Musica on manuel uberti

In compagnia di Bob e Grant

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Da mesi ormai trovarmi davanti alla pagina bianca mi spaventa. Non riesco a scrivere. Non riesco ad usare le parole per rendere concreto ciò che penso come ho sempre fatto.

Per superare questo per me nuovo tipo di blocco ho deciso di prendere la prima cosa che mi viene in mente in questo preciso istante e usarla come punto di partenza.

Dunque, sto ascoltando Hot Wax di Grant Hart. Ad essere sincero, non ho mai dedicato troppa attenzione alle carriere soliste di Bob Mould e Grant Hart. Mi bastano i dischi degli Hüsker Dü, mi dicevo. Posso sempre tornare a quelli ed essere felice di non essermi fermato a Zen Arcade seguendo chi, tra le mie frequentazioni di una ventina di anni fa, lo riteneva l’unico capolavoro del trio americano.

Il mese scorso mi sono trovato a spulciare, ancora una volta, l’archivio del purtroppo defunto Bastonate. Ci ho trovato articoli sulle opere di Bob Mould e di Grant Hart che mi hanno dato la spinta di cui avevo bisogno per approfondire. Ho letto l’autobiografia di Bob Mould, guardato Every Everything: The Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart, e di certo recupererò anche il libro di Michael Azerrad che è ancora a casa dei miei per un bel ripasso.

Da un lato c’è Mould, prolifico ed esigente, una vita di traslochi, scoperta di se stesso, tour sfiancanti e un’inarrestabile urgenza di mettere in musica il proprio sentire, vada come vada. Dall’altro c’è Grant, una manciata di album che sbucano dal nulla di un’esistenza ai margini, la droga, e la morte che ce lo porta via prematuramente.

Con entrambi, però, il tempo non ha avuto la meglio. È rimasta intatta la capacità di usare poche note e poche parole per dire tutto, per riempire ogni vuoto, per segnare, ancora e per sempre, le mie giornate. Poi si può discutere sul fatto che ciò che di significativo avevano da dire lo abbiano detto con gli Hüsker Dü, ma non importa. Anche da soli, separati da una distanza incolmabile, hanno tracciato un percorso in cui ogni sosta ha la sua magia, ogni direzione vale la pena di essere seguita.

È confortevole avere questa musica con me. In quello che è senza ombra di dubbio il periodo più complicato della mia vita aggrapparmi a questa musica è né più né meno una indispensabile forma di salvezza.

My 2025

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here we are again, with another year about to end. You have to excuse me for my silence in the last couple of months, but some things in my life needed particular attention so I haven’t had enough space in my mind to sit down for new writings on this blog.

Even now as I write these words, I am somewhat disconnected from the blank page. In my defense, 2025 has been an emotional roller coaster that I haven’t overcome yet, and I’ve got this bad feeling that 2026 is going to be a hell of a ride for quite some time.

This is to say that this year’s recap won’t look as my usual year’s recap. I’m going to highlight few, memorable things, but that’s it. No lists of any kind, then, just what was worth my while.

work

I lost my job this year, but I was prepared and in September I joined Verlata as a member of the IT department. For the first time in my life I’m working for a social cooperative, which gives a different value to my work. It also asks me to get accustomed to the fact that I won’t be providing software to car factories, banks or insurance companies.

The more I embrace my new career the more it looks like this is a change I was in dire need of. Perhaps it would’ve happened anyway, even if my previous company didn’t shut down. Or maybe not, maybe I needed to be forced into it. Whatever the case, I’m ready now.

education

Thanks to Ribellione Animale I fell in love with nonviolent communication and the world of facilitation. This has led me to join a proper course where I can challenge myself all the time with a new set of skills.

Facilitation is as much about working with a group of people as it is about discovering yourself. It’s a paradigm shift in that it pushes me to look at the world within and around me with another pair of eyes altogether.

What’s more, I’m not even halfway through the course yet and I can safely say it’s going to be a transformative experience.

music

One thing that’s been sort of constant throughout 2025’s most turbulent days is Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, revealed to me in all its intimacy by Warren Zanes’s lovely Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

It’s hard to explain why an old record combining tales of murderers with its author’s past has meant so much. Springsteen’s true intentions here aren’t really clear to me, for instance. Is he trying to sublimate his own experience through the lives of ambiguous characters? Are their stories the evil side of what his conscience is telling us? Is he just a great storyteller and there is nothing more to it?

