Dear Marco,

Do you know how I discovered the Capriccio Diabolico? It was recommended by this one guy from a call-centre. 

I have worked in that place for almost a year. I don’t ever remember what we were selling. A hideous place, where your soul was taken and smashed for eight hours every day. The others were like me, more or less young, more or less broke, more or less interested in something else. Everybody was skint.

On a day by the coffee machine I met this guy with a different look. Quite serious, glasses down his nose. We started to talk and it turned out that he was a classical guitar player. Ten years of conservatory. He had travelled the world and he was going to do it again. Madrid, but first he needed some money for the trip. 

During those ten minutes we became friends. He told me: “Do you know Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco? I recommend it, the Capriccio Diabolico is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever listened to. Performed by Segovia is the absolute best”,  and he smiled at me in a way that I have never seen in anyone in there. When I went back home I took a listen to the Capriccio Diabolico. It was like a magical melody, full of the melancholy of sad things but also the lightheartedness of happy things. In fact I believe that’s the reason of the word diabolico: it tells you there’s nothing else you can do but keep moving with joy. Some time after I quit that job and I started to get myself busy again. When I think about my life, I believe it started on that day, with the Capriccio of Castelnuovo, after a long period of darkness. 

Sometimes I listen to it again. Artists still go to work in call-centres and things don’t go the way they are supposed to, in fact it looks like they are going the other way around! At least now I know that the Devil smiles to us when we are in trouble. Maybe he doesn’t even wish evil upon us. 

Yours truly, 

The Walrus