Italian
I would tell my great-grandchildren to buy a place on Mars. Because in a hundred years or so, when I am dead and so are the children of my children, but the children of their children will be alive, one of them might finally decide to change planets. To join the migrants, the explorers, and the new colonizers to live on Mars.
And they would do well! Given that our world is now a faded stage, populated by hustlers and fools, a land of angry and violent people ready to cheat each other, drained by emotional aridity and inert indifference. Even the stunning beauty of our Earth does not prevent us from harming ourselves. Envious and ungrateful, paranoid and obsessive, we are all very skilled at not enjoying life, but constantly eager to destroy ourselves.
Better Mars, then. Better a red, hostile, and frozen desert, where the hope for a new world can still be reborn.
This self-destructive and sterile tendency of human beings is not only manifested in grand geopolitics, but also digs deep and dark tunnels in the minimal everyday life of our private existences.
I recently met a woman no longer young, an empty figure, devoid of vitality and will. She walked like a ghost in the present. Everything had happened twenty years ago when she realized she had been betrayed by her husband. The man had been unfaithful, and she could neither forget nor forgive that. For two decades, she had only harbored bitterness, resentment, and a dull desire to isolate herself from the world. Even the affection of her children and grandchildren could not distract her from that great, monumental pain in which she had settled. The late attentions of her husband did not work, nor did the sincere understanding of friends, and even less the doctor’s medications.
As she spoke to me, obsessively and rhythmically repeating the word “unfaithful,” I pointed out a detail: the word itself, unfaithful, is related to faith. It evokes something transcendent, metaphysical, absolute. Something, in short, that is completely outside the material and imperfect reality of human beings.
At that moment, a beautiful song by Jacques Brel titled “Les Vieux Amants” (“The Song of Old Lovers”) came to my mind, also adopted in Italian by Franco Battiato. The original lyrics tell, with a moving clarity, the true love of an elderly couple. It recalls their past loves, desires, and fiery passions that often drove them apart. It speaks of historical misunderstandings, of betrayals that in hindsight were unnecessary, but that did not change the way they loved each other.
It is an immense song that must be listened to strictly sung by Brel in French, perhaps using the side-by-side lyrics to grasp its nuances.
The lady was not familiar with that masterpiece. She confessed to me that the melody she had always been inspired by during her years of solitude was that of Charles Aznavour, “And I Among You.” A work equally poignant, but desperate, with no way out. A song that captures a man watching his wife talk to a stranger, sensing a secret understanding between them that leaves him feeling powerless. A kind of sadomasochistic voyeurism: hurting oneself, cradling in suffering while enjoying one’s own frustration.
I looked at the lady and told her that to heal she simply needed to change the song. Stop listening to Aznavour and start listening to Brel.
The most beautiful love story is not the geometric, immaculate, and ideal one; it is the one where the two lovers share their intimacy without veils, without secrets. Where they can even talk about their flings, past and recent crushes, knowing that what they feel for each other goes beyond all the unnecessary trivialities of desire. The love for each other remains stable, solid as a rock, despite everything. This is the ballad of those who truly love and accept to grow old together.
This is why, if my great-grandchildren really go to Mars, I would like them to carry an old gramophone in their backpack. I would like to imagine it up there, playing “The Song of Old Lovers” amidst the sandstorms, with two humanoids, or perhaps two humans finally free from the weight of their own neuroses, dancing embraced.
A way to remind future generations, and the stars, that true love is only the real one, made of wounds, forgiveness, and rebirths. Certainly not the ideal one, which prefers to extinguish itself in resentment.
As the Earth becomes an increasingly tired and restless planet, we feel the need to start over. But only if we can change the tune.