I don’t know and frankly I don’t care either. What I do know is that Nebraska tells me something relevant to me with every song. And by the way, Scott Cooper’s film inspired by Zanes’s pages is gorgeous.

the end

It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain … remember, remember, this is now, and now and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I don’t want to blot the fear out, and blur the edges of living now. I want to become acutely aware of all that I’ve taken for granted.

— Letter to Edward Cohen, Sylvia Plath

Happy New Year.

Con la coda dell'occhio

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Perché l’affetto quando passa non torna.

— L’arte della gioia, Goliarda Sapienza

È da un po’ che cerco ispirazione. Mi va di aggiornare il blog con qualcosa, ma tutti gli argomenti di cui vorrei scrivere mi scivolano addosso lasciando pochissime tracce meritevoli di essere pubblicate.

Sto leggendo e apprezzando molto L’arte della gioia di Goliarda Sapienza in questi giorni. Mentre lo leggo, però, la mente corre ancora a La morte di Virgilio di Hermann Broch. Un libro quest’ultimo che, pur attestandosi tra i più complessi fra quelli presenti sui miei scaffali, mi ha consegnato le più belle parole dell’anno al momento.

Nonostante mi tenga ancora piuttosto stretto Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, ultimamente ascolto con piacere due dischi nello specifico: Hard Headed Woman di Margo Price e w/ the Producers di Paul St. Hilaire. Country e dub-techno possono convivere fianco a fianco? Sì, e senza litigare per giunta.

Ci sono almeno due film che mi hanno particolarmente, e per motivi diversi, segnato nei giorni scorsi: The Life of Chuck di Mike Flanagan e Together di Michael Shanks. Sono quel genere di cinema che risveglia il mio amore per una passione che tendo sciaguratamente a tenere troppo in secondo piano.

Ognuno dei tre capoversi precedenti, a guardarlo bene, potrebbe fornire lo spunto per un pezzo più lungo. Magari anche più di uno in mani esperte. E poi, non è quello che faccio di solito? Intendo dire, non è di libri, musica e cinema che scrivo e di cui sento il bisogno di scrivere solitamente?

Non riesco a giustificare facilmente la mancanza di stimoli. Mi sento di puntare il dito contro un’esperienza complessa e ancora lontana dal potersi considerare conclusa, nella quale ho visto crescere in me l’affetto per una persona, l’ho visto travolgermi e attraversarmi, per poi prendere una direzione dove solo la coda dell’occhio può ormai percepirlo. Mentre si distanziava subdolamente l’affetto ha deciso di portarsi via qualche pezzo di me. Inutile dire che è necessario ancora uno sforzo per ritrovarmi.

Oppure c’è altro dietro agli stimoli che latitano e devo capire meglio di cosa si tratta. Dopo un paio di mesi senza impiego una nuova avventura è cominciata. È troppo presto per giudicarla obiettivamente adesso, ma se è vero che ho parecchio da fare per essere di nuovo me stesso, allora anche il lavoro dovrà aspettare per vedermi al meglio di quello che posso dare. A patto che questo sia, a tutti gli effetti, il posto dove potere essere la versione migliore di me.

Eppure, in un periodo di questioni irrisolte, ottobre arriva in compagnia di qualcosa di positivo. Annuncerò più in là di cosa si tratta così eviterò di lamentarmi un’altra volta di non avere niente di cui scrivere.

Ethel Cain e la mia catarsi

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Da ieri è disponibile il nuovo album di Ethel Cain, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. Titolo che, nella sua semplicità, annuncia chiaramente quale sarà il tenore dei settanta minuti abbondanti di musica che ci aspettano. Senza un motivo, adoro pensare che lo si legge con l’enfasi su Always, ma può essere che io sia un inguaribile romantico. Come sempre.

Avevo grandi aspettative per questo disco, complice il fatto che sono passati tre anni da Preacher’s Daughter, una di quelle opere che entrano dal nulla nella mia vita e la sanno ribaltare con ogni singolo ascolto. Allo stesso tempo, però, Preacher’s Daugher aveva reso le mie aspettative piuttosto esigenti, per cui è difficile negare che con Willoughby Tucker (d’ora in avanti abbrevio per comodità) temevo di rimanere deluso.

