleasure because I share the rebellion of a nature attacked and tired by the indifference and myopia of modern man, of the IT world and globalisation. Even without our monumental and falling bridges, will we be able to slow down our useless running, so as not to flee but to rediscover our time? Which is shorter and shorter.
Stefano d’Amico
The images used in this article are for illustrative purposes and belong to their respective owners.
