WEBVTT

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"There is a time to born. A time to die.

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A time to love. A time to throw stones.

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A time to tear and a time to mend.

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A time to make love and a time to part."

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And these words were sung a long time ago.

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Roughly 2500 years ago.

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with a cithara, tuned
with the "Seven Strings",

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as the Qoelets cithara was nicknamed.

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And each of those strings,
prepared with sheep entrails,

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was to be tuned
with constellations and planets.

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For the time we experience

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is a personal one
that grows within oneself

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until it becomes
part of the cosmos' own time.

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Defining "Kohelet", wisdom,

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has always been a conundrum.

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Man has always chased after it,
always looked for it,

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always attempted to solve it.

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Today, I introduce myself a bit
like an Alice's "White Rabbit".

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A small watch in my pocket

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that somehow captures
both my time and yours.

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Time is mostly a pace.

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We understood it

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while still in our mother's
amniotic fluid,

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as we listened to the beat,

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the beat of her heart,
the beat of our heart.

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Our ancestors, the Latins,
invented almost everything.

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Cultural sponge as they were

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of that once great
Mediterranean civilization,

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obviously an extremely porous environment,

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filled with many stimuli,

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which they transformed

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into the rhythm
of their "Dactylic Hexameter".

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The hexameter was the way

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of singing the heart's beat;

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it's the verse of Epic Poetry.

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But underneath the verse of Epic Poetry,

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recorded along the extraordinary
folds of ancient manuscripts,

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lies an ancient, primordial music.

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And you can hear it.

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It's within you right as we speak.

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Your heart may beat harder or softer,

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but it's always the same.

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"Quadrupedante putrem sonitu
quatit ungula campum."

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What is it?

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It's the beat of a hors ride.

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A wild, frightening cavalcade,
an extraordinary advance of riders,

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who chant and swiftly cross
the planes of Troy as a hoof,

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with a galloping sound,

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shakes the crumbling field.

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That isn't impressive in Italian,

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yet "Quadrupedante putrem sonitu
quatit ungula campum. "

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enhances the rhythm even more

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and the rhythm turns into a frenzy,
and this frenzy into a song of passion.

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In perhaps the most beautiful night
in Latin Literature,

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the night described
by Ovidius in "Tristia".

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When Ovidius must leave,

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due to an emperor’s will

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that denies him the fact

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that he saw something
which he was not supposed to see.

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It is during this very last night,

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spent between the arms
of the woman he loves -

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and what time is better spent after all-

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Ovidius, lost in the curls of her hair,

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sang to the beat of those passing moments,

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and each grain of sand
that descended in the hourglass,

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became a whisper of love

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sung for an eternity,
as it became eternal.

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"Lente, lente currite noctis eques!"

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"Oh, run slowly, slowly,
horses of the night,

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because if the night
slips away too quickly,

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and if the dawn rises too quickly,

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I will have to whisper farewell
to you, my sweet love.

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May that moment never come."

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It is by hands and feet

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that death can be deceived
within a dance.

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Within a dance, accompanied
by the shaman's tambourine and cymbal,

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we can repeat the rhythm
of that ancient Hexameter.

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If you paid attention,

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if we were in an estranged time,
if we were in a different place

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not too far from here,
within the hills of the Friulian moraine,

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and if we found ourselves
around 1568-1570.A.C.,

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a musician, necromancer and magician
who we all know well,

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Giorgio Mainerio,

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The famous Choirmaster
of the Holy Church of Aquileia,

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whose patriarchs still reside
within this building, suspended in time.

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We can almost hear them.

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With bagpipes

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in hand and feet clapping,
with the beat of clapping feet,

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they would search
for the systole and diastole,

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for that pendulum,
which can enthral the moon.

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So that, as Slovenian witches
of that time would do,

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it could somehow stop

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along the estranged chain
of mountains and hills

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and somehow stop for an instant.

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"To Enchant", means to chant
from within the real meaning of things,

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and to enthral, even for a single instant,

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which however can last
as much as an eternity,

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the sense of the flow of time,
or at least the memory of it,

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so that it may stop time
and deceive Death,

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which of course waits in vain
within this dance.

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That is all there is to it.

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"It's a time to be."

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It's a delicate balance

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between "Eros", love,
and "Energeia", that is energy,

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which they mentioned before
when talking about time and the cosmos,

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and "Thanatos" that is death.

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In the Middle Age "Books of Hours",

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death was portrayed
with a delicate silver crown

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and reminds us, without scaring us,

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that it will appear
at the end of our existence -

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but not to punish us!

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It will show up and ask us

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if our time was a well spent one.

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If the time we invested in our lives

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was a time filled
with things, with encounters,

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a distilled excitement.

