How much noise the silence of a voice makes. How disheartening can be the certainty that it will no longer be, will no longer say, will no longer laugh. That there will be no questions, answers, dialogues, stories. The question ricochets senselessly from one area of ​​the mind to another. Ever since the news of Massimo Cotto’s death hit me, a bucket of icy water on an August morning already scorching with thoughts and temperatures, I’ve been asking myself. Then there’s silence, indeed.

Coincidentally, it was around 8:45, more or less the time in which in the last few years, from September to July, I have been happy with that “you are the Resistance!” by Cavaliere Nero-Antonello Piroso as a spur for a day that only the heavens knew how it would go. “Ok, I am the Resistance”. Off with the earphones, let’s go, let’s begin. Bye Virgin Radio, see you tomorrow Rock and Talk, because now my day begins. “Rock and Talk”, in its own way, it too.

Massimo Cotto’s voice, together with that of Maurizio Faulisi-Dr Feelgood and Antonello Piroso, escorted the awakening of I don’t know how many mornings from the anxiety of immediately putting duty before pleasure. It contributed to the magnificent sensation of enjoying the calm of a city still half asleep, of savoring the slowness of numb movements as one does with the last sip of the second coffee. To the rhythm of the playlist of a radio program perfect to accompany from the bed to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the shower, from the shower to the closet and up the stairs, for the entire journey home from work, I listened to songs that I didn’t know, I got to know new ones, other versions. Quietly, I also answered the questions addressed to the listeners. Addressed to me.

I smiled at the vocals of the most assiduous fans, a variegated morning microcosm of male and female office workers, secretaries, lawyers, doctors, nurses, truck drivers, students. I laughed, but laughed heartily, at the insults to the brave “goats” of “Guess the Rockstar”, at those “morning savories” that have become a jargon that the “Virgin-ians” will pick up on. I waited to find out how far that “third clue” would go that told of Cotto’s genius, that absurd imagination mixed with an uncommon level of preparation, with a sympathy that was such in the true sense of the term of “feeling emotions together”, you with all the rest of the people tuned in at the same time, at the same hour.

Now I think of the experience it takes to make culture an elegant means of entertainment. The empathetic talent it takes to not just be heard, but to feel, to be truly felt inside, not so randomly. The gentle ability to know how to enter the daily lives of strangers who now realize the importance of a voice that day by day had become part of the family.

“In the morning there are 3 million 300 thousand people listening to me. But I don’t know who they are, I don’t know what they look like, how old they are, their musical tastes. I don’t know if they’re old, if they’re young, I don’t know where they are and above all I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say, because when the previous album is about to finish the technician tells us how much time we have available. The beautiful thing about radio, for me, is that it’s exactly like life: you can’t rehearse, you can’t prepare anything. You can prepare a lot of things, but not exactly what you say. And it’s one of the few things whose magic is released entirely by words. All the other times we go to see something… Even the book that is made of words is mediated by sight, we watch a film. Radio is the only thing where you can’t rehearse anything and that’s what makes it unique, makes it magical.”

Massimo Cotto spoke like this from the stage of the 21st edition of the Passepartout Festival in Asti. It was June. “You can’t rehearse, you can’t prepare anything…”. The voice echoes in the ears. The sound of the silence of the next mornings.