Comments on
Sheria Tshongo Mussoghora's song, The Albatross:

a.s 2011/2012

FEDERICA LOZITO 1A: I’ve listened to this song about 15 times, but every time I have understood new things about it. It’s not only beautiful, but also moving, touching. It tells about a relationship between two people who don’t love in the same way. In fact the author of the song loves unconditionally without receiving the same feelings while the one he loves, the  protagonist of the song’s story, hides herself behind her fears because she can’t show what she feels in her soul. Anyway the man gives himself to his lover even if he doesn’t have any rewards, because this is the real meaning of love. Love, the only thing that urges a person to do everything for someone. Love, the only feeling that makes us feel alive. Having the strength to love a person is rare, difficult, tiring but extraordinarily wonderful and pleasant. The author says that love marks not only our heart, but also our body. He tries to fly in order to live and feel this love on his skin. Even though he’ll have the marks of this disappointment and this strong love, he wants to spend life feeling this happiness. I think that the most important message of the song consists in understanding that pain is bearable and sometimes beautiful just when we love, because love is the single reason to continue fighting and living.

ALBERTO LENTINI 3A: The albatross by Charles Baudelaire: when I heard for the first time this name I thought of something powerful and enigmatic. I was 8 or 9 years old when I had to recite this poem during a play. When I read it for the first time, I felt so comforted and so strong. I haven't still understood the reason why I felt this feeling: I only understood that the first poemI read in my life would be my favourite one. Maybe because I felt like an albatross, like a poet: alone and awkward in the world but maybe the most elegant creature to see in the sky. Finally I didn't feel alone in my loneliness, in a world of adults that didn't understand you...who has never felt emarginated or misundertood by the rest of the world???
Differently from Baudelaire's poem, in which I could see a positive side, I could only read the dark and gloomy side of Sheria Tshongo Mussonghora's song. The images and the music transmitted me a sense of heaviness: it seems like someone was nailing down or tying up my soul. Instead of comfort, I felt upset, knowing how the life of "an albatross" could be sad and dejecting if you see it from the outside. The black and white images (loaded by my teacher) correspond perfectly to the nostalgic melody. And so I agree with the author of the song: it deals with a story of love and I think that the lover is like an albatross; in fact he seems awkward while "he's walking" because of his "enormous wings": his love. But inside his soul there's an open sky in which he can open his wings and space out in freedom. The song so ended with the line "let me try to fly". The search of freedom: the most important gift that God gave us.

 ROBERTA POTITO 3A: I think that most teenagers have felt like an albatross once in their lives. Adolescence is the strange period when everything seems uncertain and the mirror you are looking at reflects a brumous image of yourself: your arms look like two long and white wings unable to fly in the sky of your skills and feelings.

Unfortunately this feeling of inadequacy is spreading more and more in the world of adults too. Probably the indifference to our neighbour’s problems and the inability to communicate is making our daily lives meaningless and aloof from the rest of the world. We feel as if we were the only survivors of a wrecked ship, walking alone on a desert island.

However as soon as we start to socialize or make friends, we succeed in finding our real identity because we find out that the others too often feel clumsy and inadequate like an albatross walking on the deck of a ship.

CLAUDIA MADDALENA 1A: In my opinion, in this song the most beautiful things are the words, because the melody is sad.
I think that, when Sheria wrote the song, he was in love, in fact he makes us feel his sentiment. He describes the girl like a mystery that he wants to reveal; he wants to reveal what she hides behind her smile. He talks about the suffering that she causes and, despite all, he “would offer his bare chest for the deathblow”.At the end of the song he asks her to “ let him try to fly”.The photos of the video are very profound, in a particular way the photo of the hand with a mouth. This photo causes in me a shiver.Also the photo where there are a man and a woman united, is very pretty. This photo demonstrates  that, when they get married, the only thing which completely remains is their love. In fact in the photo we see that behind them everything is destroyed. This song is very beautiful and in my free time I will listen to it because it helps me to relax.

ILARIA VINCIGUERRA 4A : In my opinion the first feeling that this song transmits to you is sadness and loneliness also because of the choice of the music; but when you focus on the lyrics you can understand that behind this unhappiness there is also the desire to live in your own fantasy world, not to give too much importance to the real world, to escape from real life or from real feelings.

