Wonderful night out among friends and music yesterday in my native Emilia Romagna. First, dinner in one of my favourite restaurants on Earth, La Lumira in Castelfranco Emilia, run by my old friend Carlo Alberto Borsarini and his family. Then, a quick visit to Bologna’s Festa dell’Unità to celebrate the final show in Cisco‘s tour. We got there at midnight, just in time to get on stage for the final set of encores! Stage and backstage were full of old friends: besides Cisco himself and Chiara, there were ex-Modena City Ramblers Giovanni Rubbiani on guitar and Massimo Giuntini on bouzouki and uileann pipe, Francesco Magnelli on piano (with the faithful Andrea, guitarist, and Marzio, drummer); Patrick Wright, fiddler in Dagda (one of Lady Jessica’s projects); Lele, Estragon’s manager, former tour manager with MCR; Cecca, who’s worked as agent both of MCR and of FF; Valeria “miss Myspace”, together with Daniela; and comrade Susanna Bottazzi, whom I had not seen in years, a truly unexpected and delightful surprise.
This is a gift of this age (I am 41): after all those years you turn back and – surprise – you see faces you know well. Some, true, have goptten lost and are missing, but a lot are still there, holding their ground; and you feel you have somehow been holding your own. And you realize that there people out there to whom you are bonded for good, no matter how far you go; and that the chunk of a lifetime behind your back, after all, has not been a waste of time.