Ascanio Celestini
Parole Sante

My most important political experience: I must have been twelve or thirteen years old, and together with a blonde girl, on an afternoon that was already getting dark, I found a tiny, featherless bird, fallen from the nest, on the ground... Now what do we do, I pleaded, what can we invent to save it, who do we call? ... Then the blonde girl took my hand, winked and said: "Ruggero, let's go away, let's pretend we didn't see it." It was as if she had read my most wretched thought.

That afternoon I understood what the bourgeois spirit is and that I, in life, will never be like that again... Because I dream that the whole world participates in happiness, because even if my legs buckle saying it, I am an anarchist, for God's sake, like Bakunin, Cafiero, Malatesta, Bonnot...

The sparrow died after half a minute, but in the wool of my hat.

Marco Lodoli, "Grande Circo Invalido".

Italy is a shitty country. Italy is a wonderful country. Italy is a laboratory country: it invented fascism, the human-faced communism, Berlusconism. Italy has given the world the greatest masterpieces of all time. Italy made a glorious resistance to Nazi-fascism during the Second World War. Italy treats its partisans like old nuisances to be patted on the back once a year. Italy is a country which, despite having the largest communist party in Europe, managed to eradicate the terrorism of the red brigades. Italy is the country of unpunished massacres, of secret services conniving with black subversion. Italy is the country of the UN moratorium on the death penalty and the girls beaten by police at the G8 in Genoa.

Italy gave us Ascanio Celestini. An artist as indispensable as he is a pain in the neck. As capable of speaking to everyone's conscience as he is aprioristically, fiercely aligned.

Firmly planted on the shoulders of the giants who preceded him (Gaber, Rino Gaetano, De André), Ascanio Celestini explores the ills and ways of today's Italy or perhaps, who knows, of always. The brief spoken sketches in "Il popolo è un bambino" explain to us simply, gently, almost on tiptoe, the elementary exercise of power: screwing over those below you.

And what about "Nel modo dei gatti"? A beautiful parade of very Italian figures: fence-sitting and heads in the sand. Strategy of tension. Revolution. Employers. Words we had forgotten—or had they made us forget?

Indeed, in the end, the boss is a kind of thief

only when the boss steals it's not a crime

and even when he gets arrested, his alibi holds

because he is the Law.

Old words, new words. "Precariato". New clothes to hide the old rot? The oppressed, the dispossessed, those who never counted for anything. And precisely because of this, they can afford to lose everything.

We are the fags, we are the Jews

Palestinians of the Intifada, we are tramps along the street

we are the communist ticks.

We, we are anarchists

we are spastics

we are the ones with the toilet outside

we are ugly, dirty but good, which in short means fools.

And what greater discrimination than that inflicted on the mentally ill? And what greater freedom do they take, to insult, offend our orderly and respectable world with their simple presence?

We are buffoons, we are clowns

We are dressed in rags and tatters

We are clowns, we are buffoons With the cock out of the pants (...)

Yet we have a crazy idea

that perhaps may seem strange to you

to shit on your Ikea furniture on Dolce and Gabbana clothes.

In this album, you will find all this and more. Shopping malls and call centers. Thieves and the robbed. Cats and foxes. Corpses and fake living. So much, so much television. Italy, in short. Let's look ourselves in the face, because we are just like this.

Soccer is beautiful! Life is beautiful!

Only a few enjoy it.

The others, however, can root for it.