17 songs - My autobiography (4)

1999

My dad didn’t live much longer: although that January 13th, 1999, as I wrote in the diary, seemed to be a significant date – for a father who had introduced me to the world of science fiction (and science).
A quick funeral, with a few friends and my mom although reluctant (she had her own reasons). But Marco didn’t come... and this was another sign that friendship had to be something else: anyway he then joined me in the evening for a beer and a chat, always nice.

The winter, some ski trip, some times dancing (but more towards the spring).
In February, so they said, the famous Cinzia got married. On Valentine Day – what a romantic idea!. Me... I often imagined how happy she must’ve been to make the dream come true like that. The dream for us women, I mean... 
And later, when I was to use the same expression in the midst of the usual group, in a pub in Sebastopoli street, while talking about the movie Message in a bottle... my friend/adviser would have sent a bad glance at me. It would’ve been the beginning of the end. Of that friendship, I say.

And that Sunday I also received a blue rose by the minger of Star Trek, one of those from the Oktoberfest. The gift surprised me, for both the not-much-macho idea and for the sender, but... I smiled and then we still met, as we had often done. When I had met her, at the convention in Rome, I had even liked her, somewhat: we used to talk about many things and we enjoyed that. Only then, looking at her more carefully... we were under the minimum threshold of normality. Like, precisely, a bit of them all in that club. And only then I realized precisely the matter about torturers etc.etc....
In fact, shortly after, it came an audio-tape from the Polish girl telling me... that she had never forgotten me. No problem, things happen: it was a pity that never happened anything nice.
Paoletta the minger had even devoted me a little tale, and this was a positive reason for my esteem for her: she had written it shortly after the trip to Monaco and... other than talking about her feelings, of course, she had pointed out that I still used to mention Irene after four years. If we want, well I was too a little amazed at that time: because I wasn’t yet able to focus that I would remember everything this way... like I'm doing now 
Anyway, I re-re-restate, that memory has that strength because - beyond the person - that was the way I wanted to live my life, in that time and with that kind of partner. I recall my friend from Missing and Jesus to a child... whom now I only phoned or emailed just occasionally, and who one day heard me say that name and almost yelled at me "don’t you have any fresh meat on your hands? I can still hear you talking about..."
I hated that terminology. And I started to wonder what kind of people they were... people. Or bankers, especially (!!)

I rediscovered Lucio Battisti, as we said, in those months. I found again the famous Con il nastro rosa that I remembered from the eighth or ninth grade and then Ancora tu and Prendila così and Sì, viaggiare, and the unknown (to me) Emozioni - "per vedere se è così difficile morire"...
But I wasn’t thinking about death, in those months: there was some certain lightness in the air... a couple of weights had been removed from my soul. It wouldn’t last long... but for now it was so.
I giardini di Marzo, for everyone else a very heavy song and in my opinion a masterpiece, il vestito della mamma con i fiori non ancora appassiti and cercando il coraggio per imitarli (i ragazzi) and la mente e i suoi tarli and se mi aiuti son certa che io ne verrò fuori and the doubts about who was the subject. And also E penso a te, which reminded me of the cover from Raf at the end of 1993.
So I started, or rather I got back to, writing. And while I had in mind about telling the four years just passed... but in a different way (so to say), an X-Files episode suggested me a little idea about another story: dedicated to Cristina.
Which of course would be misunderstood, a few months later. But I wrote it straight off, about sixty pages and... the compliments poured in: so romantic, "we think that you wanna a child," and things like that. I was glad and put it aside.

Indeed, on that Carnival I had asked a favor to Cristina: a pair of tights. I had decided that I wanted and I could do it, dress like... I should always have done: so, with that gray knee-length skirt, a blouse taken from my mom... the famous ballerinas, earrings made in some way, and even the lacquer on my nails, as remarked a Fabrizio's friend, I got out of the bathroom of that nasty club and appeared in public for the first time! With an unlikely blonde wig that I had hoped it would give me a feminine touch... more than it actually went. But I was happy, say a happy girl, and my problem was to explain to anyone that it wasn’t the first time that I dressed up...
We made a few photos and I found myself looking horrible. Although there were some nice comments, like you have a nice ass and that hand through your hair is very flirtatious...
Everything would‘ve improved but... much, much later!
So, in fact, I used to speak with Cristina - no longer about Irene but about me and also her, who was interested in all my skills, in the stories that I had let her read in the past. And I had started to assess about telling her of my problem.
It would have been a mistake and, really, I couldn’t have imagined that.

But, first, there was spring, and Un inverno da baciare by Marina Rei (cute) was filed. By means of two girlfriends of the old group I was introduced to a girl, and I remember that face, not bad, very athletic and the fact that the day was April 9th: 9-4-9-9, easy, ain’t it?!
Marco got married on the twenty-seventh of March – Berlusconi’s day, but oh well time had passed (!)
The ceremony was nice, more than his wife, who well... she never was nor would’ve ever been a lot. But, as I said centuries later, maybe mine was just jealousy. Reciprocated (!!)
I noticed that Paolo had been reserved... someplace better than me, and I ignored it, yet. But the strongest memory was meeting again one niece of Marco’s, that is one of the many, who I hadn’t seen for fifteen years. And she was pretty and special and, as I discovered that day, she was born May 16th. She too…
Slide, by Goo Goo Dolls, so fresh and perfect, reminds me of those moments: do you wanna get married? Eh... (sigh style of bridesmaids from My best friend’s wedding, as I had to show off the usual tiresome tie...)

I went again to Milano with Fabrizio and tried to involve him in some stuff that I was doing: for him, equally passionate about computers and related, job had taken different directions. Thanks to his relatives, but let's not say it...
I sought a lawyer in order to recover the money of the famous swindler from three years before, obviously with little success: and, interestingly, I was back in Chieri because the competent court was there... and I smiled. It was all in the past.
Shortly after carnival we were downtown with Cristina, because I had introduced her to that school where there was the famous good boss, and we were able to get, for her, a job about creating their website. And, for those coincidences that I later defined the self-generating writings on a wall it appeared… a Dario fag!
Oh well. A bit of fear, and move on.
A lunch with the blood donors at the Sacra di San Michele brings me... precisely that freshness, that lightness. Even though I was alone, even if I saw things... couples... situations that didn’t convince me much, it was fine. Perhaps the escaped danger from previous summer made me fly over everything.

Thank you, by Alanis Morissette (also a veteran of India... but better presented!) and Dear Mama from Tupac (2Pac) Shakur, who I took as a gift to my mom for Mother’s day, Blur’s Tender and No scrubs by the TLC and then The boy is mine from Brandy and Monica... which worried me. As usual, because I dreamt of being like Monica in my story and yet... something wasn’t right.
Yeah, I had written in one breath Promesse and, timidly, I was giving it to friends for them to read. My terror to the obvious question, that is why is it narrated as a woman, eventually slipped away enough second-rate: they all focused on the story, the images, the tears... someone had caught the parallel with my ups and downs but obviously not everyone. I had described various experiences I had lived and... all the tears had amazingly found a logical accommodation: it sounds sexist, said like this, but yet...
Along with clothes, of course. And a certain naivety – mine, for real. And by eliminating all those you have to get ahead you have to try you must find a woman to take to your bed (cit.) ... it was even better. And even the very concept of keeping a diary, after all.

As, in the cover from George Michael and Mary J. Blige, stands at the beginning of my book and is one of the most beautiful songs of that year: not much to say, George was above anyone else!

Speaking of music, at the time it happened... one of those things that I could’ve hardly imagined: at previous year's newlyweds home, Nicola and I were discussing music and at one point talking about Cranberries (of which we noticed the new and wonderful and inspiring Promises) and... the two look at us and ask us who are the Cranberries?
Not for Irish in themselves... not for anything else, but the idea that our peers had stopped listening to new music, let me (us) perplexed. In fact, over time I would’ve found a link between that fact and… growing old. For better or worse, but on the average bad... (!!)

I then went on vacation in Greece, alone. It was May and I felt the usual allergy to pollen and so I decided to do this tour: I felt a bit out of place as I landed... down there, all alone, but then everything went well; I purchased the legendary What's the story in a street market in Athens. It would’ve gone even better hadn’t they stolen my wallet on the subway... only time in my life (well, second if you add that thing on the beach in Naples in 1984)! So then I had to spend some time (and a bit of money) in order to continue my holiday... on the islands, the second part. And I found Ios fabulous but especially fabulous at that time of year!
I also learned that Santorini (next stop) didn’t mean anything else than Holy Irene... and I was about to send her a card, but then I gave up. A short time later they told me that she had gone to Greece too, with her mom. Or maybe I dreamed about this.

Mi piaci by Alex Britti, on the train back from Milano airport, and a nice girl like in the song! The Book Fair, together with my Jehova-witnessed friend (!) and also the fiftieth anniversary of Toro crashing in Superga.

A dinner at a Mexican restaurant and Cristina giving me a Mariah Carey’s CD, which they had bought for my birthday, but there had been no chance to deliver it, and I... who look a bit disgusted. A reaction to the skin, she was too asunder on that cover. Too much envy...
In ogni atomo by Negrita was the song that I dedicated her, along with a Toto’s CD (including especially Takin' it back) that I bought one afternoon with her. Sei uguale a me / altro che no / di donne come te / lascia stare non ce n’è / medicine come noi / non le inventeranno mai / I’ll give you all my love…
She was engaged, and this was clear. And it was also very clear that she was very close to me only as a friend, and I was all right because... yes, of course, she was pretty but for various reasons she wasn’t quite my perfect match. That is, she wasn’t the head I was looking for (I hate to repeat that name so I avoid!)
But... all those words, for two years and more... the working relationship that was being created, her somehow taking care of me... had sorted a little effect. For that reason I had written Breccia nel destino and I had imagined that story... whose centerpiece was her life splitting in two sections: one with her real boyfriend and one with a hypothetical me.

