I stay in the car on level minus one of the shopping centre. Groceries are in the boot, the neon above me has the enthusiasm of a municipal office, and Radiohead are playing on the stereo.
It is not exactly Woodstock. Perhaps that is why the music works so well. Some records ask for a sunset; this one understands an almost empty car park and the feeling of having bought everything necessary without finding what you were looking for.
I do not listen because Radiohead have an answer. I listen because they refuse to make bearable things bearable too quickly.
We live in a time that asks music to work immediately. The chorus must arrive early, the video must hold us in the first seconds. We have begun to confuse clarity with truth.
Good music does not distract us from unease. It gives it a form in which we can finally look at it.
The outskirts taught me something similar. From San Giovanni Lupatoto the world seems to happen elsewhere. Here there are roundabouts, warehouses, fields, garages, and the Adige continuing its work without a press office.
At the margins you see how absurd the race for the centre is. You also see how much you still desire it. Success promises to answer the question “does anyone see me?” It never answers enough.
This is what I seek for Qoelet: not to imitate Radiohead, but to learn the freedom not to sweeten the wound. The song ends. The neon keeps humming. For a few minutes the darkness had a shape, and through that shape passed a light I had not made.