The Apeiron Armonies

Tags: culture

  • "SOUL" AND THE MALINCONY OF THE VITES REMEMBER

    "SOUL" AND THE MALINCONY OF THE VITES REMEMBER

    By Marialuisa Veneziano

    What really makes sense to our lives?

    It is a question that crosses the centuries as an obstinate comet. Philosophs, poets and scientists have tried to pursue it with treatises, theories and systems of thought. And yet, sometimes, it is an animation film to succeed where many books fail.

    The film tells the story of Joe Gardner, music teacher and jazz pianist with a dream as big as a city: playing on a real stage, with real musicians, in front of a real audience.

    When that dream finally seems to become reality, something unexpected happens. Joe finds himself in a mysterious dimension where the souls prepare for life on Earth, a place where everyone has to find their own "scintilla".

    What seems to be the beginning of a fun adventure soon becomes a philosophical question disguised as cartoon: What makes a life really meaningful?

    The spark that is not a talent

    At first Joe is convinced he knows the answer.

    The spark is talent.
    It is the vocation.
    It's fate.

    In his case, it's jazz.

    But the little soul number 22, ironic and distrustful towards life, discovers something completely different. The spark is not what we can do best. It's not a job or a career.

    IS what makes us feel alive.

    A leaf that slowly falls from the tree.
    The taste of a pizza eaten on the street.
    The wind on the face as you walk without haste.

    Small things, tiny. But life charges.

    A philosophy lesson hidden in a cardboard

    This idea is not new. Already the Greek philosopher Aristotle talked about Eudacity: happiness not as an isolated moment, but a condition of fullness, something that arises from a life lived with awareness.

    Many centuries later, thinker Albert Camus observed that the world has no predetermined meaning. It is up to us to fill it with meaning through our experiences.

    Soul can translate these ideas into a simple and luminous language: life is not a secret mission to discover, but a flow of moments to live.

    Life as jazz improvisation

    It's no coincidence that Joe is a jazz musician.

    Jazz is the art of improvisation. It starts from a melody, but then every musician listens to others, changes road, invents new notes.

    Life resembles this music.

    We think we have a precise score: study, work, succeed, get somewhere. But often the most authentic part of existence is born when something changes rhythm, when we have to improvise.

    Joe believed his fate was become a great musician. In the end he discovers something subtler and deeper: living means being curious, attentive, open to wonder.

    Just like a jazz player in front of the piano.

    The fragile spark of life

    But there is another thought that goes through the film in silence.

    Life is made of small moments, it is true. But that doesn't mean we can cross her distracted or without looking for our way.

    Because a life that never tries to realize — who does not dare, who does not dream, — It risks becoming a great sadness.

    Between two possible mistakes, perhaps the most human is just this: to forget to live really.

    Soul invites us to find a rare balance.
    Grow our dreams without losing the beauty of simple days.
    Look for our place in the world without forgetting to look around while we walk.

    Eventually Joe understands something worth more than any success.

    Life is not only in great respects.
    But it's not even when you're still waiting.

    He's trying, falling, starting again.
    He's playing his own music, even when the melody isn't perfect.

    Because perhaps the simplest truth is also the most important:

    a life must not be perfect.
    But he always deserves to be lived to the bottom.

    Ancona 5 March 2026

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  • The music we no longer hear: silence in the time of noise

    The music we no longer hear: silence in the time of noise

    Love Chronicle of a humanity that has learned to hear everything, except what matters.

    by Marialuisa Veneziano

    If a careful person had observed the scene with enough patience, he would have noticed something curious: no one was really listening.

    It was morning. A bus crossed the city with the dignified air of those who make the same fate every day. The passengers sat composed, each accompanied by an invisible interlocutor: headphones in the ears, fingers moving on the screens, private melodies that did not ask for answer or attention.

    All surrounded by music. No one really in his company.

    A time — not necessarily better, but certainly slower — music required preparation. An important visit awaited the beginning of a concert. The chairs creaked, the programs were carefully folded, and that short silence before the first note possessed the solemnity of a promise.

    Today the music arrives without being invited. It presents itself in advance, remains too long and is often ignored with educated indifference.

    Modern society, so efficient in producing sounds, seems to have lost the art of listening with the same lightness with which one loses a glove during a winter walk: one realizes the absence only when the cold becomes evident.

