Gillette Madness

TEN ROOMS OF THE MIND

There is a house that each of us inhabits without ever having chosen it.

It has no address. It appears on no map. Yet we know it better than any place we have ever truly lived. Inside, there are ten doors.

Some we open every day without realizing it.

Others we keep locked, pretending they have nothing to do with us.

And then there are rooms we did not build ourselves, yet somehow carry within us all the same. This is not a theory.

It is not a psychology manual gathering dust on a shelf.

It is the account of a man who walked through these ten rooms one by one, often without knowing where he was, and who now, with a few more years on his shoulders, is trying to describe them exactly as he experienced them.

Ten doors.

I opened them all.

Some with curiosity.

Some reluctantly.

Some only when it was already too late to turn back.

If these rooms feel familiar, it is not because they tell my story.

It is because, somewhere deep down, they tell yours as well.

Ferdinando

MADNESS — Excess

They called me crazy.

More than once.

Sometimes because I thought too much.

Sometimes because I felt too much.

And sometimes simply because I saw things from a different angle.

Over time I realized that madness is often the label we give to what we cannot classify.

Yet there is a kind of madness born from excessive sensitivity.

From excessive questioning.

From an inability to accept surfaces without depth.

Madness is a room where thought runs faster than language.

Where emotions arrive all at once.

Where the heart cannot close its doors.

Anyone who passes through it never comes out unchanged.

Because they have seen something.

And what has been seen cannot be unseen.

Many believe madness is the opposite of intelligence.

I am not convinced.

Sometimes they are close relatives.

Sometimes madness is intelligence reaching its final limit.

The point where it can no longer be contained.

Where it sees too many connections.

Too many meanings.

Too much reality at the same time.

And when that happens, language is no longer enough.

Only gesture—or silence—remains as an imperfect translator.