For a few weeks now I've gotten into the habit of spending evenings at the Murazzi with Antonio and his friends. Not that theirs is a great life: they talk about politics and occupations, they drink beer in pubs and sing songs from the seventies accompanying themselves on the guitar, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the inevitable Guccini's Locomotive. In the midst of those 1968 followers I feel like an extra from The Strawberry Statement: yet, I don't know why, when I'm with them my unease almost disappears, probably precisely because it's all a play and this allows me to assume another identity. When I go out, I hang old Emmanuel on the coat rack and leave him there until I get back. Wearing him again when I get home takes a lot of effort: I try not to think about it and go to bed straight away, comforting myself with the thought that tomorrow night I'll be someone else again and I won't be sick anymore.The keystone of all this is Antonio: there is an extraordinary strength in him and an equally extraordinary ingenuity. With him I feel reassured, almost serene. It also has a beneficial effect on my scholastic performance: he has a very high school average and a first-rate culture for a simple student, and I, in order not to feel too inferior, study much more than before and I read a lot of books; consequently my results are overall good even without the need for private lessons and my parents let me go out every night without making a fuss. I'm careful not to tell him about my unease: I hate being a victim and it wouldn't help to make me feel better. He senses my mood but respects my desire for privacy. One evening, however, he asked me point-blank: - Is there something wrong, Emmanuel? Displaced, I denied the evidence: - No why? - I do not know. I never see you fully involved, it's like you're always at the window. Useless to deny. - Indeed it is so - I replied. And I tightly closed the topic. Antonio realized that he shouldn't venture further into that mined terrain. After a few minutes of silence, with the intuition that characterizes him, he once again moved me to my favorite terrain: - Would you like to learn to play the guitar? It was something I had always wanted. - Very much - I replied. - Do you want me to teach you? - Yes, sure. - Let's start tomorrow. The next day Antonio taught me the first chords, A-E-D: he explained to me that with these three chords you can play entire songs, for example Battisti's "La canzone del sole". I practice every day under his guidance: he corrects the position of my fingers and teaches me less and less simple chords; I'm getting better day by day, although of course I'll never reach the level of a real guitarist. I sing too, another thing I've always wanted but never done, except in my room by myself. My voice is light years away from Cobain's yarragh, but the overall effect is not bad, also because my English pronunciation is quite good. Meanwhile, frequenting alternative clubs with him, I observe what surrounds me. In those circles there's a lot of dope, as they call it; let's say classic dope, no crack and synthetic drugs: more smoke and lsd. Antonio disapproves of what he defines as a bad habit (he doesn't say too much about it, I think so as not to appear moralistic: he only allows himself a few joints every now and then), but it seems that he considers it his duty to deal with social centres, where drugs are at home. I don't know why he does it: perhaps because the so-called alternative leftists are twenty years behind on everything like him. As I said, I observe and take notes, without participating in any of those strange ceremonies. The first thing I noticed was that smoking marijuana dulls the brain; basically it produces the same effect described by Homer for Lotophagi: those who smoke it feel happier and better, even though in reality they are only more stupid. This confirmed what I already knew, namely that there is an inversely proportional relationship between intelligence and happiness.This has been evident to me ever since we came into contact with the Tantras, a group of self-proclaimed actors who get high on marijuana and then, under the influence of that stuff, stage strange improvisations in a basement of the Macondo. Body expression, they call it. Their shows derive from those improvisations, basically collective hallucinations, sometimes fascinating, sometimes just exhibitionistic. I enjoy attending group rehearsals, even if I feel annoyed by certain performances: I don't consider it necessary or interesting to get naked on stage, much less mimic sexual actions. I'm not a voyeur, it's not one of my perversions. The author of their plays, if one can call those assemblages of emotional interjections and intellectual brainwaves that way, is the girlfriend of Bastiano, the leader of the group. The two have what is called an open relationship, in