Because the night

"Don't forget. Always use your voice"
Patti Smith, Torino May 6th 2017

Saturday is long gone, but I'm left wishing I could re-live it over and over, like in "Groundhog Day".
Barbara and I met in front of the Auditorium Rai, shortly after 8, had a coffee, chatted a little while we waited for Patti Smith's concert to begin.

Surely not the most technical-woes-free concert I've ever been to, but the most moving and thrilling in a long time.

The audience was the first bonus point. It was packed of committed folks, fans from all generations and walk of life that were there to listen to Patti and not to chat about their holiday plan or hairdresser while coming and going from the bar or munching pop-corn (it did happen at the Wilco's gig in NY, further proves for my theory of the spoiled crowds in big cities). There was a buzz while waiting for the concert to start that transformed in sheer exhilarance when She appeared on stage and reached its peak on the encore.

Then the concert began.
Then there was Patti on stage and nothing really mattered. If she stood on stage reading a grocery list, she would have probably delivered the most beautiful grocery list reading ever.

She's a magnet that draws you in.
When she sings and when she speaks.
When she laughs and when she dances.

She is strong and mellow.
She's peace and calm, she's rage and wisdom.

She leaves you standing, she brings you the smile you wear on the face and in the heart when you walk back home.

Fighting on the stairs

The facts:
1. I sold my flat back at the end of March.
2. I am going to sign the purchase of my new flat at the end of May.

Logical conclusion: I had to find a place to live for the two months when I'd officially be with "no fixed abode" (that's what I am according to the city register right now, it's certified homelessness).
The best solution to the problem turned out to the the simplest and closest to home. I moved one floor above, renting out my friend Pippo's flat.
Very quick move, just one floor up; it meant I could keep living in a place that was familiar to me and I didn't have to spend extra time looking for a place.

So I moved up and it felt I moved into a different world: no more quiet evening. It's a non-stop festival of people screaming, arguing and telling each other to f**k off.
The days I've worked from home, I also discovered that there are other neighbours fighting during the afternoon. Great, they take shifts.

Days passed, with me trying to make sense of this change: how can a set of stairs extra drop me into a whole different universe?
And then, one morning I woke up and found this on the stairs:

I tried to make a sense of the whole situation: fights, insults, a psycho as a neighbour.... mmmh no, let's make it a couple of psychos living on the 2 flats near me, and now somebody spooned soil out of a vase and left it on the stairs.

What's the meaning of it all? Is some superior powers trying to tell me something? Maybe to double check my door is locked at night?

I'm not sure, the only "logical" step I took was choosing a song fit to the situation and make it somehow better. And since all my musings somehow lead back to the Frames:

"I'm living out in the old house
And fighting on the stairs
And staring at the windows
Breeze blowing through the years"

Gifts

2016 was a challenging year, but it has had its positive side.
I traveled a lot.
I met new friends.
I kept in touch with old ones.

I did all of this because I went to gigs. I went to a lot of concerts, my 2016 had more concerts than months.

Going to a gig is sometimes a bit tiring: I didn't go to a single concert in Torino, which means I had to travel to some distance each time.
It requires preparation too. You learn a lot about time management when you got a finite numbers of days off you can take at work and places to go that look relatively close but requires 2 or more transfers.
Yet I get more than feeling tired and noisy ears: I returns with lots of memories and happiness, and that's what I go back to whenever I feel a bit down or moody. Yeah, life is bad enough, but Virgi remember how amazing was Astral Weeks in Vicar Street? Or Neil Young in Milano?
I returns with new music I want to share with my friends and yeah, sometimes, I added a skein or two of yarn to the luggage, cause it's a nice souvenir. So, the only good resolution I have made this year is to keep the gigs momentum going.

Yesterday the postman buzzed as I had received something that didn't fit my letterbox. I was a bit puzzled, I don't even received bills as paper mail any longer. Sometimes some funeral home leaves some uplifting letter asking to think about my future and prepare but they're not bulky.

Mmmh, I wondered, was it some Kickstarter project I backed up in the eve of the times and completely forgot about?

No! A look at the handwriting and I knew it was a real letter, from a real person, a real friend. And inside... voilà! Meeting him and becoming his friend has been the best gift, but I don't mind the book either!

