Splijtstof

“Silence is the most spoken dialect in Sardinia” says the Italian novelist Michela Murgia in the episode about the Brontë sisters of the podcast Morgana (available only in Italian, sadly), which narrates the biographies of many extraordinary women (from the past and the present). 

Michela Murgia’s words hit me while I’m having my daily run or, in this case, walk. In the episode, Murgia is talking to another Italian author, Chiara Valerio. The two are discussing the lack of Gothic fiction novels in the Italian literary tradition. They wonder whether this has anything to do with the sunny Italian climate. In fact, Gothic fiction novels have been extremely popular in those countries where the short dark days and the foggy weather offered the optimal setting for creepy stories of ghosts, murders and the like.

The past months have been a sort of living paradox. On the one hand, the COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed (still paralyzes and probably will keep on paralyzing) the whole world, forcing us to stay inside, not to meet people, not to act, basically. On the other hand, the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd (and the list is, unfortunately, much longer) demanded us to take action. Not to act was a sign of complicity with the oppressors. Yet, even to act, in this context, was problematic and not that straightforward at all. What are the kind of actions that I, as a white Western (young) woman, am allowed to perform? What are the words that I am allowed to use? It might sound silly but for months, I kept asking myself “Should I say or do this? Should I share that?” Acting without hurting anyone or without saying/doing (accidentally) the wrong thing was, and still is, very hard. Acting in a context in which you are explicitly asked by the government not to move because you might be a contagious loose cannon was, and still is, troublesome. If Hamlet could adapt one of his most famous sentences to this situation, he would probably say something along the lines of “to act, or not to act, that is the question.”

I always thought that podcasts were not my cup of tea. I have never found a moment during the day when I really wanted to listen to an episode or a series that kept me glued to the headphones. Last week, however, I saw that a BBC radio 1 presenter, Phil Taggart, interviewed one of my favorite bands for his podcast. I listened to it while chilling on my terrace and, maybe because Phil’s strong Irish accent is particularly charming, I found myself in the same situation of those who say “I will never buy a pair of those ugly German sandals,” and then get obsessed with them and are unable to wear normal flip-flops anymore. Among the forty-one episodes, the interview with Ludovico Einaudi, one of the most famous living pianists, could not pass unnoticed. Although it might not have been Phil’s funniest interview, it can help us in drawing some preliminary connections between art and philosophy. In a sort of funny twist, we can think of Ludovico Einaudi’s interview as a piano keyboard itself. In the course of this introduction, I will press some of the keys and try to sketch my own composition.