war Archivi - Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

MY SOUL IS WHEREVER YOU ARE

Dec 24, 2023 | BOOKS

My soul is wherever you are is a striking phrase.

These words, uttered by a character in the story told, give the title to the book written by Aldo Cazzullo published by Mondadori.

More precisely, the full title is: My soul is wherever you are. A crime, a treasure, a war, a love.

A crime … as you know very well by now, I love reading books about crimes and once again I thank Monica for this read.

But if at the beginning the chapters chase each other along two parallel lines: time and investigation, soon the murder itself loses relevance compared to the story which, from a blurred background position, page after page becomes the protagonist.

A crime, a treasure, a war, a love.

War, as we know, is total destruction, and even in this case it annihilates humanity by provoking behaviour that nothing and no one will ever be able to erase.

So can my soul is wherever you are become a damnation?

While waiting for you to tell me your interpretation, I want to add that although the setting is Piedmont, I found myself reading a story that is the same story I heard as a child and that has always stuck with me: greed has the power to bring together people with completely different ideals.

Here then is the purpose of the treasure.

Can you tell me of a treasure that has enriched you in a positive sense instead?

REBEL DAYS

Nov 18, 2023 | BOOKS

Giorni Ribelli (Rebel Days) is the latest book by Andrea Calugi, whom I thank most sincerely along with Manuale di Mari.

Andrea Calugi is from Tuscany and from his short biography I like to quote this sentence: he is still searching for his future, among a book to read, a page to write, a song to listen to and a glass of good wine to drink.

It is therefore easy to empathise, and as Andrea searches for his future, he offers us a vision of the future in his book.

A timeless future, a future that we cannot calculate, a future that is far away and at the same time near: all the time I had the perception of a kind of dualism.

I was reading about a future and thinking about a past, a clear representation of how everything changes but how in reality everything remains unchanged.

The days flow by and history repeats itself.

A history from which we do not learn, or do not want to learn.

A history of wars, such as the one that characterises Rebel Days, that invite reflection, that spur the search for Freedom before it is extinguished.

I loved a passage in the book in which Andrea compares the earth to a human body bleeding from the wounds of the bombs and “it hovered dust that slowly, like tears, fell back to the ground, flooding everything and everyone with its weeping.”

I wish everyone had the sensitivity to see the earth bleeding, to feel the pain of the earth, which is pain for everyone.

And I was struck by the thought of one of the characters that “the real fear was that with him would also die all those wonderful memories that should have survived him instead.”

Constantine is considered crazy for his way of thinking, what is the real fear for you?

Do you feel rebellious?

Who or what would counteract your rebel days?

IN LOMELLINA FIELDS

Jun 11, 2021 | ENVIRONMENT, ITALY

Poppies are nice, they are simple, they are spontaneous, they are impressionists they are light, they are cheerful, they are summer, they are color, they are warmth.

But they also become sad, when they represent the symbol that John Mc Crae chose to remember the victims of war.

At the beginning of the First World War, John McCrae was asked to join 1^st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery as the Medical Officer. In May 1915 during the heaviest fighting of Second Battle of Ypres, McCrae and his dressing station were within site of the Essex Field cemetery. After 17 exhausting days and the death of a comrade, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, her wrote his immortal poem “In Flanders Fields.”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Here recited by Leonard Cohen

This made me think of Lomellina, its poppies and its victims of a silent massacre, which is not even a war, because basically nobody or almost no one cares.

I have already spoken of silent deaths, of herbicides, of glyphosate, of PM 2.5 and of liveability that are open wounds for me.

So we should not be surprised if once in a while some newspaper launches a news that is a little more taken up, but which in the meantime has already been forgotten in favor of other arguments, including aliens.

And we should not be surprised if an interception only confirms what we already know, that is, that unscrupulous people do not care in the least about the damage caused by the poisons that spill into our territories in the form of “sludge” in order to earn, indeed, they joke about it. .

It is not true that “hurting the environment and the territory is equivalent to not having hurt any physical person.”

Many people will get sick and will have to fight with all their might.

CHOP SUEY!

Mar 6, 2021 | ROCK

Chop Suey! It was voted best metal song of the 21st century, first of 100 songs selected and voted by Metal Hammer and obviously I can only be happy.

And to think that as usual “with the last train” I found myself listening to System Of A Down a bit by chance: during one of my researches that start very far and then follow absurd paths, but soooo profitable in this case!

In case you haven’t done so yet, I recommend you check out their site and to listen to their appeal for the people of Artsakh through the Armenia Fund to help displaced civilians, young and old, affected by the horrific war crimes inflicted on Artsakh by Azerbaijan and Turkey.

“It is for our ancestors, our culture and our nation” Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, Shavo Odadjian and John Dolmayan are strongly linked to their Armenian origins and in November they released two songs to keep attention on the acts of war in the Nagorno Karabakh carried out in September 2020, frankly ignored by the mass media engaged in their monothematic communications …

The name of the group itself comes from a poem by Daron:
Victims of a down
As the century nears its formidable end, our global experience of universal proportions, predicted by many greats, will arrive at our solar system, to our system of a down.

Their music in general is absolutely recognizable for the influences that represent an enrichment and give the feeling of a very special journey.

You understand it immediately by listening to Aerials: it is impossible not to be captured by it, even if my absolute favorite is Toxicity which at first listen immediately became part of the songs I love.

But back to Chop Suey!
The name of a Chinese dish chosen because it represents the idea of cutting: to chop and because suey resonates with what was the original title: Suicide.

The text, very intense, also contains verses from the Gospel as a symbol of a sort of request for help that connotes the human side, and was considered as a protest for how the media treated the death of Kurt Cobain.

Serj stated «The song is about how when people die, they will be regarded differently depending on the way they pass. Like, if I were to die from a drug overdose, everyone would say I deserved it because I abused drugs, hence the line ‘Angels deserve to die’.»

But Serj also said “it’s quite interesting how involved coffee is in a lot of people’s lives …”
here he is preparing Armenian coffee… and what cups!

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

Apr 25, 2020 | PENDING COFFEE FOR, WOMEN, PENDING COFFEE FOR, ROCK, ROCK, VIDEO, VIDEO, WOMEN

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.