So much good news for Paolo Ferrarini I don't know where to start!

Sorry not to have posted in so long - I've been on holiday to Devon. Very nice holiday but it's good to be back and to be able (at last) to devote myself to starting a new business and spreading the word about Paolo's music.

Hopefully now I don't have to work office hours I can actually use this blog to make a more signifcant contribution to helping Paolo reach a wider audience. I'm all for that.

Speaking of which, I received three very exciting Paolo Ferrarini-related pieces of news today...

I will start with this one.

Paolo has been featured on a website called www.tuttouomini.it

If you have a good command of Italian, check out what they had to say here.

If however, like me, your Italian is a little rusty, try this translation instead:

"Paolo Ferrarini's 'Gravity'.

Paolo Ferrarini is a young musician from Verona. 'Gravità' is the first single taken from his new album 'Paradigmi Gnoseologici'...

We would like to invite you to watch the videoclip of this song, which is in fact much more than a simple videoclip. It has very deep and meaningful contents and is one of the few openly gay, serious works we are aware of.

The video was presented at the Roma3 Film Festival earlier in June 2008.

It is a very committed work, which we recommend everyone to see and follow closely".

Not bad eh?

The second piece of good news was that there is a second label interested in financing the printing of Paol's forthcoming album, Gnoseological Paradigms, which will include a booklet with pictures and lyrics.

But the very best piece of news I save for last.

Paolo is coming to to work in London for three months, starting in September, and so the promotion of his album, Gnoseological Paradigms will start here in the UK, which hopefully means that I can help out after all! (If he lets me!)

I was already feeling chipper today, but now I feel like cavorting, so please excuse me while I go dancing down the road....

Still waiting [ imp]atiently for "Gnoseological Paradigms"

So as I have mentioned before, I have six tracks of this album already, of the full eight promised by Paolo (although if memory serves, I think he said that "Soon There Will Be Light" won't be on the album, which is a shame in a way because I like it, particulalry the piano parts - but it probably could do with some tweaking. Anyhoo...)

I don't know what order they should go in, so I have imposed my own order.

And I have made my own itunes play list, which I have been listening to a lot.

It's Sunday morning, the baby is asleep, I am getting ready to host a BBQ for her birthday, and I'm listening to Gnoseological Paradigms (Ali's cut) and positively longing to get the album proper.

Sometimes, when I haven't listened to the songs for a while, I start to ask myself if they are really as good as I remember. And then I listen to them again and fall in love with them a little more.

Sometimes they make me really melancholy, sometimes they make me really happy, other times, reflective - sometimes all of the above and more at the same time.

This morning I have been feeling a intense excitement while listening to them - not just because the songs were making me happy (and they really really were making me happy,) but because I felt this swell of pride for Paolo and everything he has been able to accomplish. When I listen to his music, I feel so totally sure that many many other people are going to love it. A picture rises in my head of a bunch of people who are going to be big fans and they don't even know it yet! It really makes me want to jump up and down, which may be silly, but hey, so I'm silly, what else is new?

I am wildly happy for Paolo, and, oddly, for all the people who are going to love his stuff as much as I do - I know it may sounds corny but I really did feel that way this morning. So add corny to my adjectives of the day...!

Also what I love about his songs is that some of them evoke feelings and reactions that I only used to get from listening to Tori Amos songs - and lately, much as I have tried, I found the new Tori Amos stuff much less accessible to me. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Tori Amos's other work, and I am really disappointed that, for whatever reason, I can't fall into the most recent album. But it's like love - it is love - and you can't force it. You either feel it or you don't. I am listening to the new album every so often in the hope that it will gradually trickle in - this did happen with The Bee Keeper but never really worked for Boys For Pele - so there you go.

I love the musical the depth - that every time I go back there is more to discover - more resonance. Jessica's voice is beautiful, often soaring, bird-like over the rest of the score occasionally plunging in and out of the other instruments and sometimes almost absent. But always lovely. Thanks Jessica! :-D

Now that I have seen the video for "Gravita", I feel that my experience of that song is definitely enhanced (I just love that video).

"Paradigms" is my favourite track - I always start any album with a favourite track, which I listen to over and over, often eschewing the rest of the songs. It's a bit like a honeymoon with a new album, for me at least. Then what usually happens is that I eventually let the rest of the songs play while I'm busy doing other stuff. And after I've done that a few times, it's like something suddenly clicks - the songs are not only no longer strangers, but many of them have worked their way into my subconscious somehow, and without my being aware of it, even songs I may not necessarily like have made themsleves a part of me. And that breaks the ice, and so I can start relationships with the rest of the songs, until each one means something to me.

