Sometimes I cannot smile
Sometimes I cannot smile – Pier Casotti
I often ponder life and death. I decompose the pieces, dismantle elements in an attempt to rationally analyse them and then recompose and reconstruct the fragments, only to end up with a different equation each time. You need the right place to reflect and Greenland was that place for me. Life and death, black and white, opposing dichotomies revealing all their ruthlessness. East Greenland is all this. In Greenland nature takes over, it takes possession of rationality and gives a meaning to daily life. Greenland narrates a deafening silence. A voice whispering indefinable and inscrutable emotions. In Greenland one doesn’t live, at best one survives. Here 20% of youths aged between 15 and 25 try to end their lives every year. 2% of them succeed.
A self published book, “Sometimes I cannot smile” is a personal, intimate journey inside the Greenlandic juvenile world where nature, violence, boredom and a strong cultural legacy have been claiming for decades the highest and saddest “toll”. That of hundreds of young lives.
A delicate exploration of the subtle and intimate war many young people fight against violence, boredom and emptiness, a struggle that has always been the “raison d’être” of young generations, the difference being that in east Greenland many of them lose that battle.