Don Angèlo (and the Curse of the Left)

As I was navigating around the Web, I’ve found this small website (http://www.wordle.net/) that allows to generate a tag cloud from any sort of text. I’ve made a try copying and pasting the latest two pages of this blog; the result is shown in the picture here (that can be enlarged with just a click, by the way). The two most common words are “Just Berlusconi”, a two-word sentence that is also a curious but real synthesis of what’s happening to this self-democratic country. Good luck, Italy.

Here’s three good reasons for staying here in Florence:

• Well, it’s a beautiful city in the end;
• My job is somewhat acceptable and tolerable;
• My English has been worsening more and more!

And here’s three good reasons for leaving Florence (and Italy as well):

• There’s way too less situation around;
• A net-salary of 1,000 € per month sounds like ashaming to me;
• Eight consecutive years spent hearing that Tuscan accent are way enough to me, Dio bono (Good God)!

What to do? Well, I still dunno. I just hope to figure it out ASAP.

So here we are. I just returned from a two-week vacation stint actually necessary to my mind and body, two weeks between Sicily, Belgium and the Netherlands. It was a great trip, especially in Amsterdam, a wonderful city regardless all the common sayings that made it (in)famous to the more superficial observers. I’ll update you soon, I don’t exclude developments regarding the Dutch theme, for now have a look at some of my vacation photos on Flickr.

And, I was forgetting but, Patterns is out now. My brand-new album is ready and made public since two weeks ago, in any case you can find it at Jamendo, and the related Web address is http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/29499. As usual, you can listen and download the whole album for free under a Creative Commons open source license. And now I’m starting to think aboout the future album, that is expected to be much more influenced by dance, acid jazz and electronic music (that’s what I’m thinking now). Salutamu!

P.S. The post picture represents an abusive, really alternative, poster in the Brussels downtown. A message to love, as Jimi Hendrix would have said.

I’m gonna go on vacation next Thursday, destination: Sicily. A train to block the usual repetitiveness of these days.

I’ll be in Palermo on August 8th, and then I’ll be back in Mazara del Vallo, my hometown, for nine days before to board on another train and come back to Florence, but just to move again, this time to Brussels and the neighbouring zone for five days of definite linguistical troubles. Wonderful, picciotti.

So, I am gonna leave this blog on hiatus for a while, and I leave you with a sequence of Sicilian verses taken from my alternate blog Nenti sacciu:

Accumìnza a sira e penzi:
mi nni vàiu di Firenzi.

E mentre a notti si fà tutali
pozzu passìari pâ capitali.

E caminannu leggiu leggiu
m’arritrovu dintra Reggiu.

E quannu pò si fa matìna
mi nni scinnu pi Missina.

E quannu u trenu si fa fermu
‘n arancìnu pigghiu a Palermu.

E quannu sintirò cagnara
u sacciu bonu, sugnu a Mazzàra.

In my native Sicily seagulls are also called aceddi dû malutempu, bad weather birds, as it is considered a storm presage when they reach the seashore or the river bank.
Even here in Florence there are some seagulls flying around, I’ve actually seen a few of them on the bank of the Arno river since I’ve moved here last November. Kind of my native town, where I occasionally saw them in a time when I was a lot younger and more reckless than today, with much less troubles and sick thoughts.

Sometimes I’d like to act like a seagull, I’d like just to fly away with no worries, just when I want, and reach the bank to protect myself in case of bad weather, just waiting for a ray of sunlight. This is just to let you know how I feel nowadays.

Don’t you feel like living in a country plunged in a state of apathy? I can definitely feel this sensation, and I really can’t get rid of it.

On the one hand, the government in office is proving to be definitely distant from the real issues of the Italian people, and is actually thinking just to exempt the Jesus Christ of politics from the earthly justice, also sometimes lauching propaganda proclamations regarding fears who are felt but often simply unreal. On the other hand, the opposition is proing to be weak, timid, sometimes even non-existing as they’re giving it in without to answer with the necessary strength.

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you already know I’ve always considered Walter Veltroni as the best possible Italian left-wing leader.

