Eco

Solitudine, orecchio dell’anima.

Loosened, like my shirt

Loosened, like my shirt, I’m walking back home. 

Loosened, like my tie, the tension at the end of tonight, of its crowd. 

A “great Gasby party”, tonight, by the pool, for my friend’s birthday;

The stars, the music, champagne for everybody. Somebody is not here tonight. 

I sang tonight, after so many years. I take the mic. I’m shaking a little.

I  start singing, looking around; people are with me. They follow me.

Here we go again, after years, I haven’t felt that: I sing, I free my breath out of my longues, I push the diaphragm as hard as I can: the crowd disappears before my eyes and so the shaking before myself.

I’m looking around, beyond my friends, the pool, over the trees. 

I reach the dark and that’s where I stop. In peace. 

I almost don’t hear the music anymore. I go with the flow.

I keep hitting that note, the higher I go, the freer I feel:

The piano in my ears, the lights in my face. Your face in my mind.

That’s where I want to stay now…

Loosened, like my heart, I’m going to sleep now.

It’s the dawn.  The birds are singing now.

I close my eyes and I go with the flow again.

 Good night      

Roman Holidays

The trick is to look around as you breathe the night air of Campo De Fiori. Rome, almost 2 am and by the statue of Giordano Bruno a bunch of guys with too much beer in their loud words are still singing.  They must be tourists!  I’m walking back to my car now, exhausted, but content for such a great weekend.  That’s the trick to enjoy life, to catch this precise moment, when, at the end of a party, you’re going back home; you’re walking alone and as you’re revisiting in your head your night, you can feel inside that transition from being content and relaxed, to be absolute tired and sleepy by the time you finally arrive home. That transition is the cherry on top of my nights: In silence, I can hear the joy of that night, until then covered by the noise of a Roman Sunday night in spring. 

As I’m walking back to my car, still whistling some random Annie Lennox song stuck in my ears since I heard it a few minutes earlier from a car down the street, I pass by a bar, where the waiter, cleaning the last few tables outside,  is  swearing “porca puttana”  like there’s no tomorrow, by himself, to the air, to that lovely breeze that I guess he’s definitely not enjoying in this moment. “Yo Mike, what’s wrong with you? Relax” says his buddy.  “That American chick, that girl that was sitting here 2 minutes ago, had the guts to check my pockets. That bitch asked me If I stole her stupid camera!” There you go- I think- another damn tourist caught by a gipsy. They’re damn swift, you don’t even realize. Magic! Her camera was gone and she must have thought the waiter got it. Another lovely “picture” of Rome.

Anyway, I keep walking and I actually  make sure to have my wallet, you never know. I turned the corner and as  Annie Lennox’s “boat is sinking” again in my ears, I actually see a digital camera on the street, right there, in front of me. “Porca puttana” -now it’s my turn to swear.- How about that!  That gipsy must have run so fast that he dropped the camera!

“Roman Holidays” could have been the title of that photo shoot, starring a very pretty girl.  She was blond, curly hair, long, and a very cute smile. I wish I knew her name. I wish I knew her, actually!  I think in the picture she must have been sitting in Capri, or Caprì, as normally American say, still don’t know why. Then, I recognize the Amalfi Coast and Rome.  Some party with lots of people, go figure. Her Roman holidays seem to have been a lot of fun. Some romance too maybe:  There’s a picture with two glasses filled in yellow, orange juice? They’re on a table. It’s dark around.  Maybe, it’s night, or maybe who took the picture didn’t have the time to use photo shop yet. The table seems well set, it must be a nice restaurant. It can’t be orange juice. I refuse to think someone would order orange juice in a nice restaurant  for dinner. What else is yellow? A Mimosa. It could be a Mimosa served on a Romantic dinner in some fancy restaurant of Italy. A date? Why not. She’s beautiful, I’m sure she can get a date anytime she wants to, especially in Italy. I’m sure there’s some Italian Stallion somewhere for this lovely girl.  She looks young, you can tell from her skin, but mostly from her smile. Monalisa Smile. She must be a dreamer. Ok, now I’m really fantasizing about this girl!  So, maybe, they ordered a Mimosa just to break the ice. Who knows? In any case, she looks like she had fun in Italy and I like to think, particularly on that occasion.

It’s been awhile now since that night. I still have that camera.  I decided to post that picture. Maybe tonight, she’ll read my blog, by chance, precisely as I did find by chance her camera. She’ll let me know her name and when I’ll meet her,  we’ll have a Mimosa under the stars.  Why not? Roman Holidays with a stranger…  I’m a dreamer too, at almost 3 am of a Roman spring night.

 Sogni d’oro…

Shades of Gray in the sky from New York to L.A.

In my life  back and forth from Italy and the Unites States cities are my living room. Here, I get to meet a lot of people, old and new friends, whether just landed in that same city of mine, or just left for a new one, where evenutally, I’ll be meeting them in a few weeks. In my days, airports are my third home: Rome, London, New York, Miami, Brussels.

I’m in Rome now. I’ve been back  for a few weeks now and in a few days, one of my best friends in New York is going to LA. In a month or so, hopefully I’ll have a chance to meet her in the City of Angels. I have this feeling that she’s really moving there, even if she just says that she’s giving it a shot just for awhile there.  After all, every big dream has its first step and sometimes, you just want to make it without actually saying it out loud. Ash now, or we’ll wake up reality..sometimes she’d better not realize what we’ve been trying to do behind her back…let her sleep a little longer. I will decide when to wake her up:)

Yesterday was her birthday. At her age, I started making the first real step into this business. I found JFK as main entrance and today, I almost got to Manhattan. Let’s say, at the moment, I’m right at the end of Queensboro Bridge, already admiring the skyline. I’m about to wake up reality!

