Biagio Antonacci: “You are a force of nature”

This article is published in issue 12 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until March 22, 2022

The olive trees are planted in March, after having moved the ground. They fear frost and need a promise of sunshine to grow, something mild in the air. The rules of the earth do not admit exceptions, but perhaps nature will look with a benevolent eye at the five small olive trees that have braved the cold, planted in the middle of winter by a man who wanted to celebrate the unexpected gift of becoming a father again. On December 20, 2021, Carlo Antonacci was born and his father Biagio took the spade and thanked nature that in recent years has become the divinity that regulates his life, “the teacher who is teaching me everything, even that children arrive challenging the impossible ».

What challenge did Carlo win?
«I’m 58, Paola, her mother, is 44. We wanted it but we also said to ourselves: if it doesn’t come, that’s okay. Then during the second lockdown, one morning at seven, Paola wakes me up and says: it’s positive. I immediately think about the Covid test and answer: but no! We had escaped it until now! She laughs and says: I’m pregnant. My head advises me not to deceive myself, but my heart immediately feels that that child will be born because it had the strength to arrive during the pandemic and was conceived living in nature, surrounded by the animals that we care for and look after us, as Nino does, our dog”.

What does the third child learn?
“This time I didn’t ask myself: will I be capable? A question that, on the other hand, when I became the father of Paolo, who is now 26, and of Giovanni, who is 20, I kept asking myself. And I was lucky enough to raise Benedetta, Paola’s daughter, who became my daughter. With Carlo I was not afraid, but I had courage, because I received a role. During the lockdown I thought about many things and I realized that roles are useful for human beings, because they are paths, duties. I once had the role of the man who dreams of living from music: I was a surveyor, I wanted to be a songwriter. Then it happened. Now I have the role of father; being a father means moving forward for others, it means looking to the future. Each role, if lived with courage, is an opportunity ».

The courage to take up all the space that being a father requires?
«Today I know that one can also be a father in serenity: I get up at night to give the bottle to my child and if I’m sleepy in the morning I allow myself to sleep a little more. I also gave the bottle to my other children, but I was always too busy with work, very distracted, not very lucid ».

Does this difference make you feel guilty about them?
“I suffer from chronic guilt, but in this case I have none, because I know that I have done everything I could do with them and more. I was perpetually in trouble and when you are in trouble you usually exaggerate. They welcomed this little brother with love and wonder. Paolo told me: Dad, if at 58 you had the balls to have a child, then it means that my life is very long, and it’s never too late for anything ».

How are the five olive trees?
«Well, but the olive tree when young is like a child: in the first two years you have to take care of it, you have to give it water if it doesn’t rain. Then he will become something magical and independent, an unbeatable knight. An adult tree can be betrayed, but it resists: if you burn half of it, the other half survives. These things I learned by studying mine, of olive trees. I put myself not in front of them to admire them, but behind them, hidden by their trunks, to understand. I have many on my farm in Bertinoro, in the province of Forlì-Cesena. It is a house on a hill, kissed by the sun. I arrived there by chance in 2007 and I felt attraction for that land with which I had no connection, in which I had no roots ».

What relationship does someone born in Rozzano have with the land?
“Nobody. Rozzano is a concrete cathedral, I also grew up on the eighth floor, with my feet very far from the earth. And when I put them on it, it was all just asphalt. I needed nature, to feel what the seasons are: the explosion of spring, the winter when everything goes out. I understood that nature does not care about us, it goes on, it provokes us, it rebels. I am convinced that Covid was the weapon that nature used to say to man: do not be deceived, you are like a plant, a flower. Staying in the countryside I developed my theology: nature is born before God. God falls in love with her and makes her a goddess, a feminine God. Man is born from their meeting and embrace ».