TOwelcomed by infinite and warm applause, Giovanni Allevi has arrived in the Gold Room of the 2024 Turin Book Fair with his usual enthusiasm. Officially, the meeting was scheduled as a chat on Books and Music, drawing on the three volumes written by Allevi for Solferino (The balance of the lizard, Revolution and The rules of the piano), in fact a one-man show was held in which Allevi took stock of his health condition. On the fragility that concerns everyone, on meditation, on the culture that helps us understand how much we are not alone. Making me very emotional.
Giovanni Allevi: «How nice to be here at the Book Fair»
Black turtleneck, skinny jeans and mass of unruly hair, now salt and pepper. The silhouette look is recognizable as Mickey Mouse’s shadow. After kissing the audience who occupied every seat in the Sala Ora of the Oval pavilion, Allevi wastes no time and begins to talk about the state of things after the Sanremo visit.
He has currently done 12 tour dates which he announced at the Ariston. And at a certain point during these lives, he thought about saying goodbye to the scenes: first the pain in his back appeared (even if it was already present), then the tremor in his hands. A physiological problem and a psychological one that created a sort of vicious circle, the more the concern of one increased, the more the other also increased. This crisis comes after two concerts in Locarno. And Giovanni overcomes it, or welcomes it, as he prefers to say, with behavioral psychology visualization exercises.
Giovanni Allevi at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 27 April. (Getty Images)
Illness and fragility can be a strength
“These exercises have worked so well that it’s really nice to be here,” he concludes. Adding that it is good to keep in mind that he, like everyone else, is a human being. And that fear must not be pushed away. «On stage I transform my fragility into strength, and those who listen receive it and treasure it. Learning that nothing can define us completely.”
After the diagnosis of multiple myeloma, the unknown about the future, Giovanni says he almost felt invested with a mission, opposed to the abdication of pain. And that is, that of wanting to destroy certain incorrect cornerstones of society. The idolatry of numbers, that is, success is only directly proportional to sales, copies and followers.
And then the liberation from external judgement. An objective that brought him close to Kant, quoted in the Sanremo monologue, and to the concept of eternity. Inevitable when dealing with an imminent death sentence.
The role of meditation
In this regard, of progressive liberation from the traps of the mind, Giovanni then explained in detail the role of meditation. Which he defined as a practice that helps to welcome pain (“the expression is less scary than ‘accept'”). An aimless journey in which, as a Tibetan master taught him, he joins the breathing of mental words (simple «I am breathing in, I am breathing out»), and the mind keeps obsessive, bad thoughts away.
The stage that is reached is that of an imaginary life (the claim of this Turin Book Fair), «prior to me, to the struggle with pain. True, we don’t win, our thoughts never leave us”, he says excitedly, «but I win almost every day. Today I’m here: I won!»
Giovanni Allevi at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 27 April. (Getty Images)
The confession about painkillers
Do you become less creative with an illness? No, but certain painkillers help. Giovanni laughs, while he confesses: «I can’t say what they were, but during the long hospital stay these powerful drugs freed my creativity. I produced in a few months what in an ordinary situation would have taken years.”
Culture: from Homer to Annibile
Still on the subject of fragility and feeling less alone, Allevi quotes Homer inIliad. In particular the warriors over whose eyes, close to defeat, a blanket of darkness fell. The same one he saw in many people during visits to the Cancer Institute in Milan. This overlap between literature and ordinary life it is the salvation that books can give us, he says, «both were close to me, although with different qualities, but still human, part of a single consciousness».
Another help from culture came from Hannibal the leader, that of the elephants across the Alps. On the flight from Vienna to Milan, before the diagnosis of myeloma but already in pain, Giovanni – history enthusiast – he thinks back to the feat and wonders how this Hannibal could have accomplished such a feat. He then thought about it during treatment, to the point of asking the historian Giovanni Brizzi (an expert in Roman history whose books he reads; now his friend) for explanations.
Hannibal was a great leader, one of the best in history, but genius cannot be divided, he cannot control everything. And the awareness that even the greatest have flawsextinguishes the dictatorial brilliance of success, the only thing of value, to be idolized (again the numbers that Allevi wants to demystify; a circle that closes and that heartens him).
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