Adriana Ferretti

In a little village at the foot of the Apennines that no longer exists, I keep small treasures of the mind. One of those places so small that you could play one giant game of hide-and-seek across the whole village, finding yourself shouting “Found youuuuu!” between breathlessness and laughter after the great run. Those places where you could wander off without having to tell anyone where you had been all day, whether picking blackberries from the brambles or discovering just how funny the tadpoles in the stream looked. Those places that no longer exist, whether an earthquake carried them away or growing legs carried you towards other horizons.

Beginning in the 1950s, during an era shaped by psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theories, the first psychiatric medications began to be introduced.

In a book I am currently reading, “Strangers to Ourselves” by Rachel Aviv, the author tells us that, in those years, whenever a psychiatrist became interested in biological research—that is, in understanding mental disorders through the neurological and biochemical functioning of the brain—they were, in some circles, regarded as “a peculiar case, perhaps burdened by emotional conflicts that made them incapable of confronting real feelings.” It makes me smile a little to read those words today, when, in some settings, almost the opposite can happen.

“You know what’s right? That no one gets to control where music goes.”

Andrea Laszlo De Simone’s songs have always gotten caught somewhere deep inside me. They’ve always taken hold of me and carried me far away, miles from wherever my feet happened to be planted, and strictly without asking for permission.

7:28 a.m.

Kapilar 237.

“What?”

Sorry, I meant boarding at Gate 237.

Teşekkürler.

“Again?”

Yes, let me tell you…

In the room where I spent my entire adolescence, I came across a diary where I used to write my thoughts during my first years of high school. I remembered it well, but I had never opened it again. Until that moment, I had never felt the need to reread it—as if what mattered wasn’t its contents, but simply knowing it was there.

Science can be incredibly fascinating or terribly cold. We have realized that. But what is the boundary between science and horror? Where will scientific progress lead us?

You know, the other day, after I talked to you, I walked along the usual street, but instead of that dead end there was a path.

In a novel I once read that pianos go out of tune when they’re not played. Then I checked online and no, that’s not exactly how it works, but that idea struck me deeply — maybe it plucked some hidden string somewhere.