Leggenda del pianista sulloceano, La (1998)

It was all very grand on that gangway, and I was grand too, in my overcoat, cut quite a figure… and I was getting off.

It wasn’t what I saw that stopped me Max, it was what I didn’t see. Do you understand that? What I didn’t see! In all that sprawling city there was everything except an end. There was no end!. What I did not see, was where the whole thing came to an end. The end of the world.

You take a piano: keys begin, keys end; you know there are 88 of them, nobody can tell you any different, they are not infinite –you are infinite! And on those keys the music you can make is infinite.

But, you get me up on that gangway and you roll out in front of me a keyboard of millions of keys, millions and billions of keys that never end, and that’s the truth Max! That they never end! That keyboard is infinite. And if that keyboard is infinite, then on that keyboard there is no music you can play! You’re sitting on the wrong bench. That’s God’s piano.

Christ! Did you see the streets, just the streets? There were thousands of them. I mean how do you do it down there, how do you choose just one? One woman? One house? One piece of land to call your own? one landscape to look at? One way to die…

All that world just weighing down on you, you don’t even know where it comes to an end… I mean aren’t you ever scared of just breaking apart at the thought of it? The enormity of living it?

I was born on this ship, and the world passed me by, but two thousand people, at a time. And they’re all wishes here, but never more than fit between prow and stern. you played out your happiness, but on a piano that was not infinite. I learned to live that way. Land?! Land is a ship too big for me, it’s a woman too beautiful, it’s a voyage too long, perfume too strong…It’s music I don’t know how to make!

— Baricco/Tornatore – The Legend of 1900