Centro di gravità permanente
Track n° 6 of the album La voce del padrone

Track 6: Centro Di Gravità Permanente (Remastered)
Brass instruments ringing out powerfully, a tune that has now become public. It's precisely "Centro di gravità." "An old Breton woman with a hat and an umbrella made of rice paper and bamboo" yes, yes, that’s her! But what does this image represent? What does this woman from Great Britain, holding typically Eastern objects, signify? It may refer to English (and thus European) colonialism in Eastern countries, which began around 1840, and can also be linked to the following two lines, "brave captains, cunning Macedonian smugglers." Then, "Euclidean Jesuits dressed like bonzes to enter the court of the Ming dynasty emperors"...quite complex verses. I turn to the internet...it says this line refers to Matteo Ricci, who, dressed as a bonze, managed to enter the court of the Chinese emperor. But until now we have been joking… sort of. Now comes "I seek a permanent center of gravity that never lets me change my mind about things and people," the most overused refrain of Battiato's entire musical career, filled with the doctrine of Gurdjieff that strongly inspired the life of the Sicilian master. Battiato himself says: "Georges Ivanovič Gurdjieff maintained that the permanent center of gravity should be, in summary, a remedy for the instability of contemporary man, be it emotional, intellectual, sexual, or motor," explaining worse a kind of absolute balance point where everything becomes certain and clear. So essentially, the message Battiato wants to convey in the refrain is "We are perpetually seeking perfection and we keep searching again and again, very often in vain"...it’s a bit bitter when read like this. But let’s move on. "On the streets of Beijing it was May, we joked about picking nettles," the references to China in the piece continue to increase; this time it depicts a festive day where nettles are being gathered (nettles sprout in spring, hence "it was May"), almost symbolizing a kind of "harvest time" that occurs regularly. But immediately after, Battiato goes on: "I can't stand Russian choirs, phony rock music, Italian new wave, English punk free jazz, nor even African black music," almost wanting to distance himself from everything that was emerging musically at the beginning of the 80s, especially when he talks about New Wave...but there’s a particular detail that sounds quite amusing: during those years, critics classified Battiato in that Italian new wave genre and he was, in fact, the first of this movement to achieve great success; it's a bit like blindfolding oneself and starting to whip all the passersby, realizing that there is a chance it might be his own behind being struck by his whip...Battiato is so wonderful.
Then the refrain starts again and the piece leads us with its ba