Aunt Elisabetta is my muse in the art of life.
Aunt Elisabetta on the phone in her dressing gown and her house crowded with friends are among the earliest memories of my life. Then come the piles of my grandfather's construction site and steaming polenta on Sundays. Memories are unpredictable; we wish we were represented by great stories, but instead we find ourselves holding in our hearts emotions born from small details.
Perhaps the telephone was invented for her. The effect was my uncle Sergio reminding her of the cost of the bill (back then, you paid by the length of the calls) and a house full of life. Aunt Elisabetta remembered each person's tastes and intolerances naturally; everyone should feel well just after crossing the threshold of her home.
Many years later, when I taught Gardner's multiple intelligences at the University of Tor Vergata, I always used her life to explain emotional intelligence (interpersonal and intrapersonal) to the students. Without people like her, the world moves on a banal level of mechanics. With her, one cannot help but discuss the meaning of life, engaging and seeking the well-being of the soul.
Her home was furnished in a modern style by Roberto Felici, so that the large spaces could be versatile and usable for any event: from our dance parties as children to a concert. This, along with the differently colored doors, was intriguing, and today my house has every door different from the next.
At the time, she hadn't yet discovered herself as a poet, but for me, she was already an artist, and I had decided that I wanted to live my years on this earth following a style where colors, sounds, and words constantly blended in harmony.
A contagion that became even stronger when we lived together for a few months after Uncle Sergio's death, and Aunt Elisabetta soothed my body and spirit during my difficult pregnancy. My memories are Madredeus and Lucio Dalla's "Attenti al lupo" that we danced to in the morning.
The presentation of her latest book, "My Tribe, the Place of Strawberries," was the epitome of this lifestyle. The book's language is more reminiscent of a painting than a text, a few words used like a brush to paint the blank pages with emotions.
I remember many of the pages she painted, some from the long phone calls we had and others from the privilege of having lived them with her. I remember her rebirth when she went to live alone in Rome. Emancipated and fearless.
Everything else is written in the book. For me, Aunt Elisabetta is in every corner of my house, wherever I've put a painting or painted a wall. She's in the theater festival we organized this summer at the Donna Vittori farmhouse. She's in the choices of my daughter, who is always attentive to harmony and beauty and whose name is hers.
And I admire her ability to set fire to the past in a cheerful bonfire with her Tribe, freeing us from the burden of searching for her in meaningless scraps of paper. Aunt lives in the future, and as her niece Anna says: "The tribe burned its memories to make them immortal."
Meaning lies in the soul, not in objects.
I like to close with the dedication that Renato (then mayor of Ferentino) wrote to her, "for your inner gaze as beautiful as your eyes." And my only regret is not having written it in person.
Everyone is invited on February 1st to the Teatro di Documenti in Rome for the official presentation of My Tribe, the Place of Strawberries, along with the many artists who have graced Elis's path.
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