by Beppe Severgnini
Beppe Severgnini talks about the singer and Mogol’s verses: «Subtitles of our sentimental education»
In the attic I created the Museum of the Proximate Past, for the amusement of the family, convinced that this is a sign of senile eccentricity. What is my collection about? In the accumulation, on a shelf as long as the wall, of the technology that people normally throw away.
Grandma’s chest of drawers is kept (not always, not all).
The record player, the cassette recorder, the Walkman, the removable car radio and the answering machine who kept them? Only you!, the family members respond in chorus, who are forbidden to approach my vintage treasures, especially on separate waste collection days.
And yet – I try to explain every time – it is important to save some testimonies from the recent past. After all, life passed through those objects. Some have kindled passions, diluted disappointments, accompanied our days. Throwing them away seems cruel. Better to keep them and, every now and then, unlock the memories. Marcel Proust resorted to biscuits (madeleines). Why can’t we use a record player? Always in search of lost time is.
Cassette e compilation
There is more. Many objects are connected to each other. My 70’s portable Philips tile recorder has never separated from some self-produced cassettes (Basf C90!). They recorded songs from the radio, from our LPs, from friends’ records, with artisanal fury. We never went to jail because – unlike the Neapolitan Frattasio brothers (“Mixed by Erry”, watch it on Netflix!) – we made personal use of it. Once we created the compilations, we played them until they were consumed. Especially in the car radio. Removable, anti-theft. A Martian who had come down to earth in 1975 would have been amazed. The Italian boys went around with a car radio under their arms. Someone, every now and then, gave the other arm to the girlfriend.
Everyone had their favorite singers and bands. Only one name obtained unanimity: Lucio Battisti. We knew his songs and memories, and Mogol’s lyrics ended up becoming the subtitles of our days. Sometimes we took them literally. «Cantine», for example, was not a generic term for a bohemian establishment. Our cellars were cellars: morally, climatically, land registry. When Battisti whispered «And the dark cellar where we / breathed slowly» («The song of the sun») he was describing a real situation. If we all breathed hard together, we would run out of air.
Simple souls
We were, thinking about it now, simple souls. “Vendo casa” – another magnificent song by Battisti-Mogol, brought to success by Dik Dik in 1971 – was the soundtrack of my fourth gymnasium and the slow lights out. It did not indicate an early interest in the real estate market, but a hymn to the sentimental setbacks that every fourteen-year-old believes he experiences for the first time in the history of humanity. Thankfully the text also contained some nice distractions. When I listened to “A sandwich, a beer, and then / your mouth to kiss” I asked myself every time: swallow first, right?
One of the songs by Lucio Battisti to which I am most attached, “The hill of the cherry trees”, turns half a century this year. It was the single taken from the album “Our dear angel” (1973): a canticle of individual freedom, an invitation not to be crushed by social conventions. We understood this. It did not occur to us that the line “… gliding over woods with outstretched arms” was an allusion to Fascist rallies, as we read and heard later. There were fascists, even at school, and they were recognizable by their mirrored glasses, worn perhaps to hide not too intelligent looks. But for Lucio Battisti to praise Roman greetings, well, it seems frankly absurd. Also because the previous album (“Il mio canto libero”, 1972) had a forest of arms stretched upwards on the cover. Like people do when they’re happy, not comrades at rallies (by the way: aren’t they forbidden?).
Folding seats
Other times decryption was less easy. Bottom Line: The song was lovely, but it did contain some dark passages. Let’s go back to «My free song». At one point Battisti sings: «And flies on the accusations of the people / to all the indifferent heritage of him». Any teenager knew that the word “legacy” would scare girls away. But he understood the invitation contained in the sentence: don’t care, don’t let yourself be influenced by the judgment of others. Another line, a little later, sounded even more enigmatic: “The robe of the ghosts of the past / falling leaves the picture immaculate.” Which framework? In the bedroom, at most, we hung the posters.
Other verses by Battisti-Mogol were less mysterious. For example, for a boy from Crema, the agricultural part was familiar. «The bicycles abandoned on the lawn and then / The two of us lying in the shade / A flower in the mouth can help you know / Everything seems more cheerful» («La canzone del sole»): I exclude having chewed poppies in the fields between Sergnano and Pianengo , but the picture was convincing. Thus «Che ne sai tu di un campo di grano / poetry of a profane love» («Pensieri e Parole»): we understood the concept, we appreciated the poem, but we preferred the folding seats of the Fiat 127 to the annoyance of the corn on our backs (for don’t talk about the heck of the farmer whose corn we would have ruined).
The realm of Saturn
Listened to in succession today, Battisti’s songs – all beautiful, some splendid – are almost endearing: they seem distant in time like the kingdom of Saturn.
«Blue water, clear water», «I’ll call you if you want / I don’t know if he’s there yet» (there were no cell phones).
«The gardens of March», «When we left school the boys sold books» (today they look at the phone).
«You come back to me», «That evening / you were dancing with me / Suddenly / he asked me / “Who is he?”» (back in the day you could talk while dancing, today it’s impossible).
«Pink flowers, peach blossoms», «Sorry, I really thought you were alone / I thought there was no one with you / Oh, I’m sorry if you can / Lord, I apologize to her too” (fifty years ago people, sometimes he apologized).
Yet these phrases – even the anachronistic ones, even the slightly rhetorical ones – have remained imprinted in our brains, along with many others. «How can a rock stem the sea / Even if I don’t want to, I’m already flying again» («I would, I wouldn’t, but if you want…»): who cares about this intersection of metaphors worthy of a distracted seagull?
“A gloomy day”: who, when sober, would have used such an adjective? «Wonder why when sadness falls in the depths of the heart / like snow it makes no noise» («Emozioni»): if Giovanni Pascoli had written it, we would have raised objections. But it came from Battisti and Mogol, and it left us speechless.
Some wonder why recent Italian poetry has struggled to reach the general public. Well, because singer-songwriters like Battisti (De André, Battiato, Dalla, De Gregori, Guccini, Fossati, Venditti, Renato Zero etc) toured, and they occupied a large space in the collective imagination. Our sentimental education has passed through the lyrics of their songs, just as the learning of the English language has passed through the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan. Today, while I was writing and (obviously) listening to Lucio Battisti, under one of the videos on YouTube I read this comment: «How lucky to have been a teenager when you were around». It seems to me a beautiful compliment.
August 20, 2023 (change August 20, 2023 | 21:52)
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2023-08-20 19:52:55
#Battisti #luck #boy
