Busker’s memoir – 1. Deads can’t drive mad
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Federico Berti, Busker’s memoir.
Young man coming from nowhere…
Copyright Berti 2014-2015, italian version here
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1. DEADS CAN’T DRIVE MAD
 Keep on walking. It’s not your love going away, can’t wake early in the morning and blow away everything just for fun. In early ninties you found American myths everywhere: maybe a mirage I though, Steinbeck wrote about beggars joining the road while New Babylon in danger of collapsing, the whole country unified, hardened any internal resistance. No threat, no luck. That’s it, America no enemies is like a whore no customers: pretty Cinderella, nice but no fellas! Thousand of unfortunate families had been kicked on the road, living in box cars. When I looked around me however, that world seemed to be a pretense of national-popular mainstream, distant echo amplified by drums’n trombones, film and television, you could build fanciful theories dreaming on: ‘twas not my country, my yuppie generation wearing fine silk hangman knot all around their throats, moving financial codes by phone sitting in some tea room. No, we did not run away from misery, neither from gold and money, that’s what I thought leaving my loft and setting fire to the powder, in a few hours bum! A shattered world. Young man coming from nowhere… |
 These weighty considerations ruminating, I heard flying out from the radio a sound of bee singing loud: “Hit the road man … It’s not your love going away!”. Already it is not love, sure. You can run away from anything you fear, but you can’t undress your shadow. Charon the boatman waiting for me silent and ready on driver’s seat, first time I realized what many scholar theorized in dusty magazines soliciting my imagination, papers I read while chatting beside a coffee machine, popping languid glances to Barbies and Candies: masks are ghosts, and ghosts are dead. That’s the point. Ghosts are dead, and deads can’t drive crazy! So keep on walking man … It’s not Steinbeck, ‘ts not America. You’re just another wandering donkey, carrying his lavender bags. — (to be continued…) |