17 songs - My autobiography (3)

 1994

Ah, 1994!
Excuse me, now I get back to my ranks.

If I think back at 1994, and skim away a couple of things (just-just slightly important...) the first thing that comes to mind is the beautiful music! In particular (but not only) disco-music: it can be said (I think, in fact I'm sure!) ... that after a period of stasis, we were getting back to hearing beautiful sounds. And, it should be acknowledged, much of the credit was to be attributed to Italians: after the years from Gazebo and Gary Low and Martinelli and many others... now we were back at calling the shots.
Usura and Datura had already come out in 1993: that sample of Simple Minds’ New gold dreams (and friends who were getting old stucking up their nose...) and then other little things. And so, in my first tape from this historic (oh well, allow me that ) year I find Eterna Divina by Nikita: beautiful, perfect, never pausing even for a moment. And stupid, stupid if you take your time to listen to it but... it's not what you should do: you just have to dance, and let yourself be led by those sounds!
Not only this genre, no: Blumùn by Roberto Vecchioni... the professor. I had always admired in some way (since the days of middle school with Signor Giudice)... although his old-communist-style somehow bothered me: but, you know, thanks to the little man with greasepaint over his face we all became communists (and holding for Inter football team) and so…
All of us with a brain, I mean. In short, like Voglio una donna from two years before, now there was this little masterpiece titled Angeli: how can one tell you’re no longer young... remaining so optimistic, so big, so realistic? Really nice. It made me think... that I was no longer twenty years old. Adorable, back now! (apart from that carichi di sperma... but non sanno cosa sparirà!)
And then another small gem: a certain Susanna Greco together to Gaetano Curreri, with Prendimi così (quante sono le parole). I couldn’t say I had ever listened to Stadio... too far from me: but this one was really noteworthy... and after that time, I did appreciate something from that band.
We acknowledge that the Guns 'n' Roses churned Since I don’t have you (and also, soon before, November rain and more, but I didn’t care much at the time) and Tori Amos sang Cornflake girl - beautiful, like two years before Crucify myself - and... let's move on.

The day after New Year’s Eve I opened a bottle of brut sparkling wine (which I hate - I am a female and I want the sweet one!!) given to me by the customer in Milano... and I drank it as a whole. My mom smiled, returning home, and I avoided telling her that I had to forget that unlikely busty (!) ... and to some extent the after-effects of toothache, too.
We worked, we played volleyball. The group of new friends was going fine, despite the small disappointment due to the episode with Patrizia: in practice, I had gone a little out of the way from that subsection and I had dedicated myself to the others. I had given (say) the subsection, in fact, to an old friend of mine, who would’ve made good use of it in the years to follow. But gratitude doesn’t belong to this world, you know (!)
And, at work, all right. Apart from the indices of the database at the hospital that were often corrupted and I had to spend hours rearranging everything... I think it was due to the dilapidated networks of the times that barely held up a database and a number of workstations continuously increasing. So I often screamed Fuck that! or even the toned-down version Funk dat from the good Sagat at the monitor! And, late one evening... I found that pair of ballerinas in that office, and I decided they had to be mine... my very first real shoes...
Oh well.
Even the devices I had created for my network of sophisticated automation, as I defined it in the brochure made a year and a half earlier, were going great: with great satisfaction I had brought the new version completely error-free, to Marco for him to see, a few weeks before... and even if he didn’t understand much of those concepts, I was glad to see him interested.
Then, yes, that weekend in December I went for a ride to the mountains "just to waste another afternoon because Patrizia didn’t want me." Nothing new. Or maybe at the time I hoped it was...

We were going to ski, and new friends were very good at it! Not everyone but most of them, and then they were rich - as he pointed out to me that... disgraceful former classmate Alberto, years later. But we'll get to that...
I, however and as always, wouldn’t stop at anything: if they told me that my weight was upstream... I’d think “who cares” and just go! But I appreciated those teachings, as always. Carnival arrived and I wore once again my rally-driver suit: and we were at several parties, and I liked it! Take away the color from Ice MC reminds me of one of these small parties in Moncalieri, when I drove home Lucia... this curious strange, busty and peculiar girl. She seemed intelligent and her surname was very curious... (!)
Then Pass the toilet paper by Outhere Brothers, a club near Corso Regina Margherita: I will remain forever etched there, because there was a girl, cute, dancing this song... naked. That is, dressed as a statue: I can’t remember the exact details, but in practice she only had some baby powder over her body... and for the underwear I don’t know, but how much I wanted to be her... beautiful with nothing, just standard.
I pretended nothing happened, continuing to go wild: that music made me fly!
Your love by Fargetta (I was no listener of Radio DeeJay - forever faithful to 105  and therefore I didn’t know him) and then Nella notte by 883, remixed by his colleague Molella: what pace, what beautiful, what a delight!

I had been given (!) the Cure’s CD Disintegration - that one from 1989: so, at times, I immersed myself in the tub (at my mom’s place) and I played it at full volume... and I discovered the other songs as well. But no particular nostalgia, I remember this well.
Then, slowly, came spring. Those afternoons in front of the famous La Salle Institute would have been the last... in a new group: where new means big, full of ideas and hopes. And potential love...
But at the time I couldn’t know that: I realized that it was different from the year before, probably more like 1992 or 1987... it wasn’t a bad feeling, indeed! So Serenata Rap by Jovanotti and Come as you are by Nirvana echoed from the radio... and seemed to promise things.
We used to go and play at someone's large house (more or less everyones’, there!) or for a pizza. As I write this I am reminded of a doubt... but was I thinking about my historical friends, then? Marco, Nicola, Paolo? (Franco, as I said, had been settled with the two sisters plus one!) ...
Yes, I would say yes. But they didn’t belong to that group.

Marisa popped out of the hat... from some sub-branch of that circle of friends, I believe in March or so. Yes, later they told me the full story of the branches of their group, and... in fact such digressions we had had ourselves at the Sommeiller. Biggest difference, perhaps, was that they were friends since school. Little difference.
In March I had gone to Cuneo with one of those friends, the perpetual traveler (!) who would have then married a Norwegian guy: she had a house and/or relatives there, and I had to go to a customer and so...
I think it was the day when I bought the 2000th issue of Mickey Mouse: wait that I check... yes, that's it! And it’s lying here behind my back 
I also think it was in those days that Ilaria Alpi was killed: a bad story, another gift from the socialists...


My digital camera... yes, the Logitech! Purchased in collaboration with the hospital's guy: and I remember the novelty, all the people so amazed... I still have those pictures of Lucia and everyone else!
I slowly got to know other people: the night Berlusconi won the elections we were in that pub, for me historic, in Moncalieri street and... I went back to the car with Luca and I remember that vague unease: that is, Occhetto you could not see or hear, but... I had stayed in the middle, giving a chance to those who had the will and the power to do something good: so my comment was "well, you won: now it’s the time to rearrange Italy."
Famous last words (!!!)
We spent Easter (or Easter Monday) half the way to the mountains, in direction of that Ceresole that had seen me happy (perhaps for the only time in my life, in hindsight) on my birthday, in 1989. We were guests of the jerk co-starring Promesse and her worthy burping father...
No, well, I promised I will be good (cit.)
So many friends there too, much good food. Marisa in fact wasn’t to be seen very often: I remember that she was with us one day we went to Pecetto (not sure why) and I managed to keep up with one of these super-drivers super-macho (what a wrong role for me!) with my 205 and in short I hadn’t fared badly. And in my car we listened to She's like the wind, which she liked...

So sweet, yes: with those clammy hands... when I took hers into mine, back from Gardaland - which was closed due to rain. We had been fine, me, her, Mauro and Serena - and later I framed that wonderful picture at sunset!
That there was sympathy, it was clear. That it wasn’t too much, it was also clear, at least on my part. But it was okay, that sweetness and her many ways of acting reminded me Daniela, although I didn’t think too much about her.
Mmm mmm mmm mmm by Crash test dummies, another popular rib: beautiful, original! And at that time we still met at times with the two girls from Rivoli and so we had commented it with a smile. And Keep talking by Pink Floyd... and this one, possibly also as a clear sign of clairvoyance (!!) I liked a lot. And Violently Happy by Bjork – which I had mocked renaming it Violent-me-happily (and years later some idiot even came to correct me by saying "look, the correct translation is Rape"... bravo idiot, I'm not Carlo! Oops... :D ) And A denti stretti and then Spirito by Litfiba, and Praying for the dying from Seal (so soft and sweet and... announcing sweetness, in that spring just begun), and Boys and girls from the newborn (at least for me) Blur: fantastic too! For some reason, I had come to know it in the remix version by the Pet Shop Boys, and… comparing them today, the original feels much better, definitely!
And Cantaloop by Us3, and Crazy and Amazing by Aerosmith, which I discovered later, though.

Another trip to Ceresole with friends, one day in May when it was raining a little: I was in love with Marisa and I dedicated her It's a lovin’ thing from some unknown CB Milton… so perfect in its simplicity... but with the right rhythms. And Sleeping in my car by Roxette.

And then the weather become warmer: the friends from New Year's also had a pool, so we often went at their place. It was the time of The rhythm is magic by Marie Claire d'Ubaldo (then rediscovered in Il ciclone movie two years later) and Marcella Detroit’s I believe that I will remember forever because it was on, the day I saw Marisa for the first time, who had reached me and one of her friends in a pizzeria near her home: and those chubby ankles...
They wouldn’t have been a problem, after all. Her head, once known better, would have been more of it. But the real problem of that romance has a name of five letters, starting with I and ending with an internal organ (italian “rene”, ndt).

No, oh well, what nonsense! Sorry, Irene, I was looking for an original way to introduce you, you know... after twenty-three years and as many stories... or almost...
Irene Grandi made her appearance exactly in that year (should I emphasize it?) and I immediately liked everything from that record! I remember thinking she was a lot younger than me and when she sang Le cose da grandi... it made me feel old. We listened to that record below… Marisa’s home, doing our own thing (as Sleeping in my car taught us!) and... we both liked it. Sposati subito, especially, put into circulation certain vibrations...

