So here is my end of year considerations. Never easy to do them, as my life is not really that trivial.

The 2011 year is going to end, and so I am about to fly back to Sicily for Christmas as I have always done. I will be back in Berlin for the night of the 27th, due to reasons not completely dependent from my own desire, and I will spend New Year’s Eve in Germany (I am not that excited about it, I have to admit). Then, on the 11th of January I will go back to the Netherlands after almost four months in order to attend the Eurosonic Festival in the city of Groningen, where I spent two and a half years and, despite all, remains the city closest to my own way of living. I mean, Berlin has its own peculiar, interesting style: but the relaxed, quiet life of the Netherlands is probably much fitting to the kind of profile I am.

As usual I have no plans for my future. After years of wandering around, I am just hoping to be able to move back to Italy one day, given the circumstances. The crazy (but appealing) idea to move to Barcelona has basically become impossible following the outcome of the latest Spanish general elections and the huge economic crisis of Europe, so a comeback to the Netherlands is presumably the only viable alternative to Berlin, should I theoretically decide to leave Berlin tomorrow morning. However, I have never moved backwards in my 29 years life, mostly because of a personal stubbornness, so this option is quite unlikely as well. Regarding my music, I have sort of stopped recording my new album due to lack of motivation, however I am currently seeking for potential collaborations aimed to enter into the huge Berlin music scene. And, lastly, I am also searching for a new home from March 2012, when I will be forced to leave my current apartament, at the 4th floor of a building not far from a minor S-Bahn train station, located in a dead residential area of the city.

So time to say goodbye. Enjoy your holidays, here is the song for you, This time I want to surprise you with “Salato parte uno” from Jovanotti, 2002. Totally unrelated with rap despite the musician’s past: a piece the sounds kind of South American, and that phrase about a “word inside a book in the Babel library“, a quite classy piece of lyrics and a clear homage to Jorge Luis Borges. And also a good metaphore for my occasional feelings, after 11 years spent around Italy and the world without a real goal.

Maybe, maybe, maybe!, but maybe it’s over. I’ve been waiting for this moment since 1994, so I really feel like I need to celebrate. I really, really hope I won’t be forced to wait for too long…

After a long-time epic without borders, packed with surprises and driven by a desire of a life without negative pressures, I find myself again at the starting point: back to work. Damn.

The real difference is the place. I am leaving the Netherlands, and instead moving to Berlin together with all my guitars, dreams, well-asleep ambitions and daily things. I don’t really know why I’m doing this, and I am not really convinced it is actually the right choice. Differently than my past experiences, this time I am living everything in such a passive way, almost like suffering the events surrounding me. All I know is that money is running out and it’s time to change once again. I had a chance to stay in Groningen, if I ever wanted: however, sometimes, it’s better to run away rather than keep living in a place that (as beautiful as it might be) can seriously leave you with nothing but a beautiful obsession you’re trying to get rid of. I had the chance to move to Amsterdam, and it was almost real at some point: however, a few things didn’t go as they were supposed to, and a combination of randomness, alcohol and desire to change is going to bring me in a very special place: Berlin. I don’t know how’s gonna end up, I am not even ruling out the possibility it might all turn in a negative outcome, as it often happened in my life. What I know for sure is that change often comes as a inertial force.

All these things make me thing, however, once again about my almost-three years here in the Netherlands. I didn’t really expect to stay in this country for more than 6 or 12 months, but it definitely became a part of my heart. I’ve become a bit Dutch in the end, and I can assure you it’s very, very difficult for me to leave the Netherlands. I don’t really know how this new adventure is going to be: what I barely know is that, at age 29, it might easily be the last. Or maybe not, who knows, I still have that crazy idea of spending one year in Barcelona (the most beautiful city in Europe) well into my head. Really, I am unable to make any predictions related to my life: a few nights ago, a very special girl (I will never ever write her name here) reminded me I am often unable to take even the simplest decisions. Well, she’s absolutely right; I am indeed nothing more than a penniless walk-on driven by the surrounding events. That’s probably why I am feeling such a countryless wanderer searching for himself, even when I am about to relocate once again. I just hope that, one day or the other, something could happen and all of this search might ultimately end.

This is the final week before I will be forced to increment the sad counter of my age. Well, let’s stop thing about that. This is also my first blog posting after I left the company where I spent my last two years: a choice to leave a safe job that might have sounded as senseless to the people who do not really know my ups and downs, but that indeed turned out to have been absolutely necessary. After two weeks, I can say I no longer feel the horrible pressure that was about to slowly choke me and lead me to a wrong path. Now I don’t really know what’s going to happen: right now I spend my days following a Dutch course at the local university and, more occasionally, taking private singing lessons at the Groningen conservatory. The latter thing is, needless to say, finalized to my next musical work: The Dutch Album, that I still have not begun recording but I am really looking to complete before the end of the summer. It is a good mix of hermetic, bizarre and abstract lyrics: a bunch of texts I wrote in the silence of the Dutch green environment, but also aboard the squeaky local trains, in the late summer rustle of Scheveningen and Terschelling, aboard five-hour long connection buses between Barcelona and Valencia, in the rhythm of the Hamburg metro beats, in the bitter cold Maastricht winter, or just on my home table that regularly smells of Nero d’Avola wine, Duvel beer and latent uncertainties. A musical work that is likely to be fundamentally acoustic, even if I can’t rule out the possibility of having a number of interventions of mine at the keyboards, or even some more kind of surprises. But now I am saying too much, time to stop.
About my future I do not know anything yet: maybe something is moving, but still I am unable to say anything regarding it. Something will surely occur in September or October, and that will probably the time of my final departure from Groningen. However I still do not my future destination and I am completely unable to predict it at the moment. I do not rule out another period abroad in August: Lithuania, Belgium and Spain are the most likely candidates, but it would probably depend on my own financial condition and the state of my music stuff. Still, it’s pointless to make any predictions here as well, so that’s fine too.