Ethel Cain ha composto altra musica a suo nome oltre a questi due album, ma lei stessa considera Willoughby Tucker propriamente il suo secondo disco, perciò mi piace regolare le aspettative in base alle sue dichiarazioni. Ma, diciamolo, le regolo anche in base al fatto che niente di quello che ha fatto prima e dopo Preacher’s Daughter mi ha conquistato per davvero. Dopo tanti, e mai troppi, ascolti, Willoughby Tucker inverte questa rotta e posso tranquillamente dire che se non siamo dalle parti del precedente, poco ci manca.

Messa da parte la mia poco interessante opinione estetica, vorrei soffermarmi su cosa significa Willoughby Tucker per me in questo periodo. Di musica ne esce tanta e ne ascolto tanta, ma in che senso Ethel Cain ha contribuito alla mia catarsi? Cosa c’entra quello che sto vivendo e come lo sto attraversando con questo disco in particolare?

Senza scendere troppo nel personale, diciamo che Ethel Cain sembra stia raccogliendo pezzi che ho lasciato per strada negli ultimi mesi per comporre un puzzle che è più chiaro a lei che a me. Proprio la mancanza di chiarezza mi spinge a tornare a Willoughby Tucker ancora e ancora, perché a ogni ascolto sento un nuovo pezzo andare a incastrarsi perfettamente. Nelle parti strumentali e nei silenzi, è come se mi fosse chiesto di prendermi il giusto tempo per guardare di nuovo al puzzle con una maggiore consapevolezza.

Cosa pretenda da me Ethel Cain non mi è dato saperlo. La storia di Willoughby Tucker non è felice e solo a tratti rispecchia la mia vita recente. Quei tratti sono però quello di cui avevo bisogno, ora più che mai. Esattamente come c’era riuscita con Preacher’s Daughter, Ethel Cain ritorna per riposizionarmi nel mio percorso indicandomi una nuova strada. Si riparte, dunque. Un’altra volta. Come sempre.

Una canzone in particolare

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Penso possa capitare a chiunque, in specifici momenti di una giornata qualunque, di ascoltare una canzone in particolare. A me, banalmente, succede sempre quando sembrano mancare i consueti appigli emotivi. Dunque mi rifugio in un luogo sicuro perché so che lì, anche se per pochi minuti, posso smettere di preoccuparmi del senso delle cose.

Poi quei minuti finiscono, chiaramente. È inevitabile, non importa quante volte io possa pigiare repeat. La musica a un certo punto si spegne e la canzone finisce. I pensieri, allora, riprendono il loro corso più o meno da dove si erano fermati. Rimane la certezza di poter tornare di nuovo a quella canzone in particolare, e con essa la consapevolezza di poter arrestare, ancora per qualche minuto, i miei pensieri.

Ho sempre apprezzato questa funzione, chiamiamola così, terapeutica della musica. È una funzione che, in un certo senso, la musica svolge sempre e da sempre per me. Anche quando credo che si stia limitando a intrattenermi, una canzone in particolare, in realtà, sta facendo qualcosa di più. Credo, cioè, che stia rispondendo a un preciso bisogno. A ben vedere, mi sembra andare a riempire una precisa mancanza.

Al tempo stesso, la canzone in particolare porta con sé un effetto diverso rispetto a quello provato con il ritorno a un disco in particolare. Quando torno a un album specifico, nella maggior parte dei casi lo faccio perché non ho voglia di musica nuova. Ho voglia di musica, sì, ma mi accontento del comfort del già noto. Evidentemente anche qui la musica sta rispondendo a un bisogno, ma direi che è qualcosa di meno impegnativo, emotivamente parlando.

D’altro canto, perché negli istanti di fragilità non mi rivolgo a qualcosa di più lungo e duraturo? Non sarebbero meglio i quaranta minuti di un disco piuttosto che i tre minuti e mezzo di una canzone in particolare?

È proprio il suo limite temporale, però, a rendere la canzone in particolare così significativa. Per superare un dato momento di oscurità, ho bisogno di credere che sia sufficiente una canzone in particolare. In altre parole, è come se l’oscurità possa e debba durare solo il tempo necessario per farmi ascoltare quella canzone in particolare.

