Homophobic Faggot: Love Song For A Closet Gay

I was cruising YouTube for alternative gay music and this is what I found - and it, in turn, led me to other very interesting and often amusing videos. [How did I ever live without YouTube and why did it take me so long to investigate!]

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to really look through all his videos but I liked this one:



I can't hear all the lyrics but whatever they are, I thought the video was really cool.

The guy is known on YouTube as bcurious2. So far I have been able to find out the following:

He's gay, into making alternative music (so far as I have gotten, it appears to often be gay-themed); he's a 4th generation atheist; his grandparents formed an atheist movment; he loves languages and was raised tri-lingual (although he has picked up several languages since then; he's a painter & a video artist and has two day jobs to pay the bills and he is more interested in the future than the past.

I got this information from here, which led me on to find another YouTube Gem, boniac [The Reapers Pit] who I found to be very entertaining indeed. I started with this one:



and I'm looking forward to watching more of both of them and I hope you enjoy them too!

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

A Bit of Fry and Laurie...Tricky Linguistics

What can I say, I've had my fill of lingusitcs today and needed a laugh...

Linguistics, Music and Rebuilding The Rights of Statues (The RE-TROS)

I have just been reading a very interesting post on a blog called Crispy Quips, which is written by an American Linguistics major called Chris, who wants to teach English as a foreign lanaguage after graduation.

Chris has two sites, Cripsy Quips, which is a more general blog, and then one which is appears to be devoted to a more formal look at lingusitics - which is interesting for me to read, but not something I can really participate in as meaningfully as I would probably like to as I have never really studied linguistics.

(It occurs to me that this may become necessary if I'm going to be promoting Paolo's music but hey, one step at a time, right?!)

Anyway, while looking to find out what the Internet has to say about the relationship between music and linguistics, I found Chris's blogs, via one post in particular, that talks about a Chinese band called "Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (or the RE-TROS, for short,) who apparently circumnavigate government censorship by singing in English and submitting fake translations of their lyrics to the authorities.

Below is one of their videos, called Hang Police and if you would like to find out a little more about how they got away with that particular title, read his post about them here.



I thought they were definitely worth posting about for the audacity of their idea alone, (not the mention the fact that their tactics are not only bold and clever but working - so far). I will reserve judgement about their music for now, as it's not a sound that I can profess to love right away, but often that is the case for me with many new artists, so I will live with the music for a little while and see if it grows on me.

The point is, whatever you think of their music, their success appears to indicate that Paolo is not alone in believing that a strategic marriage of music and linguistics may indeed present many opportunities that a more ordinary communication does not - opportunities that in turn may offer the potential for explosive, and one hopes, enduring change - for the better?

New Video - Producer Max Titi talks about working on Paolo Ferrarini's forthcoming album "Paradigmi Gnoseologici"

This video is very interesting for many reasons, but, if I may say so, (and I may because it's my blog,) it will live in my heart forever by way of a line that occurs very early on:

"Can you give me the sound of a moth?"

Which is only topped by a following comment:

"Of course there are no moths in the studio"

How can Max be so sure? Did he check? Did he mothball the place against such an eventuality?

Seriously, although quite technical it's a great insight into the process that Paolo (and his collaborators) have gone through in order to come up with this album, which I am still awaiting, very impatiently. There will be eight tracks, I hear, and I have six. Give me the other two!

Paolo Ferrarini: An Introduction: Parts 1 & 2

This is Paolo, explaining what he's all about.

Just to give you an idea of what to expect, he talks about the following:

* [Linguistics] (including music as language)
* [Philosophy]
* [Catholicism]
* [Atheism] (including music as a way to atheism)
* [Sexuality], [homosexuality] and [gay identity]
* [Activism]

These are some of my favourite quotes from the interviews:

[concerning his artistic vision]

“In my artistic and also my activist’s vision [...] [I want] to transform the general perception [of homosexuality] in such a way that strolling in a park, hand in hand with another boy will finally become a gesture of affection, and no longer a political provocation, a slap in the face of the silent majority. I’d like to get to the point of doing it with total nonchalance, without even worrying about peoples’ gazes. I doubt I will live to enjoy such a privilege.”

"One thing is certain, I couldn’t have been gay and a catholic! I would have felt like a black guy with a subscription to the KKK, or like a Jew, perversely serving in the SS."

[what is [god]?]

"We are talking about a linguistic label devoid of entity, a fancy wrapping without a product, a nothing around which we build a sophisticated, folkloric structure that is metaphorical in nature. It is strongly delusional, to the extent that only a few get to the point of questioning what that metaphor really refers to. As a linguist with an interest in cognitive sciences, the label of atheist does not really fit me, in that I don’t consider [god] to be a mystery or a matter of faith. I know exactly what [god] is and where it dwells. [god] is a metaphor with no referent, a nothing that exists in the skulls of people who use it as a conceptual category to interpret reality."

I'll let you find the other gems for yourselves!

The subtitles are a work in progress - they were dictated by P[aolo] over the phone to another Italian speaker. When you bear that in mind, it's a pretty good job! I understand that this issue will be addressed at some point but in the mean time, they get the point across well enough, to my mind.

So settle back, listen and enjoy! Feel free to comment too, we like interactivity!

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!