We need only listen to the words of Vecchioni in “Malinconia Leggera” (light melancholy) when he sings: “It is easy to fly/it takes fantasy to walk”.
Right: man who walks, who gives his own territory a meaning and tries to make it grow with a constant rigorous application, searching satisfaction in that which he does and not in what he gives; man who silently uses his knowledge, his awareness. This is quite different from what is described by the Beatles in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”: “Joan was quizzical studied pataphysical science in the home”. Pataphysics: the science of imaginary solutions. Empty and destructive knowledge.
RIIING. The doorbell sounds.Groucho: ”You know, I thought I would change the bell, to install something more practical and modern. First of all one must buy a multimedial computer equipped with a scanner and a modem. I read in a magazine that you only have to connect the doorbell to the computer: if somebody rings the doorbell, the impulse arrives to the scanner that digitalizes the signal and transfers it to the computer where it is converted into an image file. The image is then animated, compressed and sent through the modem to an automatic telephone service that resents an e-mail message through the Internet to inform you that someone is ringing the doorbell. All this in merely forty minutes”.
(The conclusion of the dialogue is to be found at the end of the chapter).It seems like a commonplace comic punchline. And yet, how many times do we try to solve a simple, banal problem with a complicated approach? How many times do we sacrifice processes and procedures that are considered to be too simple, too cheap, too non-invasive and too “unfashionable” upon the altar of technology and innovation?
The more intrinsic the approach to face a problem, the higher its complexity and we feel we show our greatness in a better way with unlimited competences. We are so convinced that it is not true that the shortest way between two points is a straight line.
And in all this man walks?Enthusiasm sinks and is substituted by a sort of cultural snobbism that is translated into a voluntary detachment from activities and a desire to let go, to leave room for the usual known people. A sort of abandonment without comparison.
And in all this man walks? Well the discomfort, the failure in making one´s own capacities emerge, not succeeding in letting one´s talent emerge, makes the man who walks fall in the same situation as Velasquez: on the one part man is ready to challenge all and everybody to reach Cape Horn, to risk and go anywhere if there are people to save there, on the other part a man who wants to return home, who is tired of risking and looks for life without sensations.
But, due to the love for the things he does, for the world that he perceives around him, he must pronounce the fatal phrase that makes everything turn, that does his competences honour and also his being a man who walks…
Dylan Dog: “… I understand, I go!”
Special thanks to Myriam Ines Giangiacomo, Vincenzo Abbruzzino and Antonella Giampaoli for the careful review and for the precious suggestions. My gratitude goes to all the people of TSF that made this adventure possible.
Proceeds from this book will be donated to the non profit organization Informatici Senza Frontiere. www.informaticisenzafrontiere.org
