Hoping…

I grew up where most people lived in houses they called homes. These were single family residences.  They were far enough away from each other that you really weren’t ever hearing what the neighbors were up to.  If you did… that was a problem. And you made it known, so that the problem would go away.  Everyone liked being in their own space, hearing only their own voices.  

Then I moved to Italy, where “casa” means “home,” not a free standing structure.  Here people live on top of each other, the sounds of their lives intertwining, day and night.  It took me a while to get used to it.  A long time, actually.  A long time to finally get my head around the fact that those sounds above and below me, across the hall from me, those were the sounds of people being alive, those were the sounds of life, and my hearing them meant I was alive as well. 

Pino Daniele made it even clearer to me with his ode to his bustling, charismatic, crowded, noisy city of Naples. In napoletano he sings

Napule è a voce de' criature

Che saglie chianu chianu

E tu sai ca' non si sulo

Which translates in my head to 

Naples is the voice of children

That rises slowly slowly

And you know you are not alone

It’s those sounds that swirl around a life lived in Italy that make you know you’re not alone.  

Today walking the almost empty streets of Florence I veer off the sidewalk and into the street when I see someone coming towards me, out of respect for their health and mine.  We don’t look at each other, as if glances might be another vehicle of contagion.  As I wait outside the shop to buy milk, cheese, two artichokes, some dish soap, I don’t chat with the others who stand at least 3 feet away from me.  This doesn’t feel like Italy.  

They say we’re in a time of epochal change.  

I hope once this is over it’ll be hard for me to find the space that occupies only my voice alone.  I hope this city, this region, this country returns to a place where voices every which way allow us to know we are not alone.