Grasshopper

Regarding the examples I made in an attempt to add a touch of authenticity (in vain) to such a story, I realize that they can also be used to support the opposite. One that comes to mind is more convincing, though I don't know how true it is, recounted by Salvatore Accardo some time ago on TV. The anecdote says that Accardo, at the fateful age of 3 (always that age), would have seen a violin for the first time and played it, and his father was not a musician but a coral carver or something like that. Everything would naturally be in -ebbe: the conditional is a must, and anyway, even if it were true, it doesn't make the surreal story invented in this film any less so, which still managed to engage me. I greet you and wish you a Happy Easter. And now (sigh) I leave Debaser until Monday, April 16, unless in the meantime my colleagues have destroyed my computer.

Before leaving Debaser for 10 days (oh my God, how will I manage) on vacation, I’m responding from a public library with free Internet (in other cases, I find myself on the office PC: but when will I finally decide to equip myself at home?) to the question about the last paragraph, which seems to express absolute logic and total common sense. Yet both logic and common sense seem to me entirely foreign concepts to our hero Novecento, a nearly incorporeal figure with a rather strange character, to say the least, if not insane. Therefore, trying to evaluate him according to conventional thinking seems a bit out of place: with such a character, one ends up accepting even that he would prefer to eat mice and blow himself up rather than build a "normal" life; indeed, I would say it's quite a struggle to imagine him fitting into a "normal" life.

Ghemison, what I wanted to create was a kind of literary sample. Even those musical mp3s under a minute spoil the piece, but they only serve to give a vague idea. It's just that with all those 8217, a monster has emerged. Anyway, if it may console you, the book also seemed difficult to me at times, and I didn't always find the cutting irony of this page, which then continues, mercilessly describing an important dinner of "manichini ossibuchivori" - that's how Gadda defines them - all well-dressed and immersed in total self-satisfaction for their elevated social position.

Well, copying and pasting on debaser is a tough task. Gadda's writing is already complicated, and if every apostrophe turns into an 8217, poor us... Well, I gave it a try.

In support of my previous compliment, I attach a brief and famous passage from the aforementioned Gadda, taken from "La cognizione del dolore" (started in 1937 and published only in 1963!):
<<The famished sarabande swirled under the electric globes swayed by the pampero, among myriads of seltzer siphons. The light of the upside-down world drank its many uricemiche, perfumers at the mercy of Progress, urethras leveled by the seltzer. “¡ Mozo, tráigame otro sifón!”. A cheerful foolishness animated the faces of everyone; the women, as if scratching an acne, or with gestures of monkeys given some trifling treat, dusted themselves with powder at every dish: they ate minestrone and pencil. And everyone hoped, hoped, joyfully. And they were full of confidence. Or, authoritatively, they remained silent. At the table; chests out, backs straight; packaged in the starch apparatus of the tuxedo almost in the bandage and the supreme swell of certainty and biological reality. From time to time they made the siphons urinate: and the virile, aggressively releasing siphon conferred a certain gravity to the hand of the unemployed. […] Black waiters in the “restaurants,” wore frock coats, however full of pans: and the starched front, with a fake tie. Only the front was understood: that is, without that most imposing of all chest dignities ever reaching a total harmony, in the necessitating physiology of a shirt. Which was completely absent.
Permeated by a subtle shiver, the ladies: as soon as they felt honored by the title of lady from such obedient frock coats. “A mix of cream and chocolate for the lady, yes ma’am!” It was, from the nape to the heels, like a lash of sweetness, “the pure joy hidden” of the hymn. And even among the men, the secret itch of complacency: up, up, from the groin towards the meninges and the bulbs: the illusion, almost, of a moment of marquis-like power. All strikes forgotten, all at once; the death cries, the barricades, the communes, the hanging threats at the lampposts, the purple at Père Lachaise; and the black, clotted rennet on the Goyesque abandonment of the laid out ones, the finished ones; and the brawls and the blocks and the wars and the massacres, of every quality and every land; for a moment! For that moment of delight. Oh! sweet anguish! Brought to us by the reverent frock coat: “A lemon-seltzer cut for the gentleman, yes sir! Lemon-seltzer cut for the gentleman!” The wonderful, most lavish cry, full of reverence and a touching concern, more intoxicating than the melodious elysium of Bellini, bounced from boy to boy, from front to front, enriching with new right-hand spells the marquis-like hormones of the patron; until it reached the pantry with: “a lemon-seltzer cut for that big guy of a 128!”>>

Am I exaggerating if I call you the Carlo Emilio Gadda of Debaser? Have you ever thought about writing a novel in this refined and multilingual slang, which at times truly seems like a modern version of that of the great Milanese engineer-narrator? I don’t know the bald guy in question, but my neurons are still enjoying themselves like pigs (if the Holy See allows the comparison) after this reading. I wonder why I often come across your posts, already amusing in themselves, but almost never an entire review. We probably explore different, if not complementary, musical territories. Best regards, as someone would say.

P.S. The part that I completely agree with is the comparison to Jelly Roll Morton, truly bordering on the absurd. As if talent could be measured by the number of keys pressed per beats per second, come on...

Am I wrong or is the title of the film "The LEGEND of the Pianist on the Ocean?" So why be surprised if the child who lived in the boiler room, upon seeing a piano, rushes at it and discovers that musical notions have been present in his subconscious all along? Some time ago, there was an attempt to pass off as true (and at times they almost succeeded) a story similar to this, about that pianist who I believe was English, who didn’t even remember his own name but then, like a Keaton-esque figure, "would light up in front of a keyboard." And a few centuries earlier, there is the anecdote, certainly exaggerated but considered by some to be plausible, of the 3-year-old Mozart who couldn't even write yet but would place ink splotches between the lines of the staff being used by his father, and these splotches turned out to be notes arranged according to a specific pattern. Without wanting to authenticate this story, which, nonetheless, moved me at the time, I must say it's very well constructed, even if a bit overly drawn out. I share little to nothing with the review, but it's well written, and it’s not in my nature to dismiss those who think differently from me (a rare thing on Debaser as elsewhere).

@ know-it-all: Annoyance? And why ever? I just wanted to understand the tone of the sentence. Anyway, it’s not the first time I’ve lost my patience, usually always with types like this one (or always with this one, if it's just one who changes name), despite the wise advice of Hal and kosmogabri. You know, as rationally clear as it is that it’s better to ignore him/them, it’s not always easy, in the heat of the moment.

Here, the wise kosmogabri has preceded me.