He was, is one of the great protagonists, a pillar of our school life. For some it is the wild card, the great hope, the ace up the sleeve. But some people also fear it. It is a category of knowledge, or rather of the spirit. Yet no one had ever thought of celebrating it properly. Luckily now he even has an entire festival dedicated to him: any topic you like.
The absolute preview of the «A topic to like» Festival will take place in Calabria, in Roccella Jonica – one of the most fascinating and cosmopolitan places in Calabria – tomorrow and Saturday, in the historic former Convento dei Minimi. A simple and ingenious formula, born from an inspiration from the mayor of Roccella Vittorio Zito and enthusiastically supported by an illustrious Calabrian, the journalist and writer Tommaso Labate, voice of RaiRadio2on which he hosts «It’s not a country for young people», which is the artistic director of the festival, produced by Elastica.
Why, in a world of super-skills and specializations, not let the super-competent and highly specialized talk about… something else? Maybe a “topic of your choice”, perhaps very far from what they are dealing with? It will be fun to listen to, perhaps, a stern economist talk about pop music, or a cartoonist and satirist who usually criticizes the politics of spaceships and alien worlds. Indeed, the first to take the stage of the festival will be Carlo Cottarelli (tomorrow at 6pm, free entry), in dialogue with a surprise guest and… musical, given that The supereconomist’s “topic of choice” will be “Popular music”: «I love singing – said Cottarelli – accompanying myself, badly, with the guitar and I’m like a juke box: I play a bit of everything, in particular Italian singer-songwriters». Did you imagine a Cottarelli as a guitarist? Or that instead of spending review he talks about Battisti?
But the second guest will also be no exception: a pencil genius, cartoonist and satirist (but not only: his is also true visual poetry) among the most refined and powerful, the great Makkox, thinking pencil of the meritorious civil and media resistance program «Propaganda Live»Diego Bianchi’s creation “Zoro” on La7. «I chose science fiction because I like it. If the event had been dedicated to “something you hate” I would definitely have chosen politics,” Makkox said slyly. Amedeo Balbi, astrophysicist and popularizer, will talk to him. In short, we will hear some good ones, and who knows how many other surprises we will have in the future, given that this is just a taste, a number zero, and the first, triumphal edition will be next June. We talked about it with Labate.
Tommaso, tell us about a topic of your choice…
«The more time passes, the more I realize that my favorite topic is always Calabria. The English, inferior to us as a language, have this good thing: they differentiate between “home” and “house”, the house where you live and what you feel is home, your roots and your origin. Calabria, my favorite topic, is truly “home”, I think about it a lot. And the idea of organizing a festival in Calabria, born thanks to the intuition of the mayor of Roccella Vittorio Zito, in my topic at will, I consider it the closing of a circle. Above all, we hope that it is the beginning of a very long story. Starting from issue number one in June.”
On the other hand, the topics you like are unlimited.
«The topics you like, as the truly good masters taught, are those by which you truly measure the value of a human being. The hardest questions, not the easiest. With the topic of your choice, you answer two questions, not one: with the first, what is “your” topic, the quality of your passion is measured, with the second you measure how you know how to talk about it. It is more difficult, and it is wrong to imagine that it is the simple one: it is the difficult question. It deserved a festival that didn’t yet exist anywhere.”
Unfortunately. And this leads us to the choice of guests, perhaps very distant from each other, as well as from their topics.
«We hire great experts on great topics by measuring, as we would say in an economic term very popular today, the spread between their profession and their passion!».
A Cottarelli-style operation!
«Of course, but unlike in everyday life, in this case we really like the spread. For this reason we called an economic wizard recognized throughout the world, Cottarelli, to talk about pop music, and for the same reason we called a comics giant like Makkox, who signs the poster, to talk about science fiction. In the poster there are many symbols, of many different things: everything flies into the sky, which is the only space large enough to contain all the possible topics you like. All contemplable, and potentially infinite.”
But is there a topic that no one will ever bring up?
«I can’t rule it out for sure, but if I had to say one it’s football! And if Enrico Mentana ever decides to participate in the future with his own topic of choice, without prejudice to the pleasure of leaving the choice to the guest, we would be very happy for him to come here to talk about dogs.”
So how do you test your guests?
«The test will take place exclusively in the field, and all those who participate in the festival will assist».
What will the full formula be like?
«Obviously this is the zero edition, we dream first of all of a month like June. With outdoor meetings and on many more days and with many guests. Expect any kind of surprise and topic as you like…”.
Stay tuned!