Give me a word and I will change the world

God said and there was light, so thank goodness he was talkative, who knows if he was taciturn... His son said quite clearly that we would do greater things than him, but I always thought that deep down we are not still got as good as he hoped; however, in the small, we are undoubtedly creators, or co-creators. Ideas, inventions, concepts, art, machinery, various buildings, and above all words.

Our word creates, I am convinced. It creates dialogue, relaxation, empathy, emotion, or antipathy, hatred, anger, envy, jealousy, war. Create good and bad, honest and dishonest, cops and robbers. Our word is so powerful that we find it hard to perceive it, and we abuse it, we treat it as the least precious asset in the world, even if there are places where the loquacious last very little. The word can create change, such and such is its strength. Giovanni Caccamo (musician of great sensitivity, songwriter discovered and promoted by Franco Battiato) wanted to remind us of this together with Cristina Dell'Acqua (teacher, journalist, writer) who recently visited the Arsenale della Pace bringing the format they are promoting in important locations in as many Italian cities (schools, museums, universities), aimed precisely at making us understand the meaning and power of the word in the perspective of an epochal and generational change (Generations in comparison is the title of the format itself).

The two conductors, at the head of two ideal teams, invited those present to choose and pronounce their key word of that change that we all desire, in the hope of which Andrea Camilleri wrote an appeal in which he prophesied a “Humanism of the word” as the origin of a new time. Giovanni has accepted this appeal, making it (among other things) also an album, precisely entitled Parola (Ed. Ala Bianca Group srl), where the musical pieces alternate with texts recited by characters from prominence of the cultural, artistic, literary, political scene (among others Wilem Dafoe, Liliana Segre, Aleida Guevara, Patty Smith, Andrea Camilleri himself). An afternoon dedicated to listening, discussion, dialogue, understood as the effects of a single word: Peace.


Mauro Tabasso
NP March 2023