1. Because sometimes I think I would have better things to do.
2. Because sometimes I’m sure there are better things to do.
3. Because in any other situation, the idea of having “followers” would be scary. And there’s a good reason for sure.
4. Because sometimes I appreciated more someone before following him than after.
5. Because I wouldn’t like that happening to me.
6. Because often people who seemed extraordinary to me, become totally ordinary on Twitter.
7. Because I wouldn’t like that happening to me.
8. Because sometimes it’s better to shut up and give the impression of being stupid, than post a tweet and clear any doubt.
9. Because too often, people you follow become your portrait, and this could be dangerous.
10. Because sometimes, as in real life, there are things that I wouldn’t have known and things that I wouldn’t have said.
11. Beacause I still believe in the virtue, common sense and grace of privacy.
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Come ho scritto in un recente tweet, sto leggendo il meraviglioso libro di Peter Ames Carlin “Bruce”: una lettura che mi scuote l’anima, perché è come scavare all’interno della colonna sonora di tutta la mia vita.
Anche per me Springsteen è semplicemente Bruce: un amico, un compagno, un alter ego, la voce del cuore dei “mazziati e giusti”. E di sicuro non è il Boss, un soprannome che anche lui giustamente detesta (capo, del resto, non è quasi sempre sinonimo di stronzo?).
Nella mia vita, Bruce ci è entrato con The River, su una superstrada spianata che portava dritta ad accapponarmi ogni poro della pelle. Ne ho sentite – e viste in Betamax (le cassettone che si infilavano ai mie tempi nel videoregistratore) – decine di versioni, tutte quelle esistenti, credo. Una, però, mi lasciava senza fiato più di tutte: quella con la lunghissima intro parlata che faceva piangere anche lui, quando la recitava dal vivo. Non so se l’avete mai ascoltata, ma se avete voglia di provarci non dimenticate i fazzoletti.
Bruce l’ho seguito poi tutta la vita e anche lui, mi piace pensare, alle volte ha seguito me, nascondendosi dietro bizzarre coincidenze. L’ho sempre amato dal profondo e nonostante una lunga serie di sbandate musicali – l’infatuazione più grande quella per i Cure – non l’ho mai tradito sul serio.
Perché a tutto volume o di sottofondo, nella mia vita, a suonare c’è sempre stato lui. Sopratutto quando andavo sotto di brutto. “Come on rise up“. E mi tiravo su. “If I should fall behind wait for me“. E qualcuno si fermava ad aspettarmi. “I wish I were blind when I see you with your man” e persino la peggiore delle delusioni si trasformava in poesia.
Un po’ come Ames, nel 2004, ho provato anch’io a cercarlo più da vicino. Una vacanza a New York si è inevitabilmente trasformata in un indimenticabile tour nel suo New Jersey. E’ stato così che ho camminato sul boardwalk di legno di Atlantic City e di Asbury Park, quello della sua copertina-cartolina; che ho lisciato con la mano il legno del gabbiotto sulla spiaggia di Madame Marie; che ho messo piede – il mio piede – nell’atrio di quel tempio sacro che è lo Stone Pony; che ho girato in tondo per le stradine di Freehold cercando di captare l’odore per me mistico degli Springsteen; che ho mangiato sul serio la pizza da Federici’s, con gli occhi incollati non di certo sulla mozzarella ma sulla miriade di foto di Bruce appese quasi tutte storte alle pareti di questa leggendaria pizzeria.
Poi sono tornata a casa – che sta per la mia vita – ma senza chiudermi la porta alle spalle, di modo da sentire meglio quel suo invito che rigiro sempre in più occasioni a me stessa: “Mary salta dentro, è una città piena di perdenti e io me ne sto andando per vincere“.
Carlos Casas, a young spanish entrepreneur, launched near Barcelona El Prat airport a new way to publicize a product: the “ecological advertising”.
It’s a sort of “ecological guerrilla marketing” that takes advantage from the surroundings to realize the message to be delivered. In this case, precisely, the farmland near Barcelona El Prat airport, a field really well visible especially from the 600.000 passengers that every month land in Barcelona.
