mnemosine

music for autumn

in no particular order:
mariee sioux
moriarty
alela diane
claire diterzi
mia doi todd


i know, it's all about folk... 

but what's better than that for the chilling time,

the yellowing leaves and graying sky?

ok this one goes with a story, i will try to keep it short:



Few weeks ago i found this pack of very old photos of my family. i knew about their existence because i had saw them years ago but i had completely forgot, so when i found them again i was utterly amazed, also because i developed this love for vintage and old things in the latest years.

browsing through all of them i found, among other beautiful images, the photo of this woman and luckily my father had wrote who she was on the back of the card. Aida was the first [or second? i can't remember and it's not specified] wife of my father's father and she died young, not long after the marriage, i can't recall from which disease [i believe my father told me the story when i was a kid..].

my grand father hadn't had much luck with wives... he had 3 and they all died quite young!

so, this photo could have been shot in the 20s or early 30's, because then my grand-father married again with Maria and my father was born in 1939. Maria too died giving birth to my father, who indeed was named after her [Mario], while one of his older sisters got the name after Aida.



Then i found this cotton in the house [my mother was a crocheter, she made tons of doilies and stuff and taught me the basics of crochet when i was a kid] and i crocheted a necklace following a vintage pattern.

when i saw the result i could only think of old garments and ancient lace, hence the photo of Aida popped in my mind and i decided to give her name to this delicate, feminine, vintage looking necklace.

Calmly we walk through this April's day,

Metropolitan poetry here and there,

In the park sit pauper and rentier,

The screaming children, the motor-car

Fugitive about us, running away,

Between the worker and the millionaire

Number provides all distances,

It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,

Many great dears are taken away,

What will become of you and me

(This is the school in which we learn...)

Besides the photo and the memory?

(...that time is the fire in which we burn.)



(This is the school in which we learn...)

What is the self amid this blaze?

What am I now that I was then

Which I shall suffer and act again,

The theodicy I wrote in my high school days

Restored all life from infancy,

The children shouting are bright as they run

(This is the school in which they learn . . .)

Ravished entirely in their passing play!

(...that time is the fire in which they burn.)



Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!

Where is my father and Eleanor?

Not where are they now, dead seven years,

But what they were then?

No more? No more?

From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,

Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume

Not where they are now (where are they now?)

But what they were then, both beautiful;



Each minute bursts in the burning room,

The great globe reels in the solar fire,

Spinning the trivial and unique away.

(How all things flash! How all things flare!)

What am I now that I was then?

May memory restore again and again

The smallest color of the smallest day:

Time is the school in which we learn,

Time is the fire in which we burn. 





Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day - Delmore Schwartz

The Pirate Gospel

Babelesque is a place where to share your language and your words. 

i hope that YOU, whenever you are, will like to join 

and let us listen to the sound of your voice, of your country and your culture.

shameless self-promotion post

[scroll down for the new stumbles!]



i couldn't resist,

i'm making designs for t-shirts. 

you can find them here and here.

needless to say, feel free to buy them :P 

the law is NOT the same for everyone.



two words for the foreign friends who are not up to date with italian situation. in the latest decades here in italy a very rich man [also known as Silvio Berlusconi] who owns the big part of the media industry managed to get to the power by promising big changes in a period when italy needed such big changes. the politic world allowed him to do that and that's already an anomaly in a democratic country. futhermore in all the time this man has been at the power managed to create laws to protect his interests against the laws of the state, and obviously he had many to protect being involved in so many bussnesses. furthermore he - well not only 'he'.. but all his 'gang' - they managed to change the electoral law in a way that citizens can't now directly choose their representative in the parliament but only the party they want to govern. [go on reading here]



some article on foreign press: 

le monde

el pais

the financial times

absence

your name is still blooming in the absence:

the colour of your face is fading out, but not your flavour.









absence

{by s. bardotti - translated by me}



I'll let you go.

you will go and drow your face close to another face,

your fingers will tie other fingers.

and you will blossom towards the dawn

but not knowing that it was me to pick you,

because i'm the night's best intimate,

because i drew my face near the night's face

and i heard your amorous whisper,

and i brought to myself the misterious essence of your wild abandonment.

i will be alone

like a sailing ship in the silent harbours

but i will own you more than anybody else,

because i will be the one able to leave

and all the laments of the sea,

of the wind, 

of the sky, 

of the birds, 

of the stars,

they all will be your present voice, 

your absent voice, 

your cheered up voice.



{original}



Ti lascerò 

tu andrai e accosterai il viso a un altro viso

Le tue dita allacceranno altre dita 

e tu sboccerai verso l'aurora

Ma non saprai che a coglierti sono stato io, 

perché io sono il grande intimo della notte

Perché ho accostato il mio viso al viso della notte 

ed ho sentito il tuo bisbiglio amoroso

Ed ho portato fino a me la misteriosa essenza del tuo abbandono disordinato

Io resterò solo 

come veliero nei porti silenziosi, 

ma ti possiederò più di chiunque

Perché potrò partire, 

e tutti i lamenti del mare, del vento, del cielo, degli uccelli, delle stelle

Saranno la tua voce presente, la tua voce assente, la tua voce rasserenata.