Pur non avendo mai preso nota di tutte le canzoni in particolare che mi hanno aiutato ad attraversare periodi complicati, le ricordo tutte facilmente. Alcune di esse sono su dischi che oggi ancora ascolto, di tanto in tanto. Le altre sono svanite con il buio che avevano il compito di illuminare, ma non per questo sono meno importanti.

Oggi la canzone in particolare è Darkness dei Pinegrove.

Premo play, adesso.

A dopo.

My 2024

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

2024 has been a mixed bag of delight, anger, frustration, joy, and disappointment. A year of questions, connections, and self-determination. There have been many beautiful things that I know I’m going to treasure, but unfortunately they didn’t come alone.

It’s fair to say then that 2024 has pushed me to reconsider many things, myself included. How far this is going to get me it’ll be next year’s real challenge.

Anonymous for the Voiceless

In terms of emotional turmoil this has to be the central experience of my 2024.

My journey with Anonymous for the Voiceless was what I needed to finally engage with activism. It also led me to meet awesome people who make me fell less alone in my resistance to a status quo that doesn’t understand how to care.

At the same time something didn’t seem quite right to me, and when everything fell apart I understood the true nature of this organisation and decided to leave.

However, I don’t intend to stop with my activism because of this sad outcome. I only need a better project to do it, so I’m exploring options.

Bluesky

Despite all my doubts and concerns I joined Bluesky last month and so far I’ve been enjoying the experience. I found a rich community of philosophers and academics sharing worthwhile content most of the time.

On the other hand, it doesn’t appear to be an entirely safe space. I also tend to get tired rather quickly with social media, especially if I feel like I’m wasting hours following nothing in particular.

Therefore when my next round-up comes I may not be on Bluesky any more.

Books

I thought over and over again about my favourite books of 2024. It hasn’t been an easy task and I already know I’ll regret leaving some great reads out.

In order to avoid any further crime, I’m going to use a basic alphabetical order to list the most relevant titles, hence no real preference will be expressed. Here we go:

Animali si diventa (Federica Timeto)
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
Calibano e la strega (Silvia Federici)
Checkout 19 (Claire-Louise Bennett)
Cospirazione animale (Marco Reggio)
Del governo degli animali (Benedetta Piazzesi)
Dialoghi sulla religione naturale (David Hume)
Elizabeth Costello (J. M. Coetzee)
Estinzione (Thomas Bernhard)
The Fortnight in September (R. C. Sherriff)
Letteratura come utopia (Ingeborg Bachmann)
Lettere dal carcere (Antonio Gramsci)
A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara)
Malina (Ingeborg Bachmann)
Perturbamento (Thomas Bernhard)
Poesie (Paul Celan)
Under the Skin (Michael Faber)
L’uomo senza qualità (Robert Musil)

Random notes:

Ingeborg Bachmann should be a mandatory read everywhere in the world;
every book I read about non-human animals makes me a better human one;
Paul Celan will keep me busy for at least another life;
Robert Musil is the perfect excuse to avoid direct sunlight;
Claire-Louise Bennett is the right writer at the right time;
Liberazioni has become my favourite periodical.

Missing from the list are a couple of books I spent a good chunk of hours on: the first volume of Karl Marx’s Il Capitale and György Lukács’ Storia e coscienza di classe. I have yet to recover from these challenging and deeply rewarding works, but everything I’ve been learning will stay with me.

Cinema

Overall I had great times with my old passion for cinema this year. The following selection is not strictly related to 2024 films because there is always something I missed from previous years. Anyway, here it is:

All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh)
The Animal People (Denis Henry Hennelly, Casey Suchan)
La Bête (Bertrand Bonello)
Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke)
Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)
The Dreamed Ones (Ruth Beckermann)
Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard)
L’étè dernier (Catherine Breillat)
Food for Profit (Giulia Innocenzi, Paolo D’Ambrosi)
Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)
Here (Robert Zemeckis)
Judas And the Black Messaiah (Shaka King)
Sex (Dag Johan Haugerud)
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Soi Cheang)
The Young Karl Mark (Raoul Peck)

Random notes:

nothing has come close to the devastating effect All of Us Strangers has had on me, and I won’t forget it any time soon;
Food for Profit should be a mandatory watch everywhere in the world;
sometimes a giant monster is all I need to be happy;
yes, Soi Cheang, I love Hong Kong cinema too;
if Karl Marx was as sexy as Peck’s version of him, why isn’t everyone a sworn Marxist yet?

