A song sung by de Crescenzo, and this midi is just a midi, but will give you an idea of the melody that goes with the words.
Ancora
Eduardo De Crescenzo
E’ notte alta e sono sveglio,
sei sempre tu il mio chiodo fisso
insieme a te ci stavo meglio,
e più ti penso e più ti voglio
tutto il casino fatto per averti,
per questo amore che era un frutto acerbo,
adesso che ti voglio bene, io ti perdo.
Ancora, ancora, ancora,
perché io da quella sera, non ho
fatto più l’amore senza te,
e non me ne frega niente, senza te
anche se incontrassi un angelo, direi
non mi fai volare in alto quanto lei.
E’ notte alta e sono sveglio,
e mi rivesto e mi rispoglio
mi fa smaniare questa voglia,
e prima o poi farò lo sbaglio
di fare il pazzo e venir sottocasa
tirare sassi alla finestra accesa
prendere a calci la tua porta, chiusa, chiusa.
Ancora, ancora, ancora,
perché io da quella sera, non ho
fatto più l’amore senza te,
e non me ne frega niente, senza te
anche se incontrassi un angelo, direi
non mi fai volare in alto quanto lei.
I’ll translate that for you later if you like.
It is up there with my top favorite Italian pop songs, possibly just behind “I Giardini di Marzo” by Battisti. I learn every week some more about the grand past and present of Italian pop music. Predictably, I like a lot of things from the Seventies or even the Sixties, but every year they come out with more, more, more to love. Gianna Nannini currently sings a lot of the things I have thought or felt over the years. Janis sang my songs in the US long ago, Gianna is sort of a clean Janis.
This is a page with a lot of files of Italian music, although some, like the Battisti one above, are flawed. Claudio Baglioni is my current heart throb. At least he’s old enough. My last one was Fiorello, who is a kid.
Many of the faces on that page are legends. Mina, Celantano, Battisti are all people who changed at least a part of Italy. Mina left, Battisti died, and only Celantano remains and occasionally makes highly politicized entertainment shows.
Popular music is at least one goldmine to explore here. It’s almost unjust that a country with so much natural and manmade beauty, so much history, so much great food, should also have tunesmiths who have written thousands of beautiful songs. And keep on writing them.
Unlike popular stereotypes, Italians don’t drop their burdens and sing at the sound of a limpid note. They turn on their iPods, stereos and car radios, instead. There really is music everywhere, in the piazzas, in the bars, on the beaches. I think they are singing our lives with their words.
January 11th, 2007
If you linked to Think On It when she was dirtpusher, can you change the link to this one? It is now http://expatsinitaly.com/judith as you may know. There were fifteen of you and now only 8. I will then update links to you. I can no longer see the old links, or I would already have taken care of it.
January 11th, 2007
I planned it. Every January there are a bunch of things, expensive things, that have to be done and paid. Getting even one of them done in a day is a challenge. There is no Italian government arm that will take a check, as far as I know. You can’t just mail things in. Why? I can’t explain it. What anyone does who is disabled or shut-in, I don’t know.
Most taxes and bills can be paid at the post office, which is also a bank. Does that sound easy? Sometimes it is. Choose the right post office and you might be the only one there. Choose wrong and you could stand in line with a combination letter and number code which may mean nothing to you, but you have to wait until that code flashes up in lights above a teller and go there. That does not mean that you have selected the right button and gotten the right code. Nor does it mean that some Italian won’t jump in front of you and ask to have some complicated thing explained and that your teller won’t do it for her/him. Honestly, it is usually a woman, but for me yesterday it was a man.
I saved up all of mine to do yesterday. I set the alarm and when I woke up and saw the fog and the grim sky, I thought what the heck, it’s going to be a lousy day anyway. I had just had the biennial check-up done on my car (€103) so that now I could pay the annual tax for owning it. (€185 plus fee for paying) That had to be done at ACI, the Italian automobile club. In cash. I also had to pay the annual fees for health insurance. That had to be done in a three-prong attack: health office to see the one and only officer who can deal with foreigners; post office to pay the bill (in cash) that he would present me with, back to that fellow to show him the receipt. Then I needed to pay the annual subscription for television. (€104 plus fee) It does not matter if you ever watch broadcasts or not. If you own any television, you must pay the annual fee. You are given a number of ways to pay it, and every single one requires that you pay someone for the privilege of paying this tax. I don’t care what they say, it is a tax. In addition, I had received a fine for speeding from Gaeta, where we took our September vacation. This one I am convinced is a lie, because I am famously slow on the road and the street they named was always jammed with traffic and I don’t recall that you could ever even get to the speed limit. All my witnesses, of course, are in the USA now, and they don’t send the ticket until 60 days after the so-called infraction. I have gone completely off Gaeta.
