Darkness…
Emptiness…
Wandering through the wilds of life… and yet more darkness and emptiness! You try to find a spark of happiness; you try to deceive yourself, to deceive Jesus, to deceive the Universe itself—but deep down inside, you know there is no way to succeed.
You long for something more, you long for meaning, you long not for a mere material existence, but for a life that is more than life itself — one that is not mundane, stripped of feeling, stripped of reason. You want meaning, you want love… togetherness… a togetherness that can breathe life into you. A sincere life — without falsehood, and without compromises with your essence and identity. You search for the pure spring as a universal remedy for your inner sense of doom, from which you cannot escape. And perhaps you are living in an imagined world, a world that died long ago.
And how intensely you long for love! How powerfully the thirst to be loved vibrates within you! You imagine his eyes, you imagine his kisses; you can almost feel his warmth.
How you would embrace—like a scene from a Ferzan Özpetek film—amidst the dying, orange-red sunset of some Italian city, to the sounds of a piano torn apart by sadness and pain. How, for the very first time, you would truly feel cherished… how your lips would tingle from that first kiss.
But life flows on, and everything remains nothing more than a dream. Meanwhile, reality is something else entirely—merciless, materialistic, greedy, even vulgar.
But the heart inside you doesn’t stop… It tells you: “This isn’t life! This cannot be life! Go… run, keep moving! Go on!”
And you—poor human soul, searching for meaning—you start to walk faster, you run… You run! You tell yourself, “Run, faster! Just around the corner, surely a new life awaits, a new hope. A life is waiting where you’ll be happy, where there will be someone to love you, someone to kiss you, someone to crave you! Run… run, you dear, poor soul….”
And you reach the corner… but there is nothing there… Nothing! Only more cold and more road. Life turns into nothing but a road—a road that leads solely to the graveyard. This is the human “Great Road to the Graveyard”—everyone with their own cross, everyone with their own crown of thorns, everyone with their own bloody wounds!
The Great Road to the Graveyard—haha—ugly words. They sound awkward, even disgusting. I don’t even want to mention them; I don’t want to utter them. But it seems the truth doesn’t ask whether we want to hear it or not.
The Great Road, which leads boldly toward the end—an end without detours.
An end that, one day, regardless of your desire, will come.
“The Great Road to the Graveyard” is like a monument to your freedom, one that may someday finally grant peace to your searching soul.
From the very moment of birth, each of us sets out upon this road. With a cry and a breath—a thirst for life! “The Great Road to the Graveyard” is different and extraordinary for every one of us. It is like a tango: if you are a slightly better dancer, perhaps you will feel a caress or a moment of happiness; perhaps you will feel the beating of another’s heart; perhaps you will leave something behind…Perhaps
And if you aren’t, you will simply dance the dance. You will simply follow the steps, hopelessly and dead inside:
A step back.
A step to the side.
A step forward… a brief pause and again—a step forward, a step to the side…
Until one day, the tango simply stops. Your feet will grow tired; they will simply grow tired…
“The Great Road to the Graveyard” is both fate and magnificence. It entangles everyone like a net—it will spare no one, neither the poor nor the rich. No one…
Jesus rose, and we? We did not!
A pity… such a great pity—the soul was defeated by the flesh, eternity was defeated by soullessness, love was defeated by the material world.
Jesus rose!
We did not!
Oh, how I long to be in another world, Oh, how I long for another road… oh, how I long… how I long…
“The Great Road to the Graveyard” belongs to all of us. But each of us will choose the way in which we walk it—whether you will look only at the dust beneath your feet and trample the green grass along the way, or whether, on your journey, you will manage to plant the seeds of some flower or tree, to leave something behind for the others who will walk their own “El gran camino al cementerio”—that depends on you…
Choose wisely…dance wisely
Oh, how I long to be in another world, Oh, how I long for another road… oh, how I long… how I long…
And yet, unfortunately… I remain here… the same as the characters in Ferzan Özpetek’s movies… lost souls searching for one another in the labyrinth of everyday life, condemned to walk “The Great Road to the Graveyard” while yearning for another life—a more meaningful one, a braver one.
Jesus rose… we did not!
…
Would you care for a tango with me? Come on…you know the steps
A step back.
A step to the side.
A step forward… a brief pause, and then again—a step forward, a step to the side…
