Give me more of humanity
I want to see clearly now.
Category: Uncategorized
Confidence is a dish served cold
I drink Martini
so cliché
while spreading my lips
at your sight
I’m by your side?
Not even good with words
maybe good-looking enough
or that’s what I want to know
although
my brain’s a Medusa hair-do
not the prettiest
yet a catcher:
you compliment – I bite
you think I’m cool – I die
you talk so smart – I would rather play thumbs.
Still here we are
still, we are
can’t move far
can be only stars
self-awareness is an idol
with the eyes of a petrifying clum.
I brush the carpet
I thought it could be magic.
I clean the dirt out of it
The years,
the steps,
the last kiss.
I brush it
I strike it
I want it immaculate
without losing the dirty memories
The steps forwards, the ones backwards,
who cares for the direction
when stomping on a forbidden zone?
I wash it, I paint it again
– if necessary –
I paint a new frame
I weave it again
as all this were gone;
I paint it blue and green
like the once-had-a dream
I change it to change
the truth in vain
as if the water could wash from it the pain away.
Addiction
“A case study of the effects
of psychotropic substances
on grown-up middle-aged men”
by William Wordsworth.
That one will eat you
from inside out
reversing you like an
old holed sock
excavating your cheeks
defeating your age.
That one will instead
slowly make you its
own,
glowing in a singing swan
grasping your head like an
old deadly hag.
It swallows you up the same way as
it took in you its domain.
That one will teach you
it’s better not to
overdo, not to overdose,
if your mind cannot charge anymore
the path of your own, personal thought
– your proactivity –
in horror vacui slammed out.
The only one I know
though
has a liver and a heart
two lungs-wings
a fucking hot tongue.
What should I do when
already now I want the then?
Tell me the cure, give me the potion,
the secret ingredient that can
give me my candor back.
I feel safe in your fish eye
in the time you can’t define
I get joy out of denying
how dirty,
dirty rainbow am I.
Million faces blue
and my love, away,
the same colour too.
Addiction.
What I cause
What I accuse.
It’s easier to live under the blanket
I challenge myself in dreams
– never in danger, always on the alert –
I cannot die and even get touched
but
I run, I run, I fight, I’m chased
constantly, they’re closer, so near
I can feel my fear
without losing grace
I just focus and rise!
But I bounce here and there
my focus unfocused by fear
again, they are so near…
Now I’m awake
enough for tonight, challenge denied.
Bar poetry – the Intro
I keep my fear
on one bold gear
The easier: the smoother, the harder:
the first, I sweat and slowly go
the last, I hardly proceed but in the end succeed
the definition given by the moment
Untitled (about beauties and beasts and my naivety)
There are people with beautiful feelings
seeing people with beautiful feelings shining
like beautiful people hiding
beautiful feelings.
And there are people with less beautiful feelings
seeing people with less beautiful feelings shining
like beautiful people hiding
less beautiful feelings.
There are people with horrible feelings
seeing people with horrible feelings shining
like beautiful people hiding
nothing like beautiful feelings.
Following the body
Feeling feels somehow different now:
I don’t know if I can
– oh, sure do I; but
I mean if I really can –
translate the buzzes in my brain;
anyone gets an analyst nowadays
I am still waiting for mine to take
my dirty laundry, to wash it,
my dirty dishes, to lick it,
even though reluctant I fight
against my own unwillingness.
I cry for the dolphins
– is it egoism too?
I may be a folded pine
when the water’s so blue
caught in rifles of chloride:
like the last requested smile
on the pond,
before you
drown and, finally
get lost
freed by submission
Eh?
Don’t get lost
Submission is freeing me?
No, I don’t think so
I may be apologetic…
But no, I don’t think so –
I just look at the stars
– so far, so true –
they are alcohol and dope
I am far, if I can feel them too
so near, so bright,
yet dark as night
– that’s their meaning of existence:
feeling disconnected
to everything connected.
The title is an homage to Zanias, from the music track “Follow the body”, To the core EP, 2016. This record and her whole production are amazing, by the way.
The eclectic rock of Verdena: 20 years anniversary (and still I want more)
There’s a band, who wanted to be (the) Verbena but someone else got the name first, and so became Verdena, not the divine plant anymore, just the name of the best rock band I’ve gotten to know. With a lot of personal affection in it, yes.
They started playing in 1995 in an old henhouse, just teenagers, two brothers and, couple of years later, a bassist. They started taking great inspiration from the grunge of Nirvana, publishing the first album, Verdena, in 1999, with the independent Italian Black Out, label born from the idea of promoting underground music with the means of a major, the owner Universal (and despite how it sounds, I would say it worked, considering also the other names supported).
Since their debut, and even before with their demo tapes, it is clear that Verdena have something special, a sound that is hard, melodic, complex, full of references from the greatest of rock, yet fresh and distinctive.
Verdena grew up with me (or viceversa): I discovered them with their third album, Il suicidio dei samurai, and immediately started to listen to everything from their past. The result became an ongoing addiction.