But back to that May 21st (!)
The party was held in the community where the famous George worked, an Arab immigrated seven years earlier who cured other immigrants, especially problematic kids: and to me this had generated a lot of respect for him (as told in Le cose in comune). He spoke good Italian, and he also knew how to make jokes in a foreign language, which wasn’t a common thing - at least back at the time. And he could cook: that evening he proposed to us, I don’t remember if for the first time, his butterflies noodles with cream, tomato, I think bacon and... well, very good!
And she... appeared as materialized from space (I like to tell this story, what should I do) in the kitchen: I went there to take another dish and I saw her... her cream-colored skirt at the knee, her nice face, petite, she was eating sitting on a chair. I don’t remember much of that moment, and if I had a time machine I'd use it to intervene in the months immediately following (!) ... but I can say that it was a thing at first sight. Not like Annalisa, no: her eyes were not as strong, but perhaps it was her voice or words.
Something started, that evening. Outside the building, me and Marisa greeted everyone and she and Irene exchanged their phone numbers and I obviously memorized the 6-0-6...
She, too, instantly liked her: I prefer to call it "female intuition" (because of a potential and imminent competition) or better "powers of my mind" which would have done everything in order to make that story implode... with a big bang.

But let's go in order.
Think about the way is her song. That is, it’s from Alexia along the now famous Ice MC, but it’s the rhythm on which I will forever dance thinking about Irene. And even a little about Beppe, one of the friends from that group... perhaps the most dimwitted, perhaps a Democrat and hypocritical, perhaps the most mentally-delayed but... so good and certainly smart, when he wanted to be!
Beppe was the one who owned a house at the bottom of the hills like everybody else but... with an attic all for himself: and so, after a while, I found myself too going to his place in the evening (although it was actually far from my/my mom’s house, but oh well) or on Sunday afternoons. And he always offered us a drink... Oh God, if I come to think of it today, it makes me smile! I should have returned that all... and, to my excuse, I can say in all sincerity that I really wanted to reciprocate: like I always wanted to return all invitations to weddings that I received in those years...

Bon-Digi Digi Digi-Digi Bom Bom, he would usually start singing. Not just in 1994, huh? I believe he went on for at least a decade to follow!

Anyway, everything went on more or less normally, with Marisa. I guess I was thinking at Irene but, in fact, it wasn’t love at first sight: simply, something that looked important. I used to go and visit Marisa at her home in the country, including kittens and other animals (we were quite similar in this!) and then we used to go around a little. One day in June I went to the mountains, to the dam in Mont Cenis, with that other super-southern  engineer and I remember that we had been talking about many things, as always. And women: on the way back we had gone and visit that friend of the traveler from above, the one with blue eyes who worked in an appliance store... and we both liked her!
So, summer. Again, the swimming pool in the valley and then a few trips to the mountains, with the Arab who could jump into the river Dora as if it were the most normal thing in the world... Oh well, it was hot, but we were still at 1600 meters! And I was following Irene from a distance... I watched her, I studied her. She had told us she was working as internal teacher for maturity in a school, and this seemed interesting to me. But, above all, she had claimed to have a degree in German language and that she had lived in Germany...
Like they say, I fall at your feet!

Seven seconds, from Neneh Cherry in duet with Youssou'n Dour (which I had already seen at the famous concert Human Rights Now in 1988). Irene Grandi again (oh, don’t forget Irene Pivetti Speaker at the Parliament...) and then, in that summer, I had recorded a compilation with a few songs from previous years... and I had included Somewhere in my heart by Aztec Camera: the year before I had purchased the (used) CD in Portobello, in London... I had this vague memory since 1988 and so. That one, and also Working in a goldmine, are perhaps the sweetest memory I have of Irene - or better of me dreaming of her.
Because anything could still happen (cit.)

And the wonderful dance music: Sweet dreams by La Bouche (unfortunately died a few years later), The rhythm of the night by Corona, The summer is magic by Playahitty, Gam gam by Mauro Pilato and Max Monti. Oh, sorry: Eins Zwei Polizei! I wouldn’t want to gloss over this masterpiece by Mo-Do, unfortunately he too passed over. And the fifty times when everyone was asking Irene to translate the rhyme that made up its lyrics... (I actually asked her to translate even Der Kommissar. Obvious).
Football World Cup, that curious namesake of Irene’s and the missed penalty by Baggio, which enjoyed me greatly both because I was beginning to hate the popular-national mood, and because the guy had betrayed his team to move to Juventus, and also because, after all, that National team didn’t deserve to win against Brazil.
So, we went to Tuscany with Marisa and some others from our circle. The sweet lass tall and a bit nordic had got engaged (the jokes, perfectly right, would come only later) with the Arab and... they looked like a beautiful couple: calm, quiet, good. Then there were a few others and...
In camping me and my girlfriend, in an accommodation the others. All quite normal. But it was 1994! You couldn’t... be quiet.
La voce, Indro Montanelli’s newspaper, which he had founded after being ousted from Il giornale because he didn’t want to lick the ass of the new owner (needless to say who we're talking about...)
I used to buy this newspaper like two years before I was buying L’indipendente and... no one (either boy or girl) was going along. Cuore, ditto. Incidentally, in that summer Cuore gave away some books from the past and one of them was that old diary of a Michele Serra’s trip, "Tutti al mare", which had been written in 1985. I read it in one breath and I liked it - I had always liked the idea of travelling all the coasts of Italy!
In short, I was alone to play the politically engaged. Me! Who had never cared about politics, but... the smell was starting to spread, with a strength that only an idiot would not have caught.
Excuse me, 50 million and more idiots ;)

Me, who had just voted both Forza Italy and PDS in March, now I was horrified to see those TV commercials... that Also Spracht Zarathustra used as the theme of regional tv news, then trying to stop Di Pietro, that fact of Milano football club used as a banner to attract voters (and all that money, that allowed him to buy players just to keep them on the bench so as not to let them play in other teams - as pointed out by the father of a friend from the old group).
But I was alone. Not so much to others, who I knew only a little and basically it wasn’t important, but against Marisa... so small in her head, so empty, so tied to those TV programs that I had abandoned one decade earlier. That trip to the beach, at her friend’s house in Diano Marina... everyone mad about Biscione’s (berlusconi’s logo, ndt) TVs. I had tried to ignore this, but it was tough.

But now there was Irene! "I was offered to work for a publishing house, you know, Dario, but... they’re berlusconian, they only care to obtain translations quickly and without regard to the quality! And then I thought I'd say no and go to work at a company in Switzerland... it will be harder but they are more serious and although I’ll be earning less... it’s much better..."
Bingo! Those were exactly the words I wanted to hear! The words that I was struggling to hear from Marco or Paolo... now for quite a long time. And then Irene had a vagina.
What an idiot. Like if you just cared a damn about that.
Sorry for the digression...!

No, they were words that it was difficult to hear from almost anyone, in that year. Sure, maybe you would hear them even less in the future... and that's why I'm here. But... they were important, and they were right - I knew well!
My girlfriend went back to her country house a few days before and I stopped a little longer in Tuscany: a friend should’ve come and visit me, but then he didn’t. I wrote him a famous postcard and it was fun (!)
I wandered through Follonica, in the evening, and there were stalls with books and... I regret to this day that I hadn’t bought the 1994: Colpo grosso book by Maltese and Gramellini which was proudly displayed. It sold out early and... it had its sense. Just as it had made sense to listen to a press conference of the President, on an evening when we went to the pool in Venturina, for me historical: there was something big at stake... and it made me somewhat nervous that no one was interested.
Over the years, it was all clear. What people are, I mean.

However holidays passed and we returned to Torino, after another little trip in the mountains and a side trip to another community where George worked. The Galibier mountain’s top at 2700 meters I've never equaled anymore in my life! By car, I mean.
I somehow still remember my phone call for Irene’s birthday: those numbers in a sequence that would become... a poem. It was obvious, just like two years before, I would have given up Marisa as soon as possible: and it happened near her birthday, thanks to the monstrous traffic congestion one evening in the center of town, and the half quarrel that ensued.
Good.
From then on... well, it’s all narrated in Le cose in comune, in fact. Looking back at the tapes I recorded at the time, I see that there is not much... Strange, because I always listened to a lot of music, and in that year indeed...
Perhaps I was elsewhere, with my mind. I went after her in those months... with diligence: we phoned, we met friends. We talked about books and we spent so much time in front of the book shelves. Then we went dancing and, as I have repeated a thousand times, we were the only ones to go dancing just to dance! And to translate the songs lyrics.
She was so beautiful... not beautiful, or better, not only beautiful: she was everything, inside and outside.
And I didn’t know what to do. I had never known that, let’s make it clear: and in those days it was so clear what I had already felt for a decade, that is it’s me who should’ve been the one sitting on a bench wearing a miniskirt as a guy is going to ask me to dance. But not only in those months I couldn’t even admit this... actually, I didn’t want to believe it. So I tried to trim down those who were after her - sometimes well sometimes poorly, like that evening during a game of cards at Beppe’s house when a joke I made came out quite badly. And then I tried to stay close to her, which is usually wrong. But when we met we were talking much, real much: and that voice, those speeches used to fill and satisfy me. I had lent her my famous first story and she had liked it, and had written a little comment: and, considering how… poorly-written it is, if I reread it now, I'd say it went well!
And then, German language. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to learn it since long: curious, it would take another May 21st for me to finally dive into it...
So she started bringing me some small translations or her little dictionary and I was deep into those: and there were people who commented "you’re doing it just to impress her" but also those who could realize I wasn’t joking and complimented with me. And then Carmen.
Her real name was not Carmen, that's the name I gave her in Promesse. Linda. No, that's the name I gave her in another story.
Well... the bad girl spreading on anything that had a Y chromosome, drew over her and... it wasn’t good: Saturday night by Whigfield is the song that reminds me of this annoying thing dancing that cheap stuff... calling the other girls to her. The curious thing was that, in my opinion, the two kinds were completely different, but perhaps because of it, or maybe because we were all young, or perhaps because in the end... she wasn’t the person I thought, or at least she would no longer be in a short time…
In short, I mean, this one was taking Irene away from me. I don’t know the details, but in broad terms it was clear. I was supposed to be stronger: and, inside, I was. But something was blocking me.

