At 10:47 pm the house changes sound. The children are asleep — or have at least stopped negotiating with sleep. A reasonable person would go to bed. I open the computer.
Matteo and I are married, fathers of young children. We work in the ordinary world, where bread does not arrive in exchange for a beautiful chorus. Music receives what remains: nights, voice notes, postponed rehearsals, half-hours rescued by miracle.
Meanwhile, we are working on our first album. In practice this means a keyboard at low volume while someone coughs in the next room, an arrangement interrupted because there is no milk, and a verse taking three weeks because next Tuesday is always seven days away.
The music industry loves “consistency”. The algorithm, like certain ancient emperors, appreciates regular sacrifices. It has no children with a fever, so understanding can be difficult.
Family does not take us away from the artist’s life. It takes us away from the idea that an artist deserves a life separate from everyone else.
This life changes the songs. It makes them slower, perhaps, but unable to pretend. A sentence must survive the morning after, traffic, groceries and a bad day. If it only works in a room with the right lights, it may not yet be true.
Far away, at the margins, lost on the outskirts, we sometimes experience an abandonment that is only apparent. This is where Christ meets us — not in the finally successful version of ourselves, but in the life we have received.
It is almost two. I save a version ending in final_7 — musician language for “we will talk tomorrow”. The album is not finished. Life, however, started many hours ago.