Sometimes reality is tougher than dreams. Fantastic ideas get caught up in a web of thousands of questions that don’t always have logical answers
Have you ever found yourself dreaming of something that comes very close to reality? Some time ago I suddenly woke up from a strange dream, perhaps a nightmare. Interpreting dreams is definitely felt to be one of the foundations of psychoanalysis: it was Freud himself who said that the analysis of dreams was a direct route to the subconscious. Without going into the details of my night-time thoughts, I just remember that I was at the Cannes Yachting Festival and as I walked between the stands I saw somebody who was talking to a designer friend of mine.
I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel like speaking to him, so I pretended to be on a phone call. I just remember that I wanted to ask him if the weather was good in Dubai and if the water at Montecarlo was clean. Of course there are a lot of ideas and questions in dreams, and they don’t always follow a theme, or have any internal logic. And I found myself as if I were in a comic book, with bizarre and absurd questions floating in cloud-shaped bubbles. How come a yard that launched and delivered two boats of around 50 metres in September 2016 found itself on the brink of bankruptcy one month later? Why did that yard move its sales office to Monaco, setting up a new company which then was to pay the shipyard in Italy? Perhaps because that way it could be closer to its wealthy clients? Or because owners could pay in Monaco and it definitely wasn’t a problem for them if the builder in Italy wasn’t paid? Why did the majority shareholder, who seems very rich, rich enough to be able to buy a significant stake in an important Italian bank, not intervene to save the historic Italian yard? Of course the bank itself wasn’t doing so well, to the extent that the State had to intervene to save the situation after a sovereign fund withdrew at the last moment.
Perhaps if the bank had changed hands, there would have been enough money to save the yard? Or perhaps it is the funds from the yard that were used to speculate on the bank shares, and had this gone well it would also have saved the yard? At the end of all this I told myself that I should have lighter food for dinner so as not to have these strange dreams. Looking at it more closely, I’m not the only one with dreams. Some people dream with their eyes open, like the unions in the historic yard who are hoping for a white knight, with deep pockets lined with Chinese Renminbi, to sort everything out. I know from experience not to believe in dreams, and at this stage it is cheaper for anybody to buy the firm out of bankruptcy straight from the court. I forgot to tell you that I also dreamt that I was wondering how it was that all the big financial newspapers, which always pay close attention to these events and are quick to launch special investigations which shed light on behind the scenes manoeuvring, haven’t paid much attention to the yard, or the workers, or the shareholder.
It is a great mystery that my dream couldn’t explain, because the alarm began to blare out, and I woke up.
(The editorial by Franco Michienzi November 2017 )