    Even the most celebrated musical events show this transformation. The Sanremo Festival, once a national lounge of shared listening, today appears as a brilliant worldly conversation in which music is spoken incessantly without really giving her the time to be loved. The songs are judged with impeccable speed, commented before being understood, archived before becoming a memory. Music, as a young guest shy in a noisy reception, often remains in the background while everyone discusses his presence.

    And yet the music retains an obstinate quality: it continues to ask attention.

    Whoever observed a class of students just before starting to play knows that rare moment. The voices are flattered, someone keeps a laugh, a collective breath takes shape without being commanded. For a moment no one tries to emerge. Everyone's waiting.

    In that wait something surprising arises: not only music, but a form of gentle human agreement.

    Silence, so avoided in everyday life, reveals its authentic nature. It's not empty. It's a relationship space. It is the place where the individual stops occupying the center and agrees to belong to a common time.

    Perhaps our age fears silence because it cannot be accelerated, shared in real time or transformed into a show. Silence requires presence, and presence is an increasingly rare virtue.

    The true elegance of listening is precisely this: to grant something the right to exist without interruption.

    Let a melody end. Don’t look for another. Stay a few moments with what remains in the air.

    It is possible that the future of music does not depend on new instruments or new modes, but on a much more discreet rediscovery: learning again to wait.

    Maybe a simple gesture would be enough. Turn off every artificial sound for a minute. Listen to the steps, the wind, a near breath, the imperfect noise of the world.

    And to realize, with a surprise worthy of the best novels, that music had never left us.

    It was just us who stopped listening.

    Ancona 1 March 2026

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  • The great Music explained to those who think they hate it

    (without yawning)

    by Marialuisa Veneziano

    Ancona, 26 January 2026

    Caution: This image could cause sudden unforeseen musical falling in love

    There is a phrase that has been turning for years like a tired monetine:
    "Classic music is boring. "
    Right behind the twin sisters:
    "The jazz is incomprehensible. "
    "The work is snob stuff. "
    Three comfortable phrases. Like slippers worn out. They stick without thinking and sit on the couch of habits. But the music, the big one really, doesn't like to stand still. He takes you by the hand, he pushes you out, he gets your emotions.
    Let's try and see her closely. Without useless bows. No words. With a little birichino smile.
    "Classical is boring"
    Really?
    Beethoven was closer to an angry rock star than a sleeping grandfather on the armchair. He screamed with notes, broke the rules, made the perbene lounges tremble. Mozart was an international celebrity before Instagram existed, full of irony, theatrical, blatantly brilliant.
    Classical music is not a silent museum: it is a Netflix series without remote control. Inside you find storms, caresses, pursuits, abyss, resurrections. Only in place of the words speak violins, breaths, tympani. It is an ancient and futuristic language at the same time, as a bottle message that always comes punctual to the right heart.
    "The jazz is too difficult"
    Jazz doesn't want to be understood. He wants to be busy. As a brilliant person who at first intimidates you, then makes you laugh to tears.
    It is improvisation: a conversation made of sounds. One tool proposes an idea, the other responds, a third joke, a fourth sigh. It is the pleasure of the instant that is born and dies in a few seconds. Swing means movement, oscillation, body that does not stand still. Even the brain, when he listens to jazz, starts dancing in socks.

    You do not need to know the musical grammar: just let yourself be carried as by a downhill bike.
    "The work is only for snob"
    Actually, the opera is a giant soap opera with an embedded orchestra. Impossible loves, fierce jealousies, betrayals, duels, laughter, tears, twists. More than boring.
    People sing because emotions are too big to be in a normal voice. When the heart explodes, it becomes music. It is an exaggerated language, yes — but also life is, when it takes us seriously.
    And then there is that strange magic: a human voice that crosses a theater without a microphone, like a sound swallow that blows the air. It's pure physics, muscle poetry.
    The secret that no one says
    There is no "difficult" music. There's only music we haven't met at the right time.
    Like some books, some trips, some people. Sometimes it takes a rough day, an open window, a little silence before pressing play.
    The great music does not ask for competence. He asks for presence. I'm listening. A pinch of emotional courage.
    Maybe you'll find that piece you thought was boring is more like what I thought. Maybe you'll be surprised to smile without knowing why. Maybe you'll want to find another one. And another. Like when you start a love story without realizing it.
    Music is a house with many doors. Someone's already caught up. Just push it slowly.

    Marialuisa Veneziano

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