Yes, travel (live only once)

This article is published in Vanity Fair issue 18-19 on newsstands until May 11, 2021

After a year and a half, we know what damage the virus causes (in addition to the irreversible one of the end): social nervousness, mental numbness, physical dullness, vampirism, need for automatic weapons, insane thirst for spirits; in front of the lockdown, the ties break up, the butts swell, the eroticism is paralyzed. The anguish did not spare anyone. If all goes well, there is exhaustion – poetically called “rupture of cojoni”.

Now, with shots of the vaccine, we see a light at the end of the tunnel: it reopens, we start again, we come back to life. Air! Air! Summer opens before us. Come on! Pack your bags, get in the car, let’s go. The hoarseness of Lucio Battisti emerges from the memory: “Yes, traveling / Avoiding the hardest holes / Without falling into your fears …».

Here, for many nothing will be the same as before. The pandemic has changed their priorities. To recover the balance broken by Covid, after more than a year spent hunched over their computers, enduring Zoom and Skype calls, they have the clear perception of being in “burnout”, worn out and depressed like their grandfather’s bagpipe. Especially the Millennial generation is putting their lives back on the line: some are abandoning their stable jobs to start a new business, turning a passion into a profession. Others scoff at employers’ demands that they want them in the company: if they can’t work where and when they want, they threaten to quit their jobs without thinking about it. It is the “Yolo economy”, an acronym for you only live once, live only once. Obviously, not all workers in burnout they will leave their jobs. For some, an extended vacation or a more flexible work week may quell the urge to travel. Others may find that returning to the office helps restore balance in their lives. But, for many who can afford it, adventure is in the air. The journey, after all, is the experience from which our existence is born. It is not the man who makes the journey. It is the journey that man makes. It’s the surprise, it’s the surprising encounter, it’s a stomach ache in Mexico, a shit in India. The real conquest of the journey is the unexpected, the unplanned that resets the past. What we need after an unfortunately suspended life is not to see new things, but to have new eyes. Life (and art) are a matter of vision. During these months we have closed our eyes as if to look at internal images, we have traveled in the head, we have had nightmares and some half-sleep from cold sweats. Xanax and Lexotan to close your eyes to a reality of death and loneliness, prey to the desire for a kiss. Air! Air! The journey around my room is about to end.

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