"I must have been thirteen and my mother woke me up one night to watch a very good pianist on TV. It was Glenn Gould performing Bach's Concerto in G Minor and that completely moved me. At that instant, I decided that what I wanted to do in life was to play that music." Fabrizio Acanfora smiles, drinking a morning coffee on the Bar's terrace, as he recalls a decision that was not easy to defend. "My parents thought I was going to be an engineer or something, because my passion until then had been building and fixing electronic gadgets. Initially, they flatly opposed me having a career as a musician." He sips his drink. "It was tough!" he says.
This Neapolitan's childhood had unfolded between the artistic inclinations of his maternal side, full of poetry, painting, and sensitivity to music, and the constructive and practical character of a father who handled the technical side of the ports in the Campania region. "When I turned 16, they more or less gave up and arranged an audition for me with Marisa Carretta, a prestigious conservatory professor. If she liked how I played, then I could pursue music studies. If not, no." And, of course: Marisa, whom Fabrizio considers almost a second mother, liked it. A lot.
Afflicted by an eternal and incurable curiosity for things, during his studies he became deeply enamored with baroque music and the harpsichord as an instrument. His childhood as a handyman helping his father (thanks to whom it was rare for a plumber or electrician to enter the house), led him to build his first harpsichord. There, in addition to its sounds, he began to learn the secrets of its inner workings. It was his first step as a luthier.
After finishing his studies, he played and continued to learn the mysteries of the instrument. Scrutinizing its body and soul. "In 2003 I moved to Holland with Jacques Ogg and stayed there for six years, working as a luthier, but also playing music, recording, and taking care of the production management for several orchestras." There he met his future husband, Maurizio, "a Roman who was dedicated to epidemiological statistics, while waiting to fulfill his dream of painting." After visiting Barcelona and falling in love with the city, they moved here sixteen years ago, weathering the effects of the crisis and taking a decisive step towards a future that would bring many surprises. And not all of them good.
The secret of my obsessions
"In Barcelona I opened a workshop for the repair and construction of harpsichords," explains the parishioner, who recalls marathon working days, "starting in the morning and finishing in the early hours." But things soon went wrong for him. "My hands would seize up and hurt. Sometimes it was impossible for me to move my fingers for days. I was diagnosed with a genetic disease that affects the cartilage in my hands and I knew then that I could no longer work as a luthier, nor as a concert performer."
He started studying music therapy, but he didn't feel comfortable either. "It took me back to my school days, when I was unhappy with the pressure, my classmates... I became very depressed." Looking for the reasons for that discomfort, a second diagnosis arrived. "I discovered that I am autistic and that made me see the light on many aspects that were intrinsic to me, the obsessiveness with what I like, the ability to focus, to work concentrated for hours forgetting everything else, completely abstracted." And with that (self)discovery, a new Fabrizio Acanfora was born.
"For a while, and although I didn't finish it, I was coordinator of the music therapy master's degree, but I started to study in depth things related to neurodivergence and soon after I published my first book, Eccentrico, which enjoyed some success in Italy and will now be translated into Greek." That was the first of a series of books that elevate him as a philosophical and sociological reference, such as Rompere il gioco, "where I criticize certain dynamics of activism in networks that can become a false activism" or L'errore, "a history of normality as a construct that responds to the interests of capital." He, more than anyone, knows what it is not to play at being normal, and he doesn't need to.
He combines this facet as an essayist and agitator with his work for Specialisterne, a company that offers training and employment to autistic people in the field of information technology and museology. "In addition ---he warns---, I am working on writing what will be my debut novel." A rather tight schedule.
Preserving the spirit of coexistence
"We came here in 2009 and we just bought an apartment. Barcelona is the city where we have chosen to live and my relationship with it is very good, of course," explains the artist who awaits the day when his work begins to be translated into Castilian and Catalan. Furthermore ----he confesses--- he feels more comfortable in the Raval "with all its problems" than in an Eixample "which for me is too bourgeois."
Delighted with the spirit of coexistence of a welcoming city, he is clear that its worst enemy is "gentrification, the arrogance of those who come from outside to speculate without the slightest interest in preserving the social fabric of the city. Or, worse, those who, being from here, feed that way of killing coexistence." He sips the last drops of his coffee. "In any case, it is a phenomenon that affects all European metropolises and not only," he adds.
---- Something that cannot be found in any other European city is our gastronomic offer, in case you want to eat something, it's about time.
Fabrizio Acanfora does not hesitate. "One thing I loved about Barcelona when I arrived here are the tapas, the possibility of sharing small portions of food," he explains.
--- Well, some tapas, flying!