The advertisement we are talking about is related to “Red Hat”, one of the most renowned American software company that is engaged in providing open-source software products to the enterprise community. “Red Hat” advertising, in this case, doesn’t consist as usual in a print ad, a tv spot or a poster. Not at all. “Red Hat” is now talking to his target through a field plowed in a way that the grass deliver his message: a message – sorry for the wordplay – highly legible.
So, beyond the brand and the product, “ecological guerrilla marketing” is a new form to consider advertising: a 100% natural approach that doesn’t alter the landscape in a negative way like traditional outdoor advertising media normally do. And uncontrived is “timing” too, because times are determined, once and again, more from nature than people. In the “Red Hat” case, for example, according to “Fly and Flowers” advertising agency, the ad can stay “alive” till the end of November.
At the end, if it’s real – like Henry Ford said – that “advertising is the soul of business” at least now it’s finally a more natural one.
“Trick or treat?” children of all America scream happy on the night of October 31, amused and dressed like witches, phantoms and vampires. Because this is what, according to the tradition, dead people do during Halloween night: come back to earth to make jokes, sometimes very scary ones, to lucky living people. So everybody must be absolutely ready. You know what I mean: ghost you, ghost us. Therefore, let’s go with giant pumpkins, cakes, candies, every kind of costumes and camouflages, home, table and garden decorations (and what gorgeous ones!) since the end of September.
From the East to the West coast, traversing Ohio and Illinois, Nebraska and Colorado up to the smallest towns of Iowa like the delightful Grinnell, Halloween reigns supreme. Everywhere. In rich’s houses like in poor’s ones: after all, as Steve Jobs was used to say, isn’t death the only really democratic thing of life? Drugstores, pharmacies, supermarkets, discounts (in the US there are many “Everything at only 99 cents” places, and in the United States “all” means truly “all”) have a giant department consecrated to the beloved recurrence. Every shop window invites you to get ready for the darkest night of the year, every garden of the sunny California or the beautiful Orange County is dressed for the occasion, with tiny ghosts lean on the trees and enormous spiders coming out from the (super neat) plants.
Halloween is for kids but adults loves to be involved too. It’s another excuse to celebrate, to stay together, to express. Because exteriorizing is the thing that americans love more than any other. Politic, charity, sport: americans display their thoughts, their feelings, without any fear to be judged or hit from different minded.
In Italy the commemoration of dead people is on November 2. With a “tiny” difference: in 1630 catholic religion banished any kind of pagan ritual related to this occasion, removing any sort of fun and cheerfulness from this feast day. Then, since a few years ago, Italy rose against that, giving new life to an “italian style” Halloween that, ironically, can’t be more sad. Any legend, any magic, any poetry is gone. Above all children are being put aside (in Italy they would “receive” a lot of doors in the face if they just would try to imitate their american friends!). Italian Halloween, at the end, is just a series of disco nights in costume like Carnival, an excuse for italians “bamboccioni” to get drunk and make merry (perhaps because of the negligence of a country and a society that doesn’t help to come out from the condition of “eternal child”?).
“Trick or treat?” children of all America scream happy. This is Halloween: until italians will not be ready to open their doors, definitely a festival that it’s not for them.
credit: Me
Speaking of Falling Skies (the TNT tv drama produced by Steven Spielberg): those sparkling spikes on the back don’t get out of my mind. The point is that watching them lighting up clicked something in my head.
Let’s start from the beginning. The skitters, freakish alien creatures, put on Ben’s back (the second-born child of the “story hero” Tom Mason) an implant that makes him a sort of slave. The implant, when removed by humans, leaves some painful marks: spikes that start from the neck and go down on the back of the poor Ben. A fact, this one, that makes him an outcast forever, specially because his spikes every now and then light up hypnotizing and throwing him elsewhere.
At this point something clicked in my head: I see in this image a giant human metaphor. Getting out from the tv show, I look around and among mortals like us I can see a lot of people that under their shirts, blouses or jackets hide Ben’s spikes.
These people have been hurt by their past so much that they carry a permanent trace of it. Apparently they look like the others, they get muddled with them. The truth is that they really are outcast and they know that very well, especially when their spikes suddenly light up. It can happen everywhere, when they are alone or among others: the result doesn’t change. Every Ben on this earth, with his heart, head and soul, for a little while goes away, recalled with no denial possibility, from his personal freakish skitter of the past.
After all an implant is an implant. Right?