In short, the High hopes went on until New Year’s Eve and a little further: the only Pink Floyd’s track for which I go mad and... oh well, of course, because of the memories from those days. But even for the famous sentence life consumed by slow decay that I made mine and have been using specifically to comment on the lives of so many friends, for years to come. And then Sure by Take That, who would’ve believed that! And Space Cowboy by Jamiroquai of which, however, we'll better talk next year on the occasion of its remix. And Bang and Blame by REM, lesser work but linked to that afternoon in the pastry shop in Castiglione... that green Punto parked there in front of the shop and we getting off it. And Insensitive by Jann Arden. And Undecided, again from Neneh Cherry and the other  And Please forgive me by Bryan Adams, and Said I loved you... but I lied by Michael Bolton. And Kiss from a rose, sublime, by Seal! And Voglio di più by Jovanotti, and us returning home one evening from Marisa’s country house, me her and Luca. And Gelosia by Dirotta su Cuba, so fantastic! And A che ora è la fine del mondo Ligabue, mocking tv programs and thus implicitly my ex and that fake world of karaoke. And Stay with me by Da Blitz, another historical track from that year (along with Let me be in spring), or Hymn from Ultravox remixed by Caballero, which we danced a lot in that autumn - sometimes even over the disco’s cubes! Or Voglia di gridare by Daniele Silvestri, with which I met him and started to estimate ("lo slogan è fascista di natura", as I began considering politics). And Runaway by Co.Ro., who continued to churn out great music to dance to. And, well, even T'appartengo from Ambra: after all, it wasn’t so bad (mostly because se prometto poi mantengo)! And the Audio 2, again with Rotola la vita. And Don’t Look any further by M-People, a cover from ten years earlier. And even more apt... danced and sang along at the Heaven disco: someone to count on in a world of change / here I am, stop where you're standin' / what you need is a lover, a man to take over / oh girl, don't look any further...

So we arrived at New Year’s Eve. Tours downtown, going a few times to pick her up at her home, reporting in my diary. "An auto from which you can see the stars", as she commented on my roof hatch, adding that "Germans really liked it too." The Merry Christmas in German language in a hospital in province where I made a software install. True Lies and Forrest Gump at the cinemas, historical movies and not just for me. Organizing a skiing holiday: it looked like a good idea and we were all quite motivated...
That is, not the famous couples volleyball-players, but the rest of us were, and we felt good together! Of course, I was afraid of the various competitors, however it heartened me that a blonde girl had struck many of them... a pretty useless and washed out one, appeared a few weeks earlier in the group. The place of origin of the three was a famous and very bad location of the lower padana valley (!) and... well, the simple fact that she used to carry two scary mingers along with her was indicative of a lack of ethics. Years later we found her as an employee in a one of the most bleaker italian Great Companies... and it would all make sense.
But, at the time, the idea that an empty box of chocolates (as I had defined her) was more appealing to people than my Irene... gave me some confidence.

Unfortunately, like they often say, the biggest enemy is not outside - but inside of you. And you can’t defeat him.
After all, using the same pioneer digital camera, in summer I had shot myself several photos wearing a skirt and the like.

I have a memory of me and Marco in a pub in Cavoretto (another historical place) and in my car it’s playing Point of no return from Turbo B (from Snap/Centory): again, beautiful, strong, powerful! Then on Christmas Eve... Irene should’ve come to church with us but she lived far enough away from the group and so she then decided not to join... and Marco came and visit me and we went for a beer. It was important enough that at least he was there at that time, because Paolo had just announced that he wanted to leave our company... dazed by one of his many friends and customers...
And the coincidence (sorry if I repeat myself) was that this farewell took place in less than twenty-four hours from Di Pietro’s one from the Clean Hands Pool - which had shocked me greatly! Paolo then thought better of it but... it was clear that the little hint of honesty (and Good) for Italy was ending.
And so my life. My happy life, I say, or at least confident of being able to be.


Russia invaded Chechnya at Christmas - just to figure out what kind of people are in power over there (and, of course, not only in power).


And, with the High Hopes sung by Mariah Carey - All I want for Christmas is you – we get to our skiing week!
Eight friends, two girls... different interests... cooking, making coffee, eating Nutella. Sleep, wake up. Go dancing, go skiing. Talk, talk French or try it. Staying in the cold and getting sick. Looking out of the window, the mountain nestled in the clouds and listen to Regulate by Warren G.
Taking notes, to write a short story later!



A small mention for the wonderful Interstate love song by Stone temple pilots, rediscovered with Virgin Radio!

High hopes, Pink Floyd

Regulate, Warren G

Think about the way, Ice MC / Alexia

1995

22 days in January went by, among dinners, skiing, parties, phone calls... and I never had the courage to talk to Irene, despite the many evenings spent together (from Le cose in comune).

This is my epitaph. No, am kidding. Well, more or less…

They were broadcasting again the new Star Trek series, in December: its level didn’t seem to have improved much, three years after, rather the opposite... but I tried to follow it, anyway. And that probably influenced me... appearing as a stupid in her eyes. You know, right? In the eyes of humans (!) Star Trek themes are nonsense and good for simple credulous idiots... And how could you not agree, if its reference are the fans?
But no more talk. And stay tuned, as they say (!!)
Thus, expanding the discussion on translations which was perhaps the most interesting and recurrent theme among us, on that January 9th, I went and visit her and I mentioned the automatic universal translator... without convincing her much. But oh well, it wasn’t important.

More important it was my shyness. Which, during the New Year's concert aus Wien that we watched sitting on the couch together – a dream of a lifetime, right? – it didn’t allow me to take her hand, kiss her... talk to her.
No. Then I sent her a bouquet of flowers, without signature.
I’ve been back (as we all know) a million times to those moments... and some things are still unclear but they fall more or less randomly, in the hypocrisy of everyone’s lives... and things like that. But, of course, the fact that I hadn’t talked to her when I should have was mostly important: and... I was a shy girl, you see. And I wanted to be the one that receives a proposal. And later... I would’ve waited years for her to come back to me: because I wanted her and I knew she was The One.
Unfortunately, in a man's body it doesn’t work this way.
In short, let’s close the case: we should’ve been talking about music and not telling stories (or bad stories!) and at the New Year's Concert you usually listen to (but you already know) The Blue Danube Waltz and then The Radetzky March – simply wonderful!

So, in short, she got angry or scared or boh... and the curtain fell (thanks, of course, to her famous friend). Good news from the next world by Simple Minds, just published, proved to be ironic... as only the famous god from Blasphemous rumours can do: She's a river ("she's your last chance, guaranteed") but above all Hypnotized (some weeks later) marked those days, sunny but... black. The black hole at CERN, yes: out there you can read a little tale about an experiment performed at CERN on January 22nd, 1995 and... an alternate reality being created. But oh well. There’s also another tale, concerning a flood in Cologne exactly that day. Vague coincidences, let’s say...
Carnival, me dressed precisely like a fellow from Star Trek, new uniform. And ugly. Parties. Friends, so to say: because, you know, when couples go... only remain many human cases. And, in a way, I was too.
And when decent girls leave, remain the unlikely (!): the whole team from Volpiano showed no sign of separating from us... with ambitions of various kinds over the remaining males...

OMG, what nasty stuff. Everything, everything. I don’t have many more songs, for those months: if you think that it had also been released a vaguely dance track with Bastian's happy flight sample from the soundtrack of The Neverending Story from ten years before... Like I told Irene years later (!) 1995 should have been perfect, being it exactly one decade after 1985 and its days having the same position as 1989 calendar.
I'm stupid. I am a female. I was a slave to time and numbers. But not anymore 

We met, as usual, in our group. Work was going on... even too much, but then, you know, bad luck or better jokes caused by that one are always just around the corner: and so, for Easter we organized a weekend by the sea (even if with kinda low expectations) and... the day before a hard disk broke down in the famous hospital where I used to work. I was already feeling quite bad and I wanted to go away for a few days but they told me that I "would’ve done a big favor by repairing our computer now"... and in hindsight, amen, it was right like that. Some little earnings (!!) at least.
Skiing with Marco and Paolo... at least that part seemed to be all right: a photo in Serre-Chevalier... I try to smile... almost.
Compared to the picture from a month earlier at her house, I suck. Yep…

Un’altra cosa che ho perso, from Articolo 31 - I think their finest song - echoes in those cold months and while we’re back playing volleyball with... a pain inside.

Tina Arena, with Chains. Beautiful! And then Le ragazze by Neri per caso... the wound will never heal: "Ci devi stare / è inutile sperare..." (and Fabrizio’s female friends singing it along at his new house by the lake).
Especially when you've got it all wrong. One day in April, in a pub out of town, she put her legs over Carlo’s ones, a guy from our group. Logical, indeed.

May, the usual pollen allergy: Prarostino (Pinerolo countryside) together with some many friends and Be my lover from the soon-to-be-dead La Bouche... and those crossbows happenings. Fabrizio and the Museum of Cinema. Space Cowboy from Jamiroquai remixed by David Morales and they criticizing it and in that moment I agree (but then I change my mind!), 74-75 by Connells. Hold my body tight by East 17 (one little tear...) The color inside by the Ti.Pi.Cal - a masterpiece!
We go dancing, and one day I seem to recognize my Daniela dancing on the floor. I’ve never known if she was really her or not... in January, a few days before, I had actually met her in another disco and... I hadn’t recognized her! From my personal point of view she looked... whore-style, to describe exactly what I thought (!) or perhaps I simply had something else in my mind. And then it had been only three years since the famous carnival-event...

Irene Grandi sang new songs that summer: Bum bum and then In vacanza da una vita, pretty. And when the radio broadcast them just before our wake up... I felt teased. As always. We made a short vacation in Tuscany, with the two famous sisters well-equipped... nothing special. I preferred to go dancing or at least also go dancing. Everybody hold on to love, the Bliss Team, Rap me up by Corona.
In early June I decided to write a little tale about that story (the famous Le cose in comune - inspired by the homonymous song by Daniele Silvestri). I started printing several copies of it... friends, girlfriends read it... they said that they hadn’t realized how important she was...
I decided to call her Laura, in that story: it had been just something spontanous, it fitted well and she had indeed something similar with my girlfriend from three years before. Curiously (so to say) the following year I found out that she had written something vaguely autobiographical and had given herself the same pseudonym... (!!!)

We went on holiday in the Loire, and well... the places were not too bad. Our group, on the other hand, quite enough - enactment of the aforementioned fan club... The first cataclysm with a chick. The first of an infinite series, needless to say.

There was Respect, by Alliance Etnic, original and quite nice; and Shy guy by Diana King (autobiographical). And then Giorgia, that I had met some little time before listening to her songs at Beppe’s place: and now E c’è ancora mare... was a particular and original thing! and we listened to it while standing in a queue in France, not far from the sea. The Dirotta su Cuba: a beautiful album! And Sei la più bella del mondo, by Raf. Missing from the EBTG of course, remixed by Todd Terry – which looks great even in Promesse.
And one evening, at the hotel, it suddenly pops out from a radio Dreams will come alive by 2 brothers on the 4th floor: a shot... of nostalgia, sudden, big like an avalanche. Perhaps I was no longer thinking at her, and suddenly... those sounds.
That title, of course.
And Dancing with an angel too, by Double Dee with Alexia, and Passion and Memories by Netzwerk.

