On Movement and Understanding

There exists, in the complex space of narrative, a continuous attempt to reduce everything to minimal terms. Lean, broken, portioned units of meaning, designed to accompany that argumentative tragedy that is storytelling. I have always detested the logic of storytelling. I have always detested that someone should decide for me that I do not deserve the complexity of totalizing narratives. I have always detested simplification.

There is not one among my colleagues who does not mock me for my complete lack of the capacity for synthesis. Unfortunately for you, it is absolutely true. Because within synthesis hides an ambiguity I have always feared: that of misunderstanding.

There is a magic hidden inside the word that in Italian indicates understanding: "intendimento." The faculty of attributing meanings or constituting relationships through the intellect. But the Latin root of this word suggests a semantic proximity to something entirely different. "Intendere," and in its past participle "intentus," mean to turn toward, to move toward a unit of meaning, to direct oneself toward something. It indicates a will to discovery that, in expressing itself through movement, cannot but describe a space of physical approach.

Without closeness there can be no understanding. Without closeness no comprehension exists.

For many years I suffered the consequences of distance. For many years I tried to understand why, despite every one of my efforts being directed toward the necessity of comprehension, I so often found myself pushed away.

This space of resistance to understanding is one of the most absurd oxymorons I have found expressing itself in the world of book production. A world that boasts the unique and original capacity to operate at the intersection of the fantastic, that is to say the capacity to create images, and ratiocination. Ratiocination, which in Italian becomes "raziocinio," is yet another word that, used in respect of its etymological root, suggests a movement toward something.

And it is precisely driven by the difficulty of understanding that I decided to leave. Not this island that today hosts us. But the reactionary nature of the book industry. It is in the overbearing attempt to discover the magic that feeds narrative that I decided not to compromise with the conservatism of this professional space.

It is the desire not to renounce myself that pushed me away. And what a magnificent word desire is: it too indicates a movement, the movement of our own will toward what we lack.

And in that "away" I discovered something that the years spent distant from this cradle of ancient life have over time strengthened. The fact that only in movement does this industry reveal the most incredible of its wonders.

That movement which feeds desire, which sustains the will to order that belongs to ratiocination, and which, without doubt, promotes the most sincere will to understanding.

In moving frenetically through the world I discovered the devastating beauty of violence as told by Stenio Gardel and Edouard Louis. I discovered that beyond the trust I have in my own acumen, there exist authors, like Carolina Sanin, who open themselves to language and allow themselves to be governed by its logics, painting disorders to which no poetry will ever do justice. I discovered, moving throughout the city that adopted me, Angela Lehner's capacity to dismantle heroic narratives by attributing to irony values I had been taught to belong only to the noblest of feelings.

In moving, above all, I came to know each of you. And to each of you I owe a thank you. Not only because you decided to accompany me during this first edition of Mediterranea, but above all because almost every one of you, in your own way, managed to teach me something.

And I ask your forgiveness if until now almost everything I have said has referred, ultimately, to me. Then again, those of you who know me well know perfectly that I lack the emotional intelligence to recognize myself in someone else's shoes, and the only horizon that belongs to me is that of my own egocentrism. But I cannot help, in this moment, thinking that Mediterranea is born from a deep will of mine.

And it does not surprise me that once again the etymology of the Italian word "volonta" refers to a movement. The one that each of our souls makes in the attempt to achieve a given manner of being.

WHY MEDITERRANEA WAS BORN

Do you know why Mediterranea was born? Because I have never discovered who I am. But I know for certain that a fundamental part of me is rooted in this island as rooted are the basalt veins in the granites of Gallura. And some time ago, dissatisfied with the unjust limit that is my own individuality, I began to ask myself about the meaning of the Sardinian identity that defines that part of me I continue not to understand. And in my identity as a migrant Sardinian I discovered that there existed an overbearing commonality between my own person and the individualities of so many people who, coming from the Mediterranean area, shared the destiny, some more happily than others, of migration.

I remember the day in Berlin, which became my home without ever truly inviting me to inhabit it, when a Palestinian friend told me about the value that the olive harvest held for him. We were discussing this while clumsily assembling an Ikea piece of furniture in the Wohngemeinschaft that momentarily housed the two of us. I remember the sudden arrival, and resolving one, given his ability to assemble Ikea furniture, of another flatmate, Spanish, who shared memories that were Sardinian and were Palestinian. The shape of those stubborn trees, and for this reason eternal, that let themselves be bent patiently by the wind. Recognizing in their trunks the same natural movements of ancient centuries. It was strange to discover that we shared between us the childhood memory, each at his own time, each looking out from a different corner of that sea that defined us, of lying under olive trees and playing with the sky. Moving the branches of those gentle plants, each of the three of us was able, in different eras, to change the shape of the clouds.

I believe this is the reason I wanted you here today. To help me discover how many skies lean in to peer at the tragedies that the sea, which in these days has peacefully accompanied some of you, at other times tells. How many clouds we have shared with the more than 450 million people who live in the Mediterranean basin.

What an immense movement this sea makes.

To your professional expertise I would like to ask: help me discover whether this magnificent complexity can be told in a systematic and organized way without, however, resorting to that simplification device that is storytelling.

To your persons, instead, I want to say thank you. Because there is a reason why publishing companies are called publishing "houses," and it is as obvious as it is beautiful. That no matter how much distance separates us, we are part of an ecosystem that, like the sea, feeds on its own movement. A movement that obliges us to splendid proximities and understandable distances. A movement that makes of us a social, collective and dynamic organism that can only be defined with the word "Family."

To this family, dysfunctional who knows, that is you, I turn so that you might help me suggest a mature narrative of that frenzy that is our sea.