From my point of view the last verse “Let me try to fly” is the most important for two reasons: firstly it explains why the author had decided to give this title to the song, than it describes the profound theme of freedom, but in the sense that everyone has got the possibility to imagine and dream what they want whatever the reality is. The song is a sort of monologue in which Sheria imagines to tell his lover everything he things about her behavior . It is by these words that we can understand how deep his love is, that it is unstoppable, that it makes him feel alive; in fact, even if he is considered a plague from his lover, to him this plague is called life! He is also conscious that it isn’t a required love but he wants to fly like an albatross, to imagine and to dream that this impossible love can live even if only in his mind.

A very beautiful song, suitable for adolescents that very often face these type of troubles and that many times have to accept it or to make what they dream real only in their minds.

GIUSEPPE BATTISTA 4A: It 's amazing what a person is able to transmit through the sounds and words and even more extraordinary is the different meaning that they can have for each of us, like this song.
In my opinion the whole song is based on the meaning of the Albatross, this great sea bird elegant in flight but clumsy on land. It is the metaphor of the "dreamer". The dreamer, like an albatross, is different from the crowd because of its heart’s great wings and then he lives in a world of his own that allows him to fold out its wings and reach happiness, even if this world is a plague in the eyes of others .
May itbe a sin to love life in a "superior" and "different" way, living it following your instinct to fly?
For an albatross, its reality has not limitations such as pain and it can fly beyond human borders . However the fact that it has limits does not mean that it does not feel them, but considers them as part of itself and accepts them as aspects of life. And so it can live up feelings such as love, the same as poets, who live their own pain and happiness as part of their everyday reality and transform them into poetry.

VITTORIO TROISE 4A: Honestly the first time that I've listened to this song I didn't know what to say; but after listening to it several times, in the calm of my room, I've been quite surprised. Not for the music because in my opinion what is really important in a song is the lyrics, but for the sense of it. However the words are very strong and transmit a sense of anger against this girl that has trampled on his soul without taking care of the possible effects of her acts. The same words are charged of sadness, two feelings ( sadness and anger) that are present in all the song steadily and that you can also see through the images in the video published on the net by our English teacher. I have to be sincere, it's difficult to understand all the work, especially the last part but it is just this the interesting thing: trying to understand what the author wants to tell us with his music and what is more thrilling is trying to understand the real meaning behind each word. I think that in the three final lines there is the reason of both the title of the song and of the song itself. From my point of view he feels like an albatross because he knows that in this relationship he is intended to
suffer. In a certain way he is almost disappointed but, at the same time, he searches freedom and so he says: " let me be called your plague but let my plague be called life and let me try to fly". He is conscious of being a weight for the girl, but he cannot live without her. She is her life and he loves her.
Love one of the most beautiful feeling on the world, the only one that spurs you to do everything. When you are in love you feel strange, you are happy of course but sometimes also incredibly powerful and ready to do all what she wants. Love is important how i said before but sometimes, unfortunately, you are obliged to suffer and this is known well by the author. For this he finishes with:" let me try to fly", to have the possibility to continue to love even if it is an impossible love, the hope that one day things will change because life is incredible, in all sense, and you don't know what will happen tomorrow.

ARIANNA BACCARO 4A: When I listened to this song, at first, I didn't like it so much. Too sad, I thought. But when I listened to it a second time... I understood a very important thing. Everyone, in their life has felt these emotions : loving, really loving , a person, giving all to him/her and receiving nothing. I don't talk exclusively about a relation between a man and a woman, probably this song talks about a love of this kind, but some sentences remind me of love in general, between parents and children, between friends. Sometimes we believe that all our efforts to make a person happy are rewarded , but often it isn't like this. When it happens, we feel invincible. I think this is exactly the message of the song writer: love is difficult, full of problems, but when you find the real one, you'll be free and powerful as an albatross when it flies in the sky.
 

IRENE GIANESELLI 2A:  ONE DAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU The music is playing, the pictures are running after the end, women and men, trees and waste landes, in black and white, towards the end... a sense of death spreads around me. Why is a human being so drown in death? He is worn out, won by loneliness! Who's the reason of this plague? A traitor love? A heartless mother? A selfish father? I don't really know why and who can cause all this despair! But finally the desperate young man asks his torturer to try to fly.
My friend hear me, you've to fly even alone even when someone wants to stop you with  misery, crimes, and words that could hurt you. Life is not a plague, but an extraordinary adventure: pain and happiness, love and hate, black and white, day and night, but also sunset and sunrise. All this is Life: and you have to learn to feel the sense of Life in everything you do and catch around the World. Live your Life: it's not an enemy but a chance! Even when Life seems not to be interested in you!