Ladies and gentlemen, good evening, I’m Vanni De Luca.
Thanks to the applause on trust.
I am a human computer, so please imagine how
a calculator 1metro high and 78 with all the keys in the right place.
Today I will show you my multi-tasking number,
I will solve a Rubik’s cube at the same time,
puzzle became famous in the 80s,
while I will do some complex calculations
with a random number chosen by the public,
and simultaneously I will recite from memory
the divine Comedy,
starting from any freely chosen verse.
But let’s go in the audience.
Your name is?
Marco.
You have a few seconds to mix this cube and make it
impossible to solve. I did not even have to tell him, he started fourth.
The gentleman here in front?
[English] OK, give me a number, a high number,
[English] two-digit. Anyone.
[English] Higher, please.
[English] Two figures.
[English] 98, yes? 98, ok.
Ninety-eight. Ok, excellent choice. It could be any number,
a two-digit number I asked, could it be 54,
61, why not? And finally…
I need … Do you speak Italian? Yup?
I need the help of this wonderful girl.
There’s the Divine Comedy waiting for you here on stage.
Let’s make a big applause. Thank you!
(Applause)
Your name is?
Samira. Nice to meet you. Vanni. Take a seat as well.
Samira,
take the Divine Comedy, open it, yes, open it,
browse it, make sure all pages are different,
as written by our great, great poet,
Petrarca …
(Laughs)
When you did, Samira, please read aloud
– I will say in the microphone –
the first verse of any triplet.
Go ahead, go! Yes, read.
“Li rights eyes then twisted in blinds”.
Ok.
“The rights of eyes then twisted in blinds, look a little, then bent his head:
and fell with it to the par of the other blind. “Correct?
Correct!
Fantastic. We are inside the VI Canto,
Pig,
“Li rights eyes then twisted in blinds”.
Samira, we will leave exactly from that point, okay?
You will be the eyes of the public
and you will have to check that my declamation is correct.
Can I get the cube back?
Thanks so much.
Gentlemen, we have the cube,
we have the number 98,
we have “Li rights eyes then twisted in blinds”.
We can start.
“Li rights eyes then twisted in biechi,
looked at me a little then he bent his head:
and fell with it to the par of the other blind “.
Seventyeight.
“It is the duke who said to me: ‘The more you do not wake up here from the sound of the angelic trumpet,
when the podesta insect comes: … “One.
“… each one will see again the sad tomb, he will restore his flesh and his figure,
he will hear what is perpetuated ‘.
Yes, we passed through soot mixture … “Twelve.
“… de l’ombre and de la pioggia, with slow steps,
touching the future life a little; for I said: ‘Master, esti tormenti
Will they grow up after the great sentence, or lesser ones, or will they be scorching? ‘ “
Seven!
“And he to me: ‘Return to your experience, who wants, how much is more perfect,
the more you feel good, and so your goodness. “Eleven.
“All these maladate people in true perfection already never go away,
Beyond that, here, be waiting ‘. We went round that road … “
Eight.
“… speaking louder than I do not laugh, we came to the point where it goes down:
here we found Pluto, the great enemy “.
Turn the page, right? Fantastic.
(Laughs)
“I say, following …” (Applause)
“that I was before we were at the foot of the high tower,
our eyes went to the top for two little flames that we saw them laying,
and another far from making a sign, so much so that the pain of the eye could be “.
Seventy-seven.
“And I turned to the sea of all wisdom, I said, ‘What does this say?
that other fire? And who are those who ‘l fenno?’
And he to me: ‘Up for the waves … “Two.
already see what you expect … “Five.
“If we did not take the pantan, he will not hide you.” Ten.
“Rope never pierces by itself, it turns out that it ran off to the slender air”
Three.
“As I saw a little ship coming for the water towards us in that one,
under the rule of a single galeoto,
who cried out: ‘Or if’ come, soul fella! ‘.
‘Flegïàs, Flegïàs, you cry out,’ said my scorer, ‘at this time: … “
Ah … eighty!
“… the more you will not have to spend the lotus alone”.
What is the great deception he listens to … “
Four.
“… that is done to them, and then he regrets it, made Flegia in anger.”
Seventy nine. “The duke my descend in the boat …
and then he let me in … “You are.
“… near him …”
“… and only when I was in it seemed to lure …
As soon as the duke and I were in the wood, the ancient prow went off … “
Nine!
(Applause)
Gentlemen,
look at the square on your right.
No number called by me out loud is the number 98,
but if we add the first line,
78 + 1 +12 + 7 ago 98, as well as the second one,
the third and the fourth line.