Circles

Most of what makes life is routine. Utterly boring routine. As much as we all like to think and dream, routine is our life and we get used to it incredibly well, in spite of that little voice we can sometimes hear whispering from the back of our mind: "This is just like the Matrix, when it was one single movie and you think it was cool, only to find out it spiraled out into a trilogy and you were left wondering what the hell is Monica Bellucci doing there. You know that, as much as there is more and better stuff in world cinematography than the Matrix, there is more in life than this routine, so go out and get it!"
Pity most of the time the voice is muted by the need to start the washing machine, or ironing or paying bills or, even worse, going to work.

Today was meant to be yet another routine Sunday: bit of cleaning, bit of crosswords, reading, buying flowers, sitting on the armchair thinking of sorting out the wardrobe. Usual. But then I remembered there was a street fair not far from my flat and thought it was some good chance to find flowers for the kitchen there: only 2 hours after deciding to go, I was ready, which is by itself an amazing achievement for me, something that should have made me notice I was quite resolutely stepping out of routine.

I walked through the street fair, dodging political activists trying to flood me with their leaflets (mayoral election are approaching quickly) while accepting the kebab and pizza place menus, looked at the shops and the market stalls. There's a shop, right on the corner of the square. I walked by it twice last week, but at odd times so this was my first chance to have a look inside. I was curios because it's hard to label: from the outside it looked like a gift shop mashed together with a record shop. It's an odd mix, could it truly be so?
I opened the door, stepped in and... yeah, "L'emporia di Pinin" (Pinin's Emporium, what's not to like in a shop with such a cool name?) is a gift shop mashed together with a record shop.
I started browsing and before even reaching letter B in the stacks I already found out what I wanted.
I took the record out and had a look at the rest of the shop.

The guy sitting next to the records put some music on (to cover the atrocities played outside) and when I reached the counter he asked me why I picked that specific record.

"Oh, I like the Autumn Defense a lot"
And so it started a conversation with him, and the other 2 shopkeepers about music, Autumn Defense and Wilco, Wilco's gigs of the past and the future.

I left with best wishes of enjoying the record and I walked home almost as fast as a London commuter. I put the record on and listened to it twice. It's a neat album and the proof that I might not escape it wholly but I can still give routine a run for its money every now and then.

Most of the time I feel a bit of an alien when I talk about music: I try to stick to the usual suspects (my sis, Ciccio, Francesco...) because I know that they will not look at me as if I've grown a second head overnight when I talk about my favorite artists.
If I chat with a colleague or a stranger (sometimes the 2 categories overlaps, at least music-wise), it's a painful experience that can be sum up as follows: Virgi tries to explain the music she likes by naming some bands, person stares blankly at Virgi, Virgi explains the genre, "Is it something like Swedish House Mafia?", Virgi sobs in one corner.
Today nothing like this happened. Routine was broken and it might look a very tiny, unimpressive change in the routine: but it felt huge to me; it relieved me from some musical loneliness, so to speak, and gave me a new refuge from routine, at a walking distance from home.

The Sanremo week

The question is now how to describe to non-Italians what the Festival of Sanremo is. The big issue here is why: why is the festival still a thing and why should I bother trying to make any sense out of it?
Well, let's define it first and move to the finer details later on.

You don't really have to call it with its complete name "Festival delle musica italiana di Sanremo", Sanremo will do: everybody knows what you're referring to with that name. It's a week long competition that has been running for 66 years: journalists, photographers, pseudo-celebrities and singers flock to the town and it feels the whole nation has fall into a sick z-version of Groundhog Day. Everyday is the same: non-stop talking of the festival, tv, newspaper and so on talking about the songs, singers, etc.
Most of the song are hopelessly bad, it's a mashup of the worse of average dumb television.
It's more a marathon than a music show: it runs way over midnight and it's followed by an  after festival show that runs until... I don't know, I never watched it, but I know it exists.
It feels impossible to escape it. But at the same time is extremely easy, cause switching the TV off is more than enough to cut more than half the pain away.

So far I watched only 5 minutes of the festival, when Elio e le storie tese were playing. Francesca texted me when they finally made it to the stage and when the song was over I turned the TV off and went to sleep, as it was quite late already.
I am a snob when it comes to music and guess what? I'm perfectly fine with it.

