Dancing the Apocalypse (With the Air Conditioner on Full blast)

You're sweating over the umpteenth track of your epic five-act concerto. Your brain is smoking, Logic Pro is crunching data, and you're trying to fit the elegance of a string quartet into a wall of power death metal sound without it sounding like a car crash. You want to take the time to craft the perfect piece. You want to create beauty.

And instead you end up melting in your seat, like an ice cream left on the dashboard.

Because it's hot. An obscene, sticky heat, a heat that drains you and robs you of your lucidity. Thermometers regularly hover 10 or 12 degrees above the historical average, and in the vast, reassuring circus of the mainstream, no one dares utter the two forbidden words: climate crisis. Too divisive, too unpromotable, I imagine. Rivers dying of thirst in a short article on page twenty, sandwiched between summer gossip and a rice salad recipe—because even the apocalypse, in Italy, has to be covered in a cooking column.

The situation must be so compromised by now, so irreparably screwed, that the grand global editorial plan has become this: let's go extinct, yes, happily and unknowingly. Once upon a time, you'd find conspiracy theorists searching for flying saucers or false moons; today you have to delve into the depths of the web to find someone honest enough to tell the unvarnished truth of scientific data.

And what makes my blood boil? The same ones. identical figures Until yesterday, those who called Greta Thunberg "pain in the ass" and environmental activists "lazy" are now complaining about the sweat and heat as if the climate were an unexpected Enel outage, not the bill we're paying promptly. No self-criticism, of course: it would be like asking a chain smoker to be surprised by his cough. Ask yourself a question. And then, for heaven's sake, don't even give yourself an answer—we already know it would be convenient.

Hot… hot…

And as you try to find the thread of your strings and distortions, inspiration derails. The heat enters your skull and places an almost demented melody within, an apocalyptic metal pop tune.

“Hot, hot… it’s so hot…”

Okay. The epic concert can wait.

Sometimes the urge to express oneself takes a detour, cynical and rhyming. Here are the thoughts of the last few days, spewed out on paper with a few rhyming couplets (with a tongue tip and a few tongue sticking out). A summery sprout, lucid and desperate:

Hot Hot (Dancing the Apocalypse)
…orange alert…record broken for the third day…everything under control…enjoy the weekend…

I bought a new air conditioner to survive the summer I created
He blows the cool air into my living room and spits fire out the window.
How beautiful it is to live in a paradox with ice in the glass and the sea in the throat
sorry if I drown while toasting
a clean slate, turn the wheel

And the thermometer laughs at us, marking numbers without memory
as we sign yet another agreement that will save the world — in 2000

Hot, hot, how hot it is
Let's dance the apocalypse in the city
Hot, hot, raise your hands
leave the problem to the grandchildren tomorrow
Hot, hot, sunscreen
the Earth has a fever and we are dancing
We sweat so well, under the moon
that no one hears the siren screaming

The penguin has opened a B&B on the last piece of ice floe
The oilman cries on television over the missed excise tax discount
I planted a tree on Instagram
a thousand hearts for my green thumb
too bad about that transatlantic flight to go and check if he gets lost.

PAINT YOUR CONSCIENCE GREEN
BUY SILENCE, SELL EXPIRY
THE KING IS NAKED, ANOINTED WITH HERD
SMILE AT THE FLASH AS WE GO FROM EARLY TO EARLY!

…but don't worry… …the market will take care of it…

Hot, hot, how hot it is
Let's dance the apocalypse in the city
Hot, hot, raise your hands
leave the problem to the grandchildren tomorrow
Hot, hot, sunscreen
the Earth has a fever and we are dancing
We sweat so well, the air is clear
while the orchestra plays and the ship sinks

Tomorrow I'll stop... yes, tomorrow I'll stop... tomorrow...

Okay, done. Shall we publish it? Great!.

And there's another one almost ready… that just needs a polish…

And the Concertino? Well, it's destined to wait now. After all, the planet waits too—only, unlike me, it doesn't have an elastic deadline.