TRAVEL
Sound of my Italian Summer SUSANNA ZARLI When I landed in Italy in early July it was the first time visiting my home country since the start of 2020. The long lockdown months spent in Glasgow had made me yearn to return home a bit more than usual: overtaken by restlessness and anxiety from not knowing when I’d be allowed to travel again, I’d spent days and weeks fantasising about the familiar sights I’ve grown up around. Needless to say, despite the usual disorienting feelings that often accompany every trip home for me, I found myself immediately wrapped up in the warm familiarity at the sight of the ornate and regal early 1900s palaces of the Turin City centre or, on a clear enough day, the beloved silhouette of the Alps cutting through the fog at the horizon. They represented everything I’d missed during that long period of longing and uncertainty, and I immediately made a mental note to treasure them for as long as I could. But to my surprise, the longer my stay in Italy continued, the more I found myself noticing all the different sounds and noises that dictated the rhythm of my daily life as well.
ing clattering of cowbells from the nearby farm, occasionally broken only by the passing of a train on the rail tracks behind my house. These immediately registered for me as the sounds of early mornings before school and late sleepless nights spent reading during my teenage years: the sounds of the Piedmontese province in all its serenity, which a younger version of me would often associate with an oppressive sense of dullness. Halfway through July, I spent a few days visiting my grandma in Turin in the sixth floor apartment that once belonged to my parents, and in which I spent my early years of life. From my first night there, I immediately let myself float in the familiar sounds that one can only find in a big city, and that are, to me, deeply rooted in the realm of my childhood memories. From the frequent cars hurrying down busy streets to distant sirens demanding urgent attention, to the corner shop downstairs shutting and opening its heavy iron gates, these noises that are so deeply connected with the frenzy and business of urban lifestyles were easily the most calming for me. As they reminded me of the city’s chaos still living on even after dark, they allowed me to sink into a peaceful state of awareness that I was just one of the thousands of bodies in thousands of buildings that crowded the streets of my hometown. There’s something extremely reassuring in feeling small in a big, always loud, always lively place.
Being usually more focused on visuals, I was pleasantly surprised by discovering how alert I was while rediscovering the way Italy sounds. I perceive sounds as the most intimate and subjective part of the experience that is visiting somewhere, and the most difficult to replicate even in words or thoughts once one leaves. For this reasons some of the noises that caught my attention tugged at my heartstrings in a particular way: for example, the quiet provincial village where my family lives Then came the sounds of holidays, as I visited was all chattering neighbours mixed with the lull- friends in their own hometowns in different re-
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