Diaframma
Live 09-04-2011

Hold on, boy, all the eager thrills you're handling during this free time are swept away by the chimney. Like the swirls of smoke propelled to the upper atmosphere by the substantial flame burning a solid piece of wood, probably oak, without consuming it. When I'm out and about, away from my composed routine, I get so into it that as soon as I step onto any train and have time to reflect and make comparisons, the pat on the back of conscience intervenes almost immediately, as if to console me for the good times had but, above all, to remind me that everything will not last long. I must say that I see things that have happened. If before death, you truly see all the moments of life in a very short time, then I've already died several times, condemned to something worse than a coitus interruptus: I come within myself, generate feeling, and this hopeful child of mine is destined to crash against the dark, asthma-encrusted walls of modernity. 

Thus, from a holiday bridge that connected me to other people, my ambitions to their achievements, my hopes to real effects on my life, what concretely remains with me is that sensation of warmth that is fading. A warmth due to the memories of human beings and art that I've encountered, I see installations and images going up in flames. Those flames are about to end. Above all, I'm left with that icy sensation of January. Damn, January, what's passing through my ears just near Florence. I gladly associate moments of my life with music. Today I might say, and maybe tomorrow deny, that what plays like a warning halfway between a disastrous today and a mockery of yesterday is Federico Fiumani, accompanied by the now legendary aura of Diaframma. I made their last live performance my own in the very last scrap of living light. I cared about it after seeing it in action this winter, to understand if it went in Florence as it did with me. And it did. A career in a few coins, a way of reckoning the present and the past that gives back this: yesterday clear, today cloudy. In between, the barbed wire that can't be bent, placed like a curtain to mark the boundaries between the various organs of the digestive system. There's not much to do in this situation, listening to Fiumani & Co retracing their steps, there's not much to laugh about, you can only breathe slowly and reflect, otherwise you end up hurting yourself inside. You hear poems (can we say they're not just songs without offending anyone?) that materialize like a strong arm that decides for you: it grabs you by the shoulder of your shirt and throws you forward in revolt, grabs your back and pulls you back when you'd like to rush forward, slaps you and even sticks a finger up your ass, gathering so much shit or stimulating orgiastic thoughts. Then maybe it disappears and there you are, on the stage of your empty theater, with lights off, where the only spotlight on points at you lying in a grip of pain.

A career spent making the diaphragm work well to achieve this difficult leap on living may seem like little? Perhaps. A lot? I don't know. I only know that whoever narrates succinctly the causes that force me/help me to push straight on with much fear of no longer being able to do so despite everything, deserves my deepest admiration and the composed and nineteenth-century applause of my personal spleen adorned with a voluminous wig and Napoleonic attire for the occasion. On such a record, it matters little that it's the band's first official live, well recorded and with few blemishes to note. A faithful copy of what was heard on another date. It doesn't matter that it's perhaps more appealing to fans than to newcomers. Inside there's Fiumani who swings and writhes and extends to everyone the unbearable lightness of being halfway between here and yesterday, with no prospects of redemption or possible life of redemption.