That summer I tried to remove hair from my legs... trying to burn them! For various reasons... they bothered me, and I wanted to get rid of them: and when Bennato sang Le ragazze fanno grandi sogni... I saw myself as one of them. Timidly, but with my whole being - and with fewer tears.
Ah, Berlusconi had been sent away. But he would be back...
One thing I remember from those months... that year, is that somehow I convinced myself I was an idiot. That is, a poor guy, a loser, because that story in which I believed so much had ended so badly, and also because the common scent (in Italy but also in the whole world) was turning to if you’re not rich, not showing luxury, if you don’t waste, don’t eat like a cool... then you are a poor communist - the famous words used by berlu 
And... since it was obvious that being like berlu was absolute disgust, somehow I ended up on the opposite side myself: I wasn’t the only one in reasoning like this, because even good people like Di Pietro and Travaglio would then confess a similar drift. But I had added on top of it that thing about not having been able to handle her, and so...
I would have felt that way for years. In this case, the coincidence of events had been... well, I couldn’t say.
I was a queer, but not a loser, look!

It came the autumn. A few months before, to celebrate her birthday, it had been released Windows 95 with all its pretty files dated on that day. Right, why not? And in the CD version of Windows there were some multimedia files, including the Good times videoclip (very grainy!) by Eddie Brickell. A flash from 1989.
I also remember one day when I went to Novara for an installation... it was pouring and in my car I had a tape from autumn 1985 including Don’t mess with Doctor Dream!

All gray, in that autumn. Through other old friends, I met a chick born exactly on the day following my ex from 1989. Ok, I'll stop now 
I liked her pleated skirt. A girl like you by Edwin Collins reminds me of her.
Alexia’s Me and you had gone a bit on the sly; Inno nazionale from Luca Carboni was original, as always! And, from his collection from that year, I also remember Il mio cuore fa ciock, original as well...
The universal, by Blur, so dense of atmosphere. Autumn-like. And Raoul and the king of Spain by Tears for Fears now divided: the thing had hit me, I was sorry about them and I thought about the people from whom I had been separated or from which I may have been separated in the future...
Cosa vuoi by Samuele Bersani, always good! Mariah Carey’s Fantasy, vaguely sampling Genius of love from the ancient Tom Tom Club (and that used to bring to my mind Wolfenstein 3D videogame soundtrack, some years before): I'm in heaven with my boyfriend... yeah.. Dolcissimo amore from Irene Grandi, making me sob every time: who had I in my car while I listened to it, and who would’ve I wanted to have...
Blessed by Elton John. The unbearable (not sure why) L’ombelico del mondo from Jovanotti. And of course You don’t understand me by Roxette.
If nothing else, the entire Ligabue’s album Certe notti was gorgeous! Too bad, the chick to whom I recorded it... Oh well, just one among many terrific memories.

In short, with Anywhere is by Enya we arrived at New Year’s Eve. That is, with Remembering the first time by Simply Red, or Disco 2000 by the Pulp, or with the very nice Laciodrome by Litfiba. Or even with one of the few Spanish-tracks I ever loved, El Tiburon! (or maybe I was just feeling bad...)
And George Michael started his sad trend, with Jesus to a Child, which later accompanied many evenings chatting with another chick disappointed by love (she was a special fan of It's oh so quiet by Björk). At the very least, she knew a little about music!
I've been reported, in much later times, a song named 1995 from Molly Nilsson: and I've found its sentence So what's wrong with living in the past? It just happens to be the place I saw you last quite perfect, quite apt, and definitely fitting to me (also being quite feminine, about that feeling for time).



I now read that Austria joined the European Union on 1 January 1995. Curious too...
I think the funniest memory - and in some meaning hateful – I have from Beppe will always be his joke about Niki Lauda!

Missing, Everything but the girl

Dove sei, Dirotta su Cuba

Hypnotised, Simple Minds

 1996
It was a horrible New Year’s Eve. Besides, I got drunk for real, like it rarely happened in my whole life - the room turned around me for at least twenty minutes. In that horrible famous ugly place in the lower padania valley (!) at the home of one of those.
It was all wrong, I kept telling myself: those friends, my place, the things I was doing. Looking back at it, now, it looks like I was forced to go around with them, to feel bad...
One of the gals had asked me why I was no longer the cheerful and joyful person she had met one year before: it was hard to explain her that I was no longer cheerful and joyful exactly because she was still around and Irene wasn’t.
We went and see the sun rise in Cuorgnè... a beautiful dawn. Wasted. I got home at six or whatever it was... and I cried inside. The radio played Così celeste by Zucchero and I felt nausea.

In January 1996 I started doing... no, actually I had already done them in the past: except that from that day on, I began to make them driven by despair... get out and walk, and walk... with tears pressing behind my eyes. Walking and walking also at night time: in particular I went to the house of the one with the pleated skirt...

Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio and Too hot, and then The ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen. Philadelphia, I couldn’t stand it. Tom Joad, in particular, reminds me of a carnival party in a club by the river Po, and... many girls dressed like little mice/Minnie, and I would’ve liked to be like them...

Life must go on, right? So I began to attend more assiduously the famous star trek fan: a pair of crazed but at least let’s say aesthetically normal (and it wasn’t a detail...) and then a bunch of... human cases, in fact. As I was now considering myself too, yeah.
With Oriella, the one who understood a little about music, we began to go dancing relatively often (with a side trip to the bakery around four or five in the morning) and Children by Robert Miles (for whom I’m so sorry) was the soundtrack of those months! And often I sat quietly in a corner... the sad princess, yes: and people came and ask me what was wrong, why I wasn’t looking to the future, and forgetting the past...

Because my problem wasn’t just Irene. My problem was deeper. It was that, when I listened to Le amiche from La Pina talking about big earrings like chandeliers... I knew I would’ve liked to wear them myself. And then go dancing in the right shoes.

But, behold, I remember many good songs! Logic, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this book 
1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. One of us by Joan Osborne (and the nice cover from Finardi some time later). Goldeneye (from the 007 movie) by Tina Turner, which I always liked. Strange world by Ké, and Spaceman by Babylon Zoo. Pazza di te by Marina Rei, good one. And TVUMDB by Elio e le storie tese (with Giorgia) which together to La terra dei cachi, are perhaps their only two songs I adore!
Over Sky plus by Nylon moon, another likeable italian dance track, I remember something curious... a flu! And a headache so strong I couldn’t sleep for most of the night: I don’t get sick often (!) and so I remember four situations and four songs that echoed in my head without giving me peace: this one, then Secret separation by Fixx in 1986 and Two can’t play that game by Bobby Brown (the sympathetic husband of Whitney Houston...) in 1995 - in addition to the aforementioned Over my shoulder by Til Tuesday. Better not get sick, after all.

Then came the summer. Shortly before, the Book Fair in Torino, and... me intent to assemble the spaceship's bridge... I couldn’t say that I didn’t enjoy that experience, but... for me Star Trek should have been more. Also more, I mean. And when my literature muse passed by our stand… of course together with him, I realized that I was still missing her. "She was at her place, in her world", as I wrote on my diary.
Lemon tree by Fool's Garden, perfect: loneliness, wasting my time, nothing ever happens, steppin’ around in a desert... no, not of joy. As I have written elsewhere, that Easter I felt alone for the very first time: friends were there... but nothing had any flavor. And nothing made sense.
Of course let’s not forget Wrong, less popular than Missing, but still a nice track by Everything but the Girl: tears in my eyes as I tell myself I'm feeling bad, and that I’d deserve a bit of happiness... on my car coming back from a lunch along with the blood donors. And Cosmic girl by Jamiroquai (guess to whom it was dedicated?) which followed the prophetic Virtual insanity! And of course Fable by Robert Miles, beautiful and even more than Children... because it spoke about the fable.
But I was on holiday in Tuscany with this young friend who didn’t like to dance and so... we used to listen music from outside the clubs. And I dreamed, about being on a cube or meeting her... I wasn’t sure.
Still Marina Rei and Noi... that sono passati undici anni / a volte il tempo sembra niente touched me on the inside. It seemed to be late, or perhaps it tasted like it had been forever since the bright 1985.

The sympathetic It's alright, it's ok by Leah Andreone reminds me of my cousin’s trivial wedding from the south (!) and one of the few long trips I ever made with my mom on my machine. And there was Sensibilità by Dirotta su Cuba, still! And Gary Barlow’s Forever Love, the fatty boy from Take That... but so romantic. And Alanis Morissette which was coming to success, especially with Ironic. And Return of the mack, Mark Morrison, which I always liked in a special way. And L’allucinazione by Grignani... so descriptive of how I felt when I thought about her, again and again, "è un'ossessione, stai diventando la mia allucinazione". E Aspettando il sole by Neffa, another debut: "Oggi non c’è / sole intorno a me"... I put it as a tagline to L’ultimo tramonto. Of which I should talk or maybe not... but I will only mention the fact that, of course, in that 1996 I went back to thinking about Daniela. To the mistakes I could’ve done... at how good I had felt, what I would’ve given to be happy again.
Years later, it would have been proven that things were not quite like... in that tale. Which remains, however, a nice piece of… fiction!
Oh, and of course there was Fastlove by George Michael: I have spoken extensively in my short tale... but my friends got their ladies, they all have babies...
Yeah.
I listened to that full album while going to Menorca at that customer-pseudo-friend’s place... it is curious, isn’t it? Now I seem to remember him as an old man, drunk and ugly, and often even half stoned. And do consider that he was younger than I am today 
Sad records, bad trip, bad vacation... my cries by the pool while listening to Depeche Mode’s 101... Only Tranqi-Funky by Articolo 31 could allow me out a few laughs.

There is not much news to tell, in this year. At least this, one could say  The monetary crisis was fading and... relatively bright days would’ve come soon. The Fenice theater burns, but... italian stuff. Above all, Romano Prodi wins against Berlusconi! Another of the few honest people in that country... and everything seems to be going in the right direction! Even Clinton is confirmed.
In the fall... no, actually I see that it was the spring of 1997 but... I was remembering it being a bit before, comes the Pippo Chennedy Show, the first tv show by Guzzanti / Dandini firm which I would have followed without losing a single episode! (More than Avanzi in 1994, which I had only glimpsed). In part it was because we were going out less at night... yeah.
Stupid girl, Garbage (was probably me). I kept wondering if there they were holding anything against me... Massimo di Cataldo’s Anime. The Sottotono with Solo lei ha quel che voglio... which I dedicated to my new girlfriend. Over whom it’s better to draw a veil: I felt like crap and life repaid me with an appropriate currency.
For a moment I believed that The flame by Fine Young Cannibals... had some bearing on what I was experiencing: I'm holding the flame, once again...
Good night.

