Caterina Caselli
Insieme a te non ci sto più

Chapeau maestro. Or lawyer. Or whatever you would like to be called… Simply Conte, not of blue blood, although he lacks no nobility of spirit, quite the opposite; because the maestro is in the soul, and in his previous life as a writer “for hire,” he imaginatively crafts numerous melodies that will remain cornerstone hits of the national song repertoire for decades.
Autumn 1968, winds of rebellion, Italy in black and white, momma RAI and just two TV channels, with Canzonissima airing on the main one.
A four-month-long festival with a lengthy lineup of performers and young singer-songwriters of those years, including a budding and vibrant Caterina Caselli who, in the second phase of the singing contest, after her first breakthrough with “Perdono”, has the honor and contractual obligation to sing the maestro.
The piece, with lyrics by lyricist Pallavicini, is vast and compelling. She is not the most in tune—she never was—but it’s a gut punch of touching emotionality. It takes “gold helmet” to the finals, but she must present another song, “Il carnevale”, which will not make it on January 6th.
“Insieme a te non ci sto più”, like many other songs, carries that national-popular flavor, but in my opinion, among the national-popular and for the period it was born, it is the most significant, the best born and expressed of its kind. And personally, it is the one I love the most viscerally, the most beautiful Italian love song.

Patterns and habits that vanish after years, almost without warning (or maybe they do, she was already cold and distant lately), like the cork of a fizzy vintage, ready to vomit its alcoholic blood on a shiny Carrara marble floor.
An explosive earthquake of the soul that dismembers the foundations of the self, causing the walls of self-esteem and the roof of love to crumble, catapulting you under the debris.[***]
Silence, desolation, ringing in the ears, semi-consciousness, shards everywhere, fog in the eyes, concrete dust in the lungs, insufficient sight, perception of hypoglycemia, bone ache… And silence again, followed by quiescence, and then…

She’s no longer with him [DO NOT UNDERSTAND LOVE, YOU CAN’T DO THIS]. However, he survived. Insignificant, detached, in a lethargic embryonic state. But he survived.

And he looks at the clouds up there [HELP ME, DON’T ABANDON ME], the clouds of that dusty cataclysm, as he finds himself buried alive in that oppressive egg of despair.

She has no tenderness or understanding; she looked for them in him and won’t offer him her hand [YOU WRETCH, WHY TO ME?] to give him a glimpse and a hope or a spit of illusion.

Instead no, it ends here, with the awareness of the separation, the acid on the palate of the one leaving and the harm being gratuitously inflicted, [MAY YOU BE DAMNED] of the heart-wrenching crime being committed and he, helpless, trapped below, in the stupor of a cloak of stone.

She carries torrents of clear water in her eyes where she will drink [DAMNED, I WAS YOUR SOURCE OF LOVE]. “Tick”, “Tock”. Nothing of that for him. “Tick”, “Tock”, only tiny tears beginning to fall from a rusty tubular gutter residue, olive green and rachitic, finally collapsing on the anthelic of one of his ear rims. Only “Tick”. Then “Tock”. In that harmful hazy slumber, he perceives no other way.

She seeks forests and valleys with a warmer sun than him [WITH ALL THAT I KNEW HOW TO GIVE YOU]. Dozing on that narrow cot, his head churns distorted images and blurred slides in the rhythm of thousands of chaotic flashbacks per minute.

Both are dying a bit to be able to live, and that’s why she invites him to smile at her if he can, even if it is not easy [BUT HOW COULD I… YOU’RE KILLING ME LIKE A DOOMED MAN]. He falls asleep and dreams of her face fading like an old photo in sepia effect; sharper, recent, and distant memories of seaside summers and pompous family Christmases, within her warm arm embrace and her thick hair.

She says goodbye, it’s not farewell, [WHY CALL ME LOVE WHEN YOU SAY GOODBYE?]. A glow, a glare that disrupts his sleep, they drag him, they slap him. For a few seconds he comes to, and there’s that smile she asked for, only to fall back into the absolute void. Silence once more, and in the dreamy darkness a whisper, resonant and amplified repeating to exhaustion “Arrivederci amore, ciao.”

The scent of detergent, a white ceiling, and pristine sheets. Through the room’s twilight, tiny rays of sunlight orderly penetrate through the blinds’ slits. He is definitively awake, he has definitively survived. More so, he is definitively alive. His family and friends have pulled him to safety [WHERE ARE YOU LOVE? WAS IT A REAL NIGHTMARE?], she is no longer there, she has walked beyond, even the clouds are already further, but in the opposite direction.
Give it time. Everything will become clearer to you, my friend. You will thank her for freeing you from her unlove, her silences, her now extinguished eyes, and her lies. Yes, you will most certainly discover those too and will understand serenely how worthwhile it was to let oneself be slain. But now you are a phoenix reborn, lick your wounds, rise again, and you too observe from above the forests and valleys with a sun warmer than hers.

[***] No reference to actual seismic events or the recent tragedy in the areas of Rieti and Piceno.