Giacomo, the drawing of a life, by Alessandra Pandolfini, is the third moving story we present in this series of readings of short stories written by students of the two-year School of Writing and Storytelling. Others' lives It is a masterclass designed to put students of the Viagrande Studios Biennial School of Writing and Storytelling They were first introduced to the improvisation of creation using objects that weren't theirs. Then, immersed in the storytelling and initial editing, their texts were read and evaluated by three experts in the field. The story you'll read, Giacomo, the drawing of a life, was evaluated by actress and cultural promoter Ester Pantano.
Giacomo, the design of a life by Alessandra Pandolfini
Giacomo usually remembered the cat's litter box based on the sound Calliope's paws made when she walked on it. He knew he needed to change it because the sound was stickier. He knew his mother's slippers were now worth the hassle because of the slick tread on one foot and the soft tread on the other. He'd realized weeks before that the battery in the neighbors' burglar alarm was dead because the sound was slightly less loud.
No, he wasn't blind, he was just a great listener. Hearing was the sense Giacomo valued most, and the one that best allowed him to understand the world.
It was not so much the musical field that he mastered in his dream world, but rather that of imitation. People love to spend their time arguing, gossiping, looking at other people's flaws, so they might as well show it to everyone., was his recurring justification: he believed he would surely gain in honesty. Giacomo actually hated the clandestine manners of the courtyard, but he was fascinated by the commitment and hard work people put into reproducing the conversational manners of the subjects of discussion. What fascinated him was that none of them were actors, but that didn't mean the impersonations didn't convey the idea. He reasoned that if people with an average sensory system were capable of doing decent impersonations, he, with his ear, would be successful.
"The images in this story are incredibly vivid even after reading it a day. There's depth and maturity in the way the story is told and how it reflects life." Manuela de Quarto
Giacomo kept one of those old '80s tape recorders on his bookshelf, stolen from his mother. He kept it just to say he collected vintage objects, so to speak; that it was unique compared to his 17-year-old peers. He often felt guilty for simply looking at those objects, without actually using them, as if his life were sometimes made of plastic. He decided it was time to use that tape recorder as an assistant in his study of human matter.
He had to test and test himself on every type of individual, on every cadence, accent, tic, stammer, flaw, or spit. He needed to feel prepared, and like Forrest Gump, he began spending spring afternoons on benches talking to people whose voices were like sandpaper, sometimes velvet, sometimes chalk, sometimes even chewing gum. He said the most interesting voices were the scratchy ones, because they reminded him of Ferruccio Amendola, because a peculiarity had become something beautiful, and that was what he wanted to do with his life.
Once he had recorded everything, he went home and started practicing. That was his gym, that tape recorder contained his scores.
Giacomo, the drawing of a life is part of the stories of the masterclass "Life of Others" of the Biennial School of Writing and Storytelling of Viagrande Studios
As time went by, Giacomo actually managed to grow his audience: from his family, to his schoolmates, to people in cafes. After graduating, he failed half of his university exams, told everyone to go to hell, and began writing his own stand-up comedy shows and performing in off-the-grid theaters. Sometimes, people even stopped him.
“But! But I know you, you're the one, young man… you're the one from the imitations!”
“I saw you the other day, how much you made me laugh”
“Wait, aren’t you the one who performs in that… niche theater?”
“You know, my aunt talks that way too, you cracked me up!”
Giacomo was surprised to see that while he'd been a nobody in high school, the fact that he could make everyone laugh had completely transformed his reputation. He continued to eat pizza alone, but the people at the next table remembered his name.
“At dinner he asked me what I meant by that sentence, and at that point we talked about thought, about theatre, and about why the prices of the dishes were precisely those and not others.”
When I met him I told him:
“You must be hyper-aesthetic to do impressions like that!”
Actually, no, that would only make him think I was a know-it-all. The sentence was:
“You must be in a lot of pain to want to make everyone laugh.”
Actually, no, wait, he would have said this one was true but also very rhetorical. I think the sentence was:
“I saw your show last time, you're really good. You probably feel too much, if you think about it, it's really sad, and you want to make a living by making people laugh.”
Exactly, that was the exact phrase. Sure, it has its flaws, but it's neither too banal nor too contrived. I said that phrase to him after one of his shows, and he asked me to eat something together. I was surprised because he usually ate alone, from what I'd been told, and he wasn't comfortable with people paying him compliments. At dinner, he asked me what I meant by that phrase, and then we talked about thought, about theater, and about why the prices of the dishes were precisely those and not others. He told me about school, about dropping out of college, and about the scratchy voices. I told him my version of life, and asked him what material my voice was made of.
