The dawn of 2025 is at last upon us. Yippie-yay.
As I write the first page of the new agenda, I find myself reflecting on the year that has just passed. Although it was filled with many interesting experiences that I will cherish, it almost felt like a filler episode for something big to come.
A quiet year with a lot of beautiful images (some of which I tried to capture in these shots) and a lot of thinking, so much so that I finally understood something I had hoped never to understand at the age of 27. I’m getting older 🥲 30-somethings are going to throw stones at me with good reason, but that’s how I feel these days.
No need for tears, I assure you. Just a hard but mature realisation that gives things a new taste.
Under the fading light of youth, my thoughts turned to the past few months to see if the creative engine had not run out of steam. Of course the light was there, just in a different way.
In the past I would get inspired by something and go off on a tangent. Sometimes it worked and I was able to make stuff that I was really proud of. When it did not work out, however, I was left with a wasted potential and the realization that I had been chasing dragons with a net for butterflies.
Well, I wouldn’t change that damn net for anything in the world. I look at it with pride when I think of all the hard drives full songs, drawings, ideas and demos that are now gathering dust. I have the feeling that all of this effort has been in preparation for a different time, and that different time is now getting closer and closer.
In 2024, I have found myself increasingly drawn to people and nature for inspiration. This is nothing new, but I have the feeling that it has been intensified by my recent move from Sanremo to Rome.
It is a great privilege to have so many different cultures and so many different things to do right on the doorstep of my home. But this overwhelming amount of things to see and do gives a different flavor to coming back to the beautiful and quiet piece of land that is my home town.
I love them both and I’m grateful to be able to squeeze the juice out of both and to live in the midst of these great contrasts.
A thank you to all the people who had to bear with me for the past 12 months.
It seems to me that we live in truly strange times, sometimes breathlessly pessimistic. While I still strongly reject the notion that “ignorance is strength”, I’m sometimes led to switch off my brain to enjoy the simple things in life and forget about the atrocities that every damn news outlet is trying to keep me informed about.
Yes, it’s the coward’s way out. But this is a place of honesty: there are times when you can’t carry the weight of the world. The year 2024 was such a time. I resonated with it, but couldn’t make it a mission. I’m working on this, I swear.
Well, that’s all I had to say. I dare leave one word of advice before I go: enjoy your 2025 as much as possible, but don’t stress it. If something is going to happen, for better or for worse, it is going to happen anyway.