The week of Sanremo means that I watch even less TV than usual and spend more time doing other things. This year I've been writing a lot of mails, listened to music and discovered poetry.
The big final is on Saturday, but I'll be in Torino where I don't even have a TV set to keep off.
In the past I would make an effort to read some news about it, because it was impossible to avoid the office chit-chat about it. But since I don't speak to anybody at work, it felt right to not bother at all and spend my time otherwise.

I could have started packing my stuff, since end of month is going to be here soon and then I'll have to move all my stuff to Torino. But I thought spending 32 minutes listening to Dave Matthews Band with Bela Fleck & the Flecktones would be much much better:

And at that point it was too late to pack, but look! I still got some spare 23 minutes for one more song:

And this is...

And this is our heyday baby

And we're not gonna be afraid to shout

'Cause we can make our heyday last forever

And ain't that what it's all about

Oh living, in our own terrible way.

(Heyday - Mic Christopher)

2015 was so 2015, it couldn't survive. It was doomed since the start, the clock was ticking and I'm pretty sure it knew it'd eventually met its demise. All these years, they start pretty new, but then they don't really last, right?

So long 2015, you were pretty shit, but friends, music and books made it up to me.

Chances

It’s just a matter of point of view, I guess. And of chances too.
As I said, there’s always some restlessness when starting a journey by myself, all my doubts and self-consciousness piling up and making sleep hard to come.

Thursday morning I was still asking myself what I’ve gotten myself into: yet, it was too late, I was on my way to Dublin and I got tickets for two concerts and booking for an hotel, not much else to do but go.

So Thursday evening arrives and I’m sitting at the bar of Vicar Street asking myself the question above until they opened the door of the venue and they pointed me to my seat for Colm Mac Con Iomaire gig.
Have you ever seen a concert opened by a poet? Until last Thursday I didn’t either, but then I set at a table listening to the magic of words by Steven James Smith.

Table? Oh, I see why on my ticket there was “Table 21” written on the seating: I was seating at a table, with a small candle lit on it! That’s first time I watched a concert sitting at a table.

Sitting at a table for a concert is quite interesting. In between the breaks between the acts, I chatted a bit with the other girl at my table. I don't know her name, we never got around to introduce ourselves to one another, but that was ok: I know she's French, she's a cinema journalist, she saw Glen Hansard play in Cork the day before and she watched Star Wars that morning. She also hinted about the possible link between fashion statement and ugly sweaters.

After the concert, I decided to wait in line and ask for an autograph at the end of the concert. It is not something I commonly do. No, scratch that, let’s rephrase it: I never do it, once concert is over, I don’t wait for the band, I don’t ask for the setlist from the crew, I just shoot away.
This time however was different, even before it began: first of all, I brought Colm’s latest CD over from Italy, so part of me had somehow contemplated the possibility of asking for the autograph (gone are the days when I contemplated which CD to carry with me while traveling, now I just sync playlist offline).
Then, CD in hand, I queue up with a lot of other people and stroke up a conversation with my queue neighbour. He told me he had traveled from the western part of Ireland for this concert, quite a long journey, but it was worthy, wasn’t it?

I agreed with him: “Oh, definitely worth it. I’ve flew over from Italy for it.”
“Italy?!?!”
“Yeah, took the plane this morning from Milan and here I am.”
“Wow.”

And that’s how I met Mike from Galway: journalist, writer, Pearl Jam fan, traveler and much more. By the time we reached the head of the queue, I found out he lived for several years in several Southern America countries, had been in Genova during G8, and he’s relearning Irish Gaelic and in the process of writing a book.

We could have parted way then and it’d be a great evening to remember already. But then Mike got us some passes to go to a little after-gig pub event (not really a party, more just some pints) where I met his friend Ruairí and his wife and chatted with some other people.
Hours flew by quickly amidst cider, cheers, chat and laughters. Many more "wow" followed: people were surprised and happy to see somebody traveling from that far and for once it didn't feel odd to say I was traveling by myself.

I parted ways with Mike outside Vicar Street. I brought back some good memories, a Lisa O'Neill LP and a CD with Colm's autograph.

It's just a matter of chances: what would have happened if I had decided not to join the queue? Or to not reply to Mike's chatting?
Now that days have gone I wonder why I didn't ask him for a mail address, to be able to contact him again after the concert. Was his name even Mike? I've got this terrible habit of never remembering names when people introduce themselves, and to make up for it I just give them random name of my choice: so he could have be a Frank or a James for all I know.
Perhaps our path will cross again, who knows? It's just a matter of chances, after all.

