Life in balance

In life you always have to have a plan; we Italians certainly do not shine in this matter, in which, for example, the Germans, the Swiss or the Austrians excel, people who do not even go about their bodies without having a plan. On the other hand, we know how to be more ingenious, creative, original, imaginative, sensitive and generous. If we also had the discipline and the ability to plan the universe it would be ours, and it wouldn't be fair, we would have everything and the others nothing. And there are those in the world who have little, very little. So my plan and that of the Sound Laboratory has always been to share.

Last week we had the opportunity to share something truly unique: a plan, precisely, our plan, which (with a little imagination) will become a plan for Africa, a plan for peace. The friends of Okapia Onlus (very active for years in Rwanda) and Pietro Morello, very young ambassador of the city of Turin and our recent friend, have invented a beautiful and unique initiative, which, when they told us about it, we immediately fall in love. They dreamed of transporting a piano to Rwanda, loading it on a pick-up, and letting it take a tour of the most remote villages, where Pietro would perform playing, and then show and try the instrument to all the children and fewer children who they would have applied. The problem was finding the instrument, and this gave us the opportunity to share a piano, intended as a piano.

When we were told about this initiative, I instinctively replied, without thinking about it, about my stomach (one of my most developed tissues, because I think a lot and make many decisions, what do you believe?): We would have procured the instrument, not c 'they were problems, at least so I hoped. Soon after, I phoned our trusted piano dealer (Cesare Gastaldi) and explained it to him, asking him to help me find the right instrument, which had to cost nothing, be sturdy, not too heavy, movable by hand from 4- 6 people, therefore compact, reliable and possibly also had to sound good. He seemed to be asking too much, but the instrument popped up. A beautiful tool. It even seemed a pity to sacrifice him on such a mission, with no return, but it seemed right to me. Perhaps the children who see this piano will not have the opportunity to see and hear another in their entire life, so it was much better to send a worthy instrument rather than a disposable "can" (as they say in the jargon). Getting rid of the things we don't need is too comfortable a way, a selfish way of doing good. Sharing does not mean depriving ourselves of the superfluous, but involving others in our capital, not in interests.

So yesterday morning we saw the piano start with joy, to which we were already fond of. A specialized company has come to load it, and after a careful packaging operation it will set sail on a freighter to Africa. There he will find our friends and the pick-up on which he will begin his journey (of about thirty days) without a return ticket. In fact, it is thought to have it personalized and painted by the children of each village and then place it in a definitive way where it will be possible, in memory of all the people who have listened to and played it, ideally united by this very thin and vague thread that is music, which ideally it also unites us and all our young students with them in whose name we have not donated but shared the piano. It would be really nice if each of us could share this plan.

Mauro Tabasso
NP August / September 2021