the sense that they do what they like with whoever they like. Her name is Elettra Giordano and she is a pale and blonde nineteen-year-old, a lucid hysteric who would like to do heavy drugs but doesn't have the courage, and therefore vents her tensions with sex. But she vents them badly. I know for sure, because for a while she vented them on me. And here, doctor, I open another parenthesis: with her, for the first time, I discovered the meaning of the expression throwing oneself away: it is a strange and dangerous syndrome, which consists in experiencing enjoyment in identifying with the humours and secretions of one's body; I could define it as the pleasure of decomposition, a kind of "cupio dissolvi" that assails the human being when he has lost his self-respect. Every evening, after rehearsals, she and I spent a couple of hours together in her car; I can't say that I really liked it, but neither did I dislike that relationship distorted like an acid flash, meaningless and without a future, hastily consumed on the banks of the Po river in the midst of passers-by, hidden only by the fogged up windows; she said ridiculous things to me like "fuck me soon, you have to come quickly, they see us, I want you right away, take me now", then she started screaming loudly, I covered her mouth and told her "are you stupid, they're arresting us", but I always had the doubt that it was part of the script and that she physically didn't feel anything. At least she didn't want the condom. I'd been missing that strong flavor for a long time, even though it was so different from what I remembered. But soon I was pissed off with her mental jerks: there was nothing true in that convulsive agitation, it was like letting the propeller of a blender jolt here and there; the result was mush of matter with no trace of soul. Furthermore, I realized that Antonio didn't like it: so I gave it up and never set foot in Macondo again. Too bad, it was a nice place; but in Turin there is certainly no shortage of interesting pubs: the Divine Comedy for example. Even if it's a bit out of the way, it's one of my favorite places: it's divided into three floors, one for each Dantesque realm; Paradise is occupied by a restaurant with a terrace, Purgatorio by a cocktail area, Hell by a sort of solid brick crypt that hosts good live programming: ideal for a music lover like me. Strange encounters occur in Hell. One evening, during an intermission of the show, I was sitting at a table drinking my coke, while Antonio on the terrace of the Paradiso smoked a joint with some friends. Suddenly the lights in the hall went out and two silhouettes appeared on the stage against the light. The two began to dance in the dark to the rhythm of the bongos played by a guy sitting below; then the spotlights came on. There was a bang, a light bulb exploded. He was a guy with a nice body, curly blond hair and an androgynous face. She, tall and aristocratic, wore a jumpsuit, black like her hair, had very long legs and danced with pink leg warmers on her ankles; she had the face of a doll, perfect and expressionless, and she moved with the agility of a feline, in sudden leaps and jerks; then she'd stop and arch her shoulders in a way I can't describe. - Who's that girl? - I asked Bastiano, sitting next to me. - Her name is Michelle. - And last name? - Kerschbaumer. She is a dancer at the Teatro Nuovo. - She's a spectacular pussy. - Don't get any illusions, she's too old for you. - How old is she? - Twenty-two. - Yes, it was just to know. - And besides, she's engaged to him. - Him who? - Roberto Morra. The dancer. - I wonder what a girl like that is doing at the Murazzi: she tastes like upper class a mile away. - In your opinion? - I honestly don't know. He mentioned a guy in a leather jacket sitting three tables over: - He's her pusher. During the ballet the girl looked at me for a moment with her shark's eyes, black and empty. I had the distinct sensation of hearing a click. After the show I waited for her outside, but I didn't see her: she must have gone out the back door. After ten minutes I wasn't thinking about it anymore: I was completely absorbed in a conversation that Antonio was making to me. I start by saying that, even if I am a typical representative of generation X, I feel completely alien to the mentality of my peers. Antonio is intelligent and he understood it immediately: it is evident from everything, from the fact that I don't go to discos, from my musical tastes, from my readings, from the way I speak and write. He says I'm a typical high school product, but apart from the fact that he is more so than me, it really annoys me that he trivializes my way of being like this. My diversity was born with me, classical high school has nothing to do with it. Already in middle school my classmates told me that I spoke strangely, and in fact I can't stand the expressive