What really hit me this morning was the words in Paradigms, which made me think for a moment about how, as children, the lack of language and lack of exposure to religious and social indoctrination and intolerance had allowed us, for a brief time at least, to be so free. We didn't really judge or evaluate our emotions or our actions, we just got to experience them - to be sad when sad and happy when happy. And not guilty or paranoid. For a moment in time anyway.

I wonder a lot about what to say to my daughter about religion as she grows up. I'm afraid that there is such a thing as a religious gene, and that I will have passed it on to her. Because although I don't believe in religion or even really in god, like a recovering addict, I still feel the ghost of a need to prostrate myself befor some higher power, to give my life over, my decisions, my way of life - to abdicate responsibility.

Which is stupid, and masochistic and lazy - faults that I'm afraid I must own up to. Which is how I came to flirt with Christian fundamentalism, throw myself into Islamic fundamentalism, play around with Paganism until I finally came to a calmer, more self-accepting state. Now I definitely view my religious compulsions (which are few and far between but also too dangerous for me to deny their existernce) as the result of the early religious instruction I received - like the wound was inflicted, and has healed, but that the scar tissue will always pinch in cold weather, or something like that. I have to keep them in check, recognise the danger signs and remind myself of why my love affair with religion had to end. It wasn't good for me. From my point of view, religion is like a person I have been deeply attracted to, had an intense relationship with and then had to leave, not becuase I want to, but because I have recognised that the relationship isn't good for me and ultimately, it isn't real - it's all in my head. (Isn't everything....but anyway)

I remember in particular puzzling over how I could be a good Christian or Muslim when I knew that I was definitely a bisexual person. Definitely not gay. There's nothing wrong with bein gay. If was a lesbian, I would be fine with that. But it's not me. I know that because I am attracted to some men and and I attracted to some women. I happened to marry a man, a man that I love very much. But that doesn't erase my sexual identity. I don't view the relationships I have had in the past (sexual and non-sexual) with women as a 'phase', athough I know that some people do go through a 'bi-curious stage' and feel that they come out of it straight. That's their experience, it doesn't mean that mine has to conform to theirs. Of course not!

People can say what they want about bisexuality being a pit stop on the road to gay (wasn't that said in an episode of Sex in the City?). But I know better. It's just that a hetero lifestyle is easier on so many levels, and if you have the choice, why not choose the easiest path? Also the gay/lesbian world isn't so welcoming of the bisexuals - some of their reasons are actually pretty good - the bicurious may not mean to do damage to the gay people they unwittingly (or sometimes I'm sad to say intentionally) 'experiment' with - but I know that often harm is done, so and I do see where the negativity may come from from but hey...

Also I didn't and don't meet many girls who are into girls on a daily basis - actually I used to mainly fall in love with straight girls. (I know I should probably say 'women' - I have a hard time remembering that I'm all growed up now, so forgive me) Anyway, that falling in love with straight girls well... that never leads to anything good. So yes, I know that I fancy girls and boys. And no, bisexuality doesn't make you any more or less likely to cheat on your partner. There seems to be a lot of talk about that these days.

Ok, it definitely widens the field of potential sexual/romantic partners, but I am a very loyal person and despite some lovely invitations to cheat on my (now)husband over the years, (issued by men and women,) I have never done so nor do I intend to do so, bisexual or no. Although monogomy isn't that important to me as a concept, my husband's feelings about monogomy are. And monogomy is important to him. He has asked me to vow monogomy and I have chosen to do that. So bisexual or not, that is what I will do - be monogomous. So religion and sexual identity has definitely been a quagmire for me in the past. One of the best things about getting out of all that religion was being able to feel good about my sexual identity. And that of others. Phew!

Hopefully I know better than to go down those roads again (the religious and therefore most often assocaited gay-hating roads,) and I really hope that Georgie doesn't end up walking them too. Ultimately I have no control over that, and shouldn't try to exert any, lest I end up pushing her there. But I do wonder about it and I do worry about it a little.

But back to the music. That's something else I like about Paolo's work, it really is a music towards atheism, at least it is for me. It speaks to my experience of religion and how I have scrambled to the shores of atheism/agnosticism and can look back and then move on. I find "Ziqqurat" particulary tends to take me back to musing on all the bizarre religious shit I have gone through. And of course, it makes me glad to have gotten out the other side.

