Vinicio Capossela
Canzoni A Manovella

THE REVIEW

"Signora Blutner
don’t dwell
on what’s been
it will not return
if they've auctioned
us all off
now at the auction
give your heart..."

 

The enchantment. What is it?... It is a compact disc stored in a drawer. Of a boring, white-painted nightstand. It, and its drawer. An anonymous drawer like so many others, which inside has... the enchantment. I take it in my hands and bring it to life. And it arrives. It arrives from darkness and light, silent as a whisper, strong as a marching band, small as an ant and large as an elephant. It lights up as if it were the last cigarette, turns off like a switch. It’s disposable like a razor and eternal like a painting. It is a crank, spinning around and spewing stories, tales, characters, lives, and plots. It is the crank of a wanderer who arrives a bit whenever he wants, whenever he can steal a bit of time from his uniqueness, from his journey through the narrow alleys of his own mind. One who fears nothing, armed only with his voice grim as a raven and a bottle of good wine. The rest is a whirlwind of vices, life, art, and songs. A cyclone of fantasy. Something, perhaps even a "everything"; countless steps of a horde of non-human giants, dressed in music each woven differently, sometimes with the clamor of a village band, sometimes with a funeral silence, only to become a polka, or circus music, Greek melody or lament. The listening happens by itself, it is lofty and pompous, well-orchestrated and redundant, full; it flows smoothly like a walk and at times manages to be relaxing. It is not for the weak or the superficial, for those who see music and words only for what they are. It is not for those dedicated to easy comparisons or criticisms. It is for those who love evocative and lively music, that makes you see characters as if they were really there, living their story, before the listener. Just press Play, to see in an explosion of air marching souls towards an uneasy destination, dances between lovers, soldiers fleeing from their fate, men and women drenched by a rain all their own, talking pianos that let themselves dance with nostalgic ladies, undertakers devoted to their sad duty plotting to steal the very corpse they carry; and yet, grand processions behind a maharaja adorned with fantasy and full of reality, a truthful and inspiring moon, roses of a thousand colors for a waiting white sentiment, fluttering brains and cruel death sentences, contracts and divorces, crews bottled up and loves, thousands, billions of loves. You pressed Play and opened your eyes to a world that will not leave you for the next hour, that will make you part of its peculiar and mad life, of things that perhaps happen in reality too, but without our noticing, perhaps. Madness, seen and unseen. Madness, which then ends. As everything ends, as must end even the enchantment, which cannot last forever, otherwise it would not be desired enough, to exist. And so, time takes the rope in hand and draws the curtain.

"the curtain remains... I am leaving, away..."

Ladies and gentlemen, Vinicio Capossela.