In this special column for Atwood Magazine, I explore the impact of one artist and album across the range of my experience in one city or across several cities. The aspiration is that you will resonate with my experiences and how they might intersect with your own life in deepening our understanding and reflection on a particular artist and album in our contemporary world.

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Emma Marrone’s seventh studio LP ‘Souvenir’ enables profound contemplation about one’s significance in the world which is of utmost importance in our challenging times through how she explores existential themes revolving around mortality, identity, the search for meaning, and authenticity.

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Stream: ‘Souvenir’ – Emma

In the Fashion Life of Milano’s Brera

When one initially arrives in Milano whether by air or train, there is a rush of feelings as to arriving in the fashion capitol of the world, but the surprise is that this city of dreams is not readily apparent as it is needs to be uncovered.

My uncovering happened when I arrived into the Brera area in Milano — I was immediately in awe of its illustrious architecture and lens on life with couture shops on the rife and beautiful people drinking red wine on street cafes in the cool winter light as they lounged in sunglasses and abundant winter coats. This beautiful ambience led me to reflect on my life in a strange way that was framed through Emma Marrone’s most recent album SOUVENIR as her songs pierced the outdoor bars and night air. The strangeness that I felt revolved around a feeling that I had walked these streets before even though I had never visited this area in Milano in my life.

SOUVENIR - Emma Marrone — SOUVENIR – Emma Marrone

For 48 hours, I inhabited a feeling of déjà vu where people I saw on the streets reminded me of the shadows of past lovers, and even the sidewalks appeared to bear my previous footprints. I was struck within the nostalgia of a previous life as Emma’s album enabled me to revisit these frames of memory with intense forms of recollection. While walking from our apartment to the Duomo, I was in awe of the wondrous architecture amidst the fleeting glimpses of remarkable human beauty that astounds.

We sauntered into the breathtaking Milano Starbucks, and rather than a coffee, we relished a delightful Italian Prosecco as we basked in the outdoor heaters with the most incredible view onto the roundabout. The city of Milano in winter is haunted with a brilliant sense of dark warmth which only invites luxuriating in its streets and bars as the shuffle of beauty passes before your eyes as one inhabits Marrone’s vision.

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Emma Marrone © Bogdan “Chilldays” Plakov

In the Historic Piazza of Firenze

In Firenze’s Piazza della Signoria, I was surrounded by the most significant statues that have been created in Western art, and amidst those incredible renderings that were forged from nothing is the most incredible monument that we are nothing unto our own selves. I felt a sense of dissipation of my own self between those monuments, as I realized that my very own breath was fleeting in every moment.

In that twilight, I sat with my lover in the golden winter night as we sipped our Prosecchi in our descent into the darkness as the sound of Emma’s album liberated our souls from their tethers. We walked from the piazza and over the infamous Ponte de Vecchio and became lost in the dark vie of Firenze, while we later ambled back to our hotel to sit on the illustrious balcony while drinking our Nero di Avola in the soaring midnight sky.

It almost felt like I could live forever as long as Italian wine coursed through my veins in lifting my consciousness to other worlds of recognition. The simultaneous experience of listening to Emma and drinking Nero spurred a chrysalis of becoming into the world in new ways.

On the Canals of Venezia

We stayed in Venezia for weeks every winter as it had become a deep and habitual destination for the last four years as it was nothing like on earth to be immersed in lagoon life within its endless darkened corridors which always lent a glimpse to the most glorious blood red sky on the open Adriatic Sea as we coasted on the vaporetto.

The experience of Venezia was not only this illustrious experience, it was within finding and inhabiting the local haunts which were far removed from the touristic machinations or indeed perhaps in that midst but unrecognized. One such place is the unmistakable Tiziano Snack Bar which does not seem like much characteristically, but if one gets to know and spend time with Pepe this place becomes to be like your own home. It is a local haunt that captures the wonderful living histories of cross-generational life that set this bar apart from all others in Venezia.

One of the oldest wine bars of Venezia is Enoteca al Volto, established in 1936, very close to the Rialto bridge in the hidden and dark Calle Cavalli, and it is a place that we often found ourselves in the late afternoon with a quarter liter of Prosecco and perhaps one or two quarter liters of red wine as we sat enveloped in darkness on this Calle with locals and wondered at the incredible experience of being alive in this precise moment.

On one particular evening last December, we could not beat the winter chill and hunkered inside for red wine and we were again immersed in the kaleidoscopic vision of Emma’s Album within the striking dim intimacy of the enoteca.

On any given night we would often be hanging at the local bar Al Parlamento on the hidden side of Cannaregio while also always making our way along the numerous bars along Misericordia as we melded into Emma Marrone’s search for meaning through her songs which became our existential quest for fulfillment in the vespers of the fog. I found my own ephemeral sense of fulfillment through my private terrace on a canal in my apartment in Dorsoduro where Emma’s album became the soundtrack of our sojourn as I imagined previous lives and centuries through the evening glimmers in my particular canal of the lagoon.

The experience of being in Venezia is like nothing on earth in particular to dwelling within the hidden enclaves which can only be discovered through one’s own experience that carve your space within the remarkable lagoon life.

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Throughout my journey in Italia, Emma’s album was a touchstone of inspiration.

Her music enabled me to explore different textures of being alive with renewed levels of perspective that were deeply entrenched within the insatiable beauty of Italia – a beauty that transpires through one’s skin and mind.

Emma Marrone’s seventh studio LP Souvenir enables profound contemplation about one’s significance in the world, which is of utmost importance in our challenging times through how she explores existential themes revolving around mortality, identity, the search for meaning, and authenticity.

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