immagine in evidenza primo giorno di primavera

The first day of spring

This first day of spring will not be like anyone: thoughts, memories and, hopes at the time of the
quarantine

I went to the supermarket today, nothing out of the ordinary, a day like many.

Yet today it is not a day like others. Today it is a shitty day much the same as the last 15. Today might be less shitty of the days that are yet to come because it is a shitty period. I hope it will soon be gone but I hope people will not forget it.

Today it is not a day like the others, today it is the first day of Spring.

Dik Dik even wrote a song with that name.

Today is 21st March 2020.

Usually, around this time of the year, my body gets out of hibernation and my nervous system starts releasing endorphins stimulated by the sunrays that warm me. This is all happening up while I ride from one corner of Bologna to the other by bike and my first thought is to open up a beer together with my friends in Piazza Dell’Unità or somewhere else around the city, under the moonlight. My mind goes to the thought of the beer flowing down my oesophagus until it floods my stomach by sealing it all with a gigantic liberating burp.

Today, however that is not the case.

Today I am queueing on the pavement around Lidl and I think about the fact that I will have to get a cart that might have been previously touched by someone that sneezed on themselves. I am then forced to touch it and I am thinking that I will fill it in with products that were previously touched by many others. Those people could have sneezed themselves or they might have picked their nose or wetted their finger with their tongue to open the damned plastic bags of the fresh produce section. All of those could infect me and those after me. I am thinking that this might never end. I then think of the cashier that touches all my products after having touched all the cash that carry more diseases than pigeons. I also think that the people all around me have been smarter than me since they have gloves and masks with filters while I have neither the gloves nor the masks with filters. I only have the shitty ones that I used when I had to use an anti-mould product on the wall. I also think that I would like to have a cool mask like theirs. Maybe one that is black, with studs and the Wretched stencil on the filter. I also think how useful it would also be to use it against air pollution since I mostly ride around with a bike; unfortunately, my glasses would then get foggy and that would be annoying.

My mind then goes to all that I did in many years of touring, events, living. I think about the beds riddled with rat shit on which I slept, the mattresses filled with bed bugs, the plaster peeling away that fell into my mouth while I was sleeping fainted on the wall. I think about that time in Forteguercio when my head was under a ladder and thirty-odd people alternated up and down shaking their combat boots full of dust and mud on my mug having me swallow it down for good. I think about the attic of Confino or the mattress full of Rosalia’s dog hair and blood or all the other thousands of situations from which I got out safe and sound despite the terrible hygienic standards and… in the meantime I have paid without even noticing that I was done shopping.

I drive home thinking more.

I imagine that this shitty situation will pass and all will go back to normal in a while. We will go back to drinking in Piazza Dell’Unità. Concerts will start again; so will my job, Salvini’s ramblings and dinner with friends. Yet, maybe nothing will go back to the way it was because this was only a test to see to what extent they could limit our freedom, because 5G is coming, because the USA are envious of China and I think that we will live under house arrest until the summer of 2021. Maybe some crazy cells will meet and will start smashing everything. We will finally be able to make a revolution; fuck all of them. We will get our spaces, our passions, our freedoms back. However, then I think that people do not deserve anarchy and what comes to mind once again is the scenography of a dystopian movie that is now reality.

In the meantime, without noticing, I am back, shut-in, at home. My hands already put a vinyl on the turntable and my fingers have placed the needle on the rotating vinyl. Guitar feedback is filling the room. While I swallow the first sip of beer of the day I think: “Perdition” by Disorder is a fucking amazing record.

Text by Koppa