MY OPPONENT PLAYS TENNIS

MY OPPONENT PLAYS TENNIS

My opponent plays tennis is the prelude to the challenge that Fabrizio Canciani was forced to face.

These days tennis is the focus of media attention and everyone, sport people or not, follows it in some way, but I would like to tell you about this different tennis match.

Fabrizio Canciani is a writer and singer-songwriter, an exponent of that artistic Milan  that always gives a strong sense of belonging and the beauty of that side that retains its characteristic connotation while downplaying its cosmopolitan aspect.

Defined as ‘the cabaret artist lent to the crime novel‘ Fabrizio has staged, among others, the show Murders and songs, which is also a book.

La mia avversaria gioca a tennis

His books published by Todaro Editore  number seven, between 2004 and 2011, and then there are books with other publishers.

To describe Fabrizio in an immediate and effective manner, I will quote the words of introduction to one of his books:
I met Canciani in an underground club, very underground, more underground than club, in short, in the suburbs; where, at a time of great television noise, they were trying their hand at intelligent cabaret. Or not.
He is a good one, even when he writes. I highly recommend reading his detective story.
Or not.
Enzo Jannacci 

La mia avversaria gioca a tennis

Among the songs Fabrizio has written, I cannot fail to mention Nerazzuri siamo noi

Fabrizio also sang at the San Siro for the Scudetto celebration in 2007.

La mia avversaria gioca a tennis

Sure he also sung for the double star this year, but not on the pitch.

Because his opponent plays tennis.

Antonius Block, a noble Scandinavian knight, on his return from the Crusades in the Holy Land, finds death waiting for him on the beach. She would like to take him away but the knight decides to challenge her at chess. An unequal challenge, death knows a thousand tricks, he is invincible. He is only trying to buy a little time, just a little time. Just the length of a film: The Seventh Seal by Igmar Bergman.
I wasn’t coming back from any crusade, I detest crusades, even crosswords bore me.
I had my life.
And I liked it. In fact, I was going through a really happy time, which is not so obvious these days.
But one day, on my way home, I too found an adversary waiting for me, to challenge me. Not on the beach, in the kitchen, at dinner.
Death? No, worse, worse. In the meantime, death plays chess, you sit there nice and quiet, you move the pawns, you think about it, you cannot hope for luck but only for ingenuity, and if you sweat it is only because of the tension.
My opponent plays tennis …

Go on reading here

La mia avversaria gioca a tennis

LA PASSIONE DI FRIDA – FRIDA’S PASSION

LA PASSIONE DI FRIDA – FRIDA’S PASSION

Frida’s passion published by tre60 is also the passion of Caroline Bernard pseudonym of Tanie Schlie who for her twenty-seventh birthday receives the biography of Frida Kahlo written by Hayden Herrera and begins a journey of immersion in everything that revolves around the artist.

On her website in the foreground the sentence: “And then I sit in Paris at the Café de Flore and I order my inspiration” … same Café de Flore in which Frida also sits on page 270.

The book also talks about a small café called La risa: laughter, but above all it talks about the PASSION mentioned in the title.

A passion so strong and visceral as to be unique and unrepeatable, a real bond made of earth, painting and blood that Frida Kahlo reports not only on her works but also in every single moment of her life.

A painful life, a life without discounts, never.

I particularly received inspiration in terms of living with pain, but it was other types of suffering that raged on Frida that came to me with the same intensity of her determination.

That hole in her heart remains indelible.

But superior is the strength with which her example arrives of how the will transcends the physical, managing to touch the impossible.

As much as fate is cruel.

At her death, her personal items were collected and banned from the public for a period of fifteen years at the behest of her husband Diego Rivera, but in reality the years passed before they were exhibited are fifty.

Among the photographs available thanks to The Guardian I was struck by the boots. Observe them well

And I tried to imagine the perfumes of Casa Azul 

Mexicanidad.
In a sentence in the book, her sister Cristina, who bears the same name as the friend I thank for the book, tells Frida that she is Mexico.

But she is also pain, tangible, inexorable, irreducible.

Thanks to the book, it is possible to witness the birth of some of his paintings following a thread of emotions, as if they could not be thought otherwise.