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This is what that dark lady will ask us.

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And that is it,

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within the magnificence of a space,
which also becomes time -

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notice how seamlessly
the language of theoretical physics

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clings so tightly

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to that of art, of poetry,
of anthropology and of philosophy -

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it’s that space, that time,

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embroiled between a finger that creates
and a finger that was created.

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Within a sense of “Humanitas”,

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which is related to "humus"
but also "mano" [hand].

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It's with our opposable thumb,

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that allows us to perceive ourselves,
maybe for the first time,

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as creators or sub-creators
that shape structures and meanings,

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that we are enabled to hold our time
between our grasp.

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And that is within a spark
of Michelangelo.

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In that very sleepy, dreaming Adam.

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He dreams because he still does not live.

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And he does not live yet 
because he doesn't have a sense of time,

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which is all wrapped
within the mystery of our origins.

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Who existed before Adam?
After Adam, who will exist?

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Adam, the man who gives names to things
and steals the soul of the world,

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who makes himself a grain of time
and eventually returns to a grain of dust

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within the meaning of things.

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This might be my favourite example.

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It is my favourite
because within this kiss,

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which Greek vase painting

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captures beautifully from the first Polis,

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we are talking around 8th century B.C.,

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within this vase there is a kiss
that has lasted for more than 2000 years.

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And it has lasted
for 2000 years, 2800 years,

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as this was never traded.

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The time of that kiss

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becomes an eternal moment
between two people.

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Exactly like the finger of God

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that descend from the infinite
and transforms the infinite into present,

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and gives it a sense and strength
of being wonderful, here and now.

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The great poet Keats sang this

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in his famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn ”,

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and this is that very urn.

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But, what does that
suspended time consist of?

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I am sure that all of you have ever tasted

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the essence of that time,
which precedes a kiss.

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For that's when a waft becomes a breath

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and a breath turns into "anemos", wind.

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And the wind becomes spirit

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and those spirits merge
and become a tepid vapour.

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And that tepid vapour becomes an emotion

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and that emotion is meant to be shared,
yet distilled slowly.

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Like Rostand once said,

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the bee sucks the honey
from the flower's corolla,

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but before this moment can even happen,

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that's where all the sweetness
of the honey is found,

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in a kiss that wasn't given,

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which will last in the course of time,
which will last forever.

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And so, Horace, inspired by such a style,

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during a winter's night,
when time seemed endless,

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he tells his love Leuconoe,
with long black hair:

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"Loosen, loosen them for me
in this very instant,

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allow dreams to remain suspended
below, your eyelashes,

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near the border of your eyes.

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Do never worry about the time
that Zeus could have granted us.

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Don't ask yourself how many more winters

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will tire Adriatic's enraged waves.

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May this moment, this very instant,
which precedes our kisses,

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be our time for all eternity.

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Generously pour into the cup
the Sabine wine

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than let's share this wine,
along with our love,

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which by lasting the whole night,
will essentially last forever.

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And John Dowland,

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one of the great poets
of the Elizabethan age,

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in this dimension of music,

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which repeats the sense
of Qoelet and Jewish cithara.

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Within a musical structure
which speaks of life, love,

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instants, fleeting moments

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and emotions and afflicting worries,

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we sings intertwining in his scores

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a wonder, which is once again
the wonderment of a song,

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it's his "Come Again."

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"Come again, sweet and kind love,

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[translates]

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so that my night isn't restful,

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but full of dreams"

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And what are we, as echoed
by his famous countrymen echoed,

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if not a collection of dreams,

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a mixture which seams our lives.

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A dream can appear long a lifetime to us,
as long as an undefined time.

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And life can be short and sweet,

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like only a dream can be.

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It is the waiting,

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it is the waiting that can allow us
to transform memory into will,

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that allows us to give sense and meaning

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to the things we experience.

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All literature and philosophy
play with the concept of waiting.

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Waiting does not mean wasting time:

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it means having the opportunity
to savour it all the way.

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Today we have no time.

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We run after this "Moving contraption,
with its toothed gears,

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as it grinds up the day
and chops it down to hours",

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Ciro di Pers, our Ciro di Pers,

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who probably dwelled here
long ago, singing his times.

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We fear waiting.

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Our waiting rooms are a place of misery.

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We have transformed our lives

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into waiting for something
that will never arrive.

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Transforming our present into nothing,

00:14:40.854 --> 00:14:45.343
trapped between the idea of a future,
which still does not exist yet

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and a past that no longer exists.

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They have no meaning

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if not in our meek present,

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which swiftly transforms
the future into past.

