Fabrizio Ulivieri - TrendSetter

  Carlo Goldoni, the eighteenth-century Italian playwright who, it is said, invented the Commedia dell'Arte , in his comedy La Pamela wrote ‘He only half dies who leaves an image of himself in his sons.’ But is it really true this Goldoni's adage? When my daughters were little I think I committed some continued injustices on them, even though those little injustices did not look like injustices when I was perpetrating them. Rather, they looked like little things, superficial things dictated by the exuberance of a father who loved so much their daughters. And they loved me, I believed...But did they really love me or that was just a way of accepting their father in an unswerving and occasionally undiscerning scheme of children who are adapting themselves to the image I had created for them? I think it was this last case. I used to talk to them about me, my life, my dreams, my problems, my sufferings, my joys, my disillusions...again and again, I was repeating the story of my lif...

In my growing up with you, father, I now think there was an autistic quality. I offer this not as a criticism but as a diagnosis if it interests you. As a child, of course, you loved me and I loved you, but, even then, you treated me as you waited to be treated. Perhaps it started unconsciously, but you slowly translated me into an inscrutable object of your vision. And in fact, we were having inscrutable commerce with each other's hearts, during those perfect days. That is the way I felt indeed year after year, above all after turning eighteen. After that point, in fact, I realized how separate we were, two enterprises on the go, yours and mine. What your enterprise was I couldn't say, but it was opaque to me. The more I gained my life the more I felt it opaque, and distant. I am sorry father to say that, but that was what was disquieting me, and I couldn't say it to you. It lacked the courage. You were like a distant fading away image that I was unable to stop and grab.

  Father I am perfectly aware it is you, that you want to hear about, not me. But the only story involving you that I can tell, or the only one I am prepared to tell, is this one, namely the story of my life, which is quite different, quite another matter from what you think, from the story of what you thought my life was and where you were in. My story, the story of me, the way I think, act and react, began years before what happened, before it arrived on the final scene where you were playing your last drama and went on for years until you made your exit. Forever. Father, you would commit a grave error if you think that the difference between the two stories, the story you wanted to hear and the story you are getting, be nothing more than a matter of perspective. I think I felt as manipulated as you manipulated many of the women who passed through your life. It is not so. It is not so. I know. But I really suffered that I wasn't the main character in your life. My perspective was...