In my honor, I want to clarify that Wannabe by Spice Girls walked past me several times in the late summer, especially during the famous fans’ convention in Rome and I managed to bounce it back, considering them some poor idiots 
Say you'll be there, somehow, was already a bit better.


It would have been a bleak autumn, as indeed it had been the rest of the year. A New Year’s Eve spent at her house... with other pearls of that... nonsense started two years earlier. A wish of making Il grande salto like Raf sang, really...

Let’s console ourselves talking about (What's the Story) Morning Glory, the fabulous album by Oasis! All perfect, from Wonderwall to Some might say to Roll with it to Champagne Supernova and Don’t look back in anger...
And sending a series of insults (!) to Macarena and all the crap that more or less on an annual basis would have infested the ether (and our ears) ...

Fastlove, George Michael

Wonderwall, Oasis

Fable, Robert Miles

 1997

On January 1st the radio played with much enthusiasm the new single by Jovanotti: Bella and... well, watching the chick with whom I had spent a platonic night (!!), let's say I didn’t agree much. Besides, it had been pointed out by that mangy dog, sorry, the good Luca from our group of friends. The playboy, so to speak.

To be fair, Nadia wasn’t that bad: apart from her deflated tits at twenty-nine and dark circles under her eyes... she had a nice smile and a nice little body. And we had also had a good start in our relationship: but, of course, as I said, it had started the stage in my life where stories could only be absurd...
Virgin at marriage, or something like that - at bottom, I preferred to put aside the details from certain delusions (as far as my mind allows me, that is only a little, but...). The which thing wouldn’t have been entirely wrong. Maybe at eighteen, to say, not thirty. And not when all your friends were living together or were ready to get married... (as George Michael sang, exactly)
But, of course, they were simply my fantasies taking shape and coming to life - as I would have understood years later.

As for her head, more or less I continued to like it: pretty smart, reasonable interests - literature (she studied law and had given me a copy of Siddharta which I appreciated less than I should), far enough political ideas so that together we took part in Northern League meetings (remember that we still wanted to dream that our country would recover...)
About music, a bit less, Oh well: sometimes I dedicated her Girlfriend in a coma by the Smiths and she looked at me angry (!). She owned a beautiful Siamese cat a bit in a coma too (though he was able to use the elevator by itself) and a sympathetic mother, while her father was in fact posed as retrograde, not willing to let her out in the evening later than eleven o’clock. Or maybe it was her who was using this as a cheat. Or maybe it was all just a figment of my imagination.
So, in short, when we managed to go somewhere... we were pretty well. Then, of course, gradually it became heavier to bear. And even that demand of her, that I dressed up as a gentleman - haha, if she only knew!
No, anyway, it was a bit of it all. I had bought my own house, at the end of the year, and in those months I was dedicating mainly to recabling the flat so I could finally fulfill my dream, an automated home! I involved my partner and we had enough fun for a few weeks, and then I started to install a bit of electronic stuff... and only later I also purchased some furniture: I had no hurry to cut the umbilical cord, although certainly I didn’t wanted to stay at mama’s home over my thirty years! Of course, I wanted to do it along with some girlfriend, but...
I tried to engage that girl in this challenge (let's call it so) but she wasn’t too convinced. I guess, for several reasons... difficult to summarize them all here: for sure, quite often, she seemed too theoretical - quite logical for those who study law. And also, perhaps, considering who at that age is still very much tied to the family.
Just a girl (by No Doubt). She or I...

Strange days, indeed, as he sang Franco Battiato. But above all, at that time he sang La cura, an exceptional work of art! And Coccodrilli by Samuele Bersani, and the famous belle tettine  that horrified the pseudo-emancipated women unable to truly understand a lyric... Hedonism by Skunk Anansie but mostly Brazen (Weep)... why don’t you weep when I hurt you?
I cried, I cried... trust me. Some nights I stayed in my car under your home crying... because it made no sense. So many things, almost all of them - and a good part of them didn’t make sense because I didn’t feel in the right place.
When Laura non c’è by Nek came out, I regarded it immediately as a pearl! A little like Capelli by Niccolò Fabi, already enjoyed some time before with Dica - but the best would come later. Laura non c’è was funny, well-written... and of course took me a bit back to my ex, but thinking back at capisco che è stupido cercarla in te / solo è strano che al suo posto ci sei te... I realized that that comparison was simply wasted with Nadia. As I've written in Accadde qualcosa, I didn’t want to be alone, I wasn’t able to find a meaningful girlfriend and so... I had tried to be satisfied with the friend of an unlikely woman from the hospital, who had made us meet.
And of course I took her to France as I had done years before... and then also in my group...
The news of a fire at Torino Cathedral caught us in the morning when I decided to take a trip to Beaulard and bring her along: I made up a theory related to the fact that the pope was expected in Torino in those days and then he had changed programs... and Nadia wasn’t quite convinced.
We went to Geneva at Easter - yes, ten years after that failed trip with Marco. We even slept in the same bed together (!!) without obviously doing almost nothing. The weather was not great and... well, in the end, it wasn’t too bad: listening to the full CD Ultra by Depeche Mode on this journey certainly served to raise the bar! Although it made me feel... often Useless.
All my life, see. Among other things, finding out that Dave Gahan had almost died because of drugs in 1995... was added to the disasters from that year. And to the coincidences-not-coincidences...
My beloved Dave!

Oh, the adored One headlight, by Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers: I liked it a lot! And then Regina di cuori (...) and Goccia a goccia by Litfiba, another beautiful record. Maybe better not to dedicate it to women, maybe, seeing how I felt... oh well... (!)
At Easter we went in Liguria to meet her relatives, and even that day was not too bad: I remember a poster from the Northern League, which reported Ezra Pound's famous sentence “if a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good" and I loved it. Naturally.

Work, despite a bit of scare in those months, went on as usual, always with a very dense agenda! The usual hospital went on just fine: by the way I remember fondly the little guy from Calabria, and the new server installation we did on January 17th, a Friday... and we going on till late! Maybe because he’s been one of the few honest Calabrian which I have met... (and of course he died after a few years. As usual, see Blasphemous rumours...)
And in those days I also met a nice man, a principal in a school, which later gave me a lot of work and a lot of respect, in those years. He's gone soon, too: Mario, like my dad. Another coincidence or foresight from Promesse.
On the other hand, about a year before I had sold one computer to a guy together whom was working one... little idiot, a friend of old friends of mine. Incredibly, the guy postponed payment for months and, after a little while it was clear that he was trying to cheat and bail on it. It would’ve been the first fraud in my career... ten million liras, well...
And in those months after my calls... and other people’s too, one day I decided to go once more and meet Gualtiero (so was named the young man with Parkinson's disease), who lived outside Torino, to solicit payment. He didn’t open the door, I threw a punch on the bell, I went away. In my car there was Staring at the sun from U2.
I had to wait six years before the issue could be considered settled (!!!)

Some more weeks... for some reason, in those months I wrote very little in my diary. I think it was just the... resignation. I resisted a little bit more and then I decided to let Nadia off. Meanwhile, I had completed the paper for buying my house, and I remember with affection my mom announcing with a smile that today it’s my birthday, as we sign for the mortgage at the bank : economy was running now, after years of crisis, and I remember the consultant (with whom I've been in touch for years) whose eyes shone mentioning that even the poorest investment fund made at least 10%...

Nadia came to see me again, and it was possibly June: she didn’t bother much of my home automation which was taking place, but said something about the dust on the floors (I was not living there full-time) and this is the last memory I have of her.
I fell into apathy. Obviously. It was hot. A few months earlier there had been the Hale-Bopp comet and we had gone to see it on the mountains. From disco to disco by Whirlpool Productions: music never left me, and often could make me smile from deep!
On television, a reportage about Lucio Battisti, who had disappeared from the scenes for almost two decades... the fact that he was born on my same day was beginning to intrigue me.
I used to meet those from the usual group, as always: I would then be invited to go to Corsica with them in August. And in late July I helped that famous jerk to move, with tropical temperatures! But it was fun. On the radio, the new album from Oasis, not bad though obviously nothing to do with the one before. And Kiss the rain by Billie Mayers and I breathe by the Vacuum, quite original! And Kiss me by Sixpence none the richer and that long dress from You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress. And of course Your woman by White Town... inside of me I was singing it, smiling at it... even a bit scared to imagine myself in the shoes of that girl in the videoclip - or maybe thinking of someone who was in that state of indecision... in the midst of those signs. Curiously (haha!) I remember that we talked about it with Irene’s guy, one of those days... curious especially if we consider the days to come...

Going nowhere somehow, again by White Town, would become my anthem. Of that summer, and the rest of my life: life should be more than just going nowhere somehow...
But, meanwhile, we were dancing also Free by Ultranate and Bailando by Paradisio (of which I would have later literally l-o-v-e-d the version from Leone di Lernia!) and even the fabulous Freed from desire by Gala, released in 1996, but exploded later: he's got his strong belief.
There were also Falling in love and Hole in my soul by Aerosmith, the latter on a sunny afternoon in Corsica, home of that other guy, and Cristina dedicating it to me. Along with the book "On being an eagle" that one girl was reading at the beach. Years later, when I finally stopped considering myself a chicken just because I was in the wrong body, she would have reneged all those beautiful words. Things that give you pleasure...
Some new entry in the famous hospital... spending a whole afternoon talking to a little girl just met. We would’ve met later for years, and sometimes we even went out for a pizza.

In Corsica I was the famous package - the one who used to follow friends with tears in his throat and never have fun. Yes, camping was good and my relationship with Cristina was... dunno, say blooming: not that I did nothing but tell how sad I was... she should’ve not reacted like that, those flowers you sent without signing were something so tender...
Yeah. That people usually say the opposite of what they really think or, better, they say things without thinking... I‘d have understood more than a decade later: but at that moment, that was fine. I was fine with them, I even went dancing once and the environment was not bad... Alexia was out again with Uh la la la but I was happy to dance again Think about the way, as well as some local anthem that everyone was often screaming.
Breathe by Midge Ure: and finding that the guy from Ultravox was still alive! Giudizi universali by Samuele Bersani, another pearl. To the moon and back by Savage Garden, perfect for me: she shies away from human affection / I would fly you to the moon and back if you'll be, if you'll be my baby. And above all, I couldn’t remember a time when I had felt desired.
A journey for which I don’t have the needed map, exactly.
And so Rosso, by Niccolò Fabi: how perfect! The words, the topic... wonderful, beyond how I felt inside: I began to seriously love him!

