For Ludovico Tersigni writing a book meant testing oneself on a terrain that he explored as a teenager but which, until now, he had always decided to keep to himself: «For the first time I had the perception of what it means to put into the immense ocean of literature a new drop, and it was a crazy feeling. Now, together with Alda Merini, The largest ape man of the Pleistocene And The non-existent knight, in the library there is also a place for what I wrote”, says Tersigni who, in See you beyond the horizon, published by Rizzoli, tells a story that is also a bit his own: that of a successful boy who feels the need and urgency to leave to try to grow and discover himself. «I needed to empty my bowl and be able to fill it again. I experienced this process as an exam: with X Factor I did the oral exam, and with this book I’m doing the written one”, insists Ludovico, known both as an actor in successful TV series such as SKAM Italy And Summertime but also how leader of the first X Factor post Cattelan, a role that was a watershed in his life and career that he chose to tell in his novel.
What do you think you tackled in this book?
«The relationship with my career, which in some ways has been tiring although I consider myself very lucky for the experiences I have had. Thanks to my work I met incredible people who changed my life and gave me the opportunity to completely open the parachute of thought, but from the point of view of commitment and fame it was complicated.”
Why complicated?
«I am a stray, a wild animal, a great lover of solitude and interior spaces. In fact, in the three years that I lived without Instagram I had a great time because I lived life authentically and I learned more things than in the previous 24. In the end, however, I was forced to return to this microcosm and I tried to transform it into a fun outlet to share what I wanted to say to others.”
What led you to return to Instagram after three years?
«The fact that I lost many social and work ties that I wanted to continue cultivating. Actors like Luca Marinelli and Elio Germano are structured enough to be able to do without them, but I still don’t. Young people need advertising, and Instagram is just that.”
Marinelli and Germano also seem like strays to me, but they have shown that they can handle fame and exposure. Why not her?
«Maybe because it all came too soon and I wasn’t prepared: I wanted to do things first, to experience sides of my personal evolution that I couldn’t face».
Giulia Mantovani
What do you think you gave up to do your job?
«To all those things and those paths that it is right to undertake by a certain age. I think about travel and, above all, sport. As a kid I played volleyball and did athletics: I liked going to the arena and training with my teammates, not to mention that I had a wonderful relationship with my coach who managed to teach me with a few words and a couple of looks things that I still carry myself inside.”
What did the coach teach you?
«The importance of being able to count on your teammates because sometimes, during some matches, you can lose your head and yourself. In those moments if you close yourself off it’s over, it’s very difficult to get out of the black hole you’ve entered. If, however, you open up and remember that there is a team that supports you and a coach that motivates you, things will never completely fall apart. Maybe this is why what I wrote in the book came naturally to the surface, as if it were a liberation.”
Freedom, as he writes in the book, comes from the origins. He writes: «If you remember where you come from you won’t be afraid of that beyond which is at the same time the distance of the future». Where does Ludovico Tersigni come from?
«From the sea, from many uncertainties and from a continuous search for research itself. Why, after all, do we all continue to look for certainty? Simple, because those certainties make us think that in the end we will find meaning in our lives, the problem is that for me the perennial search is already having found something.”
What?
«The desire and curiosity. Fiorella Mannoia said in an interview that curiosity is the most powerful driving energy in the universe together with love: I very much agree with her thoughts. I hope that curiosity continues to belong to me because she has always guided me in these years both on a professional level and in terms of literary, sporting and social research.”
Curiosity in the book corresponds to a certain idea of motion. He writes: «Life is like a bicycle: you can’t stay in balance if you stand still».
«Life is movement, as is yoga which I see as physiotherapy, continuous maintenance of the body through motion. Movement, as Jovanotti sang, is always positive, and this also applies to the journeys I have made and which inspired the ones Lorenzo took on in the book.”