Well, today I’m retracting it all. I think Veltroni should consider to resign and retire from politics together with all the leading members of the Democratic Party. No more people like D’Alema, Rutelli, Fassino and so on, but just a brand-new leadership. The Italian left-wing should have the guts and nerve to start a renewal process rather than keep on living. A change is necessary, it is necessary as soon as possible.

Veltroni is a weak leader of a divided party, even if he’s not the main responsible of it. Unfortunately there is a clear need to modernize the Italian left-wing, recovering its basic values in order to make it stronger to challenge the attack to democracy represented by Silvio Berlusconi and his government. Either we should move on quickly or we’re really in serious danger to enter into a long populist, quasi-fascist era. Let’s move on now.

Here’s Corrado Guzzanti’s imitation of Walter Veltroni. Year: 1997. So dangerously prophetical.

Following the acoustic experiment of Vacation, I chose to recycle a handful of old recordings from my notebook and use them for a brand-new music work. The resulting album is called Patterns, twelve tracks characterized by guitar arrangements much more complex than its predecessor, consequently being much more mature and “serious”. I expect to finish my recording in two months, but I want anyway to offer you a little taste of it. The track below is called South Kensington, and is the first song taken from the new album I want to bring out here. A song with some kind of jazz atmospheres, with Giordano Pisuttu perfoming the electric piano and the rhythm guitar to make it all sound a bit more professonial. I am also making this song available for free at my MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/aromanomusic. Have a nice listening.

The post title is a verse taken from a wonderful Fabrizio De André song. An artistic citation for one of my most political posts.

Several friends of mine are complaining.
They ask me how it could be possible that Silvio Berlusconi can hold our Parliament as a hostage just to ensure him a future out of the Italian jails for the next five years.
They ask me how it could be possible that a TV assistant suspected of having an intimate relationship with our Prime Minister can serve as Italian Minister for Equal Opportunities with no problem whatsoever.
They ask me how it could be possible that an Italian minister can be allowed to fingerprint little kids just because they belong to an ethnic group rather than a different one.
They ask me how it could be possible that another Italian minister can even propose to send the army troops in our streets for unspecified “security reasons”.
They ask me how the heck it could be possible that, in the meantime, our economy keeps on struggling, like falling down into a bottomless well.
I am instead asking to myself why the Italian assisting to this horrible show are actually harmlessly tolerating it.

Well, maybe Berlusconi is not the real issue, as neither the immigrant, the communists or the economy are. Unless exceptional circumstances, let’s get ready to stand twelve more years of Berlusconism. Five with him as Prime Minister, and the following seven as President of the Republic to end it all. Saludos.

P.S. The song below, the one I suggest you for today, is De André’s “Smisurata Preghiera” (Unbounded Prayer). The song was written in 1996, shortly before his death, but the Italian lyrics are still definitely topical, terribly topical.

This is a post written at 7:30am under a sultry weather; if you just don’t see a thread in these words, well, perhaps there’s no thread at all.

It’s hot. And I need some relief.
The air is sultry, I can hardly breathe and sleep, and mosquitos are poking fun at me, like if I am their favourite toy. So I think.
I don’t know, but I am feeling lonely in my condition of a betrayed Sicilian. Sometimes I think the sacrifice of the mafia victims was just useless. A good way to give a new name to some street or school, but anyway already forgotten by the majority of Sicilians. The sacrifice of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992 already belongs to a distant past. And then, since the anomaly has become normal here in Italy, we have elected politicians who fill their mouth with words like “anti-mafia” and then choose Renato Schifani (!) as president of the Italian Senate, leaving me with a Hamlet-like dilemma: are they serious or are they just making a fool of us?!?
Well, maybe it’s time to go far away, a bit more far away than a hour of train, moving in search of myself somewhere else.
When you wake up and feel emotionless and annoyed there is a question that enters into your mind and takes it, and says “Are you making the right thing?”. When a voice inside makes you desire to change your life and tell everybody to go to hell, well, considering the chance is the only thing you can do.
Where could I go, what could I do? Who knows. I just know I’ll look at my face in the mirror, and I’ll see the desire of a quiet and normal life. What’s going to happen next is simply part of that big movie called life. The great gig in the sky.