But when, that evening at the pub (one of many on our own, she and me) I spoke about my clothes... and a bit about my things, everything changed. Again, from a friend I would’ve expected a quite different reaction: if I had come to trust telling her those things, an idea just scaring at the time... it was because we had built up a lot. And, of course, if you want to make love with someone, you don’t say that you feel like a woman (!!!) but… she misstated, a short time later, the little story about her that I decided to let her read just for... honesty - but also because I really found it cute and filled with feeling.
Reasoning back at it today... as I write this, I realize that the point of it all was probably disappointment: I saw that in many women whom I’ve tried to explain how I always felt. That is, to her I was a strong, intelligent man... and for a woman who had suffered from the weakness (in various senses, see how she spoke about her father), it wasn’t acceptable that I wanted to become a female.
Something more than "you're a fag/who knows what you do in your bedroom or in your underwear". I say this to no offense but... the weaker women, nothing abnormal but perfectly feminine and intelligent... in seeing someone who can do many things, travel, think, and is self-employed... suddenly eager to be like them, get angry. This explanation seems more appropriate, even more than the annoyance for those who want to take their place without having been entitled by birth or other theories I've read in years. They feel betrayed by their reference, a strong male who, they suddenly discovered, had cheated.
And that's why the carnival thing could be accepted, but the joke on us women wasn’t, and watching me talking as a woman in the narrative role of Monica was rather wrong: in fact, I remember that she told me that the book was well written but she wasn’t satisfied - unlike many others.
So, yes, she obviously was caring about me and I disappointed her. That doesn’t justify many of her behaviors in the years to come, such as renege compliments on things I can do and other amenities... But let's say that I can understand that she was a little traumatized.
A few nights later, at the group usual meeting place, she wore a beautiful blue short dress with white flowers, curiously similar to a similar dress that I had taken from my mom... and it was unusual. More unusual was that she almost avoided greeting me, and then when I wrote her a quick message about it, she was surprised and denied.
Sure, sure…

But it wasn’t too important.
In June I had talked a few times to one other girl from the a usual club... I had met her a few years earlier: tall, relatively well-made (!) and quite pretty. And smart, in fact we had already made so many laughs on various topics. She lived outside Torino, and that summer she moved to the city for work. And… in a pizza time… we got together. Worse (here speaks the virgin in me) we ended up in bed!
And... well, like she said, if we were far apart it made no sense. Like I said: yes, I wouldn’t have made it on the first evening for... my principle; however, if you're fine, no problem. And we went on for a while... some trips, some dinners, a little sex.
After seven years. There were people who laughed at these words, obviously they didn’t imagine my being out of place (!)
I was relatively happy for a while. Then, the fact that she didn’t come to holiday with me provided a little annoyance (I can’t remember the reasons but boh): so I went in Tuscany all alone and... I discovered the beauty of having a phone at the beach! I had bought it for my birthday a few months before, and I used it a bit, without exaggeration... but sending text messages to friends from the shore is something I found amazing!
Then there were the photos, where she was invariably bad looking (a detail, you know, significant). Then, a joke about the lithium that she was taking in order to treat... I don’t know what. I had no idea - I would have read about it only much later. Then her total lack of sweetness. Then some sudden and unprovoked freaking out - the time she wanted me to get off her car and go home walking, and then as I opened the door she began to apologize. And finally, that September day in front of IKEA.
Mad and bully: what could’ve been best for me who always dreamed of being tortured à la Fifty shades of gray? Yes, but in a more sexual way... (!)

So, after Fabrizio and Barbara’s marriage, I left her: and dancing Bailamos by Enrique Iglesias with her at that party remains a nice memory... together with various sex nights and her congratulations - and I imagining myself in her place...
In my car there was the Roxette’s collection Don’t bore us, that day, with the wonderful Anyone and all the others. And then it was the summer of Scar tissue and all of Californication CD by Red Hot Chili Peppers: I always considered Scar tissue a bit a remake of Under the bridge... unfortunately in a different situation for me. Genie in a bottle by newborn Christina Aguilera reminds me of my getting far from her homonymous. Then the obvious Blue by Eiffel 65, danced so many times and original! And Say it once by Ultra. And Two times from Ann Lee and King of my castle by Wamdue Project, these ones quite beautiful to dance as we still did quite often together with Paoletta: who had come to a dinner at the greek restaurant wearing a very short white dress an... considering her body, let's say we smiled. But she conquered her future husband by means of it...
Waiting for tonight from Jennifer Lopez, her only track I did appreciate, despite (or possibly just beacuse of that) I've dreamed of this love for so long / when you would be here in my arms
Canned heat by Jamiroquai, always appreciated. Mirando el mar from the Soundlover and Lovin' times from Web had and still have wonderful sounds! Me on the highway in Genova… And then Just my imagination and Animal instinct, still from the Bury the hatchet CD from Cranberries.
Does it feel good to you by Phats and Small (not to be confused with the Paps and Skar... at least I’ve often made a mess of them!) reminds me of holidays in Tuscany and phone calls to my Barbara. I liked to know if she felt fine with me too...
Bongo Bong by Manu Chao gave me... that usual bother that I often felt towards the stuff that appeals as alternative; a bit like La Flaca by Jarabe de Palo. Me chico latino from Geri Halliwell (Spice Girls) instead put into crisis my desire to be a woman: What would have I done with all those boys in the videoclip? About Mambo # 5 by Lou Bega and similar amenities... better fly over (!) and I would say the same concerning 50 special by Lunapop or Supercafone by Piotta (!!) And indeed these latest songs would’ve deserved a comment that some german girls in the camping sticked over Vivere il mio tempo from Litfiba, italienische scheisse - which on the other hand was pretty good!

Meanwhile they had sentenced Andreotti for Mafia, amazing! And, in the spring, there was NATO air strike against Serbia: in hindsight but also at first thought (!) I would say perfectly justified, and things like the sacred bombs in LigaJovaPelù’s Il mio nome è mai più... frankly they began to bother me, and I thank Nicola for having understood it before me (this small part, say )
The fact was that I liked those three... and I didn’t accept being right-wing and then Forza-italia-ist or Fascist, considering those who were by that side in Italy but, over time, I realized that often the idiots must be canceled... or at least fought. Without ifs and buts.
Ah, and don’t let’s forget the massacre at Columbine...

In August came the famous Carlo’s alleged, say, daughter (!) and it was the day of the total eclipse.

Cristina came to visit me in the right shoes (so to say, but at least we tried) another 9/9. And I was very embarrassed and... oh well, we chatted a bit and... nothing. I remember that comment of hers on my breast that I found completely out of place, since I wasn’t real. But oh well...
Perhaps she had other things on her mind, given that nine days later she was getting married. And, one week later, even Oriella the-friend-from-Jesus-to-a-child would marry...

On September 13th what Space 1999 had profesied didn’t happen, it was just an ordinary Monday.
I let the end of the year and the millennium... approach slowly. Autumn, like the evenings, hurt my solitude... I imagined that I would have changed sex, that my problems would be solved... but it wasn’t easy. And not knowing - yet - who to talk to... wasn’t helping. Shivaree’s Goodnight moon had some good sounds.
I kept on working a lot: there was a bit of freak everywhere, and then the Millennium Bug scare. And then they organized a bunch of dinners, I think I ate out for three weeks in a row, in December! Various groups, friends, customers... the wife of a friend from Paolo’s who leaned her head on her husband's shoulder and I imagining myself in her place...
I drove downtown Cristina one day (she had no car) and it took forty-five minutes for me to go back home. I marked it on my diary, because... riding home my girlfriend would’ve made acceptable those delays and queues...

And Germana, the one with the blue eyes, the one who worked in the mall five years before, had her second child in those days: she was admitted in the hospital where I worked, so I went to meet her... she asked me to accompany her for a walk in the hallway... and I envied her status, and I cried. I wanted to be pregnant, I wanted to be female, it was all so clear...

Song for lovers, by Richard Ashcroft of Verve - gorgeous. It made me cry, again, of loneliness. Another way by Gigi D'agostino... yes, it looks silly put that way but it’s so, it reminds me of the funeral of the good dean because a car with its radio blaring passed by the church. Always with a thought to the god of Blasphemous rumours... Fifty-eight years... Mario like my father... another premonitions from Promesse as they had been Barbara and Chiara, my so to say short loves in that year.

I listened to Last good day of the year by Cousteau, then I loaded into my car the New Radicals CD, Maybe you've been brainwashed too, and left heading to Poland to my usual friend. With tears in my eyes for most of the trip... until Germany made me feel a bit better (!!)


I wanted to mention Someday we'll know, technically out the year before but it was on TV and radio in summer: the lyrics... those words, I immediately made them mine! Someday we'll know why I wasn’t meant for you... I'm going around the place where we met for the ninety-seventh time tonight... if I could ask God just one question... why aren’t you here with me tonight? And even (oh well) two years later you're still on my mind... 
The answer would’ve come many years later. The real answer, I mean, beyond shyness flowers mistakes and all. But… the curious thing was discovering that the good Gregg had worked with some Danielle (Danielle!) Brisebois in 1995 for a song called What if God fell from the sky... and in the spring it had hit me a lot.
A nice circle which was closed!


As I write this book, I realize, for example, how many songs of the 90's I missed: much of Grunge... Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam...
It's true, in those years I was doing something else... and perhaps also listened to something else. Which wasn’t that bad anyway!

And one latest note, about Man! I feel like a woman from Shania Twain: I hated that song and the shortly previous That don’t impress me much because, obviously she was sooo happy and convinced… since she was a woman possibly a bitch. But… if I listen back at it now, and watch again that videoclip… if I have to be sincere I must admit that she was simply beautiful (sensual without being gross), smart and proud of singing those words.
Lucky her, then! And… yes, there’s much worse stuff, out there …

Vivere il mio tempo, Litfiba

Blue (dabadee), Eiffel 65

As, George Michael and Mary J. Blige

 2000

In what year did I start recording less audiotapes? More or less at the end of the 90s... indeed: and it wasn’t good, as we know.
It must be said that there have been some several steps: and 2000 was undoubtedly the poorest, in that sense.
That spring, I started to save songs in MP3 format, and then I used to record them on tapes (or CD, when I changed my car radio).

Yes, the year 2000... passed quickly. Of course, since so much had been done before the end of the millennium...
Same age as Christ: I smiled, a few times, with this joke. Not many, it must be said.
I came back from Poland somewhat happy: a beautiful trip, Berlin on New Year’s Eve... then Alicja’s village, the snow, then the New Year's party, then her family and friends... cold weather, listen and try to decipher a unknown language, feel some satisfaction in seeing the Eiffel 65’s CD in a display so far away! Bratislava and then move on via the ring road in Vienna.
So we continued to exchange letters… and thinking again that I could be content (i.e. do like everyone else), I tried to think about a possible story between us. We would have then met again in October in London and... no, nothing was to happen anyway.
As good as it gets - to quote another overweight  girl from the future.

