EDITORIAL

I come from the 1900s, from the years in which the by now long gone year 2000 was a distant planet that we imagined like a science fiction film (the naïve ones of those days, with the astronauts wrapped up in their silvery suits), from the 60s and 70s when we were the future, we the children and youth of the time, and we thought the only possible future for humanity was the one we were designing.

      What was new was, and always would be, the flower children who preached peace, our miniskirts that had an infinitely different meaning to those of today, the long-haired boys with their guitars who protested against the wars and dictatorships. Then everything went off in another direction and in the cast of the millions of small changes that ,without us realising it, have radically altered our lives and our souls, the leading role certainly goes to the Web and its universe that has expanded unceasingly and inexorably. When speaking of the new generations and their changes, Alessandro Baricco, with a happy metaphor, in his essay The Barbarians speaks of “a new species, with gills behind their ears” and adds that “ where they breathe, there we die”. Unless of course we grow our own gills.

      It has taken many years to come round to accepting the transfer from the printed page to the Web and this can perhaps be seen from the lay-out resembling a traditional magazine. But today, on launching this first Bridge onto the boundless virtual world instead of before a circumscribed real audience, I get the shivers. A bit like throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean – who knows which shores it will wash up on.

      Bob Viscusi was far-seeing in the poem (with which we open this number) written for the presentation of the first print issue of Bridge, in New York, in distant 1996: “in the electronic sphere the spiders spin the cables for their webs”. In poetry there is a visionary capacity that can synthesise in a single line an entire theory, a vision of life, a feeling that would otherwise take millions of words. And in our magazine we have chosen to give a leading role to poetry. And you’ll find plenty of nature, art and literature.

      The magazine was born between Apulia and the United States, with brief incursions into the rest of Italy. An arduous bridge, that spans the ocean, a bridge towards “elsewhere”. Despite the myriad changes and traumas that our years have brought, the myth of the United States resists.

      For young people it represents an educational journey that cannot be renounced; for those who live in our Puglia, in many ways still a place on a human scale, the myth could be the skyscrapers and the unconfined spaces of America. But for the Americans the myth could be the blinding white of one of our masserie, nestling in the green of the olive groves, the sunshine and the silence. The myth, the dream to be fulfilled, is always on the other side of the bridge, elsewhere.

      I thank with all my heart all those who have helped me to set up this first edition of Bridge on line: the journalists, the writers, the many experts, the photographers, the artists, my translators, graphic designers, technical assistants. Special thanks to Michele Giordano, without whose precious support this magazine would never have seen the light of day.

      I look forward to opinions and suggestions from all those who read us. The rule of the Web is to win round the readers, grip them, catch them up in the spell of virtual worlds. My suggestion is to read us, enter into our landscapes, dip into our seas and our stories for a while… And then to switch off the computer and rush back to the real world  for cheap sale where there is everything the Web will never be able to give us: the colors and fragrances of the real countryside, the magic of the city lights, the smile of a real person who listens to us.