Be my weather

Be my weather

Blow through me like the wind

Wind in invisible shapes about my ribs

Rain on me

Be my winter

(Prayer Before A Voyage)

There’s always a moment, before setting out for a journey, where I’m tempted to call it off.

“Why should I go? Home is so warm and comfy, why leaving it?"

It’s also the moment when people marvel I’m going to travel by myself. I’m still way too self-conscious for my own good and sometimes I struggle with people’s reaction. My brain, or at least a part of it, interrupts its normal activity and spins a tale of its own.

“Why did she say that? What did he mean by it? Was that pity I read in between the lines? Yeah, it must have been so…"

Yet, the moment I feel so ready to chicken out is also the one I start feeling the pull towards going away: close the flat door behind me and never stop travelling. Move from one place to another, discover new towns, new faces, new food.

Tomorrow I’m off for yet another journey and I’ve already been through all the usual stages of panic and delight: suitcase packed, passport ready, I’m off for some days of music, Guinness and lots of walking and rain in Dublin.

As usual, I’m looking forward this trip: I will be able to escape Milan and everyday life for a while. As usual, an irrational part of me keeps thinking and believing that, while I put my life in a kind of nice and relaxed hiatus, problems will sort themselves out and a nice solution will be presented to me at my return. I can’t but daydream that while away from home, I’ll have a Eureka moment and know what to do from that point onwards. Yes! I will be back with a clear idea of how to fix everything, and I'll be fine and happy and won't get angry as easily as I do now.

This foolish belief simply keeps the door open for all kind of disappointments, I know; yet I can't stop myself: years pass by and, while I repeat to myself that it does no good to believe in it, a part of me sneaks in my thoughts and make me wish for it to come true.

To be played loudly

I bet that when the parcels arrive at reception, Liliane doesn’t need to check the recipient names any longer: one look at the flat square box and she calls me. Another vinyl on the way.
Luca calls them “those things that turn around”, followed by a mimics with a finger spinning around (it's either a LP  or a frisbee), his wife has never seen one before starting to work in our office, so one of the last delivery I got caused a lot of curiosity.

Because of the trips of the last month and a half, plus searching for where to buy a new stylus for my Vestax (not the easiest task, when the manufacturer has gone busted), meant that I got a nice pile of new albums to listen to.
And that’s exactly what I did yesterday. I was working from home, so I ditched all the streaming services and plugged my Vestax and started working down the pile: Star Wars, as in Wilco’s latest masterpiece, was the first, followed by a Chet Baker concert album, a live by BÖC and last but not least, “It was triumph we once proposed… songs of Jason Molina” by Glen Hansard.

I’ve been listening to this EP a lot at work, mixed with original recordings of the songs by Songs: Ohia but yesterday felt different. It was getting darker, but I couldn’t be bothered to turn on the lights. As I worked with only the MacBook casting a bit of light from the monitor, Glen kept playing. Once the side was over, I would simply move over and turn the LP and start again. You can play a 5 songs EP a lot of times in an afternoon. Yet, it never seems to be enough: I’m not sure whether it’s just an impression made on my feeble mind, but I seem able to hear more when I use the turntable. So at each new round I grasp something more and feel the need to listen to the songs once more.
Moreover when I read the sleeve for the first time, it struck me as a very well tuned example of serendipity, given I had just finished listening to Wilco.

I followed the advice of the sleeve: my lovely turntable is extremely powerful even without a amplifying system.
Hopefully my melomaniac neighbour didn't mind it too much.

Fast Car

I remember lending “The Hare’s Corner” to Barbara.

I remember she gave it back to me and I brought it back to Milan.
I remember it sat in my office desk drawer for quite some time then: I was not in a hurry to bring it back to the flat. In one of my midnight insomnia induced redesign of the living room I had unplugged the DVD reader, the only way I had to listen to CDs. Plus with the music on my iTunes library I didn’t feel the need for it.

I spent about a year without the DVD reader. It was good in a way: in between TV, DTT box, Apple TV, an uncounted number of lightning cables and the plug for the turntable, my living room is a bundle of cables crossing one another in a lovely electric spaghetti nest… Having 2 cable less to deal with made the whole thing look already tidier.

