IDENTITY
There are many ways of communicating and communication methodologies seem to have tripled in recent years. Journalism and television are no longer the only tools to get the attention of users. Online platforms have transformed forms of communication into disposable trampolines to shoot slogans or fashions like wish-catcher bullets, while destroying that part of the user in search of a solid base of information and delight, at the same time to always refer to. Feeling the rustling of the newspaper sheet under your fingertips has become a different memory now that you can switch between apps. The same information has changed, marketing, television, cinema, have all changed in favor of ever more constant modernism. But there’s something that can never fit in, identity.
The identity of a people, a region or a single town is too important. It is to it that we must approach to transform ourselves once again into something more complete. Social media has done its part by pushing us to be “different” with the same pose in front of the lens of a smartphone. Now it’s up to the writers to dig in search of the identity of the people to impress with any kind of content, written, visual, audio. It is not to the masses that we must aim, but to the niches of users and readers in search of an additional value that only writing can give. The difference, this word has the power to make us all identical or extravagant, in intentions as in costumes. But there is only one deep identity that binds humans to their differences: everyday life. The daily essence we don’t even notice. It is part of an emancipated process that over time makes us defined, the principle of our every decision is linked to this identity. Our pleasures, interests, future purchases, the pages of a newspaper we would like to see or the friendship on facebook of which we are proud. Our identity, although drawn with an almost prophetic article, is not a metaphor or a compendor of philosophy or theology, it is a fundamental element of our life, it almost guides us to the initeration of a hectic life, it is a non-conceptual ingredient, but Structural. Composed of uniqueness and moments of our lives that made us choose one path over another.
We can say that our habits depend on the identity that we have built over time.
Boredom is also part of it, boredom is daily and as a doorbell from the gun alerts us when we absorb content that is not part of our identity. It warns us that we are the victims of a cycle of images, videos, content that does not belong to us and pushes us in search of something more common to us, closer to our ideals. Right or wrong does not exist, correct or incorrect is superfluous, we follow our real identity even if we do not know it. Perhaps we can venture to say that we don’t even know ourselves that tangle of habits and emotions that has brought us to where we are.
What I have around me is also what I am.
I belong to the category of thinking humans and I think everything I have around me is also what I belong to. I am not talking about real estate, about things that can only be purchased, but about the actual matter that surrounds our lives. I have chosen to be part of a city, a village, a nation, a complex society that is constantly growing, my decisions, although tiny and imperceptible, are part of a wave of events that I myself have chosen and which have also determined my ident user, writer, living person.
I write because I think, and if I think I have to look for this identity, look for it in people, in peoples in the variety of people and in the small percentages of men and women who do not let themselves be approached by algorithms. How can a computer analyze our past only by counting the thousandths of a second of a visualization. He can’t. As a writer I have a duty to be curious about people, to engrave my interest in their lives, it is the only way to write something that interests “really” and not only for a few seconds, even if it is only ten people to read what I write , I will still be happy to have reached their identity and entered it not out of boredom; because that content created with targeted precision will forever be with them and will not be expelled in favor of something else, it will not be passed beyond the eight seconds of media attention that a user has for something that does not belong to him, that is not reviewed in the list interests in that personal database that is identity.
Malta- Gozo- Comino- Cominotto — Small Islands of a particular Nation
I have been living in Gozo and have been working in Malta for almost three years. I walked, talked, listened, drank, exchanged food, prayed, with people who belong to an ever-developing nation. If you come to Malta only once you will not understand the true heart of this land. .
I don’t think I’ve come to the identity of this nation yet, but I think I’ve received the gift in quantity enough to fall in love with it. In part I have changed in them, evolving my pro-European form in Maltese thought, a thought made of a “simplicity” very difficult to conceive. As if it were an obsession I did not give up on the mere idea that Malta and Gozo cone their small islands were conceived as the extreme of an island life too modest, rough, smooth, obvious, familiar, rustic. These are words for those who don’t want to know. What I have understood is that the identity of this nation, real, resides in the family, not only that composed of relatives, of close friendships, but in the deep root inserted as an olive tree in society.
“The Family”
It is an element of discussion between the neighbors, it is political, it is the government divided between the different islands, it is the folklore of a religious feast, it is the parish priest to whom we ask for advice, the one who married us, who married our parents or our brothers and sisters. Family is the seller of pastizzi, the Italian chef who manages to reproduce the lampuki cake or the bragioli. Nothing can be called simple in Malta, nothing really is. Maltese people are proud of their traditions and after a hundred years the social content of them has evolved leaving intact the deepest roots. Although traditional Malta remained open to the influences that came from the sea letting that folklore, that family become even more precious and unique.
That foreign influence meant that independence became pride, defiance and war for one’s identity, made a boat trip, a drink with friends become part of a lifestyle made of emotional baggage. That our parents’ homes with their memories were the part of culture you never forget, even inside a modern downtown apartment, not even close to the largest of the shopping malls. That thousandth presence of a past has made tradition, the cult of its own history, an integral part of the present.
No real estate plan to erase a footprint like the Maltese one could ever be high enough to remove that grain of history that lives in every brick, religious statue, cathedral and family on Maltese territory.
The identity of such an open country will never be “simple” and will not be calculable with a few pages on facebook, or fast story on instagram. The desire to become bigger and bigger will always be bound by that of being united. A struggle between the sacred and the profane, between the enrichment and the stillness of a nation that knows very few moments of despondency and many moments of pride. It may seem that some of the most well-known characters in society can influence the aspects of daily life, but it’s quite the opposite. It is that daily life in the “simple” gestures of an island and pure life that characterize the characters of Malta. It is a flag waving high in a sign of obedience to the raw truth of a people who wish to be only themselves, with a few hints of novelty. Culture and curiosity are the foundations of those who do not just want to be an island. There are invisible bridges that connect Malta to all that is far away. Now they are close, they touch each other through a border of intent that is called love for their own territory, for the sea, for writers, band players, architects, conductors and those holy men and saints women who every day with their fidelity are part of a nation. It is true there are also the dark sides, those that hurt, the rotten leaves, the rotten apples and the black roots that exploit the goodness of those who only want to exist as it was educated, but all that is wrong will always be and only a tiny part of a tiny island , of a tiny world, of a tiny universe that we will never remember again, because there are people who can defend their identity, in front of a parliament to demonstrate, at the ballot box, at the table on Sundays and at church in the morning, with friends, colleagues and with relatives, or with strangers who come from outside to find some peace, here is the part of identity that I am in love with: The family
