Freedom Ai Tempi Di Corona: The Second Wave
Illustration by Livia Falcaru
I was luckily born in a country where millions of people receive an inestimable gift called freedom.
From my very first steps, to my very first words, to my first rages, and my first joys, I was a child of freedom. I would run everywhere, disappearing constantly, pushed by my curiosity to discover everything with no limits. I remember playing this game by myself, where suddenly I closed my eyes, as if I was taking a picture, and reproduced in my mind every detail of the world surrounding me. I already had this thing for grasping the moment, stopping time to make it mine. As a child, I talked a lot too. They called me Chatterbox. I had to express everything that happened to me, sometimes simply by yelling, singing, crying and obviously laughing. My childhood, I believe, was the purest expression of the freedom I received.
When growing up, adults came into play and reality was no longer this horizon of possibilities, but a set of well-established rules we live in. It takes a life to break one after another these barriers. How brave do you need to be to reshape everything, every day, and finally reach your freedom?
Hopefully, by the most insignificant act of living, we somehow embrace a bit of this ultimate freedom effortlessly. We decide what we want to be, whatever the outcome, whatever the price. We step into life every morning, without questioning it too much, and like a tribute to the children we were once, we follow our daily routine.
Occasionally love, friendship or passion bring us closer to this realisation of time and space that is totally ours, of life being a total liberty. We often find ourselves on the verge of freedom, stepping for an instant far from the reality of our evermore depressing world, submerged by a sudden outburst of hope. We deeply wish that time could stay suspended forever to this smile we proudly harbor. I personally live for those moments of pure naivety. I live to dance, to laugh, to yell, to cry, to share, to love, to be amazed, to discover, to create, very loud, very long, a lot, ever more, in brief: for freedom.
The past year, however, has been a struggle. A violent heartbreak. The COVID-19 pandemic took over my freedom.
Illustration by Livia Falcaru
At first, the lock-down was a pause, a needed break, an opportunity to slow down. But as months went by, it turned into a wrestling fight with my inner liberty. It took me months to understand it, to word it.
All attempts to tell me what to do, or what to think, usually fall into infinite debates and quarrels. For the first time ever, I sat down locked-in my house, with no explanation, unfairly punished, with nobody to blame or to argue with. I kept repeating myself over and over: accept it, just accept the situation. How could I?
No, time simply went by, and I remained in a complete deny. I was totally rejecting the idea of a world where my actions would have major repercussions on other. A world calling for responsibility towards other. This freedom I always claimed, all of a sudden implied a large number of people to take care of, to protect. It shaped a new perspective I never considered. A larger picture in which my single irrelevant existence and desires put in jeopardy strangers.
With this second wave, I have no choice but to admit it. The virus is transforming the face of freedom, no one knows for how long and if durably or not.
I could not picture in my mind the emergency of the pandemic with the factual data, numbers, and sky-rocketing graphics. But, from the moment I realized I needed to give up my absolute pleasures for longer than expected, I took the measure of the historical event unfolding before us.
Clubbing, among all, seems now like an old memory. Each time we think of those sweaty nights in the heat and beat of liberty, nostalgia hit us. Months have passed and we no longer wonder when this intimate and essential part of our freedom will be returned. We slowly concede to change our vision of liberty.
Illustration by Livia Falcaru