But, on the other side, what if you want to watch a movie you like and you own? Tough. I did re-buy some of the movie on iTunes, but it wasn’t the same thing, especially when I bought “Grand Hotel Budapest” thinking it was in English and it turned out to be only the dubbed Italian version.

While in London I bought a DVD I wanted to watch (more on that another day) and once back, I went and replugged the DVD into the mess.
Tonight I wanted to listen to “Blue Shoes” but, instead of iTunes or Spotify, I thought I could just listen to the CD. I could, if only I remembered where on earth I put it. But even remembering where in my apartment I put it would do, really.

I dived into the search and lost myself in it; I found some DVDs like “To be or not to be”, and “天下无双“ (this movie is hilarious, plus there’s Wang Fei acting in it), 1 bus ticket and some CDs: Fabrizio De Andrè, Wilco and then “Tracy Chapman”.

Ah. The first time I bought "Tracy Chapman", it was on a cassette: I bought it at "Maschio", a music shop that was more than a shop and that I still miss every day. I listened to it so much the tape eventually gave up on me and I was extremely sad about it. I bought one CD then, but left it as a farewell gift to a friend: it felt bitter-sweet and I do hope he still listens to it.
I re-bought it once more the first time I went to China, about the time I found out that even big French supermarket chain sold not-so-legal (read: downright ripped) CDs.
The copy I found tonight has seen all my moves of the past 10 years, with the other CD of hers. I put it on tonight, playing the song in the order I used to like listening to them as a teenager… no wonder the tape self-destroyed! You can't keep fast forwarding, rewinding and switching sides without the poor tape going a little bit bonkers.

I moved to “Collection”, yet another souvenir of Beijing, even though slightly more legal than the previous one I bought there. At the same time, I've kept searching for “The Hare’s corner” while Tracy played: now I got a nice pile of DVDs waiting to be played in the next days and, if I’m lucky, I’ll eventually find some CD to play too.

This gift

This gift will last forever
This gift will never let you down
Some things are made from better stuff
This gift is waiting to be found

Last week, while in London, I went to Glen Hansard’s gig. It was the last concert of his European tour and to me it was a way to balance the fact I missed the concert in Milan: I can’t understand this nasty habit of everyday life’s duties, such as work, to interfeer with my concerts schedule.

Despite my never-ending wonder at how drunk Brits can get, not just in general, but specifically at a concert, and how people can be more interested at their phone displays rather than watching the concert (yeah, I’m talking to you, blonde on the 3rd row that spent good part of the concert blinding me with the display of your iPhone: from where I was standing I could see that you’re truly into Facebook, but please pretty please dim the brightness of the screen, ifs), I loved the gig.

The setlist was a cool mix: a bit from the old album, a bit of the Swell Season, tracks from the new LP, one cover by Songs: Ohia and one by the Interference.
Towards the end of the concert I got a little bit blue: if a concert is really good, then there’s a moment, shortly before the encore, when I wish that it never ends. I wish we were trapped in a pocket in the fabric of time and space and we could be listening to music forever and ever.
Sadly, encore arrives, if you’re lucky you get a second encore as well, but then lights are on and you’re out, making your way to the train station.
The best way to deal with this kind of sweet sadness is to think about how beautiful the night have been and about more beautiful nights ahead.

It’s the same way I feel in the days after I return from a travel: I’m happy, my eyes full of wonder and memories, but also sad and with a longing to leave again. The best way to deal with it is to postpone the sorting of the photographs and plan the next travel.

With concerts I do pretty much the same: after I've been to one, I think of the concerts I already got tickets for and about the ones I hope to go to. Last week, sitting on the Hammersmith line, my mind was split between images of the concert I just saw and vague hopes for the ones that I'll go and see very soon.
In the last year travels and concerts have often gone hand in hand. They become my perfect getaway from all the things that are not really working as they should.
It's nice to visit a place and return home with a soundtrack in the mind and not only with pictures that I won't sort out but will rather dump in a random external hard drive anyway.