Logorrea, Il suicidio dei samurai, 2004
Their cultural background is impressive but not surprising: they are big fans of the Beatles (that, ahem, I personally don’t like… yes I know, but), Interpol, Nirvana, Flaming Lips, to cite some. And every album expresses a new side, or maturity, of their sound, always carrying their timber, yet always unexpected and magnificent. When you think they have released their best album, the next one will change your mind.
Puzzle, Endkadenz vol. 1, 2015
So, what happened? Verdena, the first album, was grunge. Clearly. They were just 18, with introverted personalities, rebel: Kurt was the muse, their first inspiration. Solo un grande sasso (Just a big stone), the second album, is a new story: psychedelic and ambitious, with long complex tracks. The dark melancholy started with the second album gets emphasized in the third, Il suicidio dei samurai (The suicide of the Samurai), and almost disappears with Requiem, despite the title, that brings back their grunge but grown-up attitude. Then the double album Wow, Endkadenz Vol. 1 and Vol. 2… I prefer to leave (personal) descriptions aside and suggest you some tracks to listen to and get your personal idea.
Sotto prescrizione del dott. Huxley, Requiem, 2007
Since when I moved abroad, I’ve started to realize that, aside from the main genre, every country, even the closest ones (Austria and Italy, where I live and where I was born, for example), has a personal way to translate it, that implies that culture too. In my case, I am a big fan of the (old) Italian songwriters, I like that mix of tradition and sperimentation, that being politically engaged, poetic, idealistic; that decadent yet still brilliant flair of a brilliant yet decadent country. Lucio Battisti, Franco Battiato, Fabrizio De André, Rino Gaetano to cite a few. But I can also try (hard) to see it from an external point of view and understand that, together with the (indisputable) beauty of an execution, the emotional involvement plays a key role. That’s the best part of art.
Fuoco amico 2 (pela i miei tratti), Endkadenz Vol. 2, 2015
Head image taken from rollingstone.it
Kunst am Kanal – Art into the (Danube) flow
As you may know, Vienna is a city that developed in the proximity of the Danube. A former arm of it, the Donaukanal (Danube Canal) delimits the city centre, and it is a cozy urban yet green place to hang out, especially during summer. Along its path there are free areas for making graffiti, public vegetables gardens, outdoor exhibitions, many small and bigger bars, and the most interesting clubs (for example Grelle Forelle, which I mentioned more than once previously). And many different music and art events take place here, free events where people can gather in a chill setting.
Couple of weeks ago it was Kunst am Kanal, Art on the Canal, organized by the club Das Werk in cooperation with its two art ateliers, Lichtbogen 334, the nest of the visual artists from the collective 4youreye projectionArt, and Dachsbau, a co-working space for artists to rent and exhibit their work. Das Werk means “the factory”, but also “the art work”, and that’s what this club promotes aside from music.
Contemporary art can be easily seen as snobbish, due to its hermetic messages and aesthetics, the high prices and the steered value, not necessarily based on pure talent (see my post about Roberta Sinatra and her study that analyses the trends in the art business). It’s the underground facet, instead, that can offer a glimpse of closeness to a wider audience and become part of a bigger context, integrating into the surrounding of music, drinks and good vibes. The final result is not individual anymore, rather a sum of different contributions, styles, perceptions, points of view; and the location, even if the same one, acquires each time a new unique appearance.
Moreover, these events can also give the possibility to minor and free-time artists, or simply creative talents, to express themselves: collaborations and projects can bloom, most likely not for decorating a fancy loft, rather for creating a collective experience.
The new huge graffiti of two hands exposing the teeth of a ferocious dog was mapped by the visualists collective 4youreye for projecting colourful visuals that gave a whole different feeling of it; at Werk a new exhibition space offered a solo from Noémi Kiss, an architect and philosopher (and woman that I deeply admire) who rose in the last six years as conceptual artist, using simple and poor materials (concrete, carpets as example) to give them new shape and purpose. In this occasion she presented five different reinterpretations of three-dimensionality recreated on beautiful antique Persian carpets hung on the walls, creating a door –or a window– for the viewer to look into.
And then much more is offered, involving all different forms of performative arts, and the music: live concerts during the daylight, dj sets at night, offering a wide range of styles and sound.
A special paragraph deserves Lichtbogen 334, with its dark ambience particularly fitting to the projections introduced: a “digital mirror” altering colours and movement, that I already mentioned in the post about the Playground Festival; a panel with two plaster cast faces emerging out of it, one happy one sad, lightened by changing shapes and patterns; two lysergic skulls decorating the shutters that divide the exposition space from the storage for the 4youreye equipment.
The Kunst am Kanal festival takes place once a year, but still there are many other events where lights, colours and moods mix together to create the special atmosphere that characterises this part of the Kanal. All this arty melting pot just opposite to the District Heating Plant designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, a famous Austrian artist I will definitely talk about, and just adjacent to a complex of buildings ideated by Zaha Hadid, uncompleted due to financial cuts and changes that – rumors say – made the architect not satisfied anymore with the project to the point that she wanted her name dissociated from it. Still, these buildings are masterpieces here for us to admire and, thanks to these occasions, to rediscover in a different light.
Words on canvas 