Looking forward to write here soon then, maybe in July, August, or who knows. I was forgetting: on the 26th of June I will be in Hamburg to attend a concert of a music legend named Bob Dylan. So I am saying goodbye with a song from the rock’n'roll minstrel: one of his less famous works, it is named Workingman’s Blues #2 from the 2006 album Modern Times. To me it’s just a great, great piece of music. See you.

We’re still alive. After a wonderful week I spent around the crazy ramblas of Barcelona, the artistic works of Salvador Dalì in Figueres, the typical small streets of Lisbon, featuring the concert of the legendary Paolo Conte in the old city of Belèm, and the breathtaking views from the hills of Oporto.

I have to admit I am in love with Barcelona: it’s a sensation that just cannot be explained with words. Then, Lisbon and Oporto are something that really leaves you something too, two cities that definitely deserve to be visited. Maybe you would not realize it immediately, but they’re quite wonderful too.

And well, now I am back in Groningen. Now I’m approaching my final working week, and from Friday 27 May I will officially be a luxury unemployed guy for the entire summer. I need to understand a bunch of things before to get back to regular life: from next June I will work on my Dutch and my new album, that is something I really care about. And then I want to discover the real me, I want to understand what I am aiming for, since I am going to slowly approach my thirties; I have a lot of questions searching for an answer I will try to find out during the next three months, and a real necessity to stay away from the vices of the capitalist world centered on horrible keywords such as “productivity”, “profit”, “competition”, “human resource” and some more stupid stuff like that. I definitely need to stay out of all this.

And then where I am going to go? Well, I am not thinking about it really. And sincerely I feel like it’s unimportant. I would like to be anywhere, to be honest: I’d like to live contemporaneously in Amsterdam, Berlin, Bruxelles, Barcelona, Hamburg, Maastricht, Palermo, Lisbon. But I don’t think it’s a feasible idea, so I will be forced to choose only one city in the end. On the other hand, you know, I am totally unable to settle in a specific place, I have always been a free spirit continuously searching for positive emotions.

That’s all for now. And I am obviously gonna say you a big goodbye with a song of the great Paolo Conte; thanks to him, and because of my gigantic desire – now finally made true – to attend one of his concerts before it would have been way too late, I indeed discovered Portugal, something I wouldn’t have probably ever made otherwise. This specific song is named Le chic et le charme, and I must admit I had never listened to it before the 5 May 2011 concert of his in Lisbon. A song that really left me some sort of feeling due to some weird reason (maybe its strange title, its minimalistic French lyrics, or the kazoo intro, who knows!), and a song I consequently decided to share with you people. Greetings!

Doubts are taking over my head, they’re taking it like a drop of water that, slowly but continuously, crashes on the floor, eventually making the sign of its small but regular force visible all of a sudden. I have to admit I have always been afraid of radical changes, even if quite often (well, always?) they turned out to be necessary.

But this time it’s different: this time I know what I am leaving, but I don’t really know where I am going. I am riding without a navigator, that is quite a difference. I only know I need to stay out of all the things that are slowly leading me out of contact with reality: office life at first, but also the repeatedly constant days that have characterized my Dutch life. It is quite incredible, and weird, I have to admit, that these last few days here in Groningen turn out to be the most interesting and promising ones; a spring that comes to make your life complex, I must say. Then, well, I am a guy who used to live in a weak equilibrium of his uncertainties, with the difference that his own doubts are now larger than ever.

I have decided a few weeks ago that I cannot leave the Netherlands. I am still bound to this country I love, despite all things, and it would be way too difficult for me to leave it right now. On the other hand, I don’t really know what’s gonna happen to me now: I just now that I am almost 29 and starting all over again won’t be that easy. I hope to make it, I hope to understand what hell of a road I want to take after all this running around. I have a feeling that the lack of landmarks is gonna get a issue too tough also for me, a honest traveler continuously in search of something or somebody.

So, I get back into the silence of these pages with some fine top-quality music. A song by Sergio Cammariere (a man I had the pleasure, and the honour, to see performing live in Pisa years ago), a musician from Southern Italy just like me, and with a jazz spirit, as well as me too. Alla prossima.

