Tanto domani piove

  • 2022

 

In the ’70s, on August 21st in Campodimele, it was a ritual to buy the “Desiree” by Algida, the ice cream cake with hazelnut sprinkles and a slice of pineapple in the center. Under the disheartening late summer rain, my family and I sought refuge from some relatives to share and celebrate my birthday. The absence of aunts and cousins, despite persistent searches, and the cake melting inside the Latina-registered Fiat 500, marked my childhood memory with meteorological mortification. To sadistically confirm this small trauma, my older brother intervened, favoring the annual debacle the night before by singing a mocking and ominous tune: “tomorrow it will rain so much, tomorrow it will rain so much.” Today, after about 50 years, I extracted sounds by shaking the historic metal sign that bears the imprint, among various ice creams, of the Desiree, the cake of the trauma. The produced audio unexpectedly evoked the genesis of a storm, with pouring rain, acidic lightning, and sudden winds, acoustic metaphors of childhood, social, and political upheavals that vibrated in those years. Like in a shamanic ritual, a biographical circle closes, the wounded anniversary becomes a sonic pretext that exorcises discomfort and redeems past sorrow.