Do you have a favorite?

You can see them on the Foundation’s website, or here you will find a selection combined with quotes.

I conclude with a news, reported by Fantastic Nonna: the Municipality of Milan has dedicated a square to Tina Modotti who plays an important role in the book.

I fell in love with this photograph.

Do you have one in which your smile explodes radiating joy

YESTERDAY, TODAY, FOREVER

YESTERDAY, TODAY, FOREVER

Reading Jaya‘s poems, and in particular East Coast Swing, I found the footnote: “Inspired by Eugi’s Weekly Prompt: Dance” with an image that is a whirlwind of colors, which well represents dance and which Eugi has combined with the moonlight.

Moon. Dance.
Of course they can only be associated with him.

 

Anyone who does not admit to having tried at least once is lying.

Among other things, only he could go down in history with the penny loafers with white socks.

It was 1983: Motown Records reunion show with a lineup of great guests. Motown 25 YESTERDAY, TODAY, FOREVER… a fantastic name, isn’t it?

Following the performance Fred Astaire said: You’re a hell of a mover. Man, you really put them on their asses last night.” 

What do you think about it? What put you on your ass?

THEY DON’T WANT THE TRUTH

THEY DON’T WANT THE TRUTH

“They pass the years hoping that when my time comes there will no longer be anyone who will continue to insist on asking for truth and justice …”
These are the words, as hard as absolutely lawful, by Luciana Riccardi, spoken in an interview in March 2017 on the occasion of the twenty-third anniversary of the death of her daughter: Ilaria Alpi.
Just over a year later, in June 2018, the hour that Mrs. Luciana was waiting for has arrived, but her voice continues to speak.
Speak through all those who still believe in justice, and speak through all those who recognize admiration and respect for her:
In the meantime, the words her sister Annamaria Riccardi wrote in a letter before the archiving hearing ended in October 2019 were heard: the magistrate granted another six months of investigations to try to get to the truth. This 180-day deadline expired in April but for now it remains frozen like everything else.
In reality, the truth has been blocked for much longer, a very long time.
Who helped Jelle do what he did?
Who paid for it?
Why did they do it?
These are the three questions that Mrs. Luciana left us in her interview with Chiara Cazzaniga for Chi l’ha visto.
Chiara Cazzaniga in particular, has a fundamental role in the investigation: with unstoppable stubbornness convinces Ali Rage Amhed, known as Jelle, to come to Italy to testify for the innocence of Hashi Omar Hassan, in prison with a 26-year sentence. Federica Sciarelli, having a series of doubts about his testimony, instructs her to try to track him down.
In fact, Chiara finds him in Birmingham where he lives, where he has a family, and where he drives the buses, despite being officially unavailable for the power of attorney.
But who exactly are Jelle and Hashi?
Both Somalis, are united by the desire to escape from Somalia, and by the fact that on March 20, 1994 neither of them is on the place where Rai Tg3 correspondents Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin are murdered.
Yet in January 1998 Hashi, in Rome to testify against alleged violence by the Italian military in Somalia, was arrested for competition in the double murder, accused by Jelle.
Jelle alleges, as a justification for his lie, he did it in order to be able to expatriate: he is in fact granted a pass and a job with a mechanic who repairs the cars of the Ministry of the Interior. And he will declare to have escaped after being deposed at Digos, just trusting that it would not have been possible to convict Hashi in court if he had not presented himself: “look I did not do so much for the money … I took very few, because in any case I didn’t finish the job … but I had achieved my goal which was to go away from Somalia … and I didn’t think that if I had not presented to trial, an innocent would have ended up in prison, and above all I thought someone would have verified what I told “.
This is what would be expected from justice.
In fact, however, things went differently.
Three million euros are the amount recognized as compensation for the 17 years spent in prison by an innocent man, one would wonder if this is the price of a sidetrack.
No, unfortunately the price is much higher, the events are much more intricate and crammed with inconsistencies for which Giorgio and Luciana Alpi continued to demand explanations, invoking a truth that has not yet arrived.
A truth that was written on Ilaria’s notebook, disappeared, a truth probably buried under the Garoe-Bosaso road, a toxic truth.

https://archivioalpihrovatin.camera.it/

Justice, non-violence, human rights, these issues of investigative news reports taken into consideration for the award of the Ilaria Alpi prize.
Authoritative guests at the 2007 edition: Zoe Eroshok journalist from Novaja Gazeta and Ilya Politkovsky son of the Russian journalist murdered in Moscow, Anna Politkovskaya to whom the event was dedicated.
Different stories but with a common denominator:
“The duty of [the] journalist [is] to write what this journalist sees in the reality. It’s only one duty.“

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

No need to argue: everyone knows ZOMBIE of The Cranberries.

