The Go-Betweens
Bright Yellow Bright Orange

From the Handbook of the Best Young Prime Ministers of the Last One Hundred and Fifty Years (Walt Disney editions):

Great Work [great work]

The term "Great Work" refers to any grand - or at least historically considered such - endeavor accomplished by the greatest leaders of the Contemporary Age, namely the ineffable Best Young Prime Ministers of the last one hundred and fifty years, during their tenure. But not only that. The "Great Work" is indeed a true and indispensable condition for status [see, for this purpose, the entries in the Handbook: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Vietnam Laos and Cambodia, Abyssinia, Afghanistan and Iraq etc. etc.].
Over the years, however, a group of distinguished literary scholars has studied the issue in depth and decided to reformulate the definition and concept of "Great Work," without necessarily overturning it. The redefinition stemmed from historic and historically disputed issues, and from the study of the biographies, events, and facts of what we can consider the true progenitors - albeit now mummified rather than Botoxed and/or plasticized - of the Best Young Prime Ministers of the last one hundred and fifty years: the Best Young Pharaohs of the last one hundred and fifty years before Christ. Thus, today a "Great Work" is any grand - or at least historically considered such - endeavor or construction accomplished by the greatest leaders of the Contemporary Age, namely the ineffable Best Young Prime Ministers of the last one hundred and fifty years, during their tenure.
Modern Great Works include skyscrapers, imposing military bases and aircraft carriers, especially bridges, rather than pyramids and/or mausoleums, constructions that are now objectively outdated and not very relevant. But let's not make this a matter of common sense, which is notoriously lacking among the qualities of the good Best Young Prime Ministers of the last one hundred and fifty years, but rather a logistical and/or modernist issue. The construction of bridges especially is today, although perhaps overused, the Great Work that has the most immediate impact on the followers, usually not very indoctrinated and quite degraded by television and also by computers, of the Best Young Prime Ministers of the last one hundred and fifty years. It alone, in fact, appears not only as a magnificent architectural work but also as a real challenge of man - despite appearances, the Best Young Prime Ministers of the last one hundred and fifty years - against Nature. Only they, the Best Young Prime Ministers of the last one hundred and fifty years, modern Odysseus Ulysses or Nobody if you will, have the audacity to challenge the waves and sea storms. They face the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis in the waters of the Strait of Messina.

Pico de Paperis

Great works are probably the most manifest representation of how the Western democratic system is, all in all, really not very democratic and representative-participative but rather mere attestation and recognition not even too bureaucratic of the powers held by representatives of historically strong powers in the world of finance and business, media and telecommunications, the mafia. It is curious, by the way, to note how all these strong powers sometimes can coincide in a single group of people/one person.
Before going any further, since I have been accused elsewhere of writing "long-winded texts," and also because it is well-known that - as Guccini sang a few years ago - "one does not make revolutions with long-winded texts, but one can make poetry," as the Handbook above suggests to us, the great work par excellence and most overused, the one that strikes the imagination of the Italian community the most, is the bridge. No, leave Ponti Carlo aside for a moment in - speaking of mummies... - Sofia Villani Scicolone Lorena. You surely have in mind those imposing metal structures aimed at allowing the crossing of a stream of water or any other obstacle? Good, those.
And what bridge, among all, can break into the hearts of the Italian-speaking population more than the fabled and infamous Bridge over the Strait of Messina? Heart of the arguably - personal rules aside - not even very clear program of the Berlusconi government, the construction of this bridge (preliminary works have already started) aimed, as most know, at uniting Calabria and Sicily, seems quite useless to all of us poor mortals. If not to the pockets of some say fortunate and unspecified builder and the mafia - I would add, again by the way, that strangely, often, the interests of these two categories coincide. In this regard, we poor mortals can certainly argue that: A. The bridge will cost quite a bit of euros, which, especially this year, in times of crisis and with the great plague of the cows, as you well know period, colon abundant (etc. etc.) B. The construction of the bridge will not even be a much more practical solution than the improvement of fleet(s) and/or road and highway infrastructures aimed at connecting Sicily with the rest of Italy. See, for instance, the unfortunate and infamous Salerno-Reggio Calabria - in this regard, I am amazed no one has, for example, ever suggested the construction of a magnificent bridge that magically leads from Salerno to Reggio Calabria, but time will tell. C. The current travel times of the strait are not as monstrous as they are portrayed. And this is a fact. D. In this damn country, it is well-known that works are always done poorly. E. The mafia sincerely thanks. F. Let's all have a good "scratch," but even the tuna know - which, in truth, are quite intelligent as well as tasty animals - that southern Calabria and the area of the Strait of Messina are zones of high seismic activity. G. The future Silvio Berlusconi DeLuxe Bridge will allow this character to pass, even geographically and structurally, to history.