Instead of overthinking what doesn’t work I’ve decided to not care about it for the time being, or at least try to do so.
I try to not dwell too much on life and get an headache because of my inability at fixing my problems, but let stuff go with the flow: every travel I do, concert I attend, play I watch is a small gift I allow myself for having not given up so far.
Sometimes in order to enjoy my gift, there are some small price to pay, such as traveling with Ryanair after having managed to avoid it for almost 8 years: I got nightmares by simply recalling their lottery ads on board, but I still got a bit more of month to get used to the idea.

Friends. Gifts.

There are moments when I just hate being me.
Like early Monday morning, around 6:15 a.m. : I know the alarm clock is set for an early hour, earlier than usual, and I know I can't snooze it. I got a train to catch, so I can’t really turn around with the risk of missing my ride back to Milan.
That's why I try to go to bed early on Sunday evening. Try being the keyword as I miserably fail each single time and end up going to bed late, grumbling about being grumpy the morning after.

Then why, oh why, do I end up waking before the alarm clock?
Should I compliment my inner clock for being so proactive?!?
I check the time on the phone on the nightstand.
Still 15 minutes to go before I'm supposed to be up.

"Go back to sleep" I say to myself.
"No... It's late for falling back asleep. I'm up! I'm up rise and shine!!! I'm uuuuup!" Myself has I-take-no-order-from-anybody-not-even-myself attitude.
“Go. Back. To. Sleep.” I order myself.
“Lalalalalalala I’m not listening!” Myself is obviously quite an anarchic git.

This morning, as I was trying to force some extra minute of rest on my body (you'll thank me later, body), myself decided we had enough sleep and we should wake up: that’s the moment I started hearing something.
No, not voices: it was way too early even for schizophrenia to kick in, even though it’s never too early for some pluralis majestatis.
Was it a piano perhaps? Some chords... Yeah familiar chords, but I could not place them.

It was annoying: it woke me way before the alarm clock. I dig through the mess in my head, but couldn’t place it. The tune grew louder and clearer and by the time I locked the door behind me and started my walk to the station, the fog started rising.
I swiped my ticket at the metro entrance and I’m smiling because now the song is clear in my head: I can hear the melody, the words, the backup vocals.
I know the song, few taps on the phone and it’s not playing just in my head but on my headset too.
Like many Monday morning before, I’m sad and upset. I’m maybe a bit more down than usual, as the weekend has been so nice, lovely and serendipitous, the kind of weekend you wish it never ends. And yet it did end and what’s ahead of me is not so nice or lovely (I don’t think serendipity applies to Milan somehow).

And while the song kept playing on repeat, I stopped thinking about the train I had to take, the appointments ahead and just smiled at the memories of the last 48 hours.
It was a quiet weekend, family, friends and nap in between; I met new friends, new friends almost getting into a fight with an asthmatic dog; I met friends I planned to meet and friends I stumbled upon while crossing the road.

Sometimes I tell myself I should call or text a friend and 9 times out of 10 I don’t. I’m not sure why: surrounded and immersed into communication tools as I am on a daily basis, it shouldn’t be such a tough thing to do. Sometimes I got a desk with more iPad and iPhones than fingers on my hand, it shouldn't be such a task. Yet, most of times, I end up postponing calling people (so I don’t bother them), up to the point it’s too late in the night and I might as well do it tomorrow.

Some of my friendships languished and later died this way; on the other hand I believe it was their fate, they were not real enough, or maybe they were just one-sided, unrequited friendship. Just like love, being in a friendship means both parties have to work and care enough to keep it alive.

But for those 9 out of 10 dead ends, there’s still that remaining 1 and it compensates for all of them. That 1 doesn’t care how many months go by before we talk to or see one another: in the moment we meet again, it feels we just spoke one hour before and for all the thing that changed around us, our friendship didn’t. Or, if it did, it improved.

It’s quite awesome, isn’t it? For all the negative things that surround me, it’s an amazing feeling, to know I’m lucky to have such great friends. The trick is to remember about such luck: it’s so easy and dangerous to focus on all the bad stuff. Maybe because they’re more, but somehow the notion I got awesome friends fall too easily into the background.
I'm grateful for those friends, and I know it sounds cheesy, especially coming from somebody like me. A lifetime long education in stoic behaviours makes expressing gratitude and heartfelt emotions a tough, awkward experience. To say I feel happy, lucky, touched by having such great friends sounds weird, yet true to my ear.

And I should remind myself more often: breathing becomes easier after.
And in case you were wondering about the song… it was by Glen Hansard (who else?)