The first column: 78 + 11 + 5 + 4 ago 98,
as well as the second, the third and the fourth column.
And if it’s not enough for you, gentlemen, you can check
the first diagonal, as well as the second one,
they do again 98.
(Applause)
Thank you.
But your applause is about trust for two thirds
because here we have Samira who must confirm.
Samira, can you confirm?
I confirm, even if I have not been behind anymore, so …
… that I was fast. All right.
A round of applause in Samira, let’s get back to the place.
Thanks honey, a kiss. Hello.
Please, again in the audience.
Ah, let’s rest for a moment. Let’s rest for a moment.
I ask you to close your eyes.
It’s not rhetorical, is it?
Let’s close these beautiful little eyes.
Let’s take a deep breath.
Ah, and we throw out this air.
Feet plants well supported on the floor,
then we remove the legs.
Hands on the thighs, back straight.
And I ask you to imagine.
Imagine being in front of your door
and having to open the door.
But notice that the knob changes
and becomes a nest. Cip! Cip! Cip!
A beautiful nest of birds.
Open the door
and inside your living room, in the middle of a blanket of Cuban cigar smoke
there are some nuts that are clandestinely playing poker.
Disconcerted by the thing, go to the kitchen to ask your mother for explanations
but that is turning the sauce with a giant baseball bat
who is screaming, because this baseball bat is alive too.
Think you’re in a dream, go to the bedroom,
say: “I’ll rest for a moment”.
But your shower is on your bed
who is hopping like a five-year-old
and you are smearing the room of water.
Well, open your eyes.
Thank you.
The show you saw a while ago
inspired by a great artist of the past named Harry Kahne
that in his shows he showed he could write 5 sentences at the same time
on as many blackboards, holding the chalks with hands, feet and mouth,
memorize series of 20 words in a matter of seconds
associating them with as many numbers
and to recall them at the request of the public.
When I read the story of Harry Kane, I told myself:
“Yes, go! How beautiful!”
This makes you understand the kind of nerds they are.
(Laughs)
But I wanted to do this too.
And therefore, starting from that inspiration,
I put my greatest passions on paper, then
recreational mathematics, logic and finally poetry.
At one point I said, “Let’s put them together this way, let’s intersect them.”
and there he stood before the first wall.
It’s too hard,
I’ll never make it,
they are three activities together, one more difficult than the other.
Self-sabotage that we all know well.
So I set aside the project.
After some time,
here I find inspiration and I find hope
looking at who did the multi-tasking his life, then
the musicians
who learn to combine podo-manual skills to read a score
or to the song.
And when you learn a new tool,
you start any journey in our life,
we need a solid base on which to rest.
That base is called
method.
And the function of the method
it must be to make us pass between two states of being:
between being unknowingly incapable
and be unknowingly capable.
And we all happened when we learned to walk as children, right?
We were in the crib at the beginning,
it was enough to cry and our mother gave us
all our needs, then
porridge, to drink, the Spritz, if necessary.
And here we are, however, unknowingly incapable,
we do not know what it means to walk.
Then one day, crawling,
we see the big ones who have two legs
and they go faster than we have four.
How is this working?
We are consciously unable to walk.
Then the challenge begins, go, take the furniture,
we climb, our mother holds us by the hands.
We are consciously capable, we are taking the first steps.
When I first asked Samira to come on stage,
did not think: “Left, right”.
He is unknowingly capable.
It becomes our second nature, we no longer think about it.
It’s the same thing that happens when we learn to ride a bike
or we learn to drive.
And the number you saw a little while ago
is: clutch, gear, accelerator.
I only had to impart, like a driving teacher,
to myself,
the best method to become unknowingly capable
in my business.
How can each of us find his method?
I have only one piece of advice that is to simplify
so let’s take what we have to do,
we divide it into many phases
and for each of it we find the best strategy
to complete it.
That said so, it’s easy.
I found it a great difficulty,
I had to understand
how to put these three things together with a single strategy.
So, the Divine Comedy.
There are three different areas of the brain:
the Divine Comedy with language,
math, the calculation with the square matrix
and finally the Rubik’s cube is the logical part.
What could be the trait d’union of all these activities?
I searched and found:
the art of memory.
An instrument that we all have,
installed here,
no plug-ins is needed.
We just have to understand how to use it,
because we are not taught at school.
And that’s how the first obstacle was the Divine Comedy.
How can I learn a text written in Italian vernacular,
that today is really impractical for many people,
but make it easy and fun to learn?
You must know that memory works by images.
The more these images are paradoxical,
rich in colors, action,
here, the more easily we deposit them.
