Massimo volume
Il nuotatore

I have to be honest. It took me six years to understand this album.

Separating Massimo Volume's production from Mimì's books and stories is impossible. Not having a piece of the vast puzzle put together over the years means not being able to complete the picture. Evidently, I was missing some pieces.

Clementi, as always, teaches you nothing if you don't have the same scars on your body/soul as he does. Only in this case does the harmony become total. In my case, with a few more years, some defeats, and perhaps too many broken dreams, the "Nuotatore" finally has meaning.

Even though it isn't in an autobiographical register, Clementi talks about his fears after a life of escapes, success, oblivion, disappearances, and returns. In "Il nuotatore," he no longer speaks about freaks, marginalization, paper mache heroes, incredible provincial farces. The narrative perspective shifts from those who have nothing to lose to those who have lost everything.

This time he talks about defeats, failed comebacks, speaks of mala suerte, of fatal indecisions. Lost opportunities, absence. Of capital sins preview of inexorable punishments. Of necessary conformity as a countermeasure to social ascent, a true defeat for those who, like him/me, have lived forever fleeing from it. He speaks of the inevitable, the punishment or countermeasure to vanity.

Once experienced/understood all this, "Il nuotatore" transformed into a punch in the gut aimed at the conscience. Every sound, every verse, finally fits into the puzzle that began on a precise day: April thirteenth, nineteen ninety-five.

Fred? Yes, I'm Fred.

See you in a few years...and you'll find me in Poveglia.