Holidays - packing

I am going. Finally summer holidays. Goal for this holiday is to understand why Pink Floyd ever dedicated one of their songs to a touristic village. I will be disconnected from the real world for 3 weeks.

iPod

Following my purpose of losing weight, today I rode my bike to work. And I took my mp3 player with me, and listened to Gianluca Petrella; at the beginning I was scared, 'cause the recension was saying Italian avantgard Jazz, and usually avantgard is the label that a recensionist uses to show off and avoid admitting that piece of music is hopelessy ugly. Petrella was everything else, experimental of course, but the way research oughts to be: some experiments will fail, but most will succeed, and by the way, it's a lot of fun. So I listened to turntables, trombones, double-bass and saxs, pianos and rhodes, all in different mixes and composition.

While riding, I realized that people might be surprised to discover I listen to this kind of music while biking, and asked myself what kind of music do the others listen to. Every time I crossed someone with her headphones on, I wanted to rip them off, and listen. Would it be some shitty commercial staff? Some 70s rock? Is it something I don't know? And, if I don't, would I want to know it, would I like the music? How much music is there out there, that I don't know, that I am missing now? Discouraged, I turned to mythology:

Delle tre la prima e’ dolce e paffuta
La seconda ha una classe infinita
E la terza un bell’andar
Leonino e muscolar, cosa devo far?

Me dicettene e’ purta’ un pomo d’oro
E di consegnarlo ad una di loro
Gia’ che c’ero n’ accattai
Quattro chili e li guardai
Belli, belli assai

Me, tu devi scegliere me
Il premio lo dai a me

Io m’addimanne e cche’, neh!
Vanno cercanno ste tre

Ho le natiche piu’ tonde del mondo
Ho negli occhi un bel mistero profondo
E io tengo un bell’andar
Leonino e muscolar, tu chi vuo’ premiar?

Statte zitte che pe’ ffa’ a’ pummorola
Comme zeus commanna int’a casseruola
Ci va il tempo che ci va
Trallallero trallalla’
Oue’ chi vo’ pruva’
Me, dammene nu poco a mme’
‘na cucchiarata, ecche’, neh
Chella lussuria che te,’ oue’
Un ultimo assaggio pe’ mme’

Poi la storia racconto’ tutt’e cose
Di tre dee tutt’e tre vanitose
Che vulettene, vois-la’!
Miss italia organizza’,
Hue’, chi vuo’ mbruglia’?

Il Giudizio di Paride - Avion Travel

Readings

Yesterday I did not feel too well - probably I was too tired of an extreme weekend, and I spent my time lying in bed reading. I finished I peggiori racconti dei fratelli Grim, an amazing surrealistic epistolar novel, in which two scholars dispute about the impact of the Grim's brother on South-America culture. It's a pearl of humor and imagination, and it is the proof that there is a Chilean literature besides Isabel Allende.


In Tre storie d'amore, di Montalban, Pepe Carvalho is confronted with the different shapes of love: an old love, a passionate love, and the absence of love. In all cases, the extreme and pure consequence of love is murder, murders to be solved passively. That's maybe why Pepe prefers cooking to loving, and lighting up his chimney with books.

Beauty

Saturday has been a special day, one of those intense ones I live for. I went to Amsterdam, to buy a new double bass, and met with Monica. We spent the day together, had lunch at the Nieuwmarkt and listened to some great tango, played by her boyfriend. Monica and I share two passions, one is music; we both can't get enough of it. Sun was warm, but wind was chill, so we spent the day putting on and taking off our coats.

Monica lives in a beautiful apartment in the Jordaan, probably the most beatiful neibourhood in Amsterdam. You can sit there and listen to some Nick Cave, or Lou Reed, but if I were you I would listen to some Richard Galliano - his version of Guarda che Luna is fantastic, and made me think of the Musica Nuda album from Spinetti-Magoni.

I left Monica waiting for something to happen, and surprised Marco with a phone call. Marco and I went to Live-Earth, where we learnt that everything we were already doing for the environment was OK, and that others should start imitating us. A good reason to go somewhere else, and discuss our existences in a Thai-restaurant. We discussed about God, her almightiness and her alsaviourness. If God knows everything, she knows also what she's going to do, so it should be very boring for her; moreover she cannot change her planned acts without violating her infinite knowledge; but she can do everything, so she is able to change the future she knows will happen. Actually, that might be even the only meaningful thing to do. God major occupation is denying herself.

Marco looked beautiful, extremely young. That was even stronger when Marine was there; it was great to see how much they love each other, smiling and looking for eachother.

On the way back I listened to "Il canto di Natale" by Vinicio Capossela, a must for everyone intending to change his life. But I got distracted; it was not her mini-skirt, discovering a pair of wonderful legs in which I could have registered my residence; neither were her eyes, circled with some liner as black as the best 60's; but she was burning for her man, and he smiled at her, and I didn't exist for them, not even as an annoing accident between Utrecht and Waalwijk. It was beauty.

The shop was closed, so I did not buy any double-bass.