A life in emoticons

Place: Trieste, kebab stall
Time: October/November 2006
Players: Webmaster, stall owner

Me: Do you go home often?
Him: To Siria? :-)
Me: Yeah.
Him: Sure! :-)
Me: When was the last time?
Him: I go there every year! :-)
Me: Isn't it expensive?
Him: Business has been good. I came to Italy five years ago, found a job, went back in the summer to get some documents. :-)
The following year business was good, I went home in the summer. :-)
The year after that I opened this stall, and I've been able to go every summer. :-)
Last year there was the war, so I couldn't go home... :-(
Me: Oh...
Him: ...so I went to Spain instead! :-)

Miranda July

i found these from Neil Gaiman.

she wrote a book, this is the website:
No one belongs here more than you

i'd first gotten to know her through her movie. It is called
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Gnapppo had told me it had good music (he was right).
all the staff at WGD loved it when we saw it last year.
we really really did.

she has other websites too.
this one is a project about people missing people.
How will I know her?
(the webmaster also misses people)

she has a main website.
This is her website.
there are many other nice things on it.

(David Byrne gives consent)

She will be reading parts of her book in Milan on June 11th.
i'm afraid i won't be able to go because i have important stuff to do here on the tenth.

(p.s. dear mister blogspot, your services haven't been working so well on firefox lately especially when i try to use the preview function. It doesn't bother me really and i shouldn't complain because i'm not being a very good blogger lately but perhaps other people who are more consistent may be getting bothered by this but are still too shy to say anything about it, not on the internet at least, so see if you can di something about it)

(p.p.s. i also would have linked to something on mentioning Gnapppo's name but he does not seem to have any of those wonderful blogs of his anymore, and i didn't feel like uploading those pictures of him struggling with a Rubik's cube outside Pieffe again. He's not online right now so i had no way of asking him about this.)

intermission

Old and familiar faces 3 - Mitko

Location: somewhere between Duino and Turin (or vice versa).
Time: sometime between 1am Tuesday morning and 6pm Wednesday evening.

Him: Now I understand why you don't update your blog so often. Every time you try to do it some wierd bulgarian shows up and kidnaps you away in his car.
Me: It's funny because it's true.

Later, or earlier that night/morning/evening. Oh whatever, SUMMER.

Me: I really needed this, i haven't had a road trip in ages.
Him: When was the last time?
Me: On my birthday, a friend of mine was playing with his band in some place 5 hours away from home, and the night before we just decided to surprise them, filled two cars up with people and drinks and drove over.
Him: That's strange.
Me: Not really...
Him: No, i mean it's strange i don't remember you writing about it on your blog.

(Actually, the second conversation might have occurred immediately before the first one. My memory, as always, is not in any way helpful in reconstructing the events.)

Two books i bought yesterday

(in that order)

Small anecdote. Upon seeing my fresh purchase, L. remarked:
"Eclectic, very eclectic. I like that, eclectic taste is a thing of true geniuses."
I was about to thank her for the compliment when she started to snicker uncontrollably while muttering the word "genius". I guess this is one of the reasons i hardly ever talk to her.

realizations

I just realized something. I was translating a press release for Vinicio Capossela's upcoming US tour, and had just produced this phrase:

"(...)generating great interest and enthusiasm among audiences and record industry insiders"

when it dawned on me. Two things dawned on me, actually.
The first, and most immediate, is that a very, very very tiny part of Capossela's chances of success in the United States depends on the quality of my translation. Of course ninetynine point periodical nine percent depends on the Artist, the success of his concerts, the audience, the organization and management and touring conditions etcetera. But there's still that oh point periodical one percent which lies completely on my shoulders in this moment, which is made even more relevant if i think of how important his music was for me in certain moments of my life (before the existence of this blog), of the crazy, drunk version of Besame Mucho he performed at Teatro Miela in Trieste back in '97 or '98 with the Kocani Orkestar, of how the Live In Volvo cd was present in every italian musical aficionado's household at the end of the nineties, of how we used to whisper his songs in each other's ears with a person who would probably prefer to remain unmentioned in this context. (Oh, and i hardly listen to his stuff nowadays, two or three songs from his latest studio album were quite pleasant and i enjoy him playing with Marc Ribot but that's about it.)
In short, a part of Capossela's future was/is depending on me for a short period. No matter how small that part. A strange sensation, definitely.

Even stranger was the sensation i got immediately afterwards, when i realized i'm no longer part of the musical audience, but have slowly and perhaps even unintentionally become a record industry insider.

This i really can't describe. I can't but i will, at this conference i'll be giving at WaveCamp in July.
Oh, but we'll get to that in due time. Now i'll just dwell on these strange feelings for another while.
And hopefully finish the bloody translation, too.

(The webmaster believes he is a rather good translator from english to italian, but occasionally mediocre in the opposite direction. He hopes this not to be one of such cases.)

A cautious and rather minimal return to reviews

Yes, Facebook is indeed a drug.

Update: Warren Ellis agrees, albeit with much better words than I could ever have come up with.