I will give you an example precisely with the Divine Comedy.
In the IX Canto dell’Inferno, Dante, around 22,
I said it before,
“Ver is the other breath down here I was, conjured by that raw Eritón
that recalled the shadows to ‘bodies on’.
That said so is a senseless tongue twister.
But let’s try to give meaning to these words.
“It’s true”, true it is.
I imagine the conductor of Verissimo, Silvia Toffanin,
who has heavy breath.
I do not want to, but the images must be paradoxical.
This breath is not heavy because it stinks
but it is heavy because it is ballasted
and then it goes down.
And going down he risks hitting Luca Giurato
who is leading an episode of Uno Mattina, quiet.
Luca Giurato escapes and slams into a box of raw meat
on which Eritóne is written.
From this box they come out of hands
that recall the shadows to their bodies.
“Ver is the other winder down here I was,
conspired
from that raw Eritón
that recalled the shadows to ‘bodies on’.
And this work of protrae throughout the text.
It’s the same job a director does when he has to translate,
must readjust a text from the book
and make it become a cinematographic work.
And when you work with a text it’s easy,
because it is particularly evocative.
How can we work with numbers instead?
that do not give visual stimuli?
The answer is given to us by real memory phenomena
which were Giordano Bruno, very Italian, and Goffredo Leibniz
who developed a method to convert
numbers in sounds,
the sounds in words,
and from these words create an entire gallery of images.
Example.
For me, the number 40
it’s an image of a rocket.
And viceversa.
For me, the number 785,
if you tell me: “785”, I think of a horse.
Do not ask me why, that’s how it is.
This allows me to create a real mental file
where images for me represent all the numbers from 1 to 1000.
So it’s easier, the images interact,
but when the recollections are numbers
and in the square matrix we now have 98.
Was the number 93,
the calculation would have been completely different.
I would have put a feather, because the feather is the image of 93.
I put it on the grid, mentally,
and I start doing my calculations
But I could get confused
because in the Divine Comedy here and there are numbers,
they could bother me,
so I fix the number, calculated as an image,
just before saying it.
For example, I start with 23, which for me is the image of a gnome,
that is there,
the number 20 which is the image of a nose,
and so on
until you complete it slowly
with colorful and paradoxical images the whole table.
If I now you …
Almost everything, attention.
Because here you come into play.
If I asked you which numbers are missing,
you would say to me: “Boh, I do not know”.
But if I asked you: you were about to open the front door, right?
Did you hear chirping?
What was it? A…? A nest. Well done.
Revenue and nuts were clandestinely playing poker,
your mom was running around with a bat …
…baseball
(Laughs)
And finally the shower, very good, in your room.
And here’s that by reconverting the images in my head
I completed the square matrix.
It is a method.
I always invite you to look at the screen.
On the left corner, ladies and gentlemen, with its 14 tons of weight
a meteor!
The probability of being hit by such an object
it is one in 1,600,000
At the right corner of the ring, gentlemen,
of lesser weight, but equally fearful,
ready to undermine our psychic balance,
a cube of Rubik.
The probability of solving it blindly is one out of 43.
Billions.
(Laughs)
Haha!
Of billions.
(Laughs)
Considering that nobody here has been hit by a meteor,
I would say that solving a Rubik’s cube
it is a particularly complex operation to do blindly.
But,
when we find a point of reference in the chaos, there.
Even small,
here all around takes shape.
And in Rubik’s cube it’s literally like that.
Because as much as I can mix it
the center never moves.
Because they are pins,
everything else revolves around.
And so, this makes us understand that the faces in the end
they will have the same color as the center, like this.
The easiest way to fix the cube:
four phases.
From 43 billion billions of probability to 4 phases, with a method in between.
Difficult, because they are hundreds of moves, algorithms to learn by heart,
all right, but they are 4 phases.
I make a cross, orienting the centers,
I solve the first two layers,
I make a cross on the other side,
and finally permutation, or better, interchange between them
all the corners until I’ve solved the cube.
In doing so, it solves one of the most difficult puzzles in the world,
that most of you, I’m sure, will have somewhere in the cellar
and they have not yet solved it.
In doing so, with small steps at a time,
I took what I considered totally unreliable
and I have made it not only part of my daily life, but my work.
I live there.
And I’m one like you
that sitting in this audience are probably looking for
time, finances
or the method
to be able to give life to your ideas.
I hope to have given you a little input on this point.
And like a drop from day to day … tic, tic,
erode the rock,
the advice is this:
find your method
to make anything you want to do simple
can be
pass the next exam
or build the life you have always wanted.
Do it methodically,
a step at a time.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
”
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