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Through memories we can discern
who we truly are, who we aspire to be;

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and most importantly,
how we choose to become that person.

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And this here, is the flash
of a myth, of a ritual.

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Within the Cueva de las Manos, in Mexico.

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This man from 12000 B.C.

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left a trace of time,
around the colour of his hand.

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The excitement,
because you are allowed to,

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of placing your hand on that print

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opens some sort
of spacetime fascination,

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where these 12000 years are recapitulated
in the touch of a shadow.

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A hand’s shadow, that reminds us
of something very important.

00:15:51.572 --> 00:15:57.337
That we are human beings,
just like he used to be,

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and we crave for passion;

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we have an insatiable need
to experience a dimension through time,

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which is only ours,
because we can perceive it.

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Incredibly, some trees
are 10000 years old,

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with leaves that grow centuries
apart from each other -

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and yet, they retain
no memory of themselves.

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By placing my hand on this hand

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I sensed that 12000 years
are only a moment,

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just a heartbeat, an instant.

00:16:36.300 --> 00:16:40.668
And so we ask ourselves,
much like the psalmist used to sing,

00:16:41.308 --> 00:16:46.500
“Watchman, what is left of the night? ”

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How long will we have
to simply stand and wait?

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We should learn to savour the night

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to imagine it by listening,
surrounded by the shadows around us,

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the humming of each strand
of grass, as they grows,

00:17:06.750 --> 00:17:10.170
the whirring of the stars
as these cross the borderless sky,

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which is maybe the very whir within us,

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the creak of the bench we sit upon.

00:17:17.908 --> 00:17:20.623
And never get tired of asking:

00:17:20.623 --> 00:17:24.758
"Watchman, what is left of the night?"

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Because sooner or later,
it will be overtaken

00:17:27.887 --> 00:17:32.233
by a feint glimmer,
which appears from the East

00:17:32.233 --> 00:17:37.470
and which signals us
that perhaps our time has come.

00:17:38.588 --> 00:17:41.940
Pay attention, because even now
my time is slipping away.

00:17:41.940 --> 00:17:44.484
Because this is
what time is, the "Kairos".

00:17:45.264 --> 00:17:47.410
Represented this way by the Greeks.

00:17:47.410 --> 00:17:50.659
It is a fleeting moment;
it always flees behind us.

00:17:50.659 --> 00:17:54.099
It passes us by
before we can even know.

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However, it has a long curl,
which rests upon its forehead

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and that's where we must be careful enough
to seize it, grab it when it passes by,

00:18:05.559 --> 00:18:08.897
welcome it and avoid
being caught unprepared.

00:18:08.897 --> 00:18:10.527
"Kairos".

00:18:10.527 --> 00:18:14.604
You can find it on the coasts
of Dalmacia, at Trogir,

00:18:14.604 --> 00:18:19.706
perfectly represented there,
as it was 2000 years ago.

00:18:19.706 --> 00:18:24.039
Grabbing that special moment

00:18:24.039 --> 00:18:29.968
means thinking that our life
is filled with time,

00:18:29.968 --> 00:18:35.235
as in, "life must maintain
that fullness of time".

00:18:35.235 --> 00:18:41.249
In Seneca's words, "Do not hope
to add years to your lives.

00:18:41.969 --> 00:18:47.113
Instead, hope to add life to your years."

00:18:47.113 --> 00:18:51.634
You may get well beyond 100,

00:18:51.634 --> 00:18:55.060
without "living" a single second.

00:18:55.060 --> 00:19:01.094
You may live 30 years,10 years,
one month, even just a single hour,

00:19:01.094 --> 00:19:05.925
and that time can be
an untouched, wonderful time

00:19:05.925 --> 00:19:10.155
which leaves you with a sense of wonder.

00:19:10.155 --> 00:19:16.633
So like the great Faust,
who gazed upon an endless sky,

00:19:16.633 --> 00:19:20.220
after having made a bargain
with our inner Devil.

00:19:20.220 --> 00:19:24.690
And each of us has a demon
with whom we must come to terms.

00:19:24.690 --> 00:19:28.659
Let’s ascend to the tallest

00:19:28.659 --> 00:19:31.570
and most solemn spire of our castle,

00:19:31.570 --> 00:19:34.210
and seeing that the first lights
of dawn are arriving

00:19:34.210 --> 00:19:36.270
and signalling to us the end of our time,

00:19:36.270 --> 00:19:38.323
we too can say:

00:19:38.323 --> 00:19:42.560
"Oh fleeting moment, stay a while!
You are so lovely!”.

00:19:42.560 --> 00:19:44.044
Thank you. Thank you.

00:19:44.044 --> 00:19:47.490
(Applausi)