sloppiness of my peers. In their mouths everything becomes intolerably squalor, and I'm not referring to the word fuck that is heard all the time: that's the least, I use it too if needed. There are no A-words and B-words, words are words: the important thing is to use them appropriately. The point is that human communication cannot be reduced to primitive interjections. The way we express ourselves reflects the way we think, this is known, but few realize that language in turn shapes thought; if you get used to expressing yourself like a savage, you will become a savage: it's mathematical. I especially find appalling the way the girls express themselves, their stupid habit of writing k instead of ch and nn instead of non, their excessive and imprecise punctuation, their four or five exclamation points (one is enough), all those ellipses (they must be three, not one more and not one less): they are an insult to decency, I don't know how they can think I like someone writing that way. A girl who expresses herself like this, fucks while chewing gum, is a vulgar and disgusting person. In reality, even fucking is a disgusting term: I hate the periphrasis making love, but I must admit that it is the only one capable of expressing the concept. Writing this diary has allowed me to understand that style is not a question of form, but of substance: if one describes a situation with the wrong style, the feeling he communicates is completely different from the one he intended to express; therefore, in fact, he describes another situation. It is a semantic fact, not a stylistic one. Today people speak a kind of ramshackle slang: a language like this is impractical from a literary point of view, but a more evolved style would have no credibility in a novel set in our day. It's the times that are vulgar, the language only reflects them. Thus a writer is caught between two fires: either he chooses verisimilitude or he chooses decency. The main difficulty are the dialogues. For example, a character like me, in order to be credible, should express himself as boys of my age in my latitudes do: he should say fuck or shit at every step and avoid any sentimentality like Harmony collection. The result is a half-autistic caveman, a sort of returning illiterate. Too bad that this troglodyte doesn't look like me at all: when I hear him talk like that I'd slap him, I'd like to throw the book away, ask for damages from the author. Who is that idiot? Oh yeah, I forgot: it's me. I have asked myself several times if this is a typical problem of our times or if it was the same in the past: perhaps the writers of the past simply didn't care about verisimilitude; or maybe, who knows, people really did express themselves in a much more formal way. "Come on!" continued Marguerite, "we're talking silly things. Give me your hand and we'll go back to the dining room. They mustn't understand the meaning of our absence." "Go if you want, but I ask your permission to stay here." "Why?". “Because your happiness hurts me too much”. "Then I'll be sad." And what about the omniscient narrator, the one who sees things from above and always knows everything about everyone? Where is he, who is he, how does he read inside people? The night passed quickly, and the morning blushed to find him still clinging to Matilda. Drunk with pleasure, the monk got up from the siren's luxurious bed: he no longer thought with shame of his own incontinence, nor did he fear the vengeance of the offended heaven. I really wish I could write like that. Then, in more recent times, the streams of consciousness take over, the inner dimensions that are intertwined with facts and cannot be told impersonally. She had to make a supernatural effort not to die when a beautifully timed cyclonic power lifted her by the waist and stripped her of her intimacy with three paws, and ripped her apart like a bird. She managed to give thanks to God for having been born, before losing consciousness in the terrible pleasure of that unbearable pain, wallowing in the steaming quagmire of the hammock which absorbed the explosion of her blood like blotting paper. Beautiful to read, but if your name is not Màrquez you better forget it. To conclude, this is not an effect of classical high school: it is a problem that I have always asked myself. If anything, it's the opposite: I chose the classical high school because it is the only one in which I can at least partially identify with, although I don't recognize myself at all in the school itself: it is an institution towards which I feel a visceral distrust, and she who, in a now remote past, tried to take care of my studies, well knows it. Well, despite knowing all this about me, Antonio has the annoying habit of involving me in the contempt he feels for my generation and often catechizes me as if I were an idiot. I only put up with it because, as always, he's in good faith. You