Like a Rolling Stone

I think I've got a lil' hippie spirit inside of me; I think everyone does. When the persuit of freedom and the desire of love and being loved pervade us, Jimi Hendrix's solo guitar or the melancholy of Janis Joplin's bitter-sweet voice, taste like scratches and caresses, are for sure the best soundtracks for our lives. Recently has been old Woodstock's B'day: I confess I would have gave anything to be there, 40 years ago, to celebrate, above all, rock music. Woody was a millions people dream with the strength that only music can give; psychedelic emotions, freedom of being, "wind of change", tribute to the great Goddess, the Music, endless but gentle rain. There were many contradictions about Woody and its detractors never loose the chance to remember us that they still remain, but the most important thing at the time (and the best important legacy and memory nowadays) is its halo of poetical struggle and utopia of those children of rock that wanna change the world and surely see in Woody the opportunity to forget, for some days, about real life, looking for a shelter in a guitar. Is this what rock is: think to be someone you are not for the time of a riff and then finding out that person is actually you, just your dark and hidden and maybe also scaring side...after all, even the moon had its own. Rock is what let you be yourself, for real, even just for a little while; in rock we're real in feeling and not hiding anymore our our emotions. Maybe you're blue, maybe you're trying to forget, struggling with a sorrow you're hide inside; maybe you're just in love and you don't know what to do about it, acting as a child who hasn't the courage to take the hand of his young school mate in the school yard...is now that you escape in Elvis' songs. Maybe again you're not able to express yourself 'cause you've never learned how to do it, maybe you don't know how to talk about what you are and what you have, that's when a lyrics does all this for you and well, you know, it'll always be better than you in doing it. "Toughs guys don't cry" we are told from the night of the times; no, toughs guys have the hell of the passions and feelings inside and they do cry: they just do it with rock and roll, singing or writing pieces of songs around the universe or on their arms, as tattoos, instead of crying common tears; their tears are dried by a chord, by their screams against the pain of life and the defeats that it inflicts to us; happy under a stage we take our sorrows and for the time of a performance we throw them against the sky and we are finally in peace, our breath comes back and we reach our break. With our lives' playlists we fight, we dream on, we stand up for ourselves, we never give up; as I'm writing Janis is singing about her wished Mercedes Benz in my earphones and for these minutes I don't need nothing else; my thoughts had finally shut up, there's no more difference between my mind and my writing hand that just 10 minutes ago didn't know what to write, when my Ipod was shutted down (I'd rather a record player but uhm I'm just 19 years old and I live in the 2000s). Now is Sir Paul the one singing in my head; it's just like he had thought about me and none else while he was writing his precious baby..."take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better": a rock song reaches our heart and makes everything better, we are under a spell, under its power and greatness and it'll be just endless, we know that its magic will last forever. We're Elvis' soul's sons, Stairway to Heaven is our Bible, great stadiums all over the world are our temples; Because the night is our one and only promise of pure, burning, eternal love, The long and winding road soothe the aches which that same love sometimes can give, we want get married in a chapel in LV, we see our honeymoon riding a Cadillac...because freedom belongs to us, because, if we believe, in freedom we trust.