In January, it was cold... my mom going down to her village because my uncle, the smart one, had died: the news had come to me while I was in Poland and... what a pity. There was not much relationship between us because we met each other infrequently, but I knew he was a good one. So my mother went to the famous Trigesima (3rd week after funeral, ndt) and I was at home and... I was in crisis with my body. As usual…
I spent one evening at home getting dressed and drinking... then a few days later I went to dance with Nicola and others and... I felt terrible: I watched the girls and now it was clear that it was all unfair.
"Bad night, eh?" he asked me at one point, vaguely worried: and I gave the blame to the music... although, in hindsight, there was something good besides Eiffel 65 and Gigi D'agostino. For example Future woman from Brahma, with that sample from Rockets or Computer love by Unconditional.
Verde rosso e blu, Irene Grandi’s new album, I had recorded it just before Christmas and... I quite liked it, yes: Eccezionale, Verde rosso e blu itself, Limbo... and La tua ragazza sempre in Sanremo was very beautiful too!
Instead, say, I couldn’t stand The bad touch from the Bloodhound Gang: perhaps it was again the virgin in me speaking and that do like they do on the discovery channel wasn’t fitting much to me.
Glorious by Andreas Johnson was pretty and Sasha’s If you believe too - and on these notes I recall the future-wife-of-the-Norwegian-guy who was melting, a night in our car in Finale Ligure by her friends...
And then I saved the world today, Eurythmics’s return! Along with the other, 17 again: by this title I began some talk between those who stay smart and young and those people faking their past (!)
And yet Fairy tale of Neja, to make me dream: there is a fairy tale for you / hoping your dreams they will come true...
And, finally, The ground beneath her feet by U2, perhaps the most poignant (and sad) in their production.

There are no special events to remember, in those months: a birthday dinner with the club, a little carnival meeting at my house, where I wore a wig and a blue dress with Paoletta and another... and listened to Subsonica’s Tutti i miei sbagli. Oh, and a carnival party along with those from the hospital where I danced Move your body by the Eiffel 65 like a rampage - although in the legendary rally suit!

Then Easter, a trip to Liguria. Music by Madonna gave me just nausea, and American Pie (from the movie soundtrack) even more: moreover, the film was depicting her prevaricating for no reason a great gay friend of hers and... I didn’t like this thing, feeling somehow pulled in. Later, I would’ve then endured What it feels like for a girl, but... with other doubts.
The new album by Santana, on the other hand, contained those three pearls - Smooth, Maria Maria and Corazon Espinado - they weren’t bad! I knew and I still know the great guitarist only a little... but at least these ones.

Oh, right: Boys don’t cry, the movie that Cristina suggested me go see... and it destroyed me. The violence, the non-acceptance... the ugliness of trying to look like in a way that doesn’t belong to her...
Later, talking about it with her, it all played in favor of her theory you are no woman. This theory, however, shortly before had made her say you'd better not get dressed for carnival as you’d like, they all would mock you. Satisfying indeed...

Pure shores, from All Saints: cute, perfect for that movie with Di Caprio.
Skunk Anansie, with Secretly and also You'll follow me down and Lately, listened in a summer day before going at my accountant’, as I began spreading my tales (!)
Desert rose from Sting in duet with Cheb Mami. Radio by The Corrs, pretty, at end of January, and me going to the train station to pick my mum up - she coming back from my uncle's funeral. Join me by HIM and this life it ain’t worth living... beautiful, apart from the underlying sadness: but I liked the idea of join me, in the broadest sense of that ideal, political and else, and so I called like this a kind of treatise on politics/economics/ethics that I wrote at the end of year - and that would be somewhat the beginning of blogs (as Fabrizio had suggested). Moving too fast by Artful Dodger and the beginning of the Two Step music - but it didn’t last more than a couple of years.

Everything was a bit useless again. If anything, Craxi died in January (!)
In May there was another wedding in our group of friends, but this time in Abruzzo: so much food, new places... but really nothing special. Apart from Juve football team losing the league title at last moment!

In June we went to Disneyland, another thing that by itself didn’t inspire me that much... but in the end it wasn’t bad. Aside from trying to figure out if I could fall in love with another gal from the infamous club... and in the end nothing came of it. I was told that she could see that I was very close to her but she didn’t know she wasn’t sure... and I also realized that she used to misinterpret everything I said: from potential jokes to compliments... A few days later I ran and recall my famous tape containing Phil Collins played by Vienna Philharmonic that I had lent her!
Oh well. Moreover, the day after our return, exactly in Paris it happened the Concorde accident. A pity.

At work, a few months before there had been that anecdote with another man from the hospital... a funny guy (useless to indicate his place of birth...) who didn’t want to pay the bills, but claimed to get services. But that fuck you he lavished me during a quiet conversation... remained written in history! Years later police has arrested them and it has been quite enjoyable.
In summer we would’ve then known the most disgusting people of the whole planet, i.e. the famous chiropractor and his wife. But at first they seemed almost normal... oh well, he more than her.
Too bad, because otherwise I was very happy: I was earning money, I was able to do everything (much less than now but already a lot  ) and I went on learning!

There was Lady by Modjo, which I loved! Beautiful story and how pretty she was, and how I wish I had her role. We went canoeing with Fabrizio, his girlfriend and a friend of theirs carrying that fateful name (!)
I tried to be normal, to be nice, to see if something could be born. Obviously nothing: indeed, a feeling of being teased - and not only by God.
La passion by Gigi D'agostino accompanied us on our trip back, as Fabrizio destroyed a bit of the esteem I had for him stating that Annie Lennox "he had never liked her and she had been a mistake from his youth." Too bad lying like this, perhaps just to make oneself look good in front of a chick (...)

There were the European football championships, where Italy lost - and so far everything is okay (!) - but it happened against the French and... they weren’t much better. And Zoff who surrendered to Berlusconi... bad sign of the times. I also made a trip to Stromboli, at a friend’s from the hospital, a woman who had completely changed her job.

Groovejet, by Spiller, original and cute. Rewind, still from Artful Dodger (with Craig David), and again Jarabe de Palo with Depende. Un giorno migliore and Qualcosa di grande by Lunapop, a bit more valuable to me. Britney Spears overlooking the scenes… and every boy would’ve liked her: on the other hand I hated her because of that room filled with makeup and all the necessaires...
The real slim shady and Stan by Eminem, first songs from a great guy! Robbie Williams now on everyone’s mouth but who created havoc with the videoclip from Rock DJ where he even stripped his own skin, and that shortly after sang Supreme "all the places you've been trying to find your Love Supreme". And Red rose from Saint Germain, an original track which, together with the very first one from Moby, Why does my heart (feel so bad), brought new sounds.
Craig David, who came to success with Seven days: and I wondered how complicated it was to meet someone, ask for her phone number, try to go out together...

Nothing. All empty, the whole year. Even the optimism from Lovin' each day from Ronan Keating was short-lived.
If I ever feel better, sang Phoenix: and I devoted it to Cristina... if I ever feel better, remind me to spend some good time with you. Then when I felt better, she would be gone (!)

Also In your arms, Benjamin Diamond, wasn’t bad: original and fun with a nice videoclip. Holler, from Spice Girls, remains today perhaps the only song of theirs that I like - perhaps along with Viva forever and Northern star by Melanie C.
We still remember another single from Artful Dodger, Please don’t turn me on, and On a night like this by Kylie Minogue returning after more than a decade. And Summer jam from Underdog Project, pretty, with that nostalgic aftertaste. And the ATC with Around the world, beautiful to dance and listen!
I have yet to mention that at one friend’s father funeral I had Seven days on my head all the time.


At the end of the year, George Bush usurped the president place from Al Gore and... you could tell they were coming mala tempora. Moreover, the so-called dot-com bubble had already burst in march, in the Stock market... and that short prosperous period was ending.

I went down to the village with my mother for Christmas holidays... I fell in love with a lady, a Cinzia whose face looked like Uma Thurman (!!) and I felt I was also reciprocated (the annoying Believe by Cher and also Più che puoi in duet with Ramazzotti remind me of those moments). But, when it was time to meet again, to court her a little, get to the goal... suddenly I came to feel out of place again. I don’t even remember why: I just know that at dinner that night, I cried inside at a short distance from my mother and my aunt... and no one seemed to notice. Maybe because no one could figure out what was wrong when I tried to fall in love...

The world wasn’t enough, as they had sung the Garbage one year before: the men’s world, for me. And in general, the world lived like everyone else... It was clear during those marriages, pretty but fake and... in many dialogues made with so many people.

Just before Christmas, at a charity concert organized by the people from the usual hospital, I left almost in tears, and I then I wrote on my diary "does it exist somewhere some universe in which I and my Irene are married and all the crap from these years never happened?"

No, it didn’t exist. It would’ve been a very bad New Year’s Eve, and so on.

La passion, Gigi D’agostino

Lady, Modjo

Chiedi quello che vuoi, Davide De Marinis

 2001

I realize as I write that these three years were the darkest of my life. And we may just save a few songs!

The New Year’s Eve with two couples, even if good people (at least at the time) didn’t make me feel good; also, that place in the middle of nowhere in the Lanzo valleys... well, you can’t expect much.
I focused on my job: installation at the famous French doctor was a major challenge and so I was deep into it! My staff had completed the wiring and now it was up to me: and everything was fine, except for some catch here and there. Then, as we know (see 10 piccoli imprenditori) the crooked two would start to hate us... but it would happen later.
It would be another lesson in life, like that one of 1991.

I used to meet those from the same old circle of friends: in early spring we went to a farm near Asti, and it was sympathetic. I have a note about the aforementioned Summer Jam, on that day. And then Luca himself organized a carnival party at his house (the most villa among the villas on the hills) and... again, I tried to dress like I was dreaming. I had recovered a twin-set (after learning that they were called so, a few months before) and then I had also décolleté shoes, bought with painful terror one year before. No makeup yet but... after skiing, my face had a nice color nonetheless (!)
Nothing but some mocking, some chat with someone who then told me "I wouldn’t speak about personal things with people I don’t know" only because I had mentioned that I sometimes felt like a woman...
She worked at Meridiana, you can’t hope for anything else (!!)

