"ma un uomo camion vive ancora in me.." (Paolo Conte)

I'm defoliating the young ficus carica that we are explanting because the rocky soil has to be minced again. Above is the unequal sky, gray and azure and always changing --a cold wind comes from downfield -- I lent my windbreaker to Susy but I don't feel cold-- working and running up and down and all. I first met Susy this early morning, we shook hands-- exchanged our reciprocal biographies in three phrases-- later I tried not to look too hard at her sweet smile or to listen too intently to her warm accent. She took tools from my hands once or twice and gently said "I do this now". It is a week of apprenticeship and I came down south. It probably wasn't a good idea. Everyone is very nice to me and knows more than me about everything. But it's not that, maybe just that it was a long road to get here and my first impression was that they don't really need me here-- I grumbled against the school for sending me out to a apprenticeship after just three weeks of school. And letting me pick the one I wanted, too.
Susy tags the vases, I shorten the taproot proboscides that make funny angles or just don't let the plant go and we stick the little creatures into the vases. It's my first really ungrateful doing with plants-- when I go up to the road and line the vases along the stonewall where the rows end "so they don't get stolen" says Very Friendly Bruce (the boss of the 10 hectares foundation) and that's where I cut all the leaves down mercilessly. Some of the varieties have dark buds, pointed and with a hump-- now unprotected-- others are of a bright green almost white-- the leaves fall to the ground and make a bed of silvery green that should be raked away and composted or burned but will remain here-- some of the nano fruits are oblong, they fall too-- It's a conservative foundation and there are more than 170 varieties of ficus carica in the two or three parcels where we are working. I look at the little plants coming up from the rocky soil, shaking slightly and elastic in the gusts of wind and wonder what's the why or sense or the beginning. When I bow and get my nose into the small plant to cut the succulent branches that are hard to get I can smell the sweet obvious smell of the fig-- I wonder if that moment is to be considered part of the notorious idyll of this outdoor life-- because maybe the fact that it doesn't feel idyllic depends on me not being ready for it-- and I wonder whether it should be used as a lever to turn inside out all the painful or squalid thoughts rushing through my mind instead. To be into the light, to stand up to light wrote Max Frisch: not flattering to light itself, only a desirable task like submitting oneself to Time as if it was Eternity-- I want to learn how to do that and many other things but my mind knows other things better: I often get distracted. I think about her again, and again I see her and hear her in my head-- Martina-- so that I wish I could close my eyes and make it go away-- with the obnoxious moaning of why and why and why-- And this morning I felt sorry for myself a lot, foolishly, there in the densely parceled land-- myself extraneous, alien, guilty, ignorant, "getting old", incapable of clearness and peace-- indifferent to the parcels besides, trying with smiles and loud phrases and stupid brown-nosing and aping knowledge to melt with the thing all around me-- the people and a job to do, a role in the job to do-- being useful-- being accepted by the others and all the crap--
But then in the end I felt unreasonably glad that I was doing this job, later glad that the job had ended and I was tired and the sky was definitely now different and that we are were all in a good mood, that the sun kept showing up between one cloud and the other-- and we all got to the storehouse dragging the soles of our shoes to get the bigger pieces of soil out--
Everybody was smiling and raising hands when we said goodbyes and I drove back home and the radio was playing and I made the turns when the road made turns and had no further thoughts or feelings or compassion left.

Rarely you get two interesting hints in a single interview with a musical artist on the italian press. Mostly is all the usual bullshit about the new album coming out, assorted gossip, what's the meaning of a song and other silliness.
This time, reading-yawning a recent interview with Paolo Conte (alas, from La Repubblica) in occasion of the new coming out live CD and DVD of this great songwriter and interpreter, I managed to be awakened by two passages, not bad considering the many poignant things he would say, if ever interviewed by a non-lobotomized journalist.

...Days ago I was reading a writing by Campigli [see artcyclopedia], who is one of my favorite painters. He used to write wonderful confessions as an artist: I know myself, he said, I know my paintings only through my mistakes. And so I am, in pain listening to my musics, I know where are mistakes even though they're not apparent to the others. And I suffer. But mistakes, if well managed, make the Style. (...)

You are so mindful with words: aren't you suffering these times when the word seems to have lost its integrity?

I don't give a damn, I am not suffering for the downfall of our literary gusto. As I always say, if you have to speak about being poetical, it has to be conceded not only to the literary field, but also to music. Music must be poetic, interpretation must be poetic, the relationship established with the public must be poetic. What is disturbing with writing, a part of the scarce plasticity of the italian language, is that many times, writing in oneself language, one picks the words that give absolute certainty: and this certainty sometimes is annoying, because the artistic dream is very abstract.
Sure, sometimes the cake turns out good, you really used the words that couldn't be changed with others. But in other cases the words control you: the artistic discourse is made of doubts, influences. Read more (in italian)

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