I have to talk about you guys

Hi, I’m here, with the encroaching darkness of nine o’clock in a bus over flowing with annoying little sounds. Glancing outside I sense the silence. But the silence outside doesn’t exist, certainly not on the A4. And yet I watch the trees floating bye, the concrete barrier, the far away lights, and see only silence. I see strange figures, that penetrate the air without a single breath, without the slightest noise. Sad sounds echo through some shabby stolen head phones. The figures aren’t strange they’re ordinary things . Eppure quegli alberi che scivolano sotto il mio moto compaiono e scompaiono in silenzio. So many thing in motion in such a small amount of time, it would be impossible for them not to have made a sound. I tell everyone that I’m a writer, but I lie to myself every single time. I talk, I talk, I talk and don’t do anything but talk. And what? Write about how my damaged sixteen year old soul is so worthy of the attention one that fells like a failure when in the end the only thing that is failing is my imagination.

But of you tonight – ore 21.51 – I have to talk.

We can talk about you, but who are you? In you I see the most normal people I could ever come across, actually maybe more. Your inner beauty, the sensibility, the intensity of youth. All beautiful souls, who make mistakes on the way, perhaps misinterpret the signs along the path, maybe stubbornly insisting on following shortcuts that no-one showed them. A mistake also created to HELP YOU TO GROW. It will make you strong and thanks to this you will teach everyone that mistakes don’t have to be repeated. You are not alone, mistakes are part of being human. Know that, I tell everyone that the wonderful are those that make the biggest mistakes, because life is testing them. It wants to see, after you’ve gotten back up, that you are still the same person you were when you had fallen. I looked you in the eye and saw what you have inside. You have abilities that even I can’t imagine, those eyes narrowed from the tension unfolding on stage, but so full of experience, stories. Those stories you wanted to gift to me, on the afternoon of May 15. Only you can understand the tension that I felt, while you were looking for answers from a shy audience. And I wanted to respond, I wanted to be a part of your conversations, demonstrating that a rasta is capable of more than just rolling joints and listening to Bob Marley. I wanted to prove to you, to all the people who were sitting in their comfortable armchairs, that of me they had already judge, that in that place we could have stayed. Of my life, three quarters was spent like the walking dead, picked on for no reason. And I cried, at night, in my mother’s arms who was trying to cheer me up. Now things have changed a little. Stubble, hair styled, baggy shorts and name brand T-shirts, they have no reason to pick on me. I was able to change myself to suit others who didn’t even deserve to be in my presence. I always wanted to have strong arms, overflowing with anger and being able to beat someone for no reason, but in the end, come to think of it words can be harder than stone, sharp as knives and hot as fir just lit. The words are more versatile, they have an infinite range because they arrive exactly where you want. You have changed my way of thinking and have given me a world where I think. I have never called myself a writer so as not to be disrespectful to anyone who does it for a profession, yet I feel that here at the keyboard I could spend all day and night, to talk about you, me and all that you were able to awaken in me. You got up, proud as a lion to show the world that your wounded heart has had the best of hell. A darkness born in the last car of a train, in an underground parking lot in silence, in the most distant lands, and then who knows where. Now you’re here to tell us how that darkness is pain, it is the absence of love and it’s despair, but from all that darkness your able to escape, you just – if the light is still there – create it alone, to live and make the heart soar.

Thanks everyone! Matteo