Nick Drake
Rider on the wheel

Here, I have a teddy bear, his name is Paluk and he is cute.

He is cute and says cute things like "shall we have a snack?" and "you are my best friend".

Then he also says "f*** off, a**hole!" but he doesn't say it to me, he says it to the bad guys.

Someone might think that he is bad too, not because of the swear words though, but because I ended up in a place with white walls because of him.

It seems indeed that only I can see Paluk.

In this place with white walls, there were some men who were also wearing white, and to each one, Paluk said "f*** off, a**hole". But they didn't see Paluk, so they believed it was me saying those bad things.

Ah, that was indeed a strange place, it felt like being on the moon or in a glass of milk filled to the brim. And in that glass, a lot of people were floundering. And, if you have never really floundered, you cannot understand.

But in that place, I met an interesting young man, a certain NIcola Drago, someone who claimed to be the reincarnation of an obscure English singer who died under mysterious circumstances.

Well, this Nicola often sang a cute little song, cute (almost as cute as Paluk) and he did it quite well.

Because those who flounder rarely lack expressiveness.

Well, that song made me reflect...it made me reflect on beauty.

And I thought: there is the masterpiece, but there is also a beauty made of nothing. Little poems of two verses, a glimpse of a street, a girl passing by furtively.

It's just that such beauty cannot be explained...but, precisely because it cannot be, it's beautiful to try.

Like certain conversations when you are kids, where you talk all night. And indeed, you try to explain and talk, talk...

Talk, talk, talk...

And so let's talk too...

Well, in this little song there is a guitar that plays by itself and therefore plays for three...

And a plot like in filigree, where you can glimpse specks of gold and a kind of spring...

A morning song like no other...but with psychotic words like no other too...

It talks, in a confused way, about when one is stuck in the wheel like a little animal in captivity, a hamster, you know...

It talks about when you no longer know who you are...or rather when you are not at all...

But if you don't know English it's the kind of song that seems like a little piece of heaven...

In short, darkness and light..."there's like a memory of light in the dark porch" said a poet I once met...

Darkness and light, which are Nick Drake's specialty, who is that singer who died under mysterious circumstances.

Well, today I'm no longer in that place with white walls...and I adore Nick Drake...

Yes, yes, I adore him...I adore him very much...

And Paluk likes him a lot too, but I've understood that it's better to keep this to myself, it's not good to be friends with a talking teddy bear.

Because someone does know about Paluk, and it's my new girlfriend who is one-third pedagogue, one-third young lady, and one-third cloud. And since she met me, she has also become an ardent Drake fan...

(That Nick Drake usually appeals a lot to girls, especially those who are one-third cloud.)

That one evening, while she was cooking trofie with scamorza and speck, and we were listening to this song, she said:

"I think the trofie will turn out great"...

In fact, they were delicious.

Ps: the song can be found, in slightly different versions, in "Time of No Reply" and "Made to Love Magic," two essential albums of unpublished tracks...

Trallallà...