So there you go, whether you wanted to know or not, this is how I feel about the hotly anticipated works of Paolo Ferrarni - and how I feel about religion, and it's influence over my life to date.

I know you are working as fast as you can Paolo but please, for the love of pete, hurry the fuck up!

xxx

Pictures from the set of the video for Gravita

Watch the video now on YouTube...

Gravita - Some inside insights into it's creation from p[ aolo]

So I was chatting to Paolo recently and I found out some stuff about the song Gravita that I thought I would share with the blog.

In case you haven't seen/heard Gravita yet, here's your opportunity:




1:.The Title

The song is in English but Paolo chose to give it an Italian title as an homage to a question that was often put to him when he lived in London, namely as to whether his dreams were in Italian or in English. Paolo says he doesn't actually know for sure and guesses that it's probably a mixture of both. I know from experience that if you wake Paolo suddenly he is more likely to speak to you in Italian but hey...

Anyway, knowing that he had probably given all sorts of answers to the same question he decided to reproduce this inconsistency between the title (i.e. what he thought his dreams were like) and the actual content of the song.

2. The syntax of Gravita's made up dream language

Apparently this made up language is not as random as it may sound at first. In fact this made-up language of dreams, as featured on the track, is, I am reliably informed, made up of universal phonemes, and it also has a syntax.

The "words" come back in different combinations, but they are [theoretically at least] recognisable as independent words, not just random sounds. There, you see, method behind seeming madness!

3. The events behind the song: Not being able to fall in love

I always want to know what a song's supposed to be 'about'. I'm sure that most people imprint their own 'abouts' onto songs, whether it's a positive or negative feeling/event/etc. is by the by. The song and the video both impart a sense of unrequited love - the video does so in what I can only assume is an intentionally controversial portrait of unrequited love. And a very beautiful portrait it is too.

But knowing what a song is about - i.e. what it means or what it meant to the artist at the time of writing sometimes adds extra dimensions to my listening pleasure so it may please you [or not] to know what I know of the 'about' for Gravita:

Back in 2001, Paolo was torn between falling or not falling in love with a guy called Francesco. He was in Cairo and Francesco was in Berlin. I knew that Paolo was going through something difficult with this relationship but he didnt seem keen to really talk about it much at the time. I have since been told by Paolo that he found himself caught between surrendering to his feelings and obeying his misgivings about the relationship - at that time he didn't feel that he could give himself to the relationship without sustaining real damage to his dignity. More than that I don't know, except that the pink shirt in the video is a visual reference to Francesco, who was apparently wearing a shirt of the same colour the first night he and Paolo went out together.

I don't know if anyone else is interested in things like this, but for me, I always like to know new things...[except when I don't] :-D

The difficult first post....

Ok so you should know right off that just because I consider Paolo to be one of my best friends, it doesn't automatically follow that I would praise just anything he did. I am not, after all, his mother. [Actually in Paolo's case that's not the best comparison, but let's not go there...] In fact, P[aolo] will probably be the first to confirm that I have been as quick to laugh at some of his earlier musical forrays as I have been to compliment them.

When he told me that he was really focussing on his music, I must admit I was a bit dubious. This is the guy who used to have-at his guitar like a mad man, and the howling that sometimes accompanied this instrumental abuse was often a little alarming. When we lived in Edmonton in London we used to drive the neighbours nuts with seriously off-key renditions of Tori Amos songs, accompanied by scary guitar interpretations and some very dodgy piano playing.

So you can perhaps imagine why, when he told me he was doing some performing, I was as concerned for his audience's eardrums as I was for what their reaction might be.

It's hard when a friend starts doing anything creative - you're either going to like it or you're not - and what do you do if you don't like it?

It was with a giant sigh of relief, then, that I listened to the first track, and then the next, and the next - relief first, and then unabashed delight and exictement at what I was hearing. Paolo and I have a few key musical influences in common, (Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard, Tori Amos - up to and including To Venus and Back but not a lot further, I'm sorry to say, Bjork, Sigur Ross and so on,)and while I could hear some stylistic elements of those in his work, there was no musical plaigerism but rather a fusion that seems to have created something entirely new, and something which is, in my opinion, fabulous.

[Did I mention how bloody relieved I am?]

It's a little bit sad for me, to be here in the UK while all this exciting stuff is going on in Italy. And maybe it's a little bit sadder that my only real way to participate is to blog.

But I'll take any piece of this pi[e]I can get, participation-wise.

And my p[rognisis]? It's worth it!