Marco Masini
Malinconoia

THE REVIEW

Dear diary,

today while tidying up my all-rusty locker I found a little cassette with a cover all dirty and scratched, but I recognized it immediately, it was Masini's 'Malinconoia'.

Wow, when I first heard it I was really just a little kid but I'd been here for a while. I must have been eight or nine years old. The cassette wasn’t mine, but I stole it with punches and kicks from Tanino who had just arrived here. But I had never heard that guy singing, it was just to beat up Tano who was small and always crying, at least that way he'd have a reason. Not that I regret it, because a week after I stole it from Tanino, two people from Milan came who adopted him right away and you could tell they had money and Tanino then could buy all the Malinconoie he wanted.

But then I had the cassette, so I listened to it with the walkman at night in bed in the dark and once Sister Pia caught me not sleeping and hit me under the feet with the bamboo stick, which I still remember, damn Sister Pia even now that she's dead. But then I still listened to it in secret. I liked it because at one point he says damn and I didn’t know you could make songs with bad words sung. Then he said that if you’re alone you become strong and I’ve always been alone, and then there was a part where he got all jealously angry so he could sleep with her and then send her away, like I want to do now with the girl from the bar at the square. Then I thought that if my mom met Masini, he would tell her she was the little Cinderella in love and instead of leaving me by the dumpster she would keep me with her and my grandparents and I wouldn’t end up here with the nuns and Father Luigi who always touches me there, and so my mom might avoid hell even if she was a bit of a slut as Sister Pia used to say. But instead of meeting Masini, she apparently met a jerk, so she’s definitely going to hell.

I don’t know if Masini was good at singing, but I always fell asleep with headphones on while he sang and if he made me sleep, he was good, because you can’t sleep with a dog in your ears. Even though I always had nightmares where they hit me and I died with blood in my mouth.

Then I stopped listening to him because that guy always dressed in black with long hair and full of pimples arrived, the one who swore and they sent away when he put the Jesus upside down in the chapel. I stole from him too, secretly though, the little cassette he always listened to and they were called Coroner, but I didn't listen to them at night because they didn't let me sleep. Then I told him that Michele stole it from him and he beat him up and told me why he spent so much time in the bathroom and so then I was always in the bathroom too and I also got pimples, and I still get some now.

But now I’ve found the Masini cassette again. And tomorrow, if I can, I’ll sell it.