It is evident that, as often happens (and I wink at those who, like me, have a certain familiarity with manipulating even very graceful and well-made female bodies), the G point is the one that interests us the most. Indeed, it is enough for us to take a quick look at the Handbook to understand well how fundamental it can be to launch into the construction of a great work, such as the alas could be the Bridge over the Strait of Messina, for a notoriously disputable and deplorable character. Certainly, this construction will allow him, in addition to probably satisfying many other interests primarily and secondarily connected to all the points from A to F, to pass to history more geographically and structurally rather than for his innumerable and well-known misdeeds. After all, history, it is sadly known, is written by those who win and hold power, and the history is full of infamous bridge constructions that bear the name of sad and ominous characters, and it is not even necessary to cross the Atlantic or travel backward through the centuries of centuries to find some examples of architectural dishonesty. I would briefly tell you a story that has to do with the Adriatic and two bridges. A story that speaks of a Great Nation that no longer exists and once was called Yugoslavia. Of an absurd and bloody war blessed by a good pope (imagine the others...) like John Paul II. Of Bosnia and a town called Mostar and of Croatia, which is so popular with Italian tourists and the Papal State, and a town named Dubrovnik. Of a bridge of immortal beauty, the Stari Most, bombed by Croatian secessionist forces in 1993 and only recently (July 2004) rebuilt, and of an absolutely useless cable-stayed bridge that connects the two sides of a fjord (an area otherwise passable in fifteen to twenty minutes by car) once beautiful and which is a real eyesore. I would conclude the story by telling you that this last bridge bears the name of Franjo Tudman. Nothing more than a fucked-up war criminal, antisemitic, fascist, and naturally (what a sadness...) quite loved by much of his compatriots. But probably you already know this story. And you know many other stories like it.

At this point, since all of this is terribly annoying, I'll tell you the story of another bridge. But we must start from afar.

Once upon a time, let's say from 1978 to 2006, although with a significant "pause for reflection" lasting about ten years in between, there were the Go-Betweens from Brisbane (Queensland State, Australia), wonderful creation of two capable and inspired songwriters like few others in the last twenty or thirty years, Mr. Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. Authors of a discreet amount of mostly crepuscular and moderately dark ballads albums, they are - although perhaps anyway too "ignored" - rightly and generally considered among the greatest exponents of Australian pop-rock music. The band achieves the long-awaited success once stationed in London, in the eighties - where, among other things, they are bosom buddies with Nick Cave and his "boys" - when between 1983 and 1988 they lined up a series of not bad Lps: Before Hollywood, Spring Hill Fair, Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express, Tallulah, Sixteen Lovers Lane. This last disc, in particular, recorded in Sydney between 1987 and 1988 and released a few months before the band's dissolution, is considered their greatest success and best work.
However, fortunately and fortuitously, at the beginning of the new millennium, Forster and McLennan, who over the years have tried with varying success some solo work, decide to reunite the band and even manage to make three new albums, The Friends of Rachel Worth, the not too briefly reviewed Bright Yellow Bright Orange and the good Oceans Apart, the last - and unfortunately destined to remain so - Go-Betweens album released in 2005. The following year, in fact, the band will dissolve once again, and this time forever, following the death of Grant McLennan on May 6, 2006, while all his fans still have in their ears the melancholic and evocative ballads of the band's last work, which at this point gains a broader value and becomes a real "testament" of Grant McLennan to all those who have loved (and love) the Go-Betweens.

Bright Yellow Bright Orange, instead, are ten small and wonderful songs recorded in the summer of 2002 between Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne and Paradise Studio in Sydney. Forster and McLennan, accompanied by Adele Pickvance on bass guitar and Glenn Thompson on drums, sign, as is customary, all ten songs. The result is anything but a dirty job. Bright Yellow Bright Orange may not be a masterpiece, but it matters little because the album works. Inside are the Go-Betweens in all their more or less multiple forms. The carefree ones of "Caroline & I" (no Cappio, this time the Caroline of Berlin has nothing to do with it) and "Too Much Of One Thing," the more catchy ones of "Poison in the Walls" and "Make Her Day," the more evocative and melancholic ones of "Crooked Lines," until we reach the two excellent closing tracks of the album, "Something For Myself" and "Unfinished Business," one of the most painful songs of the last decade, one of those that, at the very least, make you understand that the Go-Betweens still had more to say and we will continue to miss them.

However, this story, like the parable of the Go-Betweens, also has an end. Brisbane, like more or less every respectable Anglo-Saxon-derived city, is traversed by its namesake river, the Brisbane River, which flows for about 344 kilometers in southern Queensland before flowing into Moreton Bay about fifty kilometers away from the city of Brisbane. In July 2008, the construction of a bridge over the Brisbane River began, and it should be completed around this time. The choice of the name was left to a popular vote carried out online at http://www.namethatbridge.com/ and winning was the name that honored Brisbane's most famous and important band: Go-Between Bridge - in truth, this name was chosen also because the bridge will be used to easily "go between" Milton and South Brisbane, but these are details, come on! - and, although this "homage" will not fill the void left by this friendly Australian band, we are glad to know that at least this bridge does not bear the name of some more or less infamous "Cain" of human history.

At this point, I do not know if there is a moral to this whole story. Of course, let us not be deceived and let's say it clearly: the construction of the Bridge over the Strait of Messina is a real disgrace. Also because, it is worth making peace with the idea, even if - small consolation - they let us choose the name, I doubt that anyone would think of calling it "Federico Fiumani Bridge."