Moreover, in those early months of 2001, one of the secretaries at the French thing was pregnant and... again, being in her place was a deep desire to me: so I often spent some time with a fake baby bump, at home...
The cover of Via con me by La Crus, in the same days, reminds me of a few days spent in that office, and also the other girl.

For the rest, I was still going to dance, from time to time, but people were getting old (!) including my co-workers and their friends, and so we ended up going only in discos featuring revival music. And, once again, people found themselves crowded out by me... because more or less everyone knew how I remembered songs and years of past decades.
"So you're a nostalgic!" they used to claim, pompous of their adenoids (cit.)
But here's the thing, I was not! I could tell anecdotes and songs of 1985 and those of 1994 and all other years! It is not that I did it on purpose... to be like this: indeed, I was almost learning that it was a characteristic of mine (usually I call it dowry except in rare circumstances),
So, for me who I loved to dance or listen to new sounds, music from the 80s (later it would happen the same with that of the 90s) had become tragically slow, repetitive and mostly already heard: I felt I was wasting my time if there was Happy children or Rick Astley, in addition to no longer being able to move on those sounds. In hindsight, and with a nod to her, I realized that if you like dancing and letting the rhythm enter into your fibres, then you will feel like this: instead, if you go to the disco in order to fuck (cit.) it becomes obvious that the vibrations don’t give you a damn, and then you’ll only be looking for discos with people within the reach of your genitals, and therefore as old as you or maybe Saving Silverman/in abstinence as in old dance halls or in Latin American discos.

Sorry, I let myself be carried away (!!!)
And so, here it comes Crying at the discotheque! Perfect, fabulous... especially for that sample from Spacer by Sheila & B. Devotion, as I mentioned. And then Carillon by Magic Box, Prezioso and the various Let's talk about the man and Let me stay, Relation by Erika (we should note the coincidence with current events...!) and then The bomb from Love Connection, and even Anastacia (which I would have resented for years) with I'm outta love - to which we were listening from a CD single purchased at a cheap shop in London, together with my old-time polish friend.
In particular, the new wave of beautiful Italic dance music, started with Gigi D'Agostino a couple of years before, after the one in the mid 90s and the '80s... wonderful!

And then there was Can’t get you out of my head by Kylie Minogue: of course, while all the boys were crazy about it (I would say because in the videoclip she was very scantily clad...) I found it immediately boring. Other songs from hers, in the near future, would be rather better, and in any case congratulations to the small Australian lady for a career revival after fifteen years!
And Another chance by Roger Sanchez... how much I dreamt of being the one carrying that big heart ("your heart is too big" and "if I had another chance to love") who ran through the city... And indeed I was her, apart from the dress. What a pain…
Not to mention Cadavez - preferably remixed by Gigidag: I used to come home after basketball and... I cried. Everything was fine, except finding that special someone...
...everything up and running except my life, as I used to write on my diary.

For my birthday we went skiing, me, Paolo and Franco, another old friend: in France, as we often did, and with a thought to our newly acquired customer. Electronic by Markus is a song that connects to this memory, although in a somewhat vague manner. Oh, and a little too Oooh it's kinda crazy by soulDecision (more Wham-style). It wasn’t a good time, we know.
Emma Bunton with What took you so long was another somewhat acceptable post-Spice song. And more or less even Drops of Jupiter by the Train, though a bit too filled with saccharine: Patrizia liked it, the minger cousin of my former minger  who at the time was quite close to me, in fact she also often came to dance and she was basically in favor of modern sounds as well.

U remind me from Usher and Outkast’s Ms. Jackson, original. Things like It's been a while by the Staind fall into that grunge music that I only found out later, as well as Drive from the Incubus.

We’ve already mentioned the massacre in Novi Ligure (!) and so we can move on: for instance, talking about Mad Cow, the virus that spread in those months and related fears. As someone said (and I too) how the hell can you think of feeding an animal chopped carcasses of his fellows?
And then you get to the elections in May: when a Berlusconi already given to zero at least twice... ended up winning against an unlikely Rutelli: they would then begin five years... unlikely, but overall not so bad as the biennium 2009-2011: perhaps because the economy was still fine, and our dude had no syphilis yet. But let’s fly over it...
In conjunction with that election there was the famous lightning bolt which destroyed our customer’s computers... and from there on our relationship began to plummet. Well, he wanted that we paid with our money all over again... but ok, the story has already been told elsewhere: concerning music I just quote one of their many pearls, namely that if the computer was playing songs (in MP3 format) in the background, it was unacceptable (and our fault, like the fool got written by a lawyer) that the songs didn’t all have the same volume level...

It’s Corsica, baby (!!!)
In the end by Linkin Park, set as ringtone on my phone, reminds me of the phone calls from this demented: but also my friend Paolo who comments with "what's this crap, a mass?" - showing up how he's growing old poorly, like almost anyone!

A trip to the beach at the Fried Fish festival in Camogli – me on Beppe’s motorcycle, pollen. I hold no significant memories... again.
The cover of Lady marmalade by Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, Pink… I obviously couldn’t stand it: on the other hand I liked right away Nelly Furtado, and I'm like a bird and then Turn off the light. And we mention Beautiful day from U2, undoubtedly perfect and beautiful in its simplicity, and it reminds me of a dinner at Nicola’s home and he saying he likes it very much. And Jaded by Aerosmith, and Nobody wants to be lonely by Ricky Martin in duet with Christina Aguilera: this made me think about how I had often accepted or indeed preferred to be alone... waiting for a romance being worth it. But, this way, it was getting ridiculous...
One summer evening we were in a creamery near river Po and radio played Kelly Joyce’s Vivre la vie (sans amour): when I was asked whose song was it, I replied "yeah, it’s me singing". Ironic, so to say.

Our multilingual friend who had ensnared the Norwegian boy got married that summer. The strongest memory I have is the usual Germana wearing a beautiful short dress - in its simplicity - and white fishnet stockings. I tried for a long time to take a picture of myself resembling her.
Moreover, the Polish friend had self-invited herself to my house in order to attend the ceremony, and it wasn’t a good idea... for various reasons. I hated the idea of having nobody in my bed, except unpleasant or unwanted persons. However they were three-four-five days sympathetic or say special... and then she drove off, but not before having purchased a pair of Italian music CDs, including Elisa with the fabulous Luce (tramonti a nord-est).
I also remember another friend in that group, who was carrying the book No Logo by Naomi Kline and... it looked interesting. Soon there would be the G8 summit in Genoa...
Oh, and don’t let’s forget the famous companion of elementary badly lightened by religion  who commented on my friends with "those are wealth people, huh?" Not bad for an open heart/religious/brotherhood... especially considering that I had never expressed such an opinion about my group: of course I knew it but... in first place it wasn’t important (it was important the kind of people, not their money) and secondly I felt like I was able to earn money myself, with my own strength. Unlike him, a pseudo-public worker, I have to point out (!)

Anyway, the Taliban destroyed statues in Bamiyan, that summer.

Another beautiful and talented girl who became famous in those months was Dido: Hunter is in my opinion her best song, even for the lyrics "I want to be a hunter again, I want to see the world alone again / because the crown you put on my head feels too heavy now." A special face and in one of her videoclips she was wearing an evening dress... amazing. And which I envied, of course. How I envied... in a curious way, one of the girls in the videoclip from Manu Chao’s Me gustas tu - one wearing a flowers bra.
Hunter also reminds me of Delia, the very cute chick Marisa took to the disco one night and who improbably and inappropriately would then marry a jerk who shortly before was throwing bottles from the balcony and walked on cars’ hoods.
People are strange, as we know. Especially divorced women, it would seem (!) and we've got to remember that Texas - authors of several nice songs in those years - in their Inner smile state if i lose my patience you must try to understand...!

L’ultimo bacio is to be remembered as the movie... who left its mark, as they say, on a generation! Not so much in me, well... because for some reason I had already taken this talk back in Daniela’s and Laura’s times, more or less. Then... I had missed a full future phase, but roughly the concepts were those: boredom, growing up, betrayal. We talked with Nicola and others and... let's say that the concepts I could/I was able to understand them nonetheless, and even better than others: they were a bit of the same old things, be a sincere guy, don’t stop being young (in the sense of making new things and thinking smart), then just pick someone with a brain, or at least with a brain like yours...
Them all, really complicated things (!!) we know. I loved, for years to come, to feel the disillusionment or coming to know of betrayals and/or divorces of those friends. In addition to a healthy I told you so, it would have also compensated a bit for my loneliness - if I had been a dreary person.
And so, the eponymous Carmen Consoli’s song remains a true work of art! L’ultimo bacio brucia sul viso come gocce di limone / l’eroico coraggio di un feroce addio... Alberto liked it too!
I still like to remember the movie scene when the young Martina Stella (so pricey!) lends Siddharta book to Accorsi... as Nadia had done with me years before. And the book tumbling on asphalt...!

New Depeche Mode’s album, Exciter, was out and it was average: Dream on a great song! I went to watch them for the second time... in Milano with Paoletta. And then I liked immediately Tiziano Ferro with his L’Olimpiade: beautiful lyrics, an original song.
Fino alla fine del mondo, by Paola and Chiara: among their useless production, this one was a bit better  and also the aforementioned Più che puoi by Eros Ramazzotti, whom for years I couldn’t bear… in duet with Cher I had hardly ever endured... was not to be thrown away.
Much better Joy is, from Naive! When we had a chance to find a place where we could dance to it, the energy was at very high levels! If nowhere else, in my car...

In August, Franco suffered a quite serious accident on his motorcycle and stayed in hospital for several days: his back, his head... I was with Beppe when they gave us the news. Then he recovered and made the usual birthday party at the end of the month: and I gave him the CD from the Hooverphonic in which you could find, as well as Mad about you, Out of sight and that we'll always be best friends was a dedication which I don’t think he ever caught. You can’t expect that much...
By the way, Beppe used to hum Tre parole by the improbable Valeria Rossi…


And then came September 11th. The clearest memory I have is about me going to the bank, we complain about something that has to do with money, and I say "I would be willing to sacrifice some of my money, just to see capitalism sinking". Said-fact: half an hour later came the first images of the Twin Towers... and then they talk about coincidences!!
Of course I wasn’t investing yet in the stock market, at the time, or anyway very little.... It was shocking, yes, let’s admit it: the event, the dead people... But in the end I could say that it had scared me more the Gulf War: perhaps because at the time I was really afraid of losing something dear like Love, or maybe because I had done mine my friend’s fear about having to go to war and his "I wish I had been born a woman."
Yep.