But right before,  you get scared.

But  it’s good. “Scared” keeps you focused, alerted amidst the obstacles and steps of your strategy that ultimately will suceed. As you start doing something, fear becomes excitment. The adrenaline raises through your body  and then you flow, you’re light. You’re doing it. You’re living.

Scared is good my precious friend. Don’t worry. I have faith in you. I’ve always had. In these past years I’ve seen all the colors of your painting turned into every shade of light: I’ve seen how long ago you started  among all those choices and options you had before your life, waiting to be caught. Where you started, since you were still in college.  What you’ve been through. Afterward, remember where you used to sleep on your first semester in the  Actor Studio’s dorms? Now, I can actually say I was there for  “Bear Night”. You remember it right?  I’ve seen the friends you believed be such, to only then realize they were all but that. But somehow, they helped you anyway, because they made you stronger. I’ve seen your crazy schedule when we were roommates. Actually, I’ve only seen that posted on our refreigerator… I guess our cat ” Ciccio” was a more present roommate than you!  And if I was home, I’ve seen how tired you were back home, late at night, but somehow still willing to smile at life:) Then, you moved on, you got married, finding somebody that can give you the right strenght for your own motivation when this, sometimes, is lighter than the heavier insecurity of that constant thought in the back of your head to not make it. Yes, you will. I have fatih in you, I will always have faith in all your shades. The shades of Gray.

Go my friend.  Go out there with no fear to blend in  as a drop in the Pacific ocean, as the umpteenth actress that, instead,  eventually, will do raise above the ocean, above each and every one as the tallest - you’ve always been- to then  look down below and say “Gesus please us! I made it”…. and the oscar goes to…. my precious friend who, unlike what she thinks, did coin that expression, precisely for that moment.

LAX will be your main entrance. Get ready to smile:)

  

Pickataboo!

What are the real taboos in our daily life?

We all have secrets that we conveniently hide from the others; darker spots on our immaculate  resume that we constantly promote to market ourselves to our clients out there: lovers, friends, even family, co-workers that just need to perceive us in the best way possible.  But those are not taboos. They’re simply secrets that we make sure to  keep as inside as possible. Insecurities?  We hide them, or at the most, counter balance with some obnoxious behaviour; guys’ machism, for example, or girls’ snobbism (in Italian slang, we would say that they think they’re the only ones to have “it”).

But they’re not disturbing. They’re frustrating. 

Instead, what about that sense of disquitness, that disturbing feeling  insinuating into every pore of our confidence, making us so unbearably exposed before our own defenses?

We don’t dare to walk on such shaking and sensitive  ground. It’s too uncomfortable. We don’t dare  to allow those vulnerable thoughts not even remotely close to our secured life.

Why? Are those thoughts the ultimate fear, disquitness, trauma?

Once, it took me about 2 years before I could even pronounce out loud my ex girl friend’s name without feeling my tears pushing and kicking to come out of my eyes, already humid; I would be simply talking to a friend and, as a random train of thought would take me to her memory, I would need to pause, breathe and push my tears as far down as possible, far, back to that damn day of two years before. It took me almost 3 years to melt away my resentment toward her; every day, I would have simply wanted to make her suffer as much as I could, had God only given me the chance to.

4 years later, about last year, I wake up in New York, on a beautiful sunny morning. I’m working on my next production for the week later and out of the blue, I contact her. I just wanted to. I simply felt to. What the heck, why not! No tears, no resentment, but a lovely and relieving  conversation about our lives: “Is that you, for real?” she says not really believing to that random  ”Smile76″ popping up on the other side of an IM window. “Yes, it’s me, you don’t believe me? Ask me something that we could only know, then”. “Ok, then” She types. “What was your favorite pair of sleepers at home?” ” The lion ones, of course” I answer as I have never been more confident before about something- “Holy Cow, my stomach just flipped, it’s really you then, Daniele” she screams. At least that’s how I imagine her inner reaction on the other side of that window… I hadn’t  thought of those damn lion sleepers for more than 4 years. She had given me those sleepers as a gift. It must have been 1999, or something. I used to meticolously put them by the bed. Every morning. I wouldn’t make the bed of course, damn she used to be so desperately irritated about it- I guess responsibility wasn’t exactly a learnt lesson yet at that time- but those sleepers, they would always be in perfect order, right on that wooden floor. Wow, I hadn’t seen those lions in my mind for ever. But as she asked me, it took me less than a second to recall that familiar answer from my memories.

Today,  she’s happily married to the man I had practically busted her with on that day of five years ago. She has such a cute child  now, and I no longer have Nicole’s taboo. Only a lovely memory of a woman I once had truly loved and that I proudly respect now. 

If you can wait, eventually time is a gentleman. Yes, indeed.

Pickataboo!  What’s yours? 

Not today. I’m out of your games

No, today leave me out of your games. This is not what I do. This is not how I want to play with you today.

A dice. That’s what I am.

Stop rolling us at your own will, as you wish, with your eyes blinded, like Fortune, if that’s one of your other names.

I put my gun on the table. It’s not loaded anyway today. I can’t fight. Not today. 

 Suggestions? No, today I can’t hear any. I can’t give any. None. Silence around me, around my world with all these people and their wasted hum. 

Is that alright?

 I look around to find anything vaguely resembling a hint, some bearings to hold on to.

Silence in my ears. Silence in my eyes.

I cannot see anything today. Out of focus: Am I too close, or am I too far?  

In silence, I’m living this day with my solitude, far away from here, because I can’t breathe. Far away;

To a parallel world with my imagination, or to  better days with my nostalgia? No, this is not the right time to evade.

Do we love so to conveniently escape from ourselves, or we actually search for somebody, for a friend, so to finally find ourselves?

No, today leave me out of your games.