NoIn recent years, more and more people are hearing the call of nature as a profound necessityno longer a romantic dream. The benefits of contact with natural environments are confirmed by science. A review published on EnvironmentalResearch (Twohig-Bennett and Jones, 2018) analyzed over 140 international studies, demonstrating that living or spending time in contact with nature is associated with a reduction in stress levels, blood pressure and risk of chronic diseases.
It is here, among the woods and valleys of the Ligurian Apennines, that Maurizio Carucci, voice and frontman of Ex-Otagohe found his second life. His story is not an escape, but a return. After years of touring and lighting the stages, Carucci chose to cultivate the land together with his partner Martina Panarese, founding Cascina Barbàn, an agricultural and community project that intertwines natural agriculture, culture and conviviality. Through music and agriculture, he promotes a sustainable, community-based way of living slowness, on community and respect for nature. Its story is that of a return to the land which becomes, at the same time, a philosophy of life and an art form.
The search for a new well-being
The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and meta-analysis relates exposure to green spaces to various health indicators. Reduction of diastolic pressuredecrease in salivary cortisol (stress marker), reductions in heartbeat. Living in the countryside or in the mountains, surrounded by greenery and natural rhythms, has measurable effects on physical and mental well-being. Breathing clean air reduces oxidative stress, walking outdoors regulates blood pressure, contact with the ground stimulates the immune system. But it is not just a question of health: the direct relationship with the earth restores a form of internal balance, a sense of belonging and presence that Urban life often erodes. The mountain, with its slowness and silence, then becomes a laboratory of more authentic life: a place where the body tires in a good way, the mind relaxes and time regains a human rhythm.
The benefits of doing: mind and body realign
Carucci embodies aidea of well-being far from clichés: not so much relaxation and comfort, but conscious action. The daily “doing” – pruning, harvesting, walking between the rows – becomes a rite of reconnection. It’s in the gesture that mind and body realignAnd in the effort that lightness is born. Many studies confirm it: living in contact with nature reduces stress and improves mood. But Carucci doesn’t cite research; he proves it with his own life. The earth, he says, “forces you to be present.” And it is in that presence that he rediscovers freedom. The mountain, in this sense, is not isolation but openness: the place where every day – even the simplest – can become a poetic act.
Maurizio Carucci, voice and frontman of Ex-Otago with his dog
From music to agriculture, there and back
Music and vineyard, two languages of the same truth The double face of Maurizio Carucci – artist and farmer – is not a contradiction, but a coherence. His music and his agriculture arise from the same matrix: the search for the essential. In his latest works, the words become more sober, the melodies more intimate, as if contact with the earth had also stripped the music of everything superfluous. Singing and wine share the same emotional root: both are born from time, from care, from listening. And so there vineyard becomes a metaphor for the artist’s profession: sowing, waiting, accepting unpredictability.
What drove you to leave the city and choose life in the mountains? How has the earth changed your perception of well-being?
«Loneliness, in the city I often felt alone and without a path. I searched and couldn’t find. Nature has become a home for me, a creature to turn to and spend most of my time with. The living contact with the earth, with the woods, with the darkness and silence, showed me states of mind that I didn’t know before, of quiet and gratitude. Let’s be clear, nature can also be extremely ferocious and ruthless but even the crudest and most violent manifestations are part of a plan that I seem to understand, at least in part.”
What does “doing” mean to you today? What effect does constant contact with nature, with the seasons, with the real earth under your feet have on your mood? Also, has living in the mountains taught you anything about breathing, sleep, quality of life in general?
«Doing means letting your hands and your head go. Even sitting still and meditating is doing. In fact, in some respects it is one of the most difficult things to do. I try to stay away from rhetoric: doing/producing; many of the things I do will be enjoyed by those who come after me. The combination of walking/nature tends to have relaxing and stimulating effects. When I happen to have important things to think about, I start walking. I love breathing in the air deeply after the rain or in the woods. I’ve been working on breathing for a long time, thanks to music, walking and for a few years also Qi Gong. Long, thin, silent breaths.”
Today many people dream of leaving the city for the countryside. What real benefits have you experienced and what difficulties can’t be imagined?
«It’s a demanding choice and, the way I structured it, also quite radical. As for me, I would never be able to go back. The joy of eating vegetables grown on your piece of land, sleeping in natural silence, in a darkness interrupted only by the stars, are things I wouldn’t trade for neighborhood life.”
From waking up in the evening, what are the gestures or moments that make you feel good, in balance?
«The alarm clock varies depending on the season, in summer at 6.00 in some periods, in others at 7.00 and in winter around 8.00: I have breakfast, I feed the cats, the dogs, the ducks and the chickens, after which it really depends on the period. I can go down to Genoa to work with the Otaghi, or go into the woods to make wood, in the vegetable garden or in the vineyard. If I’m writing a book, I usually work half a day in the fields and the other half I start writing in the living room, turn on the stove and make a herbal tea with my herbs. I found the balance between the wild and the urban, between the domestic and the wild, between the concrete of agriculture and the artistic of music and literature. In essence, in alternation.”
The mountain, sometimes, puts you in front of silence and solitude. What did it teach you on a psychological level?
«I really think so, getting your hands dirty with earth offers you the possibility of feeling part of something great, infinite, mystical. It’s no small thing to feel part of something as powerful as nature. It makes you feel less alone and when you need it, you just need to slip into some woods to be able to draw on the cosmic and extremely available energies that the earth offers you.”
We often talk about “mindfulness” and presence in the moment. Do you happen to experience it in your daily work in the vineyard?
«I’ve been living in the woods for more than twenty years now. I feel freer but also more vulnerable. As if I lived without filters and without tricks. When you work, you work, whether it’s in the vegetable garden in the woods or in the vineyard, you have to be constantly attentive and present, the risk of making a mess or getting hurt is very high. But often, work in the fields has a very specific rhythm, and it can help you get into one trance-like immersive state, I imagine. As if the repetition made you enter into what you do, almost physically, into the trunks you cut, the potatoes you pot up, the plants you prune, the leaves you remove from the vines. Agriculture can mean enter into extreme symbiosis with nature and this is one of the components that nourishes me the most.”
Is there a direct link between working in the fields and writing music? After days of work in the vineyards, what does it mean for you to go on stage and sing in front of an audience? Is it a liberation, a continuity or a return to yourself?
«Work in the fields has often suggested words, scenarios and refrains to me. Nature is a very spacious place, ideal for creating something from scratch. Live activity, for me, has a very high liberating power. When I haven’t been on stage for a while, I miss it a lot, physically too. For me, the stage represents the place where the things I have written explode or are released, leaving me a little lighter with a regenerating tiredness that is essential for my balance.”
On tour After the harvest, Maurizio Carucci returns on tour with a new musical journey that reflects the same authenticity that he cultivates among the rows of Cascina Barbàn. After the sold out stage on 25 September in Florence (Museo Firenze), there are still places available for the other dates: 3 November in Bologna (Locomotiv Club), 4 November in Milan (Santeria Toscana 31), 14 November in Sarzana (Teatro Impavidi), 26 November in Parma (Colonne 28) and 27 November in Turin (Cap10100). A tour that unites stage and ground, body and voice, remembering that the true root of music is always a human gesture.