The Dreampack was never really about lightening the load

The Dreampack was, for years, much more than a project about objects. At first glance, it might have looked like a practical challenge: reducing everything I carry with me to an essential and lightweight system. But over time, I understood that I was not really lightening a backpack. I was searching for a more precise form of myself.

At the beginning, it was a struggle against weight, bulk, disorder, and duplicates. But as time went on, I realized that the point was not to carry less. It was to choose better. To decide what truly deserved to stay close to me, and what instead was superfluous or out of balance. So, from a backpack full of compromises, I slowly arrived at a system that felt compact, intentional, and almost philosophical.

The final form of the project is a single-object system. Everything has to fit into one single container: my Pochette.

It was never really about lightening the load

I could tell you that inside that pochette there are only a few carefully chosen objects: an iPhone, wallet, keys, GPD MicroPC 2, reMarkable Move, Korg nanoKEY Fold, charger and USB-C cable, earphones, for a total of about 1873 grams. But the truth is different. Inside it are the things I chose, the things I considered important enough that I never wanted to replace them with anything else. The things that describe me, that make me who I am and who I want to continue being.

Along the way, there were strong choices, even symbolic ones. The GPD MicroPC 2 became the right computer, the definitive one. The Ableton Move and the PO-28 Robot were replaced by the Korg nanoKEY Fold. Even the old North Face sling bag was left behind in favor of the Pochette. Every excluded object made clearer what truly had to remain.

Looking back, I can see four decisive moments.

1. From accumulation to severe selection

Every choice is a renunciation, and over time this idea stopped being just a rule of the project and became a small mantra for life.

2. The war against duplicates and hybrid objects

I discovered that, in order to reach a certain goal, we often rely on too many different tools, and in doing so we sometimes lose sight of the point.

3. Realizing that the container was not a detail

I understood that the container would say much more about me than the contents themselves. This forced me to understand who I really was before choosing the right one.

4. Arriving at a stable set of essential tools

That was the moment when I truly understood what I could never give up in my life, and how far I could not go below. At that point, the Dreampack stopped searching for its identity and found its final form.

Today I feel that the point is something else: I am inside the Dreampack. Inside that pochette there are not just objects. There is my work, my books, my notebook inside the reMarkable, music always with me, knowledge, programming, and the Just Double Bass project.

At first, I tried to shrink the double bass so I could carry it with me all the time. Nothing could have been more wrong. What needed to be reduced and carried everywhere was everything around it. The double bass had to keep its identity, its size, its inconvenience. It had to remain the object I looked for when I came home, the one waiting for me on bad days, not something to slip into a pocket. I learned that what matters is not so much what we have, but what we choose to have. That is where everything changed.

Inside one pochette, I tried to make my mind and my direction portable. That is why the Dreampack is not just a kit. It is my autonomy made concrete. It is the attempt to be free anywhere, without being enslaved by rooms, desks, fixed workstations, or accumulation.

The Dreampack was the container. Now comes my true objective.

The pochette is the way I chose to keep close what truly matters to me, without turning it into a burden.

And here, for me, lies the most important point of all. As far as I am concerned, a true objective is not the achievement of something externalized. It is not a goal placed outside of me, distant, rigid, almost imposed. That can be a generic dream, or someone else’s idea of success. But my objective cannot be like that. For it to be real, it must live together with my person, intertwine with my being, and take root in the concrete structure of my life, without rolling over it like a steamroller.

An authentic objective does not crush who I am. On the contrary, it must grow with me, breathe with me, inhabit my daily gestures, my tools, my time, my way of being in the world. That is why, for me, playing the double bass well without taking into account who I am would make no sense. It would be an empty achievement, a performance detached from life. I do not want skill separated from my identity. I want music, discipline, theory, the instrument, and myself to be tied together in one single structure.

I will never be a generic good double bassist, like anyone who simply dedicates themselves to the instrument. First of all, I will be myself, pulling out everything that is inside me and putting it into the double bass, into music, into every single note. I will be the double bassist who built this website and this blog alone. The one who took his work seriously, earning the time and the money to dedicate to the instrument. I will be responsible toward my family, and I will take care of my health so that I can devote myself serenely to my passion, without being swallowed by a role that, without my person inside it, could belong to anyone.

The double bass is large, cumbersome, and demanding. It requires care, patience, discipline, and sacrifice. You cannot live it superficially. It asks for presence. It asks for time. It asks for a form of dedication that almost becomes a way of life.

For me, the Just Double Bass project must be that bridge. It must carry me toward my dream and toward my ultimate aim: to fly. To feel free and without limits inside music. To possess the greatest possible knowledge of theory and of the instrument. To know every corner, every possibility, every passage, every technical and expressive secret with the deepest possible experience. To handle music with depth, naturalness, and truth. And within all of that, to finally release myself into the notes and into the infinite.

Only now that I have clarified who I am, and what I do not want to lose of myself, do I know that I can face this path calmly, without risking losing myself along the way. I will absorb my dream and truly make it mine. I will not become a copy. I will not live a life that has already been lived. Now I do not only have my identity. I also have the courage not to lose it.

That is why today I feel that the Dreampack is truly finished. Not because nothing can ever change again, but because the project, in its identity, has arrived. I finished the container. Now comes the most important part: filling that freedom with direction, study, practice, and real music.

From the superfluous to the essential, from the essential to myself

If the Dreampack taught me to remove what is unnecessary, now Just Double Bass must teach me how to rise. To go deeper and deeper into the double bass, into theory, into my own voice, until technique, knowledge, experience, and soul are no longer separate, but dissolve into one single thing.

And perhaps, in the end, that is what I had been searching for all along: not only to carry everything with me, but to carry with me the possibility of becoming what I want to be.

If you made it all the way to the end of this article, congratulations. Perhaps, among everything I have written, this is one of the most personal pieces. And as you may have understood, it is not only about pochettes and projects. It is about life. It is about me, about a path I wanted to share with you, and that I hope may truly help someone. Today, as it comes to an end, it leaves me with a new awareness of myself and many smiles.

If you enjoyed this piece and felt good in our company, come back for another story, another groove.
JDB