Heart of Clojure

Beside confirming itself as the best conference I’ve ever been to, Heart of Clojure has had the perhaps unintentional side effect of forcing me to rethink my position in the IT world. I’ve been working on this ever since I got back from Leuven, but I have a long way ahead of me.

Other questions arose as well. Maybe one day I’ll come back to them with the proper state of mind and I’ll share my findings.

Music

What follows is a chart as temporary as any other, apart from the first two spots which are by miles the records I needed the most this year. Without further ado, then:

SEI ALMENO UN PO’ FELICE? (Olympia Mare)
Diamond Jubilee (Cindy Lee)
Brat (Charli XCX)
This Could Be Texas (English Teacher)
All of This Awaits You (Swami And the Bed of Nails)
stillness stop: you have a right to remember (Any Other)
Make It Fit (Karate)
Light Sides (Angie McMahon)
A Polaroid for Christmas (Memoria Polaroid)
Revival of a Friend (Sour Widows)
Searching (Staples Jr. Singers)
Where Next? (Sandwell District)

Random notes:

the deluxe edition of The Get Up Kids’s Something to Write Home About made me cry ten seconds after the vinyl started spinning;
a Marta Del Grandi’s concert proved that she is truly from another planet;
I’ve been listening to Pinegrove for an insane amount of hours in the last few months. I miss them so much.

University

There is little I can add to what I wrote already, so let me just say one thing. A younger version of myself couldn’t understand the value of studying at university. That boy had to undergo trials and errors, but he got there eventually. So much so he can’t really stop now.

To be honest in the last month I’ve had some doubts about what I really want to pursue with my studies. I’ll come back to this as soon as my mind is clear. For now, I see interesting paths in front of me.

The jubilee of Cindy Lee

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Look in the mirror
A face you know too well
If this is heaven
I’m going straight to hell

— Golden Microphone, Cindy Lee

I’ve started writing this blog post at least five times already, looking for the best way to dive into my reflections on Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee. The old-versus-new angle, the time-versus-engagement perspective, and the double-disc-in-this-day-and-age point of view are but a few of the beginnings I’ve tried. Every single time the opening paragraph felt wrong, leading to nothing in particular and thus being utterly useless.

The thing is Diamond Jubilee had its moment earlier this year, when everyone in the music business was talking about this seemingly absurd record, repeating the story of its origin over and over again. Sure, the release on GeoCities and YouTube, the fuck Spotify! stance of its authors, even the US tour cancellation, all make for great anecdotes, but why does Diamond Jubilee have such an impact on me?

To a certain extent it’s precisely because of everything surrounding it. The /r/cindylee subreddit, for example, full of people sharing everything and more about Cindy Lee, has thrown me back to a time, almost fifteen years ago, when my partner and I had a blog on all things Neutral Milk Hotel. We translated lyrics into Italian, wrote news and thoughts about Jeff Mangum’s future, and got in touch with amazing people overseas who kindly sent us rare live footage. I’m deeply fond of that pre-social-network period of the digital era, even though I know it’s easier in today’s web to find like-minded strangers. Anyway, when music channels people’s enthusiasm beyond the mere pleasure of listening, I’m always moved. This is the pure energy that music delivers no matter one’s opinion of it, its raw power able to cross physical and psychological distances.

Furthermore, Diamond Jubilee makes me feel like I felt when I fell in love with the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs. These are two of my all-time favourite records and they happen to be long and unafraid of pushing stylistic conventions to their liking, much like Cindy Lee’s daring venture into the sublime does. A long album is like an invitation to enter a special place, a place whose owner is confident enough to ask for quite a lot of one’s own time so they can unfold an unorthodox amount of tales for them. I have but the utmost admiration for artists who truly believe that people will appreciate their willingness to share so much with them.