So, first to the bank to get that pocketful of cash to do all this. I had to do a deposit in US funds to feel right about withdrawing this much money. That brought on a long conversation with some bank employees concerning their new quarters, the shuffling of staff and the possible long-term consequences of all these changes. I don’t know who hates it all more, but they may have the edge. In the new bank you have the impression you have walked into the back vault areas of another bank. First you enter through a glass tube that traps you for a short while so they can keep you in there if they think you are a robber or a terrorist. That’s normal here. Then inside everything is closed up. You can see one person behind bullet-proof glass. The rest is gray laminate or the backs of things like the ATM or Bancomat. Chilly, yes. What happened to “my personal banker” as they harp on about in their TV ads? Is she walled up in the machines? Why did they spend all that ad money and then change the bank to completely fly in the face of the commercials? My personal banker, once found, told me that the girl who shares her office is relatively new, here since October 2nd, and has never seen a single customer. I also learned that all the people I have depended on for six years have been demoted. Hmm.
As I left the bank, ripe for robbing, I paid the TV subscription using the ATM. One down.
I drove to ACI and toted in all the documents required, waited in line, found that although the permanent paperwork still hasn’t arrived, although I bought this car last January, it is in the computer correctly and has been printed, so they could allow me to pay the tax, without which I would be eligible for arrest if stopped and checked. Another down.
On to the USL,
the Umbrian health department. I had a nice chat with the foreigner fellow, whom I see once a year and am always glad to see. His name is Dante, but he’s better looking that Dante Alighieri. He is trying, but still doesn’t really speak English, and therefore kindly compliments my Italian. (That is pure relief, and his friend who is my doctor experiences this same rush every time he sees me.) Then off to the post office, where the clerk has no idea what I want to do. I explain and she still doesn’t understand. She finally gives me a generic form which required me to spend fifteen minutes filling in spaces that are already filled-in on the right form. It is getting close to closed-for-lunch time at USL, so I was a bit anxious, but I didn’t ask her which rock she’d been living under or question her IQ, I just did it. There are thousands of foreigners here, and every single one of them who doesn’t work for an Italian company has to pay this way, every year. She never heard of anyone having to pay for health insurance. I also pay the **** fine.
Back to Dante, who explains that since a recent change in regulations no one knows whether the health card he is giving me is any good or not. He calls Perugia to see what the word is on Americans getting the plastic card which health professionals say we now must have if we don’t want to pay for services, even though we paid for the insurance. Perugia says they don’t know and maybe no one knows. If they have to have a court case to decide this, it could take 15 years. I need to stay healthy, not cut myself while chopping, not have accidents and definitely not get flu or pneumonia. That latter is going around.
At one o’clock I had paid them all. I joined a friend for lunch. She left, so I went and talked about politics with another friend for a while, then I drove home. With the warm glow of accomplishment (and maybe it was also the red wine I had at lunch) under my belt, I packed up all the chocolates left from Christmas and an art book calendar, both for her granddaughter and went to Olga’s. She had been in her cantina, so she peeked around the corner and asked me to follow her up into the house. I did. For the first time in my life, I, at 5′-1-1/2″ knocked the bejeesus out of my head on a low door. Sparks, stars, gira la testa, and a huge lump rising like Yorkshire pudding on my downy crown. Is this the end to a terrible, horrible day?
No. In Olga’s kitchen there was a big box for me. Gifts! The postwoman saw Silvia in town and, knowing that she is my neighbor, said, ” I have this package for la signora Giuditta, take it to her.” My eyes are crossing at the very idea, but Silvia is a good girl and I was really happy that this day held a package of Christmas gifts. I opened them instantly.
The first thing that came out was a cute jardiniere with a sack of chocolates in it! We all laughed and laughed. Out with the old and in with the new! Lots of other clever things, plus some things I’d left at my friend’s house in the US, and almost all was well. I broke a nail right to the quick opening the package.
When I got home I discovered I had broken another nail on the other hand, as well.
That really is the end to my almost terrible, horrible day.
So this post is about Italy, preserving my sanity and wasting a bunch of gas and time. There is food in there, too.
January 11th, 2007
