Sapore di Sale
Sapore di Sale
How one song reminded me of the romance and beauty of progress
Upon moving to Italy I encountered the challenge of learning a language. Accompanying a challenge of this scale comes a yearning to know if you are learning and progressing.
But how do you keep track of progress? You can’t always stand against a wall in your house, pull out a tape measure and mark it with a pencil. At times it feels as if it simply roams without you knowing.
My students try to overcome this problem of intangibility by obsessing over digestible, wholly formed numbers like grades, weights and percentages. It’s much easier to interrogate these, to set a rigid target and succeed or fail in pursuit.
But from my perspective, there’s something unerring about this approach. These numbers don’t convey what was put into the pursuit of a dream or desire, the anguish and emotion one experiences along the way.
It seems wrong to just cram all of that hardship, all that is felt, into something so bland. There must be a better yardstick? A more vibrant, warmer way of judging our efforts?
Step forward my own recent experience of progress then, one that takes us from the commune of Capo d’Orlando in Sicily, to the unwashed and smelly days of early university, and finally, a recent walk in search of a coffee.
Taste of Salt
Let's go back to 2018, University of Leeds. I was in conversation with an old friend of mine, Adam, who’d returned from Italy where he’d been studying. Chugging away on wrinkly cigarettes, he recounted his experience on the continent with his gruff, Aussie inflection. Simultaneously, he was unravelling a conversation of seismic importance to me, sowing seeds of inspiration that took hold in the arable parts of my heart and mind.
His tales of time spent in a quaint Italian town, mopping up the last of the olive oil with the last of the table’s bread, hours spent soaking up the sun, untampered cigarette branding...every element of his experience seemed to have its own beautiful flourish that stood in contrast to the stultifyingly dull vision of my future in England.
As the final embers of those cigarettes descended homewards to the living room floor and the last dregs of afterglow filled glasses half full, he shared with me a song. Composed by Gino Paoli in 1963 in Capo d'Orlando, Sicily, Sapore di Sale met my ears for the first time.
On to the phone and out of the speakers came Italy itself. Everything I had ever known of it and dreamed of. I remember envisioning lapping waves licking bathing bodies, small anchored boats drunkenly stirring from side to side, the beating Mediterranean sun above. It remains with me to this day, that first listen, and in that moment unbeknownst to me, I had found a measure of progress.
Why? Because try as I might I could never grapple with the Italian lyrics. I didn’t understand the language. The translated words just wouldn’t stick. Simply repeating them was a hollow venture and meant very little compared to the accessible sense of emotion the song offered me. And so, as years drifted by, I had made no progress.
Even after moving to Italy and becoming fully immersed in its language, I still struggled to grasp how well I was doing. A constant and instinctive fear of being wrong besieged me, a dread of seeming stupid and embarrassing myself. I recognise this fear in my students too. It culminates in a tendency to chastise yourself so harshly that you leave mental marks and wounds that sometimes require days to heal.
Nevertheless, on another path just out of sight of this intensely frustrated version of yourself, is another version of you that is progressing. It wanders, infrequently seen and rarely acknowledged, but every so often you bump into them in the most charming of ways.
Snail Shell
So it was that a while ago I finished a lesson with my Italian tutor. I strode out of my school, sun shining a sweet and succulent fourteen degrees that left love bites on my nose and cheeks, aiming for a nearby bar and a quick coffee. I shuffled Spotify. To my delight, I was met by Sapore di Sale.
It was halfway through the track that a feeling brought me to a sudden halt. A smile forced its way onto my face. The version of me that had been progressing out of view for so long suddenly appeared. I had no choice but to acknowledge it and wave. Five or six years after my first encounter with it, I had understood the song.
There I stood for an eternity under the faint pulse of the Mediterranean sun, words of another language computing in my brain. The true essence and meaning of this love letter sinking deep into my skin and down into my bones for the first time.
In a split second, I relived dozens of moments of pain and exhaustion, flashbacks to triumphant interactions and minuscule achievements, all that had paved the way to this instant. This cathartic pleasure and satisfaction was the culmination of years of effort. It was proof that I had progressed. Irrefutable evidence of success.
My progress hasn’t been linear. I don’t envision it as a line moving further away from the starting point, sat with Adam six years ago. Instead, I like to imagine it as a circle, like that of a snail shell coiling around its axis.
The line grows thicker as my learning expands. Unaware, I’d been swinging around a focal point, passing by this song again and again, slowly, incrementally understanding more and more. In essence, at the heart of my axis all this time and gauging my progress, had been Gino Paoli and his love song.
What can we learn here then? I suppose it’s that measuring progress can be beautiful and dramatic. It can be a romantic journey if you allow it to be, not one defined by harsh and lifeless numbers. Indeed, I’ve found it easier to reflect upon my progress when positioning it within contexts I have a strong affection for.
In practice, this means my proof of progress is that I’ve begun to laugh and joke daily with Anna and Lina, two of the wonderful cleaners at my school.
Gianluca, the boxing-obsessed butcher and passionate Cavese Ultra, offers me little discounts and whispers his culinary secrets.
A lovely old lady, whilst inspecting fruit and veg like an archaeologist, recently taught me the secrets of spotting the best produce after I sought her wisdom.
I feel like one of the locals in my favourite bar, not having to place an order myself but simply being asked if I want ‘the usual’, or introducing my friends to the genuine delight of the weird and wonderful characters that reside there.
Only the other day I bumped into the father of one of my students whilst taking two visiting friends for lunch. Quick as a flash, he paid for the whole meal as a token of his gratitude.
So despite the helpful digitisation of progress, if you asked me how I’m getting on in Italy, how my Italian is progressing or how I’ve settled, these are the anecdotes I would share. This is how I’m measuring my progress. More beautiful, more romantic, più come la vita stessa.