Ricominciare an experience made into a song
One of the most significant pieces of the rock-opera “A story that changes”, the first musical of Gen Rosso, Ricominciare has a history that is no less significant. Valerio Ciprì, one of the first members of Gen Rosso and composer of the song “Ricominciare”, tells us about the inspiration.
The challenge that Ciprì had was to write a text that manifested the turning point that the character Emil brought to his master, Mister John. Emil, a clown who, in his simplicity, was happy to “make others laugh” despite the fact that he too felt darkness and loneliness in his heart. Mister John, a manager who only cared about success, career and money, even if the cost was crushing others (like clown Emil for example) of whom he was envious and jealous. Confronted by the simplicity of the clown’s life, Mister John understands that his life is a meaningless life, and that the turning point comes from “starting a new life”.
Starting over is believing in love…
“I had the traces of this story in front of me and I had to express it in poetry by making it the text of a song”, explains Valerio Ciprì. The musician therefore began to review his life, his experiences of falling, the difficult moments and how he changed course. In other words, how he started again.
“Because I couldn’t write a theory”, he continues, “but I had to give a personal ‘experience’. This is the strength of Gen Rosso’s songs: to convey a life, not a formula or a basting of beautiful rhymes. It is the life behind the words that touches people’s hearts”.
…and feeling that even in pain…
However, he was left with the doubt as how to express a “starting over” that would be valid for everyone in any possible situation. He knew from the spirituality of Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement and of the Gen Rosso, that “starting over” is a keystone of all our difficulties. It is the urge to get up when the pain throws us face down.
Looking for a solution to arrive at the text of “Ricominciare”, Valerio Ciprì walked around his room late in the evening. How to express such a profound experience in words?
…the soul can sing and never stop
The answer came in looking at a bulletin board in the room where there were many photos of his friends who were “already in heaven”, with whom he had lived many experiences in building the United World. “They were people who had made it through their lives, ending their existence in a heroic way, building their greatness, perhaps after serious falls, after painful accidents along the way, in the fatigue of everyday life and in humility, remaining then as example for everyone”, Ciprì tells us.
“I approached those photos the way you approach sacred icons,” he continues. “‘You did it!’, I said to myself looking at their smiling faces. ‘You know what it meant for you to know how to start over!’. So, pen and paper in hand, with the simplicity of the little ones, putting my soul in an attitude of listening, I asked each one: ‘What was it like starting over for you?’”.
From what he heard coming from his heart, “as if it were their voice giving me the answer”, Ciprì noticed, surprised, various facets of “starting over”. “In that same evening, I think, I had finished everything”, he tells us. Put together the text with a melody by the musician and composer Mite Balduzzi, “Ricominciare” was born.
