Music

Paola Maugeri in Rock And Resilienza tells us how these characters idolized and admired throughout the world are not modern demigods but normal people who seek the strength in music to achieve extraordinary results, often challenging their own limits. And if they succeeded, we can do it too, drawing on our innate ability to resist the tests that life puts us through, transforming fatigue and pain into positive energy: putting into practice the resilient gift which, as Patti Smith says, "is within each of us, without exception."

Music understood as a tool for redemption, healing and resilience: the portrait of artists with tormented lives who were able to express their best selves through music and give it to humanity. Music as a universal artistic expression and as a means of civil, ethical and social commitment. The music that promotes another vision of the world and that Paola has always been ready to collect: from the testimony of Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson through U2, Coldplay up to the jazz musician Frank Morgan, Charlie's protégé Parker.

The story of some protagonists of the international music scene from an unusual perspective, devoid of mythological aura and imbued with tormented, irregular daily experiences which at the same time contemplate the capacity for rebirth and overcoming one's limits. “…From that moment my job could be transformed into an apprenticeship of ambition, into an internship of determination, into a course of discipline, into a certificate of resilience. From this moment on I decided to draw optimism and devotion from every interview I prepared and conducted. The older the artists, the more I studied their careers for inspiration. If those who practice the lame learn to limp, can those who practice the stars learn to shine? I would have tried with all my might! Because the great Laurie Anderson was right: there is room for everyone at the top!”.

In a period in which everything is subject to fast, superficial consumption and fleeting trends, the book is an invitation to treat art and, consequently, music, with care, attention and respect and to grasp its consolatory power rather than its tied to mere entertainment. “Personally, I am convinced that music has lost its value because it is omnipresent, because it can be downloaded for free with a gesture that is as easy as it is illegal but has now become socially shared and therefore fair. We don't look for it, we don't crave it, we don't wait for it anymore because it is everywhere, it has become a filler, a background, a wallpaper of which most of the time we don't even know the faces of those who wove and created it, and this has inevitably led to a debasement of its most intrinsic qualities, because if there is an abundance of anything we stop desiring it but above all respecting it... Having hundreds of thousands of pieces downloaded does not make us connoisseurs of music, so just as buying just for the sake of owning doesn't make us collectors. Listen less in quantity but with more attention and quality.”