One of the titles of this story was The Flowers of Death
“I haven't figured this out yet.”
"Why?"
“A person's voice is the ear's way of perceiving their essence, but yours is not clear.”
“I thought you liked me, that you wanted to have sex or start a relationship, maybe both. Instead, you just want to study me.”
He laughed and said he appreciated the frankness, and we left the place happy, because for the first time we both felt recognized in someone.
Something similar to an affair followed, but for me to be able to tell the story, it obviously had to be something less than serene. We won't be pathetic, so we'll simply say that Giacomo is no longer alive, or, if you prefer, I'll say that I don't remember exactly what happened after I smashed the phone and read the message about his death. So, with one sentence, I imply that he's dead, and the reader can understand, but without feeling compelled to cry. He would have said that the situation wasn't so tragic; after all, that phone needed to be replaced.
Yesterday would have been four months since his funeral. I didn't like the atmosphere of funerals in Italy, but I liked the cemeteries, because there weren't many people there. I usually went once a week to read and breathe in the scent of everyone's thoughts throughout the year. Yesterday I went back for the first time since his funeral. I saw the grave of another young person and thought, 'It's not true that... nothing happens by chanceThen I looked at my watch and made sure that time wasn't going backwards. If it had, there should have been fewer flowers on that young man's grave.
“Among the best stories I've read, I could make a film about it right now” Ester Pantano
Of course, if I'd removed a flower, it would have been a bit like going backwards. So I removed a flower just to play with logic, and I did the same with the flowers on Giacomo's grave, and then with all the graves of people who died before at least having a job. Finally, I created my own bouquet of dried flowers of death, went home, and placed them in water, as if that gesture could reborn them and more.
I hadn't cried at Giacomo's funeral, because I prefer to numb myself, and I didn't cry then either, but I felt like throwing up those flowers because the water hadn't revived them. I put the vase in the living room and continued with my life as if nothing had happened.
One night I got up to get a drink and noticed the flowers were gone, but I was too sleepy to think about it. The next day I noticed my sister had brought them to school for the initiative. storyteller for a day, and he had told his sister's sad story to the class. A series of outbursts from me followed, a mixture of anger and embarrassment.
“Are you going to tell me my business? And weren't you supposed to make up a story on the spot?”
“But your story is beautiful”
“Do you understand that this is personal property?”
“And yet I had to tell that story! It was important.”
He told me that a child began to cry because of a death in the family that he had never been able to process. The mother thanked my sister and offered her condolences. Perhaps you were thinking that this showed me that the nothing happens by chance Actually, it's true, and that everything makes sense and other Christmas movie bullshit. In reality, I simply continued to believe that my sister had made a mistake, but the thought of that child tormented me in the days that followed.
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A few weeks later, my sister's teacher stopped me when I went to pick her up from school. She told me some pro forma stuff about how sad Giacomo's story was, that she also knew a girl who'd lost her boyfriend at 25, that it must be really hard, and I was forced to play that game of hypocrisy. While I was nudging Martina with my shoulder, harder than usual to let her know I wanted to withdraw from the conversation, the teacher said she'd like it if I wrote a short story about the incident, since her husband worked for a publishing house that was working on publishing a book of true stories written by different people. I said I didn't want to make my story public, especially if that would make it clear it was true.
I thanked her and ran to the car, then I realized that I was so nervous that I forgot about Martina and I came back even more nervous than before.
Giacomo, the design of a life It was among the most appreciated stories in the masterclass Others' lives <– click to read more stories
It would be nice if you wrote one of my plays, although maybe you're too dramatic., was one of the phrases Giacomo had tattooed into my memory. Because I thought it was ridiculous, even for him. He'd only said it because he'd liked the way I'd described the people in the club, on our first date. He said I paid attention to detail, and I told him that many people are, eventually, but that doesn't make them writers, and he said this phrase confirmed his thesis. What Martina's teacher asked me put me in a crisis because it reminded me that I'd never followed Giacomo's advice. And if I had followed it now and things had gone well, it would have been awful to think that I should have agreed with him before, and that I was the one who had to be right between the two of us.
I began to piece things together. And I began to write letters about things completely different from what had happened to me, or at least on the surface. I probably took life events and told what could be told from behind, or I took things of my own and modified what could be modified. Or I recounted things I experienced in parallel existences. I put the story in the drawer, and I won't tell the rest. Perhaps, however, Giacomo was right.
If you think about it, I didn't even leave a flower on Giacomo's grave, while he left me the rest of my life.
