Fifty

One step away from the age of 50, I have some reflections. The first is that in 50 years I will be 100 and sorry if it's not enough; the second concerns something that every man more or less will have to deal with sooner or later, that is: to count his own failures. As a young man I was largely convinced that I would become famous in one of the many passions to which I devoted myself. In music, I already saw myself as a niche musician ... and after going from one success to another with Heremita (my old band), I would have dedicated myself to a future as a successful photojournalist. From time to time I would write poetry, paint a picture or dedicate myself to directing some unlikely cult movie.

Obviously all this between one acclaimed novel and the next. The funny thing is that I was convinced that I would do all these things in extreme humility and poverty and for this reason everyone would love me without envying me. In the interviews I was fabulously mysterious and likeable. But the truth is, I haven't studied enough and therefore I have failed in all of these things. I did them all ... but I failed.

Today that I am the husband of a wife and father of three children and I only do more things that I don't like, I look in the mirror and sometimes I happen to justify my lack of artistic success with a dyslexia and a defect attention that prevented me from memorizing things ... and that in those years dyslexics called them donkeys and died there. My grandfather always said that there are two things that only failure can teach: the first is that only those who have failed can understand the power that hides failure, and the second is that those who have failed cannot explain it ... so with great serenity and gratitude for the failure I wish everyone to fail very often ... and then let's talk about it!


Andrea Gotico
NP October 2021