FLIGHT PLAN

FLIGHT PLAN

Apr 19, 2025 | MUSIC, MUSIC

Flight plan, a title but also a promise.

Flight plan, a gift.

I’ve already told you about these special birthday presents,  I’ve already told you about these concerts with my brother and sister-in-law, with all the heart. 

This time the “flight plan” was to return to Novara, at Teatro Coccia.

Piano di volo

The “pilot”, as always more precise than a Swiss watch, started singing at nine p.m. sharp going on until after midnight, without drinking, without pause, without tiredness.

The Ten Fingers we know, games of light and so much to tell.

Piano di volo

Flight is lightness, and immediately “the little wings that learn to fly” are all those who listen and become glider hearts.

Flight is freedom, the ability to laugh at oneself and consequently also at one’s audience. Blessed irony.

But most of all I want to tell you about the opportunity to be so close that you can unmistakably see the face of a happy artist.

You can’t fake smiles like that: the first to have fun was him, with all his years of music and jewel-like lyrics, amused among the people and fully satisfied with singing, nothing else.

Do you ever feel that way?

George Bernard Show wrote happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.

Difficult?
Very difficult. But not impossible.

These are the words of a slightly lesser-known song:

Never ever be afraid
Of being afraid
This journey is an adventure
The illusion of a mirage
But you swear you have courage
And that you will always care
Of your slightly wild heart
Now and while this blue rain lasts
Blue rain
Blue rain

What’s your flight plan?

TATÀ

TATÀ

Apr 12, 2025 | BOOKS

Tatà is the pet name for Tante, which means aunt in French.

There is no two without three, although Three is actually the second of Valérie Perrin‘s books  I have read.

Valérie said she decided to write the story of an aunt after hearing a child shouting ‘Tatà!’

Does it ever happen to you that a single detail strikes you, turning into a kind of key to much bigger emotions or thoughts?

Where do you find your inspiration?

Valérie knows very well how to write a successful book, I imagine her a bit like an expert cook who uses many ingredients with the knowledge that they are right for the end result.

Tatà is set in Gueugnon in Burgundy, the author’s place of origin and deep province. 

Gueugnon is famous for its local soccer team  which has reached very high levels. Valérie’s father was a footballer in this team.

The heart of the story is told on the first page: the protagonist discovers that her aunt has re-dead.

Yes: re-dead, a term coined to represent the fact that she is told of the death of her aunt who has actually already been dead for three years.

Understanding how this is possible leads to the discovery of an aunt as immense as she is submerged like an iceberg.

How about you? Do you have an aunt of the heart?

THE TASTERS

THE TASTERS

Apr 6, 2025 | MOVIES, MOVIES

The tasters Le assaggiatrici is the film directed by Silvio Soldini released in cinemas last week.

I went to the cinema with Monica and this is one of the times I see the film before reading the book.

Cristina Comencini and Ilaria Macchia, who I am always curious to discover, among others, collaborated on the screenplay.

The tasters Le assaggiatrici is based on the novel written by Rosella Pastorino, inspired by the story of Margot Wölk who only at the age of 95 revealed that she was the only survivor of a group of women selected to check that their food was not poisoned.

Tony’s blog published a list of ten distressing films, there and then I had no idea, but now I can definitely mention The tasters: an hour and I don’t know how many minutes of distress.

 

 

To emphasise even more the sense of ineluctability, at times the images are interspersed with cuts in black.

The soundtrack music looms just as effectively.

The director chose to work with German actors, precisely in order to remain as faithful as possible to every single detail.

But what emerges is that people, of whatever nationality, of whatever colour, of whatever origin, suffer during the war.

I know I have written a platitude, yet it seems that everything that happened in the Second World War, as well as in all the other wars in the history of mankind, has served no purpose.

We have learnt nothing.

And we feed on the venom of the powerful.

HAPPINESS

HAPPINESS

Mar 29, 2025 | BOOKS

Happiness is the title of the latest reading I owe Monica.

What is happiness for you? 

The answer to this question is always very subjective.

What if happiness was a widespread state of mind that involved everyone?

The author of the book: Will Ferguson outlines his hypothesis of what would happen if everyone was happy in a short time.

How? Through a manual: the happiness manual.

Do you think we would need it?

The protagonist of the book: an editor who receives the manuscript of this manual and immediately trashes it, but then …

Everything is told with an irony that distinguished this entertaining read while maintaining an important underlying reflection.

I would particularly like to point out the publishing house: Accènto. 

Founded by Alessandro Cattelan, this independent publishing house has among its projects, the objective of translating books that are missing from the Italian market, as in this case.

Besides the humour, this book gave me a small discovery, which with my love for words, and for words in different languages, I really appreciated:

May had recently edited a bizarre dictionary of obscure terms for Panderic. The title was The Untranslatables, and it was a playful survey of certain terms absent from the English language. Whole feelings, whole concepts that remained unexpressed for the simple reason that no word had ever been coined to define them. Words like ‘mono-no-awarè,’ ‘the sadness of things,’ a Japanese term that defined the eternal pathos that peeps just below the surface of life. Words like ‘mokita,’ which in the Kiriwina language of New Guinea means ‘the truth that no one talks about.’ It refers to the tacit agreement, between two or more people, to avoid explicit references to a well-known secret…

Do you also know any untranslatables?

BEAVERS

BEAVERS

Mar 24, 2025 | ENVIRONMENT, WORLD

Beavers live where there is enough water to dive, they build the entrance to their burrows underwater for greater safety, then if the water level is not sufficient, they build a dam.

We learnt the ‘beaver – dam’ association of thought from an early age, do you remember any cartoons in particular?

I mention cartoons because the beavers I want to talk about are definitely characters.

The beavers I want to talk about live in Brdy in the Czech Republic.

The name of this area: Brdy comes from brdo meaning hill, precisely because it is a hilly/mountainous and wooded area.

The presence of a military zone in this area meant that the area was not affected by any urbanisation, thus preserving the naturalistic aspect: flora and fauna.

Having become an environmentally protected landscape for Brdy, it had become necessary to repair a drainage canal built by the army and restore the wetlands.

Huge and extremely expensive works, the plans for which had run aground under the weight of bureaucracy and waiting for appropriations.

But the beavers magically solved the issue by building a dam!

Zero cost and a great lesson to be learned.

Nature teaches us about life in harmonious balance.

‘Beavers always know what is best. The places where they build dams are always chosen in the right way, better than when we design them on paper,’ these words are from Jaroslav Obermajer, head of the Central Bohemia office of the Czech Agency for the Protection of Nature and Landscape (AOPK). 

What can I say?

I would use the words of Jules Verne:
Nature’s creative power is far beyond man’s instinct of destruction.

Do you know another similar case?

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