are uncritical, you don't think, you don't know how to suffer, you just want to have fun, you are not used to the exercise of reason, you are empty, you are easy prey to false myths, always on the verge of fanatic exaltation, be careful Emmanuel, fascism and fundamentalism have common roots, violence and mysticism are two sides of the same coin and they take hold of your generational void, etc. etc. One evening he gave me a speech that I almost remember by heart. I was impressed for various reasons, including the fact that he had invited me for the first time to go up to his attic in San Massimo street. My heart was pounding a bit, and not just because I had climbed five flights of stairs without a moment's rest, a feat that puts even trained legs like mine to the test. His den, as he calls it, is simply but tastefully furnished, with exposed white-painted wooden beams, a few modern carpets on the parquet floor and several posters on the walls, including a blow-up of the Fourth Estate. Like many people on the left, Antonio comes from a rather wealthy family: his parents have no problem paying for his studies and the house where he lives; they respect his early desire for independence: he is an only child and is giving them a lot of satisfaction. In the center of the living room stands a large black leather sofa; as soon as I entered that evening, Antonio invited me to sit down and asked me what I wanted to drink: I opted for a pineapple juice. He laughed, went to the kitchen and returned with the sodas. He poured me the juice, but added coconut milk and rum, claiming it was better this way. He didn't sit next to me, but on the chair opposite. He poured himself an alcoholic drink which I believe was tequila, took a sip and said to me: So we've determined that Moon in June isn't too experimental for you. No, indeed, I confirmed. Perfect then. He got up and turned on his Pioneer SX. It's from 1980: an unsurpassed model in terms of sound quality, those of today are not up to par. For the speakers I was undecided between Allison and Klipsch, but then I chose the former and I think I did well. The turntable is a Thorens, of course. He put the vinyl of Third on the turntable: after a short rustling the notes of Moon in June began to spread through the room. That damned track really has something special. The English have an untranslatable term to define that something: addictive; once it gets in your head it never comes out. You'll end up converting me to Seventies music, I told him, joking but not too much. He shook his head sceptically: Let's hope. He began to speak, but his words reached me as if from elsewhere, they merged with the evolutions of Wyatt's free singing followed by the fantastic pursuits of Ratledge's keyboards. I too could not help chasing them mentally, going up, down, gliding on his pataphysical falsetto, barely refraining from singing with him when he says ah, but I miss the trees, and I wish that I were home again, back home again, and the rhythm suddenly changes. However, this did not distract me from Antonio's speech: on the contrary, it imprinted it on my senses as well as on my memory; I observed him by looking over his noble figure, his severe features like a Mediterranean prince, his thick raven hair, I listened to him while sipping my cocktail of pineapple, coconut and rum, and that mixture of words, music and piña colada descended sweetly and strongly inside me and stunned me. It is one of the most evocative memories I have. It's not your fault, we're the ones who got it all wrong. Antonio always uses the first person plural when he alludes to the generation of Sixty-eight, to which he ideally belongs. We talked on ourselves; with our odious seriousness we have created the type of eternal adolescent who ages without ever becoming an adult, half-alienated, pissed off between global renunciation and violent self-assertion, between drugs and Molotov cocktails, between anarchy and terrorism, a pure wishful thinking. We have not changed society at all: those who have not integrated have fled, they have created dens, underground shelters, they have lost their way. You are our necessary consequence, generation of the void which is the child of our emptiness. I didn't exactly understand the historical and ideological references, but I felt emotionally on his side: I listened to him fascinated, with my head leaning back against the back of the sofa, running my forefinger along the rim of the glass. I hoped he would continue the conversation by sitting next to me, but he didn't: we said goodbye around midnight. Afterwards we continued to hang out for a few weeks as good friends. But when our story finally took the turn I wanted, it had a completely different taste from what I had imagined: the sticky taste of a dip in mud. I got up with my feathers muddy, smeared, heavy, dirty. I no longer knew how to fly.