Another curious coincidence was the chain of events that ushered on that very evening: thanks to Nokia, you could get free tickets for the cinema more or less once a month... so that evening I invited Patrizia to see Planet of the Apes (the horrible remake). We watched the movie anyway, in an audience barely aware of the events in New York. But… the nice thing is that for the six months to come every time I had those free tickets something happened to an air plane! It happened with the Linate accident in October, then with the fool who crashed into the Pirelli Tower in Milano in 2002... and more.
For those who know Dino Buzzati and his tale La giacca stregata... well, this was my connection. Or mere coincidences (!!!!)
Oh, and don’t let’s forget the fire at Marco’s warehouse, just four days after the Twin Towers: and we making jokes on the camper-force one on which we imagined him running from the flames... Considering that in those months he decided to leave our company... you know, it served him right.

For the rest, the year was set for yet another sad and unpleasant fall and New Year’s Eve. Imitation of life by REM, always good and brilliant in their videoclips; Para toda la vida by Marcela Moreno, and summers passing by. And then Siamo soli from Vasco Rossi - no need to comment upon (!)
Carlo had gotten his second daughter and so we were again invited to the ceremony... nothing special except that on that day at his house I met a girl... we started talking and we didn’t stop for a moment. We exchanged phone numbers... she was pretty. I called her later, a couple of weeks, and she replied coldly. I called again, and she didn’t answer at all. I wrote her a message, to no avail.
I remember that I panicked: how could it be, that it always went like that?
Scared, in tears in front of Paolo and customers and eager only to die... I decided that I was to throw away all my clothes and everything else. And I actually did it: when I talked to Cristina she was surprised, not believing that I would’ve had the courage (every comment is superfluous).
It was quite obvious that there was a connection between that part of me, and the things that kept on happening to me. What wasn’t clear yet was that, in fact, there were no coincidences: they materialised exactly the situations that my mind wanted... and communicated, in a way that hasn’t been scientifically proven yet, but that undoubtedly was always there.

Of course, nothing changed. No one knew anything, and I went on with the usual groups: I met a girl, a friend of friends, who worked at INAIL and from her email, obtained by mean of work issues, I gathered that of Irene. To whom, however, I never wrote. The Planet Funk started off with Inside all the people and it was the beginning of a high-level career! And then Boyband by the Velvet, soundtrack to a ride in Liguria with Rosanna and her mother who needed a ride. And the perfect Numeri di mia vita by Delta V "due sono gli anelli per unire" and “bang bang, numeri, slash bang, come se non mancasse che una cosa" and also “quanti numeri, battiti di cuore" and "ogni volta torno a zero'' “come se ogni volta fosse vero."
And Occhi da orientale by Daniele Silvestri, of whom I purchased the related and namesake collection. And Pacific coast party, from the still good Smash Mouth. And We come 1 from Faithless, wonderful again. And Don’t panic by the Coldplay (you’d believe it was easy...) and Sing by Travis (at the time I associated them) and Rock my world of Michael Jackson, still capable of making beautiful music. The music's not good without you by Cher (poignant, even if I used to find her face unwatchable  and then… those girls dancing, all identical, into which at times I used to immedesimate), and It takes a fool to remain sane by The Ark, which the minger above apostrophated with "queers" (!) (Note also the precise title of their other track: Let your body decide...)


We decided to go to Tuscany and on New Year’s day it was so cold like I had never experienced even on the mountains.
And not only in the atmosphere. Tiromancino with those lyrics so sweet and romantic accompanied me during those months and then also in the new year... And The dream I had of you by Schiller was the perfect dance-but-sad song to make me cry.

In the end, Linkin Park

Crying at the discoteque, Alcazar

Hunter, Dido

 2002

Never did I feel so uncomfortable as on that New Year’s Eve. If I look back at those photos... me wandering in a shirt and tie and... everywhere I turned to, were they beautiful or ugly or fat or skinny, I wanted to be like them.
Women.
The ice-cold in Florence and then on the highway, back home with Paolo and his girlfriend. The chill inside. Nuvole rapide by Subsonica, the old man running alone... their song I like most.
And, to add irony... to irony, Olmo and friends (i.e. Fabio De Luigi with Paola Cortellesi) sang Sei una merda (!!) (you’re crap, ndt)

I had to do something, I would have done something. I ran to buy a skirt, stockings, clothing. They belonged to me, it was so logical. Yet it was all fake.
Cristina suggested me to go to a psychologist: I remember that exasperated tone of hers, commenting "you can’t be a woman if you like women". In short, I couldn’t say she was wrong. Discovering, years later, that she was telling all my secrets to her husband and so-called friends... it wasn’t pleasant, though. But that's another story...
I started to always wear stockings and other garments, and it was feasible, being it winter. I wrote on my diary using a female subject and name, I focused on... how I would’ve done, how I would have talked - even to my mom.
If nothing else, I cried a little less.
We went to the market together, sometimes, me and Cristina: the pink longuette skirt was such a wonderful one, and I still own it! When I was going out in the usual group, I often heard the jokes on me paired with some of the other single guys and... in this case the mental projection was later declassified to simple stupidity - when I found out that my friend was usually telling everything to them. But, oh well, it was nice or at least pretty funny.

Whatever, whenever by Shakira – I couldn’t stand her. I found it rather amazing One step too far by Faithless and Dido... that music, that voice of hers... a step too far - was it me? I wondered sometimes with a little fear.
Wherever you will go by The Calling reminds me of a certain Gabriella, another discreet mussel, who bought a computer and started flirting with me... and I used to go to her place wearing tights under jeans and envying a picture of her sister lying on the beach...
And Pink, whose Get the party started at first I had hated, because I had heard it in Tuscany on New Year's... then her level improved: Just like a pill, Don’t let me get me... she often said things in which I recognized myself. Even Something stupid, a cover of Frank Sinatra’s sung by Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman I couldn’t stand for the same reason: moreover, they were so perfect... and me so horrible...

For my birthday I was in Brandizzo at work by Marco and ate a pizza in the evening with him, his wife, the baby and Paolo.
Then also passed Easter, grilling in the usual place in the Cuneo area – Cristina’s home - where someone made the famous joke about "eggplants are food for gay"... and here too you could see how people didn’t have much in their skull. On the other hand, a little time later, the same husband of Cristina said that since their cat had died, they could now think about having a child. Well, alright…

So we get to that vacation in Tuscany, along with Beppe and Mauro: where I felt almost like a female between two male friends... I was missing not being allowed to sleep in a nightgown, as I thought, and in Siena I bought myself a necklace, hiding from everyone else. The hotel we found by chance in the province of Arezzo, with those two rooms, all pink and green... it was another funny coincidence!
And Moi.. Lolita, by Alizée, playing in our car. It was a beautiful song and I would have given anything to be her in that videoclip: her dress, the cardigan...

I continued for a while, to be convinced. Then, as it was logical, it all passed.
I went back to my friend in Stromboli for a holiday... I met two gay guys and... it disturbed me, again. I wasn’t like them, and I didn’t want to be. I tried flirting with a... well, no big deal, and of course I was rejected. Maybe, just maybe, because the day before I had seen her friend wearing a beautiful blue dress and... I had worshiped it.

Dove, from Moony, on the radio. How beautiful tears on her face in the dawn / she cries, she knows / she won’t be able to fly / And then she questions the sun / why, why me? the sun doesn’t answer / oh God! Can you help me? And Believe in me by Lenny Kravitz, perhaps his song that I like most: me walking over the rocks at the beach, the morning after to the night in which I would’ve wanted to receive at least one kiss from her. But people kept telling me that I had to wait more time...
With all due respect for... everything the others used to, instead. If only people would say, even just by chance, what they really think...
Sei solo tu by Nek and Laura Pausini reminds me of that holiday. In the sense that I had no chance to dedicate it to anyone (girl or boy), but... it was wonderful: wonderful words! Perhaps Nek’s highest point and the undoubted advantage of making Pausini listenable 

In that year we start to hear from Avril Lavigne, with Complicated - but I’ll appreciate her more in the future. And then we find Nickelback with How you remind me of which, again, I will find out more in the years to come. And little things like Dilemma by Nelly and Kelly Rowland: a little bit of hip hop, I occasionally liked it.
They invited me to a dinner, a kind of party in a house in Allamano avenue and... I remember so many pretty girls, their dresses. Nice day, spring, dry. And me crying inside.

Could we not mention Cogne and Annamaria Franzoni? Yes, indeed we can (!) because I had other fish to fry. And the euro debuted and... of course I was happy! Although I have memories (cold) in the Tuscan New year’s day, related to those first coins changed a few days before...
And, more importantly, in March of that year he died Alex Baroni: of whom I remember especially Onde and some jokes made with Rosanna few years earlier. I didn’t know he was Giorgia’s boyfriend and... I was sorry. And the related song obviously hit me a lot... how could it be, that le cose non andassero mai come credi?

To lighten the mood, we can think (as I mentioned) about that fool who went and crashed into the skyscraper in Milano! Taliban à la matriciana... and us at the cinema that night to watch Panic room for free (!!!)

I looked back at the girls, after having tried for months to have no regard for anyone of any sex. The chick from the hospital was cute... and I have never realized if she was another timid that I had misunderstood or boh. When I visited her on Christmas Day the year before and we had a coffee... looking at the holes due to an inspection for a possible gas leak in my building (!!!) had made me think that perhaps our history would have had a future, given the precedents.
But then time had passed and so...
I invited her to watch Casomai, which I had watched with the good old Alberto: I consider it, up to this day, the most beautiful film about love and the risks that it vanishes... all kinds of risks. I loved Fabio Volo, perhaps for the only time, because he has always bothered me (!) and of course I loved Stefania Rocca in that role, and in the interview made shortly afterwards on TV, again dressed as bride and groom.
And... nothing. That evening was pretty. Later, I went for a dinner with her and her friends and sister. Then some flowers, then in August... some other invitation, little return from her side.
Nothing. Of course those prune shoes with the buckle and her long skirt... they were so beautiful...
Dancing and Rainbow by Elisa, two fantastic songs, are forever linked to that movie. And in particular Rainbow you're not an enemy anymore at Alicja with whom too I had done my outing shortly before... causing her a more or less phony concern and solidarity... which in time would vanish in favor of the usual hassle.
While Giovanna reminds me of Une histoire d'amour from Gabin: and the curious reaction by Patrizia, who called hateful the girl in the videoclip... who was wearing the exact same red pants (fashion from that year) that my friend wore at the cinema! And then, still tied to her, there’s Good times from Fargetta, that I found great (and my friends not, but, you know, now-married couples were not akin to listen to new music anymore...)
The Good times that I wanted to live together with her. She, whose eyes were a mirror to the sun, to quote Road trippin from Red Hot Chili Peppers, which had come out three years earlier but I had discovered in those months.
Le vent nous portera, by that murderer from Noir Desir  and The switch by Planet Funk, beautiful. Home and dry from Pet Shop Boys... a bit washed out compared to their former glory. Freek! George Michael’s lowest point (as you can read in My Life) and Salirò by Daniele Silvestri... the sadness of that spring I spent attached to Cristina like if I could really become her female friend and share the work in the kitchen...