The Albanians now were landing at a good pace in Puglia, but above all the Pathfinder probe landed on Mars!
And Hong Kong returned to China, and this thing is mentioned in Mele a metà 

Princess Diana’s death, which anyway at the time didn’t touch me that much (and, to be fair, making some room in the troublesome world of gossip was almost good news...) and then that of Mother Teresa... they took us to September.
Mobile phones were spreading, now that the rates were a bit down: and I remember with... oh, disappointment, that those from our famous group used them to call from one side of the supermarket to the other. I should’ve minded my own business, yes, but... apart from the cost, I could not resist to demonstrations of stupidity and displaying of luxuries....
I said nothing, but I was obviously still very much in need of a little ethics. On the other hand, less than a year before, I had heard one of my partners saying, quite serious, that he felt the need to raise his standard of living...
And then... one day in October, I received that phone call. Not a random day, sure - the day before her name day (!) and, in fact, the day before the world-renowned over-advertised Telecom Italia privatization... my first purchase of shares! I had a little fear of the Stocks and that kind of company there: but after one year, in the end it didn’t go that bad, indeed.
I don’t remember what had been said or done in days, weeks earlier: I mean, sometimes she and Carlo appeared in our group... we talked, I pretended nothing and in fact it’s not that I thought about her this much. I was just down: since months, since years... I was talking to that chick from our circle who would always ask me how I felt... I had picked up Mele a metà again after five years... really, I didn’t believe I could bring it to an end!
That image of she heading to wash dishes in the camping bathroom, and I'm going to help her... and then at some point we talk about having as many or as little cutlery to wash, and she says that is not a problem and... I observe that white flowered dress, that breast and dream of being like her...

We went to a flea market in Poirino that afternoon, where they were buried some of her relatives - as Irene narrated. She had short hair now. Watching things, go through the stalls, translate Warsteiner beer slogan in front of a pub - a queen among beers (!)
It was a slow... though firm relapse. The following days, the following weeks... the movie the pizzas the Chinese restaurants with rice in lotus leaf...
Parole, parole tra noi - as rightly she sang Irene Grandi in Vai vai vai.
When Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize it looked like another nice coincidence 
Barbie girl from Aqua and Tubthumping from Chumbawamba (with the disturbing transvestite singing dubbed in the videoclip). And Walking on the sun from Smash Mouth, and then Per un’ora d’amore by Subsonica in duet with Antonella Ruggiero, and me inviting Carlo and Irene at Fabrizio’s, who has just opened one of his various places for playing music and theater... he tells me (of course it's not that I hadn’t mentioned her while talking to him!) "she’s nice"... and I decide to go walking through the city at midnight at risk of being stabbed in Valentino park. The movie Contact (wonderful) with Paolo, and noticing that the protagonist (a scientist) was born on August 25th...
So I find myself coming back from Milano exploiting a passage from the famous sketched Sicilian above, and at one point he asks me why I still think at that one: and I turn to him and, from my heart, tell him you don’t understand, I look at her and I melt... I would spend hours with her just to hear her speak...
What a movie phrase!
I start hanging from those phone calls. Yeah, but she is engaged: fair enough, I don’t care about sex (!)
I like her mind. That’s enough.

No, it’s not enough. In November I die - or rather, I wish I could die. She and her guy go to Vienna and I dream of how much I would’ve liked to go with her. He purchases a computer and I go at his place in order to install it and seeing her at his house... strikes me. Even more hearing those compliments of hers... about my electronic home, about me who can I install and write programs: they come to my home one evening - when I discovered Kommissar Rex, of which she was obviously fond and it broke through me too rather easily, including German shepherds and Vienna! - and she says "I’ve always known you were a genius"...
The new Fool's Garden's record, cute - with that cover of Martha my dear that makes me discover a little more of Beatles 
And then, one day in Chieri... in November... it pops out Che vita è - of course from Irene Grandi. She watching her guy while we listen to that song in the car and... it's all so sweet. If only she were with me. That evening, actually, there was also her famous wrong friend, and we got to talk at dinner... about working on one’s own and more, and it is perhaps the only plausible conversation I remember having with her in ten years or whatever it was. It’s even more curious because I knew that Irene had become a civil servant... and it had surprised me greatly: that is, from entrepreneurin-against berlusconi to potential parasite-doing nothing!

But, you know, people would age badly. But it's all in the future... (!!) and in any case this doesn’t mean things could have been different - for everyone.

We still go dancing. Da ya think I'm sexy by N-Trance, perfect sampling for great dancing! And It's like that by Run DMC (yes... that's how it goes...) and Sunchyme from Dario G (!!!! no, not me...) and Men in Black by Will Smith and DJ Dado’s Give me love and the whole DeeJay Parade '97 which for some reason I recorded... especially the sweet Beach ball by Nalin & Kane...
It looked like yesterday, and it had been three years. Well, now it looks like the other day, and twenty-three years have passed 

And the Verve’s album, from Bitter sweet symphony to Sonnet to The drugs don’t work... and an evening spent at a friend’s from those of the Gran Madre to do things on his computer. Deep, sweet, autumn.
Back to you by Bryan Adams, in a pizzeria in Chieri. Torn by Nathalie Imbruglia, she so stunning in that wonderful and funny video! At the time I dreamt that someone like her would’ve come for me too... or at least who looked a little like...
And Quelli che benpensano by Frankie Hi-Nrg: a masterpiece, the track that will remain in history (including that fool who continually repeated that quote about a level of Doom). I remember Fabrizio and his communist friends... at that time still relatively close to me, and one day in Ceriale; and, simultaneously, another trip to Andora with my co-worker, his girlfriend and a friend of theirs: and on that occasion she asked me "if I really weren’t interested in a serious romance"...
People never understood anything about me, and that's basically okay.

Boadicea by Enya, then sampled or rather stolen by Lauryn Hill. As long as you love me by Backstreet boys, nice and romantic, in a small way. And, for some reason, I find E tu vuoi lei, cover of No one is to blame by Howard Jones, resang by Paola Turci.
Ah, if you want another coincidence... my swatch purchased ten years before along with the famous minger, stopped working in those weeks and, about at the same time, she announced she was pregnant. Funny 

But back in November of 1997.
Does it help you, writing on your diary when you're sad? One of the usual friend asks me, and I say yes, churning out another poem or so dedicated to her. A few days later he organizes his bachelor party and basically everyone from the group comes there. Irene rests her head on her boyfriend's shoulder, in that photo - I wanted to shoot her a thousand of pictures... luckily there were no digital cameras yet! In her skirt... she was pretty. Also Cristina was wearing a miniskirt and I joked on her fishnet stockings and... I wasn’t saying what I really thought (!)
We go and watch My best friend's wedding, at the cinema, and some people smile at the coincidence of me and them. Well... just a little: I’d rather dwell on wedding dresses and bridesmaids.

Until, one day in December, I go to Desenzano del Garda by train for an installation: on my way back return, a chat at Irene's house is waiting for me... we arranged to meet each other a few days before, because she read my tale from two years and a half before...
So we talk... and talk more. I don’t remember exactly what she told me, if not the usual stuff that women say to shy men or who haven’t seized the moment (!) but, see, she couldn’t imagine where my shyness sprang from. She said she was shocked at those pages (so far, so good...) Then I remember some random words like that she had been at a psychologist’s because she used to fear the devil (!!) and then some free advice on how I could manage to feel less alone.
Yes, she was getting older, definitely.

I go away and I feel... relieved. The idea of having one more friend - obviously a flawed idea, but for a while it seemed to be so... I remember when, a few weeks later, she told me "today we met those very old friends of ours... those we hadn’t seen for years, and we got together to talk about our story... of you and me... that is, of our non-story..."
In short, it was acceptable, like this! I would’ve thought about the future, I would have forgotten her, I’d have met other people...

No, I wouldn’t have come to know other people: I would have met other torturers, as it had always been after her. And in fact, Rosanna, the somewhat crippled (!!!) one, due to various car accidents, became my new reference on evenings out: similar in features to Nadia... I would have touched new lows in the months to come.

But, for the moment, we were simply going often to the newly-inaugurated pub in honor of Princess Diana and organize a New Year’s Eve with some others from the usual group - those who played volleyball more convinced.
Stay, by Sash! ...it craved from radios, from car-radios, from the dance floors in the famous One Way disco. And I could answer with Anybody seen my baby?? (as Mick Jagger sang)


Special mention for Elisa, who debuted in 1997! Labyrinth... wonderful (and the title of that album... Pipes and flowers, which I adapted to my romance by translating on the fly into Masturbation (pippe, ndt) and flowers!). And then she’s been outstanding for years to come!
And, well, I find it hard to give a proper place in time to Bachelorette from Bjork, but I guess it was out on the radios and on my mind by the oend of 1997 and the beginning of 1998, like the internet says: and it was... curious, touching and scaring, because of the title of that book in its videoclip (My Life!) and that tale of... Nothing (depicted as trees) surrounding everything as time goes by...

Che vita è, Irene Grandi

From disco to disco, Whirlpool Production

To the moon and back, Savage Garden

 1998

As a confirmation to the fact that people never understood a thing about me, on the day after returning from 2 Alpes/2 (as I defined that New year’s Eve: a cheap remake from three years earlier) Cristina called me and left a voicemail message, asking how it had been – since she had heard important comments that someone had made "that I had so much fun."
Who knows what people meant for having fun. That is, I started having some suspects, but it’d take some more of years... What was certain this time, is that I was in a group of morons... wannabe fuckers (!)
That is, also three years earlier people wanted to have fun, dance and live some romance but, you know, I, Carlo, Beppe, Irene and Marisa themselves... all had some substance (even more than a minimum) and we made up for the other two/three demented like Filippo; while this second round was led by the famous playboy, a few girlie equivalent that stimulated him all the time (in every sense) and then by the pariah. Which, sorry to say it, were me and the little mangle.
Me, because I felt empty and out of place. Because I was imagining the other couples in a chalet living their love... and I had been waiting for such since Christmas 1992. Because the emptyness was deep, very deep. Because of having fun like an idiot among idiots (I’ll always remember this one Sardinian jerk who rode a big plush pink panther, in order to get noticed in the cafè...) and looking for easy sex... I didn’t give a damn.
So when that other one took my hand one afternoon, I was deluded (the term was never more appropriate) she were interested into me. Another top-minded, with which I wouldn’t realistically have wanted to spend even ten minutes. Or, indeed, Rosanna, who would become the one with which to engage a challenge to the highest pity, as I wrote in Accadde qualcosa.
However, it’s true, I had tried to make the best of a bad job and... I just allowed myself a ride alone to the disco La Casa and I had been pleased to hear the notes from Missing - coincidence or else it was (!)
I really hoped I had put off a parenthesis and I was going to look at the future with a different eye, let’s say the eye from four years earlier. Of course it wasn’t like that.