I can’t simply call it a song, to me it’s history.
It has recently exceeded one billion views on YouTube and I admit that some are mine.
A deserved success, which closes the circle of the previous song of the year proclamation at the 1995 MTV Awards.
Zombie was shot by Samuel Bayer, who also made the video of “Smells like teen Spirit” to be clear, but more than the undoubted quality, I would linger on the message and on the voice of Dolores O’Riordan.
Unfortunately now the first thing that is mentioned everywhere about her is the circumstance of death, but I would like to talk about life.
Not of her biography in detail, but I would particularly underline how she wrote this piece in a flash, after learning of the tragic death of two kids from a bomb.
Although the episode took place in Ireland in 1993, a specific sadly known context, Dolores has always avoided politicizing.
“In your head, in your head” Dolores repeats it, she invokes, she invites to think, it would seem banal and yet too often it is not.
Hers is a cry to unite, to awaken.
“Violence causes silence.”
I find that Dolores knows how to make this silence speak, she knows how to give voice to pain, she knows how to shout not anger, but the strength to say enough.
Zombie is against violence, against the inability to stop violence.
This song’s our cry against man’s inhumanity to man; and man’s inhumanity to child.”
Dolores O’Riordan

I don’t know about you but as far as I’m concerned, the thought comes loud and clear and settles viscerally.
Her “another mother’s breaking heart” becomes mine.
Her voice, her unique way of singing, constitute the focal point: a catalyst, which allows the message to communicate all its disruptive despair.
Zombie was inspired by a child’s death. His life was taken in the arm’s of his mother. She was shopping in London last year, and there was a bomb planted in a rubbish bin in London and he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and he died. The reason the bomb was planted was because of a political territorial kind of thing that goes on in the North of Ireland and the UK. So the references to 1916 was when a contract was signed, which signed away the 6 counties to England. And it still goes on today: the war, the deaths, and the injustice.”
Dolores O’Riodan

Zombies who see and feel pain, yet do nothing.
Zombies not from horror movies and yet terribly scarier: us.

ANNA POLITKVOSKAJA

ANNA POLITKVOSKAJA

Pending coffee is a small gesture for the benefit of a stranger.
Here I thought I could extrapolate the idea by transforming it into a dedication.
The first suspended coffee is for Anna Politkvoskaja.
The reasons are many and in these days when we find ourselves reflecting on events, the lack of a certain type of Journalism with a capital J pulsates and is felt even more distinctly.
The first memory I have of her is related to the 2004 tragedy at the school in Ossetia: Beslan.
A name that has become synonymous with pure horror.
A lot has been said about the history of tea, but since we are talking about coffee, let’s go further. She was determined to go on the scene to try to negotiate, as she had already done with courage for the hostages of the Dubrovka theater. Subsequently, she remained alongside the relatives of the victims, advising them to go to the Strasbourg human rights court and making an important contribution in the fight for justice.
Anna was born in New York, yet she fought to report the violence of the Russian army in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, writing more than two hundred articles for Novaja Gazeta without ever being intimidated by the death threats received. Threats that have proven to be well founded in circumstances that I find particularly terrible.
But she left us the example of what it means to write for a newspaper, of what it means to look for the truth, of what it means not to be manipulated.
And every time we don’t get to the bottom of things, every time we accept flows of clearly piloted information, every time we content ourselves with not asking questions, it is as if we too betrayed her.
She is not the only one, of course, but she has done a lot alone, as long as she has been able.
One of her phrases is emblematic: “The duty of [the] journalist [is] to write what this journalist sees in the reality. It’s only one duty.“
When we realize that this does not happen, let’s try to watch by ourselves.

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