And so we get to September, after our brief vacation again in Tuscany, along with a few friends among those from New Year’s eve. Nothing memorable, apart from the heat and me who bought the Unità just to give against the crap that was in the air (and that the other two rather not despised).

Stars, the single and the related collection from Cranberries, surprised me as I went to a festival in Canavese, in fact without Giovanna.
And the commemorations of 9/11 used as a theme song Gabriel by the Lamb, and it was perfectly fitted. And Moby came out with a CD which contained several very sad songs such as Sunday (the day before my birthday) and In this world "lordy don’t leave me", and later Extreme ways.
And in Italy... the PresDelCon was occupying a bit all, with his ridiculous little fascists, his money, his mafia stink and his arrogance-like leadership. The purge of Biagi and Santoro and Luttazzi from TV were the tip of the iceberg, and we discussed this thing one afternoon with Carlo in Novara and a couple of his friends, very concerned.
Work… was also quite heavy. Apart from the French moron, with which we were already en route, and without being allowed to finish the job, then there was a triptych of beasts - a psychologist from center of Torino, an electronic from Puglia and a post-hippie architect - which created us a heap of problems between the end of 2001 and the current year. And I remember when I used to work in that office... always wearing stockings and other clothing... and maybe in the background it used to play All that you can’t leave behind from U2.
If nothing else, I learnt quite a lot (rather pioneering), about LED lamps!
And when a lightning fell and ruined part of my home automation system in my house, I decided to disassemble it completely and say good night. So much, since I was going to change sex and start a new life...

Anyway, in fact, September. There was another girl from the hospital, of whom I only save her face (!) and we went out a bit of times... We went to watch a series of strange films, including Magdalene. And then we had a mini-romance lasting two days... boh, not that I did anything special, she too radically changed her attitude.
Maybe, and again I emphasize maybe, it was also linked to the fact that I had started... making another type of things with my body when I was dressing.
How strong, my mind (!)

I had gone to Ceresole, the old usual place of the only happy birthday of mine, and in my car I was listening to Jamiroquai’s Corner of the Earth: and the idea that I knew that place and it reciprocated my smile... it was fantastic! And You give me something was kinda sweet too.
My friends from the former company, Mario Nicola and their girls had gone on vacation in Iceland that summer; and for the birthday of one of them we met at his house... the house we had known for the past fifteen years! And... at the sight of those pictures, those holidays, of those couples I won’t say perfect, but at least normal... I began to cry.
I closed again into myself, boy/girl, I began to stand up till three, four in the morning... trying to erase myself. I thought back to that last-minute vacation we had spent in Sharm el Sheikh with Mauro... feeling again out of place, not wanting to woo the Russian girls... not wanting to do things that all were doing (like dancing to the notes from Asereje by Las Ketchup) ... Not feeling like the standard single males, having enough of those jokes you can be Mauro’s girlfriend and get pregnant if you put some effort into it. I couldn’t become a woman, it made no sense. And I couldn’t get some happiness, since at least ten years. And when I wasn’t able to find the house of the Halloween party, where, by the way, I had been exactly ten years earlier with Laura... I became convinced that it was all a Truman Show: or, as I confided to Nicola making him smile, the evil eye that she had done to me.
When Marco wasn’t available to meet - or rather he was, but inviting me to dinner with his family as usual - I felt further bad: I might have done an outing... or anyway I needed so much support, and yet nothing.

There were other weddings that autumn: the famous Luca the rich with its wonderful girl, and me hating that jacket of mine, even more. I started making photomontages... by carving out myself and putting some of my photos, though still horrible. And then the other, one from the very old group who... while being intelligent, smart and relatively alternative... was getting married with an ugly, unpleasant and fascist (!) one.
I went to his ceremony wearing a simple sporty jacket and jeans and... amen. I didn’t care a dime about anything.

Tutti vogliono viaggiare in prima, and then Eri bellissima by Ligabue, belong to those months. And we also remember Love at first sight by Kylie Minogue, which pleased me more than all the others. And Music don’t stop from the guy of Heaven 17 nineteen years before, under the name of Goldpeople. A little-known but sweet Full moon by Brandy. Che vita! from Samuele Bersani and the sadness it was spreading out. And Tiziano Ferro, with his Rosso relativo, Le cose che non dici but especially Mai nata that, even though it was dedicated to a girl with feeding problems... was also just fine for me... che bello se non fossi mai nata.
And I was talking to people, and they used to tell me not to say nor think about it: the friend more or less pretty of the Calabrian other one... And then the other old friends at the party after the wedding...

And at that baptism about at year-end, the first son of the playboy, I practically didn’t speak to anyone. Because... what was the point? He was right and I was wrong, to quote Back to the Future.

All the things she said and Not gonna get us by Tatu... and I loved this latter more for that escape together... from a world that doesn’t want you. And that glance the blonde throws to her friend at some point.
It was me. Lesbian, strange, who should’ve never been born.

I spent alone even New Year’s Eve. The last few months had gone by in a flash, watching MTV in the evening until late and working on a new version of my smart home: there was Brand:new and I often followed it and wept while watching the Poor Leno videoclip from Royksopp
Help me...

On December 30 I decided to go to Beaulard for my 2nd eighteen birthday. It was a… random idea... so I took and left: it was pretty warm and it was drizzling, but this didn’t stop me. And, in my car, like a breath of oxygen, it immediately started E’ non è by Niccolò Fabi.
A masterpiece. And the will to awaken.

The day after I took three pizzas at the pizzeria behind my home and ate them, while someone from time to time called me to ask why I didn’t want to go out.
Yet it was clear enough. Easy, to name Groove Armada.

Rainbow, Elisa

Nuvole rapide, Subsonica

Sei solo tu, Nek and Laura Pausini

 2003

Ever since the… the beginning, in some cases songs bring to my mind the images of related videoclips or maybe a photo of the singer or group. In other cases, they form a... like a mixture of feelings that often come to meet me when I think back to a time in the past... a kind of image all mine: something not well defined, that is an image but not just it. So I remember at a glance of Big in Japan, and... no, I can’t explain it: tilted shots, a kind of keyboard but it looks like the middle of a typewriter...
But it is not just an image, it is a whole which belongs to the song, as well as when I remember one moment in time I can think of a whole that is more than the sum of the numbers of that date, the songs that I can remember, maybe of perfumes and/or faces.
It’s my famous special way of feeling Time.

The year 2003 began with my desire to go back at doing things, and - as I thought right away – very important at making me feel better they had been the words of Niccolò Fabi’s song: non è per missione ma nemmeno per gioco / una questione di stile non per molti né per pochi, ma solo per alcuni… sentire e fare attenzione… non è che t’importa, non è tanto è uguale… non è un dovere, dover invecchiare.
Amazing, perfect: pure philosophy played as music... overcoming Lasciarsi un giorno a Roma and Capelli and... still being enjoyable. And so you can imagine how I felt when former bank colleague Beatrice, inviting me one day at skiing along with her old (!) friends, she looked at me questioningly shouting who is Niccolò Fabi?
What, WHO IS?!
Many things were beginning to become clear - and what would happen soon with the famous French swine contributed further. There was a link between keeping your mind open to new music, and (okay) have a memory that would allow you to categorize, discern, remember... just as I remembered the song titles and I didn’t need to include in the MP3 filename also the author or the genre as others began to do...
In fact I remember this tasty talk on a day in 1999 by another customer, when a guy asked me (even a little annoyed) how was he supposed to use my files bearing just the song titles.
Yeah. It’s strange to think that many people have saddled over me various kind of labels due the famous sexual doubt (!) but they forgot to observe how they live....
Telling themselves that it doesn’t make any difference. And ageing while changing channel on their TV.

Incidentally, at that time I opened my first blog, with the idea of using it as a platform to discuss general topics of current events, politics, philosophy: I had been inspired by Fabrizio’s words, using as a basis that famous Join Me from two years before. And then I had opened also one that I would’ve liked to transform into a platform for discussion between all of us from the famous Cristina’s group etc.
Me poor dreamer! Discussions on social themes would then catch on with facebook, and that’s the end of it! While the circle of friends... those were too busy to read or write on a blog - so it remained mine alone.
Busy changing channel, of course (!!)

The Tiromancino were going great, in those months: Patrizia owned their CD and they were all beautiful... those words, as she put it in a bit dreamy look. Zampaglione was her idol and I agreed with her. Per me è importante, in particular, reminds me of the sad wedding of the playboy’s brother, a few months before... and another Sunday to forget. But those words (in fact) and the videoclip (the one with the street signs falling in love), really remarkable.
Sunrise by Simply Red, cute even if the sample from I can’t go for that had already nauseated me years before: fortunately, soon came out Fake which, especially in its remixed version, I found fantastic! And with Patrizia we had a good time emphasizing your mother she knows, that something is wrong with you babe...
Valid more for me or for her, it didn’t matter, here.
And then a certain Sunshine by Patrice, so sweet, reminding me of several Sunday lunches at my mother’s home, watching Quelli che il calcio (to laugh a little); and Feel, from Robbie Williams, another pretty good song in those months.
Patrizia also liked Sergio Cammariere’s Tutto quello che un uomo, who had gotten a good result at the festival. And then, in those months, there was also the heavy Dedicato a te "Giulia" by Le Vibrazioni (!) And Die another day by Madonna, which I considered as a sign of recovery from her.

