One of the many reasons why I left Italy, leaving behind a career as a journalist and a less promising one as a singer-songwriter, was that I had realised how the people around me had lost the concept of time as the most precious asset to cultivate and grow within themselves.
The most worrying thing was that even those who agreed with me and said they thought like me, actually meant that because sooner or later you die, you have to hurry up and do a billion things.
For example, work as much as possible and make a lot of money in order to be able to retire at an acceptable age and live healthy years indulging one's passions, or reach important positions and then have someone work on your behalf.
Or to have fun, enjoy yourself or get stoned while you can.
Perhaps the African teaching of Grandfather Kazungu, who says "if you have lost time today, don't worry: your life has found it", will also be exaggerated on the other side.
The discourse on what it means to "lose time" would be too long and philosophical, but from there I coined the term "Chronopathy" and the related concept that inspired my song, written shortly before leaving Italy for good in 2005 and rethought ten years later with my friend musician and author Stefano Barotti.
I was convinced (and still am) that it is not the fear of mortality that is the real problem of western man, but the inability to grasp the moments of which time is composed, to read the moment without trying to ride it to the limit, or be overwhelmed by it.
Because after one moment, another comes along: we are made of nothing but moments.
And the most serious and dangerous disease is not the one that could kill us, but the one that makes us live each moment badly.
To make the concept of attention to moments even better, the video for 'Chronopathy' was made by putting together a series of scenes from 20 films of all kinds and eras.
In the work of a director and a screenwriter, as in our lives, there are moments, shots, details that our attention often fails to grasp.
They are often the truest, most significant ones.
They are the messages we need and we only realise this when the moment has passed.
Then we think back to the signs that we were unable to read, to the looks on the faces of people who have left, to the meaning of the words of a friend.
We were too busy not wasting time, and we were unable to find life.
GOOD LISTENING AND GOOD WATCHING TO THOSE WHO ARE STILL ABLE TO CAPTURE THE MOMENTS AND THE WORDS.
(...And let's see who is so prepared to catch at least one of the 20 film quotes...considering that almost all of them are films that normally I would not have seen even under torture, but that, reliving them frame by frame, have taught me one more way, among the many that I already cultivate, to waste time and not fall into chronopathy!")