RFRLFLT February, 2024

The prevailing weather:

Alternating long spans of low pressure precipitation, your classic rain, with the first days of fresh and sunny spring, also known as good weather.

Internationally, and fashion notwithstanding, Azzurro I would argue is not only the most well-known Italian song, but also the best and the one with most artistic merit. Other contenders are Blu (Nel blu, dipinto di blu), Bella Ciao (barely a song), some Opera which does not really count and Raffaella Carra which I can enjoy but don't like very much.
The song would not have been so popular if not performed by Adriano Celentano, but its lyrics originate from true masters of the folk song, real singer-songwriters Paolo Conte and something Pallavicini. Conte has said that the popular version by Celentano is the best rendition of the song, which I think betrays his humble nature, or perhaps an inability to grasp the depth of his own creation, or both.
Rather than a verse by verse analyses which would be fun but too long, I will look at some specific parts.
The title of the song translates to "Blue", it is important to note that Italian lacks the blue=sad connotation that exists in English. In fact, blue, or more specifically "Azzurro" has some positive associations such as being the national colour of the football (and other sports) teams, with the team referred to as "the blues", when they are in act quite a happy bunch. Also, the Prince Charming of fables is known as il principe Azzurro. While the previous bit is true, Conte did like his jazz and boogie and latin-american rythms and he was probably aware of the blue=sad thing. Moving on.
Interestingly, two of the most famous Italian songs make heavy use of this colour. I have no idea what this means. But there is a difference between azzurro and blu. Blu is blue, a dark and intense shade, and a more generic word, whereas azzurro is a lighter shade, towards sky-blue, and cyan, it is what happens when you mix blu with bianco (white), I guess, also, the most accurate translation I just realized might be "azure" which even sounds like azzurro. Really moving on now.

Cerco l'estate tutto l'anno ,
e all'improvviso eccola qua
(Spending year looking for summer,
all of a sudden here it is)

Strong start, hard not to relate, just a few words and you're already agreeing with him.

lei è partita per le spiagge
e sono solo quassù in città
(She left to the beaches,
and I am alone up here in the city)

Introduces the seeming fact that this is a song about the singers thoughts on a woman that he longs for. Also, an interesting point is the use of quassù, meaning up here, instead of quaggiù, meaning down here, or just qua (here). This might refer to the singers geographic location in some mountainous area. At least one of the writers comes from Piedmont, a mountainous area in North West Italy almost entirely surrounded by the Alps. The keen reader might have noticed that Piedmont (Piemonte) is named so because it is at the foot (piede) of the mountains (monti), this is even more obvious from French. And yet, the region is not so far from the sea, which is accessible via nearby Liguria, which won the monopoly of regional sea access, and pesto, in a game of cards in 1556.

In the next few lines, we learn that: he hears an airplane above him, that the evening is too "Azzurro" and long for him, and finally that he might get on a train and go to her. The train is an important element and curiously the second method of transportation to be introduced. I believe it stands in antithesis to the plane, which is fast, and thoughtless. The train, with its rhythmic lulling sounds and ground level views, allows for a much more spiritually intense journey, one where the traveller can truly change as they move through the landscape and feel this change as they approach the final destination. But what really is this destination?

ma il treno dei desideri nei miei
pensieri all'incontrario va
(yet the train of desires in my
thoughts travels the opposite way)

This is the end of the chorus and the turning point. Conte uses an "enjambement" which he likes to do and I like to hear, in Spanish "encabalgamiento", still "enjambement" in english, that's when a sentence is split by the verse I think. I have kept it in the translation to illustrate the point although it does not sound so good in English.
So what does this mean, it is really evocative, there was a real train, which he might take to go to the beach, but now it turns to a metaphorical train, and it is a train that represent his desires, and then we learn that it is also going in reverse! Reverse from where? is it moving away from her? In a way. He conveys that aside and perhaps more deeply than the longing for the woman, he is feeling a longing for the past. He does not desire (wish) to go forward, but to go back. He is letting us know that he wants to revisit some of the earlier stations in his life. Immediately in the next lines he: puts himself in his childhood memories, he is strolling through an empty recreation center, he is looking for an African tree, he comes back to the present to tell us that doing this now would not be possible because there are in fact people around, and then he asks himself where the lions have gone. Conte in a very short space has created an oneiric (dream-like) scene, with several softly confusing overlapping images. We are left here, with a layered image, of a man wanting to go somewhere, maybe forwards towards a woman and the future, or backwards to a summer day and childhood. Not for fun and excitement but for a different kind of solitude.
Okay that was long so the rest will be short. There would be more to say, also about the "Genius" annotations on this song which I think are not very good except for this hilarious one.

Quando registrammo il pezzo, Celentano se ne stava in un angolo da solo e ripeteva: “tra l'oleander e il babalù”

Paolo Conte, Venerdi di Repubblica,25 maggio 2018.

The Incredibles

Ghost in the Shell

Barry Season 1 episode 1 and 2

I had big hopes for Barry but it did not hook me at all. Ghost in the Shell delivered but was not all that.

This month I finished reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.
A good, although spoiler-y, review of a really good short story, not The Big Sleep, which although short, I would say is not is not a short story, can be found here

I am about to go for a long run, it is 15:15. My immediate conscious experience post run will follow and close this edition: It is 18:54, so this is not an immediate reaction. I ran for 1hr54mins, a record for me. The views and temperature were fantastic, the road not very busy, the peaches I had at home right after felt otherworldly. Tomorrow I will be feeling the consequences, mainly in the left sole as it was already feeling tight mid-run, and the calves because that is where I feel 5km the day after, this was more than 4 times that. The mild euphoria has completely left, and my core temperature has lowered, if one is not careful the shock and relative feeling can make it seem like one is feeling down. Until next time.