In March, as I mentioned, we had to suffer the humiliation by the French and his Sardinian filthy bitch. No, not a race of four-legged... (!!!) (ndt: cagna=bitch=dog in italian)
And, interestingly (so to say) that March 20 I bore over my head Surrender by Laura Pausini, to this date her only song in English that I remember. In the end, not too bad, apart from those memories. And, of course, to emphasize the link between my mind and the world... that day it began the second Gulf War...
Ah, even that curious song from Les Balentes, (coming as well from Sardinia), sounded like a coincidende...


We used to go around Torino and, when passing near the courthouse (intentionally lower case for various reasons) I improvised myself a rapper: I recited loud the lyrics from Lose yourself by Eminem or In da club from 50 cent and I accompanied it all with gestures at the said building. And people were telling me to calm down... poor unsuspecting! Of course, as it would happen eleven years later, induhviduals weren’t able to understand or discern the behavior of a customer or crook of a corrupt appraiser, or more generally to analyze historical facts and then make a plan for the future.
I fact, in the wake of those events, I was almost persuaded to leave by the shitcountry (!) ... I had been in contact with an American guy for a few months, he was working with home automation and I asked him how they were the expenses, salaries...
One evening in March or April, below Patrizia’s home with a crystal clear sunset, I looked westward, and I imagined Tennessee! And she, without even trying to play it softer, told me that she would’ve missed me a lot...
And Prima di partire per un lungo viaggio by Irene Grandi was the obvious and perfect soundtrack for those projects. The questions that arose and made me ask... and the answers I gave myself, all thoughtful. Except something about love... and the like.
Oh well.

In the end, however, I didn’t leave for America. In April I decided to go to Agordo, Pope Luciani’s native place, to collect ideas for a tale that I had imagined in those years. I had also talked with Cristina, the year before, and even proposed her to write a little each (four hands), but obviously we hadn’t gone much ahead. Now Cristina flaunted her baby bump and... It was feeling all a bit strange: I looked at her and didn’t feel so close anymore – and no longer it interested me more than a very little bit. And, yes, like all pregnant women... I imagined myself in her place with that amended body... but nothing particularly strange.
I picked up a bit of notes for this tale that, to date, hasn’t yet taken shape over a first chapter: also because, as I have often said, with Pope Francis reality has overcome imagination (!) and somehow the ideas I had for that novel... have become a bit outdated. At least in my mind.
We'll see. However, being a guest in the house of the brother and nephew of what I have always considered a great man - himself a victim of that one from Blasphemous rumours - it was a great experience!
Cry me a river (which I later found being a cover) from Justin Timberlake and a collection of Lisa Stansfield remind me of that trip and a dinner in a restaurant. I purchased this CD as I returned home.

And on a day in that spring Enza came to say that Irene had got married. With those idiotic sabot (whose name I would’ve learned later...) in fashion at that time - the wife of chiro-thing wore them too - and... her usual useless face.
I don’t remember any reaction from my side to those words, and I would say it's okay.
Agnelli had died during those months, and so in Torino they began to talk seriously about building a subway. It seems cynical, but it is the sad truth of a place a bit so...
And, by the way, it had exploded another shuttle that winter (17 years after...) and the date coincided with the birth of another son of friends from the company. A bad sign, as I repeated for long (!)

Gatto matto by Roberto Angelini, I adored it in spring! So simple, so perfect! Double senses apart and... I mean, above all, his changes compared to his appearance at Sanremo Festival a few years before! And then, shortly after, even 12 anni: here is another who spoke of memories and dates without filling them with melancholy, but just facts.
Later, I found out that he was in the same group as Fabi and also Daniele Silvestri. Logical, I guess.
And of course Gocce di memoria by Giorgia, beautiful: even the movie of which it was soundtrack wasn’t bad, with that flash past/present (and let’s skip the plot...); and it reminds me Nicola with his pessimistic sentence about questo tempo ci ha tradito and I didn’t understand why he would misunderstand those words like that... Only much later I realized that time had betrayed him (for his choices) and he was speaking with me because I was a time expert. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately for me, my being expert was a bit different...
And then Bring me to life by Evanescence, and I'm with you by Avril Lavigne, and Where is the love from Black Eyed Peas who began their overwhelming career. And a nice Family portrait from Pink, that led me to estimate her even further: in our family portrait we look pretty happy... made me think back to certain phrases from my mother, many years before. And the beautiful idea of she grown up hand in hand with herself as a little girl: especially if I could’ve been them, the small and the big (!)
Hands clean by Alanis Morrissette, beautiful. Clocks by Coldplay, calendar shows it at that time but I can’t fix with precision: it’s a bit of my trouble with Coldplay who, in a similar way to U2, in recent years have always been there, but without ever being memorable. Well done anyway!
And Don’t know why by Norah Jones, not exactly my thing but noticeable. Xverso from Tiziano Ferro, brilliant as always and that beautiful ending "sì però all’inferno ci vai tu" 
And Fiori d’arancio from Carmen Consoli, always in very southern shades, especially in cases like this... though beautiful!


For summer holidays I went to Norway, to visit the famous catcher of transalpine husbands (!) and it was nice. Of course, during the nine-hour trip as if it were all Ceresole, like I had called that train that goes from Oslo to Bergen... tears peeked. But only for a quick moment: let's say I was feeling all right and had my idea of scoring some points, after two or three years just gone gray. And, on the train alone, it was again E’ non è - as in the videoclip.
In Norway I found, quite rightly, Royksopp’s CD and so I replaced the images from Poor Leno (and the curious Eple) with Remind me, which remains to this day one of the songs that I love most! And that video so smart... and a woman’s life, from morning to night...
Yep. But, also, a link to my other novel Shape of things to come.
And then my optimism was rewarded: on the way back from Norway (when, as I moved to Nice and Ventimiglia, I noted that I had lost two hundred years of civilization within three hours of flight...) Franco picked me up with his girlfriend and at some point he announced that the fraudster from seven years before had crashed his car to death!
I remember that I commented saying this is the best day of my life and I had the impression that they weren’t sharing it (!) but... it didn’t matter and then, at that time, you couldn’t even imagine what would have become of the people.
Or better, we could a little, as we said.
Oh, we also need to keep track of a European Cup final (or maybe they already called it Champions League... people’s opium) which I watched in a pub along with other friends while pollen went like crazy and the bad team from Torino (!) lost... for once I liked Berlusconi’s smile! Obviously better than the faces of the three dirty bosses on the other side...

There is also Maybe tomorrow by Stereophonics, in this 2003 but I discovered it later... possibly in sadder moments, to which those lyrics would have corresponded better. And the same goes for Someday by Nickelback.
And then, in the fall, more marriages and/or baptisms - and even funerals, as recalled by a nice photomontage that I prepared at the time (!) The baptism of Carlo’s third son, confirming that for the first it had been held an event worth of British royals and instead now... just the church behind the house and two pretzels and we were done (!!)
And... for another one of those rare events in my life. Which then, to reread them all in a row, you could even say that they were not so rare... the problem is that they’ve never gone over at least a basic minimum.
I had glimpsed her during the civil ceremony of those two friends from the group from 1987: she was with another taller girl... and more friends. She was pretty and reminded me a little of Cristina from 1985, but just a pinch. And… slowly we started to talk... lunch, laughing, talking. I remember thinking that she was at least ten years younger than me but, like today, I could look absolutely the same age (!!!)
Cinzia. From Cuorgnè that is in the Ceresole area (it’s important, having some patterns to follow).
Everything perfect: we exchanged our phone numbers and, despite the fifty kilometers away, we started meeting each other every week or more often. And sometimes she came to town, no small detail. Pirates of the Caribbean at the cinema, a few pubs both in Torino and in her area... then one day I invited her to yet another wedding and then a weekend later in a farmhouse along with other friends and... she didn’t come to both and since then we started to phone each other less.
Later, someone would’ve told me that since I hadn’t taken my chances with her after four weeks she had become annoyed...
I don’t know if it was my problem, but I have a rather vague idea that it is a problem of this planet. No, oh well, I'm doing an hyperbole (!!)
To her wonderful name I dedicated, a year later, To the name I love… taking a cue from other girls I had known and starting to focus on how I was feeling that name, more than anything else, fitted for me.
But it would take more time. There and then I preferred to think that the story hadn’t even started because on the wedding day of one of the two sisters of 1991, I had built some fantasies about a chick. Of course, in her shoes.
Marriage which also coincided with the famous blackout throughout Italy, due to a trellis in Switzerland or in France, or what it was! And that too, as a sign, wasn’t bad... But in the following years I haven’t heard from the two friends anymore.
That girl, Cinzia, had said she liked Nek and wanted to go to a concert of his: and Almeno stavolta was the umpteenth cute song from him - and, for a while, even meaningful...

Thus came the fall and we kept doing the usual things: I had a new kitten, since June - black, gorgeous!
An attack in Nassiriya, the importance of which I understood only say eleven years after (!!) and Schwarzenegger became governor of California. Not bad!
Parmalat’s collapse. A Beppe Grillo’s show and... magically, after having dreamed about her exactly that night, we meet Irene at Colosseum theater as we are about to enter!
Who knows how my face was, after greeting her a little surprised (I hadn’t seen her for five years), I told her - always so sincere - I dreamed about you last night. I wasn’t interested to know what she thought, nor do I care now but... in fact, someday we’ll know.

Objection Tango by Shakira – in the end I liked it. We also remember In the shadows by Rasmus.

And for New Year’s eve it was organized a dinner in a restaurant just outside Torino... along with the famous single residues from the group (one of which threw up against the car window on the return trip) and... well, nothing special. However, just before Christmas, I had met the girl who would mark the year about to begin...

E’ non è , Niccolò Fabi

Remind me, Royksopp

Gocce di memoria, Giorgia

 2004

For some reason... between 2003 and 2004 I haven’t noted the cassette titles that I recorded in my database. Which had its own logic say at the end of 2002 or 2004, but then... I don’t understand how that could happen in the meantime. Too bad, because that is precisely the thread that runs through and connects my all life! And... yes, more or less I remember the songs anyway, but...
Looking back, I think it happened because I stopped recording tapes, shortly after the arrival of MP3 format: now I was preparing CDs and so... for some time I must’ve had doubts about how to continue my archive.
Oh well. Then, a little later, they would’ve stolen my car radio (rightly, I just had a new girlfriend) and so I started listening to MP3s directly even in the car.

