AVVOLTOI
August 3, 2024 - First day of the trip - Flight FCO / CTA
Months of waiting, emptiness, absence, of God.
The album is released without warning, on an ordinary Friday, like a lightning bolt that tears through the clear summer afternoon sky in a small seaside village where it hasn't rained for as long.
August 10, 2024 - First week of vacation
My parents join us - C. seems happy. A week has flown by since the release, and I still haven’t listened to it. I’m waiting for the right moment, understand me: I’m a guilty vacationer.
I should have consumed every second of it like a cannibal devours a carcass from the moment it became “public”,' but instead, I’m watching it from afar, as if in a duel of honor between heart and mind. I’ve changed, deep down, and I wonder if the music has changed too, and the artist who has had the most positive impact on my life so far.
Vacations, C., Sicily, the sea, or something still unknown to my mind, are keeping me from approaching you: I feel like a wounded animal, agonizingly awaiting its death, while you, Vultures, circle around, meditating on my fate.
Today, while walking among the waves where the two seas meet, at the southernmost point of this strange and wonderful country, you said to me, “ti amo” (i love you), and for the first time, I had the courage to respond, “ti amo anch’io, Claudié” (i love you too, Claudié). On the horizon, there’s no sign of a listen yet; I still don’t have the time, maybe tomorrow. Is it worth it at this point? I’m starting to doubt it.
August 31, 2024 - end of the vacation and of summer (at least for me).
I’m back in Rome, three weeks after these thoughts of love and fear, “vacation” is over, and the journey my soul embarks on every summer has ended. I’m plunged back into the mundane, into consumption, into the everyday, far from the pure emotions that the summer heat brings to the surface, like boiling water does with salt.
The first encounter is almost always disappointing; the law of first impressions is just an excuse for lazy, insecure people: it takes effort to go beyond that. The first listen to this long-awaited album was on the day I left my homeland for another year. On the bus to another adventure, with tears in my eyes, together with C., I was listening, but unable to hear anything. Those who believe in fate have no fear, know no doubt, so pause, bye-bye Spotify, and patiently wait for the moment to come, if you have faith.
VULTURES 2 cover art, Kanye West
Exactly three weeks have passed, 21 days and a few hours circa since that thought. I feel ready, I press play and start walking. I had a fight with C., and I hope we make up soon, Rome is deserted at the end of August, but my heart is not.
In the Non-Catholic Cemetery, where peace and nature reign supreme, freely, I’m welcomed by seemingly friendly crows who show me the way, like good hosts. Life and death, one and the same, just like this album, which has no intention of bending to our will, demands, or expectations.
The life of an “martyr” artist, incapable of not creating, a victim of this sick world and finally the executioner of an audience whose death echoes like an “alleluia” in the Sunday morning church services.
I read some comments under Kanye's latest video, and the hashtag #SaveYe runs rampant, a testament to the reckless consideration the public now has of itself, self-proclaimed “King”, like Napoleon arbitrarily decreeing what is right and wrong, ugly and beautiful, evil and good.
Kanye’s artistic journey, spanning two decades, is the most fitting Homeric epic. He is Odysseus trying to return to his pure heart, taken away by fame, gossip, the industry, and “fans”. In the final stage before his ultimate destination, he chooses to erect a monument-mirror in his own honor, underscoring a clear and powerful message: «The real vultures are you, not me».