I still had to change my car... and in the end they had passed almost 10 years. I wanted to change it after five... it always seemed a proper time: but, as we know, I was never very motivated... With Nadia we had spoken about it and, yes, she said I should’ve changed it but... it seemed to me that she considered it a status symbol - or maybe it was me carried away by the hassle for ostentation (!) - so I replied that a new machine only served to impress women. A phrase which came directly from my hidden me...
However, before long I decided and ordered the Lancia Y that I had wished for more than a decade (a women's car, of course...) and I also settled the accounting details: and the whole history of leasing and entrepreneurs’ fantasies about lowering taxes can be found in 10 piccoli imprenditori!

We went skiing a few times in January: I had decided to try that snowboard that the guy, from whom I had bought the house, had left me as gift: it was old, he had explained to me, but... it was available. And so, without fear as always (!) I tried it for the first time in Champorcher, where I went with two friends who weren’t able to ski and the simple, affordable slopes had looked like a good idea to me. It was fun, yes: stuff for youngsters  more speed and less technical, as I called snowboarding. And you were not risking to break your leg, because they were bound on the board: in change you risked to smash directly ligaments in both knees...
And, young or old that I were, I met a cute girl... yes, she could be twenty years old... her name was Chiara, and she was from Caluso. What a memory, twenty years later! We crossed paths a few of times, it had popped some good feeling between us: I greeted her when I recovered the other two friends and I even believed I could’ve met her again...

I tried, in fact, to convince myself that everything would settle down. In that sense...
But it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t so, when I used to put on a miniskirt and improvised earrings and tried to look at me as a girl, during the Sanremo Festival: and I was trying to go on with Mele a metà...
Oh, let's not forget Titanic and its frenzy (including My heart will go on by Celine Dion)! I remember the girls crying at the cinema and me not… and I remember that I wanted to cry, too. A bit stupid, told like this: years later, anyway, I would’ve watched it and let the tears out...

Just as 1997 had brought some changes in the music scene (Vacuum, Midge Ure revived, Skunk Anansie...), 1998 was instead a... sadness, from the beginning: the first tape that I recorded was a compilation from Giorgia, about whom I was inspired by aforementioned Rosanna (a big fan of hers) and it was actually not bad, from the oldest tracks to the new Mangio troppa cioccolata… forse ero te nella mia vita passata... oh God, I wanted to be a woman, but if in my past life I had been Rosanna...!
Yes, for sure I thought about that. My fantasies were like those... there would’ve been nothing wrong. If I’d been born in the right place.
And then the new album by Simply Red, Blue: Say you love me was gorgeous and it moved away a bit from the vaguely blues turn of Fairground and, partly, already of Stars – move that I hadn’t liked a lot. The thing I remember with more... smiles, is that Mick Hucknall on the Blue cover is virtually identical to Niccolò Fabi on his new album’s cover with his same name! I saw them side by side in the window of my shopkeeper friend and they were... cute, yes: if only I could’ve appreciated them physically (!)
But two beautiful faces and two great musicians. In particular, Niccolò, who touched a new peak with Lasciarsi un giorno a Roma: those lyrics, those words, that energy! Needless to say, that ricordati che c’è differenza tra l’amore e il pianto ended up straight in the story I was writing. It was me, me who confused the empty timid girls with intelligent ones waiting to be discovered. And who in my masochism so girlish I loved crying... for all the kicks I had taken, instead of thinking like a men.
Oh well. Sempre, Lisa’s song, reminds me of that ugly feeling like your life’s going nowhere and neverending crying... fino a farmi diventare niente...

We're already in May, musically speaking: because the world tried right away, and then throughout the year, a recovery of the '80s - that thing that was to become fashionable in the years to follow. But in 1998 it came the worst, they were restored and especially "imitated" the worst from the 80s - Brimful of Asha by Cornershop is the first that comes to mind... or the cover of Video killed the radio star by Presidents of the USA.
The same Outside of George Michael and that really fake and ancient clapping of hands... yes, of course, nothing when compared to the shock that caused us (me and my friend Nicola) the tale from the bathrooms in Los Angeles and his outing... ( !!)
I listened to a bit of the two above-mentioned CD, and then again Per fortuna, purtroppo by Irene Grandi, and a little bit of Madonna... Frozen, Ray of light... I still couldn’t bear her, and her breakthrough Oriental/Indian/Buddhist gave me nuisance, ethically speaking. I would’ve seen other cases like that, in the future...
And Acida from Prozac+: nice, original... if it weren’t that it brings impressed Rosanna’s face and...
Nothing. On the other hand both Teardrop by Massive Attack and that wonderful Blindfold by Morcheeba... were above the average of those months! Tell them I'm gone, and nothing's wrong...
How I dreamt of leaving, in that year. The birthday amid those non-friends with gifts obviously not-sincere... but above all the feeling that it was me being wrong. In my chromosome but also in what I asked from life: have fun, carpe diem, don’t care about anything...

I couldn’t. I had been happy with Daniela and I had dreamed of my whole life with Irene, and... I knew what I wanted, except that it just seemed impossible to even approach it...
Were it because of shyness or another problem or whatever.
Of course, my counselor saw me blue and called me often... oh no, not Cristina, rather Rosanna (!) and we used to go out... and she answered me with her tools, that is you just put away Irene, it takes time...
No, things weren’t like this. I didn’t want to put away a dream, and if I was talking so much about it, it wasn’t because I wanted her again, but because I knew that she was the kind of person I wanted by my side. But obviously my listener had no idea what I dreamt of being - or even imagined my conception of time...

Even Cristina, however, used to call me often. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but it wasn’t bad.
So, spring passed in a kind of stasis, yep, that Teardrop and Blindfold remarkerd perfectly... a Valentine day by the sea between uncoupled friends (and that image of the napkin...), another meeting with Star Trek fans, another date cancelled at the last moment in Acqui Terme...
Okay, nothing.
Ah, yes, but there was also Song 2 by Blur to at least pull some rhythm! Which, as another guy repeated often, was the FIFA 98 soundtrack (how important ) And Fuori dal tempo by Blue Vertigo, who churned out several pearls in that period. And the ridiculous I'm happy by Soerba, that reminds me of a trip to Gardaland with Fabrizio and his total hatred (shared) for that stuff!

The ridiculous story of Clinton and Lewinski raged in those months... and a few years later, with Bush arrival, my comment was (drawing inspiration from a movie) economy was going well and politics was decent but that blowjob bothered everyone: so much better Bush and 9/11, right!
And then there had been the tragedy of Cermis, the US military plane that cut the cable of a cable car. And the conspiracy-theory fans playing with Di Bella’s Cancer Cure eh... Oh well (!)
A detail not to be forgotten (!) in Italy it was at that time the introduction of area code for local calls. I remember one of the last times I saw my famous customer in of Milano, a seven-year relationship: I entrusted the construction of a new fax platform and... for some reason I wasn’t able to get it working: lack of specifications, also difficulties in testing. It was curious because the customer had 039 as a prefix and we were often confused between this 39 and 39 indicating Italy!

The Blue Y finally arrived in mid-May, and... the first night I found myself by chance at Irene’s place because I had to go and pick a computer up by a customer in her area... and then I went downtown with the group that I was attending in those months.
We often met at the home of the two sisters... and when I think back at me carrying the printed lyrics from Dreams by the Corrs (the famous cover from Fleetwood Mac, in fact)... I realize how little sense it had. How much I was out of place.
How I cried on those words listen carefully to the sound / of your loneliness / like a heartbeat drives you mad / in the stillness of remembering what you had / and what you lost / It's only me that wants to wrap around your dreams and / Have you any dreams you'd like to sell / dreams of loneliness...
It seemed perfect for my condition, and had been written twenty years earlier. I seemed to hear Daniela’s voice... it made me feel guilty for crimes that I hadn’t committed. And, when I looked at the three girls from that group, in the videoclip, I dreamed of those clothes...

Marina, from the old group, got married on that day in May. I mean exactly that day in May, on the sixteenth - which had seen my first time, nine years earlier. They married in Liguria and so on that Saturday morning we hurried down in four and... yes, there was also Annalisa, logically - after seven years. And, with the given limitations, she and the other friends were a bit like in the theme song with the bridesmaids from My best friend's wedding 
She had aged, more than she should have, perhaps because she was lean... But was anyway still cute and smiling: I thought about her for some time and Quanto tempo e ancora by Biagio Antonacci was suited to those thoughts.

In the autumn of the past year, when I had started seeing Irene again, one day I had been dreaming that she and I were going to get married on that day… they sounded fine, those names on my diary along with that date.

I also met the famous amoeba  Cinzia i.e., my old friend’s ex. It would’ve been the last time: we had somewhat lost sight in recent times... that day, coming home from the usual hospital, I recognized the car's license plate in front of me (!) and so we stopped to talk a little while... It was a hot day, she was wearing a Prince of Wales suit, serious, with a skirt... or so I remember. When she asked me how I felt, I think I answered her it’s not going very well, and then maybe I mentioned... the usual stuff. Curious: that exact phrase would later be used in the fall by my dad...

Playing soaped football, going to the beach, planning our holidays. In radio and on TV there was El talisman, from a certain Rosana (nothing ever by chance...) and then Vento d’estate, beautiful but sad song by Max Gazzè with Niccolò Fabi. Years later, I realized that Fabi was especially good because he could speak of sad things without being pathetic - as I’ve (almost) always found Gazzè or, say, Pezzali after the first few times.
And then there was Se telefonando, which I didn’t know in its original version: I liked the Delta V in that and other occasions. And Quello che by 99 Posse, which were not driving me mad as an idea but... this one was wonderful. Not knowing whom to dedicate it, the only available was precisely my new torturer. Another mistake, of course.