The year 2004 began with the delicious news that another fairly idiot customer, a boy who wanted to become a millionaire by starting a red light chatting platform, whom I had met at another uncommentable customer... was arrested for pedophilia along with his arrogant friend from Varese or what it was! I remember reading that email and laughing and for a moment I was a little concerned about the idea that they could involve me in their idiotic mess, but then this lawyer from Novara told me to stay calm because they only wanted a statement from me.
Good, more idiots set away from my presence (!)

I skied, I donated blood (during those months I made my fiftieth donation!) and watched the usual lunatics who organized attacks - this time in Madrid (and, needless to say, on that day he was born the grandson from the famous bad-luck-giver from Lady D!)
We often went and made trips to Candia Lake, at that time: and once I took along my black cat... the gatto matto, precisely 
And one day, while in my car it played Summer of '69, a girl asked me to go and watch Bryan Adams’s concert, to be held in Milano soon: said, done, and you can find a report in Io, Bryan e la Scura (!!)

I don’t remember especially important songs, in those months, at least until May (!!!): Maroon 5’s debut, from whom I found quite unbearable This love, which I always associate with The reason from Hoobastank, annoying as well! Then Outkast with Hey ya, so and so. And I just wanna live from Good Charlotte, somewhat funny way as it would be We believe just ahead. Together by Elisa, always great, and Roses by The Roots, sweet.


Blogs were now two, but still with little relevance. However, at that time I started writing short stories... porn, yes, so to say, in which I described my fantasies while I put them into practice... More fantasy-porn, in some ways: and having found on the internet similar stories had made me somehow believe it was not so unusual... the way I fantasized sex. Which, of course, continued to be different from how they did the other males.
Toxic by Britney Spears – which by the way I consider one of her most beautiful songs... okay that you need just a little (!) - and You won’t forget about me from Kylie Minogue’s sister, Dannii, are the soundtrack of those evenings spent dancing wearing the clothes I always dreamed of and that now, from time to time, I found the courage to buy. And the photos had improved, also considering my new wig, finally decent.

But, anyway, I was always looking for love. And the girl I had met just before Christmas... she looked sympathetic.
And she was beautiful: we went to the seaside one day in May and in that picture she was perfect! We were joking, laughing, I was making jokes and she always laughed... she was clever but sweet...

We were together on that 8th of June - one day when the roses were able to accomplish their task. And since a few days it was out Amazing by George Michael, the breath of fresh air after the dark years of Freek (as I described it in My Life, which I wrote during those months) and, needless to say, it became her song. That is, the one that remembers me about her: please, don’t let this girl go...
If luck is a lady. But whom were you talking to, George ??
The day you walked in and changed my life. Stitched by the hands of fate. Now I walk in the midday sun.
All perfect! Those were unforgettable days... a trip to the beach with my car that was going on love because it had drawn very little fuel, for no reason. The Stratorino, the town Running race. Days at her home. It had worked, I had conquered her and for once she wasn’t horrible or dazed.

Or so it seemed.
The torturer’s theory, with her, reached for new and greater heights. Probably related to the fact that, now that I described my fantasies as I played them on stage, my mind expressed in an even stronger way what I really dreamed...

At first difficulties, which came even before past times (to say, we are talking of 1999...) I focused on Try by Nelly Furtado: I still consider it a masterpiece... her videoclip, the efforts to make a relationship work... that bull who doesn’t want to move...
Then I see you standing there, wanting more from me... and all I can do is try... yes, I believed that, at least at that stage, it was necessary to make efforts together. After all we were more mature, and she had also been married before.
But then the more I cry the more I cry: and as I say goodbye to the way of life I thought I had designed for me...
The dress she wore Nelly, and that perfect face, statuary, and those simple earrings... were obviously the thing that - in parallel - struck me about the videoclip. And of course, all this had to do with the way that relationship evolved.

I have so many memories, and them all clear, as always - and as always, in some ways my comment is unfortunately. But they're all wrapped up in what I have done wrong to be treated like that? at which only many years later I would have been able to give an answer.
Selling England by the pound from Genesis, heard a whole day at her place as I helped to do the cleaning. And then Misread by Kings of Convenience, which I adored at once, listened on a summer day on her couch. And then Che vita è in our car in Tuscany as I thought of how much I loved her... She wanting pictures in the middle of sunflower fields, some Tuscan sunset, wonderful as always...
Meanwhile, she began to react like mad at every little joke. Which was crazy, considering how we had met or how it had developed our relationship in the previous months.
In fact, her change had started more or less after that, a day on the phone, I had started crying and told her I was missing her and I was afraid of losing her. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion, because I said it in a positive sense, that is, to show her my feelings...
But apparently it had gone out too much of me sad princess.
Add to this, then too, that sometimes I removed hair from my legs and she would notice it and... well.
E’ stato tanto tempo fa by Simone, listened in late summer, used to take me back to spring with an incredible longing.


Shortly before going on holiday in Liguria, in July, my coworker was smart enough to get us another letter from a lawyer reporting the delusional raving from another of his delusional clients (!!!) and so I remember that in addition to the problems that I was living in my relationship I even had to care about who, as a friend, was proving more and more an idiot. But it would take a few more years...
And of course Roberta was on his side. She also set to defend the famous Sardinian bitch, who at that time had read on our website (it was not business, it was more an amateur thing) a nice comment on the sympathetic March 20 of previous year based upon the similarity between beach and... bitch (!)
One thing that obviously this idiot could never understand and that just as obviously was not liable in any location, but that... idiot of a former partner called me one day scared as hell because her idiot husband had called him... And when I told the whole story to my girlfriend she said that I was sticking my neck.
If only people had a brain, if only... (cit.)

Nothing, except a few pearls, I don’t have many musical memories of that time - even sifting the world rankings!
I remember an evening at the pub with Nicola (who was now expecting his first child too), and a discussion about rap music or better hip-hop: in particular, I think we were referring to Get busy by Sean Paul that he had as a ringtone on his phone (MP3... I don’t think so, it was still early, perhaps... boh ) and I told him suddenly that I hated it. And so he took an opportunity to call me old, but I stated immediately that a large part of hip-hop sucked as much as the music from the '80s had sucked at the time... but now nostalgia often tended to repaint it in a better fashion.

More quarrels, more trips, more nights, more quarrels... make love and then cry (I), give her a dress as a present and try it on before (!) ...
She leaves me down after a holiday to Mallorca with her friend: I go to one of the last wedding from the famous group, and... as I return home, I find my cat dead! Probably he was going and steal some food somewhere, I had noticed that a couple of times... but, what the hell. In spring she had given birth to four wonderful kittens... I had shooted a very sweet photo of Roberta caressing one of them...
I was feeling bad again. I didn’t want to lose her and I couldn’t realize of... what else I should have done to prevent me from being treated like everybody's little punching bag all the time.
Obviously I didn’t get back to her, but it was she who contacted me again - and it would go on for at least another year and a half.

In yet another barbecue on the lake we were listening She will be loved by Maroon 5 and I immediately noticed a resemblance with Here comes the rain again from Eurythmics... but I didn’t have a chance to discuss it with others because the usual mad behaviour with the chick prevailed. And then there was White flag by Dido, beautiful as always and with those words he I devoted to certain customers... Rap lamento and Chiedi chiedi by Frankie Hi-Nrg, intelligent as ever.
And then came My immortal by Evanescence, wonderful; and My happy ending by Avril Lavigne, in a continuous improvement.
So much for my happy ending, yes. And also Il mondo insieme a te by Max Pezzali, which could be somehow acceptable.

Autumn was cold... sometimes I went and visit the crazy one and then returned straight home after she had attacked me for no reason, or maybe after having been used as a carrier of weights at the supermarket (without restraint). Once she acted like crazy, and when I started my car to go away, she jumped on the hood. Other times I was doing a tour at the market nearby... now that I almost dared to buy me nice things... maybe I picked the occasion: and that winter there were those beautiful plum colored pleated skirts...
My band from D12 (an Eminem rib) and Just lose it from Eminem himself remind me of those months. And Roberta the torturer - or Satan as I defined her once.
Then there were Wishin' on a star by Paul Weller (from The Style Council), John Legend with Save room, or even Resta ancora by Fish (from Sottotono)... for a love that wasn’t right at all. Logical, considering that I was not what I appeared to be... and then I was living all that enormous Truman Show...
Once at sea in autumn, the mad girl started screaming at me once more, and then kicking me for her bad thoughts: and when in the evening, in our room, I watched the videoclip from What you waiting for by Gwen Stefani... I was sure that it meant me and my change: what the hell are you waiting for?
Eh.
And the Black Eyed Peas conquering the world with Shut up and Let's get it started, which then I took to New Year's Eve: together with Numb by Linkin Park (also in their version Encore featuring Jay Z) “all I want to be is be more like me and be less like you”.

I also remember that, at the time, the advertisers had learned to exploit - and destroy, because of the incessant repetition - pop or rock songs. Or maybe they had been doing it for long... anyway with Streets of love by the Rolling Stones and Tina Turner’s Open arms I felt this nausea after just a few days and I considered it a shame, because they were destroying music.
Oh, right, Vasco’s Buoni o cattivi... Anymore was not bad, even though it was a bit sad and Un senso that we had heard in the film Non ti muovere, in the spring. We also remember Ti porto in Africa by Mango, not bad.

Boulevard of broken dreams by Green Day was perfect for that period and I prepared a photomontage putting myself on the poster of James Dean’s movie... and even if the cigarette and the tough man expression wasn’t so suited to me... the idea was cute. And perfectly fitting.


Bush was reelected, incredible! And on December 26, there was the Indian Ocean tsunami... what strong images.

Let’s recall, rediscovered only years later, 1985 from Bowling for Soup (from the SR-71): so... perfect in the dates, in quotes, and... very important to locate those who have then aged badly in the nostalgia of the fabulous 80s 
And the sad Geile Zeit from July, I later discovered in 2016: last year I cried several afternoons there, listening to it... and although I was happy to finally understand that language, the lyrics were grueling: you hoped that everything would change, things would get better... I know, it was a wonderful moment, but, I'm sorry, it's gone... we miss you...
Crying for the time, rather than for love or for a loss. It’s what I said that night in 1997 to Irene, at her home.
And it’s so true, especially if said in German.


Even Somebody told me Killers is from 2004 and I only discovered it years later.


Oh, but don’t forget the stand in berlusca’s face 

Try, Nelly Furtado

Amazing, George Michael

Misread, Kings of convenience