They’ve been days of changes, anger and a need for such an emotional outburst. Right now I’ve been feeling like a bird in a cage, even if I have already left Italy since more than two years. I still keep living thre Italian events in a visceral way, despite the hundreds kilometers of distance that are apparently not enough yet. I am suffering quite a lot to see my own country being dismantled, dismembered, stripped and broken out, with its guts left abandoned at the mercy of the wind, thanks to a bunch of old unscrupolous criminals who are “killing our thoughts”.
Year 2011: North Africa, the so mistreated Arab-speaking Maghreb, is experiencing an amazing chain of mass revolts against its own dictators: a bunch of corrupted thieves who keep themselves bound to their own powers until the very last seconds, almost as an attempt to humiliate the quest for freedom until the end; a quest guided by the youth that inevitably starts and grows, and becomes unstoppable in the end. Because the real freedom cannot be suffocated. Never. Ever.
We, as Italians, should really look at our brothers from the other side of the Mediterranean Sea with interested eyes, and follow their example in order to reclaim what belongs to us: we, the real people, the ones who love, suffer, fight and dream. We, the people, not the “strong men” I would sincerely be diffident of. And yes, this is meant to be also an answer to all the ones who think that a leader is always needed in any circumstances: not really, you don’t need any leaders if you have ideas, sane principles, young and strong roots that can give life to the flower of an improved society. I wholeheartedly wish for such an answer, with the young people taking continuous possession of all the Italian squares until the end of this horrible Orwellian regime. We, the youth, armed only with a flower, a book, our Constitution, our ideas and our indispensable utopia for a fair, just, legalistic, meritocratic society. Because “this damned night will eventually end”…

As I am drinking some water with laurel and a big slice of lemon, I reminded of the song below from The National. By the way, they are coming live to Groningen on the 19th of February, can’t wait for that. One of the finest bands at the moment, in my opinion.

A couple words about the political situation in Italy. After the latest events, promptly reported abroad as well (three examples: United Kingdom’s BBC, Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, Spanish newspaper El País), Italy’s public international image is now irremediably damaged. There’s very little to do but to get rid of Berlusconi as soon as possible. It doesn’t really matter the method, it could happen via a parliamentary action or by forcing him to tend his resignation; all we need is just a modern, more European Italy, headed by acceptable politicians. And, about that, I have to say our Tunisian brothers have surprisingly and unexpectedly surpassed the Italian people during these days, showing a dignity and a will for normality and freedom that has ultimately died in Italy. My personal explanation is that the subtle control of mass-media and opinions in a “supposed democracy” like Italy proved to be paradoxically stronger and more effective than the totalitarians methods used in a renowned long-time dictatorship like Tunisia. One more proof that Italy is unfortunately a more and more declining country.

So we’re back. Here’s a new year, as if it might really be important. The first song of this 2011, a year that looks incredibly aged already in its first few days, is a track I suddendly found in my mp3 reader: Radiohead, A Wolf at the Door, year 2003, album Hail to the Thief (the title being a not-so-incidental reference to George W. Bush). If you can get the meaning of the lyrics (posted below), you’ll realize this song is a clear criticism to speculators, profit-living managers, ultra-capitalistic businessmen and, generally speaking, liberism as an economic concept and its obvious social consequences: it’s not a case the video I post below is evidently inspired from a good-old reading masterpiece such as Animal Farm, among all things also a ferocious criticism to the modern society totally based to (in my opinion) horrible keywords such as productivity, resources, et cetera. From my humble point of view, this is among the three best Radiohead songs, and that is well enough to assure it as quality stuff. Have a nice listening, and, well, also a happy new year.

“Drag him out your window, dragging out the dead
Singing “I miss you”, snakes and ladders flip the lid
Out pops the cracker, smacks you in the head
Knifes you in the neck, kicks you in the teeth
Steel toe caps, takes all your credit cards, get up get the guns
Get the axe, get the flan in the face
The flan in the face, the flan in the face
Dance you fucker, dance you fucker, don’t you dare
Don’t you dare, don’t you flan in the face
Take it with the love it’s given, take it with a pinch of salt, take it to the taxman
Let me back, let me back, I promise to be good
Don’t look in the mirror at the face you don’t recognize
Help me, call the doctor, put me inside
Put me inside, put me inside
Put me inside, put me inside

I keep the wolf from the door but he calls me up
Calls me on the phone, tells me all the ways that he’s gonna mess me up
Steal all my children if I don’t pay the ransom
And I’ll never see them again if I squeal to the cops

Walking like giant cranes and with my X-ray eyes I strip you naked
In a tight little world are you on the list?
Stepford wives, who are we to complain?
Investments and dealers, investments and dealers
Cold wives and mistresses, cold wives and Sunday papers
City boys in First Class don’t know they’re born little
Someone else is gonna come and clean it up
Born and raised for the job, someone always does
I wish you’d get up get over, get up, get over and turn the tape off!

I keep the wolf from the door but he calls me up
Calls me on the phone, tells me all the ways that he’s gonna mess me up
Steal all my children if I don’t pay the ransom
And I’ll never see them again if I squeal to the cops, so I just go…“