Adriano Celentano
Prisencolinensinainciusol

Amidst the splendor of the macaque (Paolo Conte dixit), the weirdest skin of the strangest bar in the world (the one under our house), the debts and misadventures of the only uncle in the family with the face of an actor...

A face like an actor's, or a face for slapping...

Because a face made for slapping is priceless for a child... an anchor to the idea that soon those endless afternoons will disappear, but, well, maybe there could be something more than the grayness you've been thrown into without being asked first...

The grayness...

The father is smoke gray, the mother is pearl gray, or just gray... And “Prisencolinansinanciusol” is a beautiful word... Like precipitevolissimevolmente even if perhaps a bit easier to say...

A can-opener word, though which box, once opened, alone can change the color of things??? And the taste... and the flavor... Then count to five... because there are five senses, or at least that's what they say... or five and a half (Dylan Dog dixit) if you count nonsense... so yes, count to five and a half...

The tiny rock'n'roll... nonsense and divine noise... is there perhaps something more (mainstream or not mainstream)? Yes, there is... and it's your sister who meets some kind of wise man who one day gives you a picture book... But, the baptism is that kind of universal mess (or universal love, uncle Adriano dixit)... Like when Malcolm McClaren saw Jerry Lee Lewis... and then, after, his picture book was situationism...

But then now comes the doubt... if the mess is universal love, then the picture book, in importance, comes after... what do you say?

Universal love... what's a little kid know about universal love? Especially if the dad is smoke gray, the mom is pearl gray or just gray?

The problem is that the child knows...

And, maybe, to show off, I'll quote Elemire Zolla... “I prefer to walk among the crowd rather than reading Elemire Zolla” said Flaiano... and I too with him, I believe... but who cares?

But we need to take a little trip to Altamira... It was a little girl who first saw the cave paintings of Altamira.

Those wonderful drawings inaccessible for fifteen thousand years were thus revealed to the only human gaze capable of understanding something... I've always found this fact magical, also because that little girl, just like Alice, to make that discovery had to go through a narrow tunnel, without even the excuse of the white rabbit...

The little girl was called Maria and there are art history books that begin with her name.

I imagine the spirits of that cave and their smile seeing a little girl. And I imagine the little girl with her candle raising her eyes to the sky “because children, when looking for something, also look among the clouds” as Matteo Guarnaccia says... And the clouds can also be in a cave.

What remains for us to do is to seek them out as well. Ignoring as only children know how the three diabolical voices of the world: “the harsh one of command, the insidious one of pedagogical deceit, the trembling one of sentimental blackmail”...

Yes, it's Elemire Zolla, who dedicated a wonderful book to childlike wonder, pointing out this trimurti of horror to us.

You heard those voices when you were kids, didn't you? Well, they're the same that are still around you. Silence them. Yes, silence them, if you don't want a madhouse of the heart too...

Even if the madhouse of the heart is a solution... And I'll explain why... because the other day I met a dear friend...

“Oh my Luludia, have you gone stupid?”

“Stupid yes, but well, for now I am kind my dear. And everyone smiles at me as if I were a creature that can do no harm.”

“And the annoying poet with the heart of a warrior? What happened to him?”

“Oh he preferred to go mad and is staying in the asylum of myself. He sleeps, walks, and chats with other of my old dissipated masks.”

“Which Luludia are you?” “I'm the one who did that thing that day.”

“And you?” “I'm the worst of the species.”

That's how that meeting went...

And, even if I have a madhouse inside my heart, in the end, I get by. I'm the only one among those good people who can manage. And anyway, every now and then I go visit them and, believe me, the last thing they want is to leave, After all, it's much better a heart's madhouse than a real madhouse.

I've gone off-topic, as usual... Or perhaps not, because when you start from uncle Adriano, you pass through the picture book and the game of the goose begins... A game of the goose full of side paths...

But what I wanted to tell you, after all, is that what I liked as a child I still like now... And it doesn't matter if here on Debaser uncle Adriano is rather ridiculed...