Post #53: Surfing the Waves of Life

29 July 2023

Mai, quest'onda, mai mi affonderà

Gli squali non mi avranno mai

Quest'onda, mai mi affonderà

Sha la la la la

Sha la la la la, sha la la la la la

Un'altra volta, un'altra onda

Sha la la la la, sha la la la la la

Quanto resisterai?

—Piotta, “La grande onda” (2002)

You wouldn’t turn to me, I trust, for a paean to Italian pop music or rap, let alone Italian rap—and you might not expect me to have a soft spot for surfing songs either. But on the Beach Boys side you’d be wrong; there’s something about the vibe that speaks to me despite being a confirmed land-rat and non-surfer. And while Italian rap is certainly not my favorite, in this case I found myself oddly moved when the song (which I had never heard before) came on during a fancy Italian lunch I was treating myself to (which I don’t do very often).

It may be that the atmosphere of the tune simply mixed well with my mood of Italian nostalgia, though pop culture is not normally the best way to trigger such sentiments in me, whether with respect to Italy or anything else. Or maybe I liked the feel-good dimension, much as I must side with my genteel Tuscan restaurant against the suburra Roman attitude. But I think it was something else that became clearer as I looked at the lyrics, though only courtesy of an online translation and some knowledge of French and Spanish.

At first glance, there isn’t much to be seen beyond the defiant attitude that one expects from such lowbrow odes to youthful vim and verse: bring it on, this wave will never sink me; the sharks will never get me; we are the young, the youngest of the young, the surfer army, yada yada. The interesting part, a kind of secondary meaning that casts its shadow around the aggressive brightness, is that Piotta, far from being the youngest of the young at the time, was already in his late twenties when the song came out. Something darker is looming, in other words, and you can see it around the edges of the final line above: Quanto resisterai? How long will you last—the next wave, the day, the season, the surfer himself. Because the sun is going down (in another line) and the autumn is already beckoning. Thirty, in sum, and all that it betokens to the juvenile bravo, or anyone else for that matter. A first reckoning with the realities of aging.

Talk big before the ocean and the sharks all you want, there are always waves that might prove too big for you, however great a rider on the storm you may imagine yourself to be. No one reaches adulthood without swallowing enough salt water along the way to realize, whether you like to admit it or not, how little of the stuff it takes to choke everything off. And as for the sharks, I don’t believe that we are ever really under any illusions: they do bite and will kill when your number comes up and they happen to be hungry. We may look the other way and pretend that they aren’t circling around us; but we know they are there, night and day, even if we may succeed at making ourselves forget about them most of the time. All it takes is a bit of blood in the water, and we are reminded very quickly; and there is always some bleeding, sooner or later.

What is different for the young is that they are (or at least should be) able to count on more unbounded reserves of vitality and corresponding exuberance to keep them going. They have more energy left to put up against the forces that threaten to drag us all down eventually—or if they don’t, there is a problem more fundamental than age. The key to the song, as I hear it, lies in this undiminished enthusiasm—in the spirit of the sha-la-la-la-la, which may come to the young more naturally, but which is the voice of life at any age. And what it says is not that big waves cannot drown me (though the lyrics shout otherwise, as if to get the rider’s courage up for the next encounter), but that none of them has been able to do it yet; so let the next one come! Likewise, it’s by no means that there aren’t any sharks in the water, or that they don’t bite, or that anyone can be sure of making his escape when the evil day comes; But first they will have to catch you, or me, or anyone; so let’s make it as hard for them as we can.

The spirit of the song is captured nicely in the refrain—un'altra volta, un'altra onda—one more time, one more wave, the imperious voice of survival itself. What makes all the difference is not the violence or coldness of the water, nor the fierceness of the sharks, but whether one can keep greeting every new onrush (and another, and another) with the undaunted cheerfulness of the sha-la-la-la-la. How many waves there have already been scarcely matters, and how many more are still to come is not up to us; our part is to be ready for the next one, and to put as much heart into the ride as we can muster, or into the crash, if it should come to that. It’s when this readiness starts waning, not when you hit the rushing wall of water again or get pulled under for the umpteenth time, that you are running out of life.

So let’s join voices with Piotta, even those of us who aren’t the youngest of the young (nor wish to be), and even if what we have before us is not celestial harmonies or angelic chorales but yesteryear’s musical light fare. I don’t get the sense that Piotta aspires to comparison with Palestrina, and as for this writer’s lowly perspective, suffice it to say that the song in question has been listened to about a million times already for every time this post is likely to get read. So let’s sing it together, this little hymn to life: Sha la la la la, sha la la la la la!—un'altra volta, un'altra onda—sha la la la la, sha la la la la la!—quanto resisterai?