So, we went off to Tunisia. All wild, and me often silent, as it had been for years. I think the fact that they had suggested me to make me grow a goatee had traumatized me: me, a female, with goatee?!
So, after four days we were in Tamerza - and I'd had enough of crying: I had cried for three years and I thought that was enough (deluded...) so, after listening to the tape I had recorded in in January three years before... Phil Collins played by the Philharmonic Orchestra from Vienna... I focused that canyon where we had passed in the afternoon and I decided that I was going to do my fate. And then, as is narrated in Accadde qualcosa, I couldn’t...
Error? Who knows... cries never finished. But it's nice to have material to be told and... being able to do it!
How is that one? "Why do you only write sad things? Because when I'm happy I go out!" great Tenco, and that 1967...

That evening went by, and so the ten following days, still doing a good face on... everything. I said goodbye to this group too, it wasn’t for me.
In fact, as I returned home I started writing Accadde qualcosa and... I was adamant to complete what I had failed to do in Tunisia.
A Tuscan girls we had known (as always, they had known...) had lent me a book and... in the end it remained to me. Maria Venturi, I didn’t think I would’ve liked her. Or maybe, I did not think I liked womenish books: instead, perhaps due to the situation I was living, I finished it off in no time! It was about a broken love affair, Nuremberg (of course), there was a character (male) with Irene’s surname (of course/2) and... at the beginning the lady refers to an abortion she’s being forced to make and which, being a disruptive act, convinces her to throw out all that past.
Somehow, I empathized with her: so I didn’t go and search for another ravine and let September come... I had started sleeping in my new house that summer, at last! And I remember... the stupid fear of the first nights... the chair leaning to the door! I mean, really, just like a girl (!) No, it isn’t true: next time, in the countryside and even with incomplete doors... everything would have been much simpler.
It is true that, in Tunisia, we had taken a ride on those kind of hanging gliders hooked to speed boats, with the girl from the book and... I had been yelling several times! Not that I was scared... it was more like a vent, like on the rollercoaster. Problem is, I just wonder what the others were thinking...

And, on that day of September, so many things happened.
I will always remember and will always remember fondly (say...) the final comment in my diary, that all of this can’t be a coincidence...
No, in fact. He died Lucio Battisti, on September 9th. Then she came up to my home Rosanna, without notice. Then I went to the cinema with a friend and we met Irene and Carlo... and even schoolmate Flora. And the film we had chosen was Sliding doors – I had pretty much guessed what it was about but I never thought it would hit me so much!
All together, everything in sync. It wasn’t a coincidence, years later I can state it clearly: I still have to understand a part of the meaning of these coincidences, but... we're almost there!
Rosanna told me the usual things you say to men who make lots of mistakes... and another case was dismissed. A case that should’ve never been opened, of course.
I, for my part, decided that everything that had happened was to be sidelined. What it had happened in those four years or so: that is, not that the last few weeks were still because of my missed girlfriend... but partially yes. I started Feeling strangely fine, as in the CD from Semisonic, who were on the radio in the previous months with Closing time.


So I went to Milano with Fabrizio at the usual fairs and we listened to Elisir by Gigi D'agostino - the beginning of a brilliant career! And then there was the Restless by Neja and The music I like by Alexia and Drinking in LA from Bran Van 3000, If you tolerate this by the Manic Street Preachers and Snow on the Sahara by Anggun, and I belong to you from Lenny Kravitz - especially when he and I decided to go along to the gym, a little later.
I also found Alberto again, my former schoolmate from elementary school: the enthusiasm was short-lived, just the time to get to know that he had changed religion (!) which wouldn’t have been a problem except that... the Jehovah's Witnesses are out of any sense. Ah well, a bit like all religions, right... What a bump, it suddenly occurs to me that he loved singing karaoke (!!) songs of 883 (!!!)
And to the Oktoberfest, exactly ten years later, with those two... always scrap from the famous misunderstood club! They hung on my every word, they both: yeah, of course... And on TV there was the videoclip by Doo Wop and Lauryn Hill... some guys are only about that thing... and me alone in that bed in that room.
How I hated it.
And then in Vienna with other scraps as above. Oh, there was also someone a bit better, like that girl from Bolzano to whom... I scrounged a bra. It was perfect and I deeply wanted to have one to wear... occasionally...
Speaking German wasn’t bad, beyond all, as we know! And Vienna... well! I also met the famous Polish girl, after almost seven years and it was pretty enough. Things she would then write me soon, would be again... out of place, but oh well (!)
And, of course, in the little town outside Vienna where we slept, there was a road named Irenental. I took a picture and smiled. I already had to dodge the other fat mussel (!!) who was behind me in that trip: she used to smile eerily when the radio broadcast Life by Des'ree.

Irene, yep. Realistically, of course, I no longer thought about her in those terms since December of the year before: but I hadn’t filed that dream and, basically, all the evil I had suffered in the latest months was also due to that history.
In spring we had still gone to the movies and some jokes of hers about the legendary Big Lebowski I hadn’t liked much – but not only. She was probably getting old, in fact - but I didn’t care much at the time. And, some time earlier, another one from the old group had come to me saying that she and her boyfriend were together 90% habit and 10% for love. The sentence should have hit me - and indeed it did - but I had considered it all filed. And even more after the summer.

So... more curious events occurred.
One day in October they called me from an hospital to tell me that my dad was there and was very sick: after seventeen (!!!) years and... in short, the news caught me unprepared... but without too much panic I went to see him, and it was really him... and it set in motion many thoughts. The more correct, however, and also the best one was that I wanted to show him all the things I had done in those years and I had learned through his teachings! And, in a small way, I managed to do it. I felt no hate for his being gone, or nostalgia for a missing relationship - I had had a full life and my memories of the times confirmed it.
Then one night she called me: she asked me if I could go and pick her up and I... I who didn’t want (more unconsciously than consciously) hear anything else about her, I replied that we could meet all together in the usual group, as always.
Maybe I made a mistake, the latest in a long series: but, exactly, I had cried too much for her. And, anyway, the mistake had been made four years earlier. Or, rather, when I was born in the wrong body...
I guess she sent me to hell after that phone call: she didn’t come to the usual place, neither her nor him. But after a few days, I went bowling with Beppe and Carlo and that colleague of his and candidly... the man-less-sure-on-this-planet announced us that she was pregnant by him!
I've never understood enough of human emotions - as Spock would say (!) I never realized how... yeah, well, how one might cheat on someone like Irene but, for heaven's sake, it can happen. Then, probably, I didn’t realize that in the last few months she had tried to use me to make him jealous... and closer to her: I surmised/guessed this later, analyzing the whole affair. Perhaps she hadn’t done that maliciously: simply, she was a female, she had felt him getting far, she knew I was available...
I, who'd never realized that there is a difference between love and crying yep. Or who loved to suffer in the presence of a torturer - metaphorical or real, sexually or not.
I then narrated this all in Promesse and... it would’ve fit to perfection. In the role of a girl...

But it didn’t end there.
While there were the movies Armageddon and The Truman Show, and while the radio was playing You get what you give, and I took to worship this Gregg (!) Alexander, and then Iris by Goo Goo Dolls, historical, and even Ho perso le parole by Ligabue (I went to see his Radiofreccia movie and it was remarkable - Accorsi was another big guy blooming at that time), and God is a DJ by Faithless, beautiful and original (then we might discuss about god being a DJ... !!) and Erase/Rewind by the Cardigans, Crush from Jennifer Paige, tied to those days in Vienna, Aqua’s Turn back time, directly from Sliding doors soundtrack. Which, incidentally, made me love Gwyneth Paltrow (!) ...
...I was saying, with this music in the background, I went and meet my dad in hospital and he didn’t seem to have his head... very functional, though it was strange because I had verified that he had renewed his driving license a few months before. I talked to the doctors, there were various arteries problems... but he wasn’t too old...
In the end, he was average. We were talking and... well, nothing too strange. But, for some reason, there was a bond between him and my failed girlfriend: German language! So, again a bit unconsciously, I phoned her a couple of times and asked her if she wanted to meet to talk about something somewhat special that I was living. She refused my invitations, and so I let it go. I could understand that, yes, somehow.

But... Christmas came, including a trip to Oropa with a bitter cold and Sweetest thing from U2 and the cover of Cindy Lauper’s True colors by Phil Collins... not that I cared much about churches but at Christmas sometimes I used to go there and then it was going on that thing with my daddy...
So I decided to go to the famous church from January 1985, that one (just by chance) behind Irene’s home. I thought I would meet her, maybe, and it wouldn’t be a problem - I would’ve just greeted her.
And... a few days later, a friend from our circle called me to tell me about a party they were organizing for New Year’s Eve: he invited me and said that she would probably have been there as well, and asked me if it was a problem. "Absolutely not", I replied. Let them pass... forty-eight hours, and he called me again and told me that her father was dead and so she wouldn’t be coming...
I cannot deny that I smiled, at that time (!)
For sure I could take my guilt and accept having cried and everything - and in a short time I’d have realized and tried to deal with my problem, but the idea was also growing inside of me that I had often been mistreated for no reason. Voluntarily or not as it was...
And so a little punishment was fitting well in there: you didn’t want to speak with me about my dad, and then that's okay.

More than anything, I wrote down the coincidence - yet another. And, humming the fabulous No regrets by Robbie Williams, now taking off for his solo career, I went to spend New Year’s Eve with Fabrizio and some of his friends.
I don't want to hate but that's all you've left me with No, in fact I never hated her, even when everyone among friends was against her. A bitter aftertaste and a fantasy of how we all could live. No regrets they don't work, no regrets they only hurt: write me a love song, drop me a line...


Note that Michael Hutchence and Falco died in this year! It didn’t go well for music, no...
Oh, I forgot the first CD filled with songs in MP3 format, purchased through a website: the complete Depeche Mode discography! Whose videoclip from It's no good I transferred to a videotape, and it was all in all still so pioneering, from a multimedia CD bought at newsstands with Fabrizio.

The end of that year was concluded, among other things, with the appearance of Marco Mazzoli at Radio 105. A very important event, as soon the legendary Zoo would be born!
And Prodi fell thanks to the demented D'Alema (who became easily fooled by Berlusconi) and Bertinotti. And goodbye to the only decent government in two decades. But, you know, they deserve it. The Italians, I mean 

Ho perso le parole, Luciano Ligabue

Only when I lose myself, Depeche Mode

A question of faith, Lighthouse family