The Sound of Passion

Stories of Audacity

To get to your destination you can just move, but to travel is much more. A travel is a way to live new emotions, or to awaken the ones forgotten. Travelling is crossing the world with the desire to be amazed, realizing that you are living, discovering every time the sound of passion, the power of nature and the thrill of exploration.

Maserati addressed a writer and a photographer in order to express these emotions, thorough their arts.

The first stop of this journey is the majestic and fickle territory of the mountain. Here you can discover how the storytellers and the Ski World Champion Giorgio Rocca lived this adventure. Discover together with them THE SOUND OF PASSION.

THE PLACE

Imagine a valley that ceases to sway because in four kilometres there’s a dam and a border. It’s the valley before you with its’ finis terrae attitude that proudly evokes ancient trade crossings, and lodging houses.

The Sound of Passion

The place

Imagine a valley that ceases to sway because in four kilometres there’s a dam and a border. It’s the valley before you with its’ finis terrae attitude that proudly evokes ancient trade crossings, and lodging houses. Above you the mountains are swollen with snow higher than a man. Piz Bernina, Piz Quattervals, Piz Murtaröl, Scima da Saoseo - their crests draw an irascible line beyond which there’s a Prussian blue sky, the blue of deep space, air being thin up here.

If you bring your gaze back to the ground, you see a road that sways with the same frequency of the valley. Perhaps for this reason it’s called Valley Road. There should be another kind of blue to the right, one with the green tones of Lake Livigno, and indeed there is, only it’s buried beneath a blanket of snow that also covers a layer of ice. On your left, stone walls protect the road on which entire mountains rest. Moving beneath them, what is visible becomes film, the landscape becomes alive.

So, let’s sum it up: mountains outside, a frontier before you, an iced lake on your right, a road beneath you, a car around you.

I’m just a whispering voice, you on the other hand, are living this.

THE SOUND

Now that you’re living, you can stop imagining. Listen. Don’t go too far: listen to the near space surrounding you. The car’s cockpit enveloping you is the safe womb of a wild animal.

The Sound of Passion

The sound

Now that you’re living, you can stop imagining. Listen. Don’t go too far: listen to the near space surrounding you. The car’s cockpit enveloping you is the safe womb of a wild animal. Inside there is no instability nor danger, even if it’s a place launched into space, chasing prey which today is just this experience.

But don’t mistake stillness with silence. Listen more carefully, especially when closer to a curve. Eight valves increase their rotational speed as a crescendo makes its way from deep visceral tones, until it growls to higher sharp tones that turn this sound into the result of rationality: the wild animal suddenly transforms into perfection of technology, its sound studied in every detail, the platonic growl of high engine revolutions.

The curve obstructs a view then opens the next; everything is reachable in this skillfully combined cathedral of elements that escort your hands, your body (you are momentum) and your hearing, towards a straightstretch that calls the wild animal. And the wild animal responds. The valves increase their revolutions once again and a slight pressure on your chest invites you to lean into your seat. Now shift your gaze to the mountains: they look like earth’s fingers pointing the direction. Upwards.

Outside, the wild animal howls for you and lets you feel its scratch, but inside you also enjoy this luxury: probing the superhuman limit between absolute silence and a war cry.

THE ALTITUDE

When you step on it, untouched snow compresses with a soft crackle; the sound too is subjected to unpolluted things; the empty space contracts. But let’s go further than sound, let’s feel the body.

THE PEAK

At the top, the view changes. The engine rests, your heartbeat slows down, your gaze opens: you rest your feet on the line that you followed from the beginning of the trip, the line that separates white from blue.

THE DUEL

Drivers and skiers speak the same language. Semantically or physically, there’s no difference in how they face the slope they’re about to cover.

THE WAY BACK

Livigno is a stone’s throw away, you’ll go back to fetch your things and leave that corner of the world that resembles a cluster of white cold pollen come from the North.