W the soup

As a child I was beautiful. Then God must have thought: «What's the use of being so beautiful, when I've already done it so well???». So here I am, nice no, but not stupid either. So after this little rip-off I make sure to be healthy but not too much, rich but not so much, lucky but not always. I would never want some haloed head up high to think that since I'm so good (and above all modest) I don't also need health, wealth or luck. Better to keep a low profile and not attract much attention. Then there are already too many musicians, singers and artists who attract attention.

Some have a real cult around them (there is more than one cult face in the environment, but I better look at mine, before someone up there thinks I'm not ugly enough yet...).

Undoubtedly one of the secrets of living happily is accepting yourself (not in the sense of accepting...). I don't think many people like me, but on the other hand, I'm not crazy about myself either, so to accept myself, all I have to do is discover my talents and bet on them.

The reason I became a musician is that I went by trial and error. After realizing that I wasn't doing very well at school, in sports I was completely normal, with the girls I was a real landslide (actually an avalanche), I noticed that in music I "had" (as they say) a hair more than the other. When I talked about it, listened to it or played, I realized I had a little something extra, I was going fast, above the norm.

If I had to try to play a talent, it was that, considering that I didn't see many others. Irony, perhaps? My wife says she married me because I made her laugh. It's not a great compliment, but at least she had a reason to be interested in me, since she's never liked music that much, and today I'm sick of it too.

It's a soup that I often feel compelled to heat up and lengthen, like broth. I add water, salt and stock cube. And when do these ingredients run out too? I make the broth from scratch. I patiently dig a small piece of earth, put down carrots, celery, potatoes, parsley, onions and everything a gourmet needs, put on the water and wait.

Every time I start over, I learn something new about the art of stewing, something that had escaped me and that I had never noticed before. Musically speaking, when the soup needs to be redone, I start right where I started.

I pick up my instruments again, I train patiently, I re-read my harmony and counterpoint manuals, my orchestration manuals for the hundredth time, I transcribe melodies and chords of songs (sometimes very complicated) that I hear on the radio, just to practice the ear.

I go on days, weeks, months (I'm not only modest but also quite tenacious). Until one day my beautiful cult face lights up and I find something I had lost I don't even know where, the aroma of boiled meat that I knew I knew how to cook.

This is the case every time, the magic is renewed until the "lean", the depression, the next undertow. The important thing is never to get dragged under water, but to give yourself the opportunity to start over and always try again, without forgetting that some soups, the more you heat them up, the better they become.

Mauro Tabasso

NP Ottobre 2022