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depression

Placide Konan sul palco di "Parole in folle" il 15 ottobre 2023 a Padova. Foto della redazione

“Fou”, quand la société te fait perdre la raison

Redazione

“Prête-moi tes dents, je veux sourire comme toi. Prête-moi tes lunettes, je veux voir comme toi. Ou tout simplement, prêtez-moi une corde pour que je puisse combattre cette maladie en me suicidant”. Être comme les autres ou ne pas être du tout, tel est l’impasse du dilemme du “Fou” protagoniste de cet ouvrage inédit de Placide Konan. Il n’y a pas de juste milieu entre les deux extrêmes, il n’y a pas de remède, il n’y a pas de guérison dans une société qui considère la détresse mentale comme une exception à ignorer au lieu d’une variante à accueillir et à aider.

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Placide Konan sul palco di "Parole in folle" il 15 ottobre 2023 a Padova

“Mon fils”, une lettre à cet enfant qui arrivera

Redazione

Placide Konan s’adresse à un enfant à naître, désiré et déjà aimé. Les futurs parents se posent les questions habituelles, à quoi ressemblera-t-il, à qui ressemblera-t-il… La vie est dure – le père n’épargne pas ce genre d’informations – mais il ne faut pas céder et garder ferme son intégrité. Surtout le mental, tant menacé par certaines dynamiques sociales : “Forgez votre esprit même lorsque la société vous opprime. Et la maladie mentale n’aura pas votre adresse”.

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Placide Konan sul palco di "Parole in folle" il 15 ottobre 2023 a Padova

“Il fait nuit sur le quai”, douleur d’une photo perdue

Redazione

Un orphelin perd la seule photo de sa famille dans un incendie. Il se dit alcoolique, déprimé, paranoïaque; pour un équilibre aussi instable, la perte du seul lien avec le passé est une déchirure déchirante. Son sentiment d’identité se brise, le laissant désespéré. Mais le slameur Konan fait trouver au protagoniste la force de croire en lui et de dire “Je resterai fort comme une forêt de sons. Je vais me lever et me rencontrer. Je me lèverai comme une seule chair et surmonterai cette impasse”.

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Xabiso Vili sul palco di "Parole in folle" il 15 ottobre 2023 a Padova, foto della redazione

“Nathi’s Eulogy”, yet dying stay contagious

Redazione

Often suicide deaths are surrounded by silence, by the shame induced by a loved one’s refusal to live. Relatives, friends begin to talk about tiredness, s/he “was tired of living” people use to say. This poem is a rebellious act against such useless, harmful tactfulness. Truth is necessary and healing, saying “suicide instead of tired” is necessary as reading the signs of a deep depression; this is what Xabiso Vili’s verses suggest. In order to save ourselves, our loved ones and all the people like Nathi, those brotherly friends we’d have never wanted to lose that way.

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Poetra Asantewa sul palco di Parole in folle a Padova il 15 ottobre 2023. Foto della redazione

“For the Blues”, when hope is a faint rumour

Redazione

A poem about the blues, that sad feeling that drags you down at the bottom of yourself and makes you question the sense of getting out of bed in the morning. Poetra Asantewa’s verses follow a young woman as her day unfolds and as her thoughts run one after the other. She tries to make sense of her anxiety and her inadequacy feeling instilled by society and politics, so inclined to crush new generations. But hope cannot be crushed because “Yet there’s something about the way an open wound aggregates and remodels to repair itself, that tells me that we’re here for much more than getting lost.”

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Those days blurred by the heaviness of being

Redazione

“In which I tell you all the reasons I don’t want to exist and you tell me to remember” is the poem Poetra Asantewa composed for “Parole in folle”. Here she gets to the core of mental distress. A bundle of negativity generated by anxiety, depression, feelings of uselessness and impotence. A bundle that can be unfastened by a healing voice speaking hopeful words: “Remember that life is breaking all of us, and every breath we take is the body mending its brokenness. Remember that there’s living proof that this heaviness you feel is not new or alien. It is a mangled dark monster that has been battled and conquered by others before you and will be conquered by you too.”

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Le Duo sul palco di "Parole in folle" a Padova il 15 ottobre 2023. Foto della redazione

“Maux en mots”, guérir la maladie c’est partager

Redazione

Avec la grande force expressive qui les caractérise, Zeinixx et Sall Ngaary ont ouvert le spectacle “Parole in Folle” (Mots Fous) en récitant ce texte composé pour l’occasion. La souffrance mentale est souvent sous-estimée et donc cachée, supprimée, pour ensuite se transformer en une submersion tumultueuse qui risque d’entraîner des conséquences désastreuses. Alors, écrit Le Duo, il faut parler, exprimer la douleur avec des mots, écouter avec compassion car “La paix intérieure [est] un combat quotidien, c’est sûr”.

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Delphina Robert

“Depression”, when it loosens its grip music sounds differently

Gaia Resta

Often people with a (mental) illness turns to personification as a way of coping with it. The illness becomes an entity with a life and a will of its own. So Tanzanian author Delphina Robert writes a letter poem to her despression that has suddently left, after being with her for a long time. Nobody informed her of this “departure” but this new absence makes itself very clear: music has a very different sound now. And despite initially feeling akward in this condition, the loosening of depression’s grip leaves room to relief and to a blank space ready to be filled up with new words.

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Leah Gerand Soko

“A letter to my best friend” is a letter to oneself, a hope for healing

Gaia Resta

Tanzanian author Leah Gerald Soko recounts how she wrote this poem at night, her mind storming and troubled. Feeling useless and unable to do anything about her challenges in life and above all, feeling she had no one to talk to, she turned to writing. A letter to her best friend becomes the chance to open up about her innermost feelings, to face her difficulties and encourage herself to accept her pain and be responsible for her own recovery. In Leah’s words, writing has been “a breakthrough towards depression and anxiety” and it represents now a way “to heal and feel strong about myself”.

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“Bitter sweet” is the skin cut that suffocates the screaming soul

Gaia Resta

Mental illness can include a variety of symptoms; sometimes self-harm can occur. In a vicious cycle, the individual punishes his/her own body – the shell containing a suffocating inner distress – and takes somehow pleasure in it. In this poem Mercy Bibian describes with brutal honesty the “journey” to self-harm in scenes of cinematographic inspiration. So the reader witnesses the first cut and then the following ones, up to the establishing of an addiction to pain, to blood, to cutting – an act that almost inconceivably provides relief of unbearable thoughts and feelings of anxiety and depression.

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