After two years of absence Luca Carboni breaks the silence and in an interview given to Evening Courier tells the story of his battle against a large and difficult-to-operate tumor, which in March 2022 chose to reside in one of his two lungs: the diagnosis, the shock, the need to escape all the spotlight, the chemotherapy, the removal of the tumor mass and the immunotherapy.
“We live in a world where everything is communicated, always. I, on the other hand, followed my instinct, my character. I stepped aside. In March 2022, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. A little cough that wouldn't go away, the decision to have an x-ray. I was speechless, that disease is part of our lives, but you think it will never happen to you. Suddenly, everything changed.”
For a moment the world stopped. Then time started flowing again, but at a different speed. Even the music stopped playing for a while. There was a new album almost ready: ten songs, including the single The Ball and another one that was supposed to be released in summer 2022. A song titled Rimini in SummerThat Carbons wrote in 1986 for Vasco Rossibut which he then decided to engrave personally.
“In a few minutes everything changed. From choosing songs I went to choosing therapies to survive.”
Now Luca Carboni he is technically cured, even if – as he himself explained – with this type of illness the word healing has a fragile meaning: “Cancer is not an individual experience, but a collective one. You cannot feel healed if the other person, the person next to you while you were receiving the drip, is not healed”.
Together, hand in hand, gritting our teeth when the pain is too strong, rejoicing in every small step forward, facing the fear of not having enough time, looking death in the face and then telling it: “not now, it's not the time“, even though we don’t have any particular reason to feel indebted to life.
In this regard Carbons declares having lived a dramatic experience without feeling pain: “Even when I saw the end as a possible eventuality, I felt happy. I had a beautiful life, full of light, joy, love. My journey was tiring and full of satisfaction. I didn't give in to despair, which coexisted with me, I fought.
I stopped smoking, I walked a lot. I went to the Apennines and looked for landscapes that would make my relationship with life even stronger. Nature helped me. The arrival of snow, the arrival of spring. I found impervious and fantastic paths that reminded me of the beauty of the things of the world. They were injections of confidence, they were incentives not to give up. Then painting helped me a lot, which has always been my other passion”.
And so in November, in Bologna, there will be an exhibition – curated by Luke Beatrice and produced by Elastic – with the paintings, the drawings, the story board of his first video and the notepads with all the notes of each album.
“I haven’t written any new music, but for the first time, while painting, I used audiobooks. And so I got ideas for possible lyrics and even music for a song. My life had become untied, it had lost the certainty of time, the brightness of perspective. Now I can put it back together and I will start doing so with words and notes. It may not seem paradoxical to you, but the illness, overwhelming every commitment, gave me a feeling of freedom. Even creative. I had no deadlines, no constraints”.
New paintings, new music and even a new tour, because the truth is that Luca Carboni he can't wait to meet his people again: “I need to rediscover what, together with the landscapes, has given me the strength to fight the disease, that is, meeting others.“.
And, precisely in this regard, “when I get back on stage the first song I'll perform will be Spring. It's the song of an awaited season, which comes back different every time. I would like the first date to be in Bologna, my city“.
To welcome him, after this long absence, there is not only his audience, but also some colleagues who wanted to dedicate a special thought to him. Click below on continue to find out who they are and read their words!