Speaking of actual content, if one trusts the press then Diamond Jubilee is otherworldly and unique, either an experimental rendition of Twin Peaks’ sounds re-engineered by Phil Spector’s machinery or bubblegum pop for the end of the world. To me Cindy Lee are delivering a lonely goodbye, written for everyone and spelled to nobody. I feel alone when I listen to Diamond Jubilee, and I get the impression that its authors feel alone too. Some say that this is a nice soundtrack for an on the road trip to somewhere far, but I’d rather not drive to these songs because I know they’d point me towards a different direction, eventually taking me to an unpredictable destination. Whatever Cindy Lee sing about seems to come from people who are tired of everything, sounds and words echoing each other to no avail. When the voice leaves and the instruments develop the melody, I am put in a room with the eerie sensation of being lost in a space I should know by heart. If this is Cindy Lee’s idea of jubilee I wonder what exactly they are celebrating here. Whether it’s their demise or the world’s, I see no diamonds. I only hear them.

Fake nostalgia is the real emo

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Last Friday, the 25th anniversary edition of The Get Up Kids’ Something to Write Home About came out. It was an incredibly emotional moment for all the people who had been there in 1999 when the record was first released. Late ’90s saw the rise of nu metal on the charts, brit pop stepping aside to let Radiohead in, Britney Spears moving hearts and bodies, and music download seriously taking off courtesy of Napster. Something to Write Home About seemed unaware of all this and some people loved the record even more for it.

At least this is what I heard and read over the weekend. I was not there, not in spirit anyway, so what do I know? Too young and out of pretty much anything related to alternative music news, I was just discovering grunge and brit pop back in 1999 before adolescent’s rage diverted me to nu metal. It took a full dose of Fugazi and the AmRep catalogue to set me back on the right track. Still, The Get Up Kids were nowhere in my radar.

Fast forward to 2007. A nice guy on a now-dead internet forum introduced me to Quicksand and Rival Schools in order to kick off my post-hardcore phase. Once Drive Like Jehu and Texas Is the Reason settled in my stereo I learnt to appreciate the Emo music that I was hardly seeing on television. However, it was 2009 by then. The Get Up Kids had broken up and they had also reunited and, let’s be honest, I did not pay that much attention. I thought certain kind of music I attached my younger self to was not relevant to me any more. I was wrong, so wrong.

Another fast forward. 2017. New job, new commute. Time on public transport has always been a great time for listening to music. Unfathomable reasons had put some heavy stuff back in my ears. Luckily nothing related to nu metal. Instead, post-hardcore and noise were, once again, my go-to genres, but it was not just about old, beloved records. It took me very little time to catch up with what I missed and this was when I gave The Get Up Kids another, proper chance. I started with Something to Write Home About and it all ended with Something to Write Home About.

I know The Get Up Kids are more than an incredible record. Yet, just as all I need from Trail of Dead is Worlds Apart, Something to Write Home About is everything I could ask for to Matt Pryor and his band mates. The interesting thing is that whatever I link this music to has nothing to do with the historical significance of The Get Up Kids releasing these songs in 1999, nor are there tears of sadness for a particular live performance I missed.¹ And to be frank, how can I relate to lyrics about break-ups, one-night stands, and betrayals of all sorts? Is this really me?

I have records in my collection that I consider specifically mine. Not in an overprotective parent sort of way, but mine in terms of I just do not share them with anyone. For starters, my partner does not like them, and that is fine since we came from different musical backgrounds anyway. More than that, though, these are records where I find a side of me that I like to keep for myself. They remind me of what-ifs and situations I could have approached better, they open up a world where certain feelings make more sense, they act as the friend I want to confess things to. These records have songs that I sing along when I am alone and only when I am alone, afraid to let too much out. Something to Write Home About may very well be the leader of the pack here, and I am grateful The Get Up Kids gave me another excuse to lose myself into it.

Savvy people told me the 2009 gig in Bologna is still one of the best show they have ever been. I do not hate them for this, I swear. ↩︎

Dance, dance, little dancer

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Olympia Mare (Bandcamp)

Sometimes it happens that out of nowhere music hits me harder than expected. Of course a book or a film can work in the same way through me, but the funny thing with music is the total randomness of its power. Literature and cinema are safe places for me. I usually have a specific reason to read a book and film criticism keeps me up to date with what I want to watch. Therefore, if I am not liking the pages in my hands or the images in front of me I mostly have myself to blame for the bad choice.

Music is different. I cannot resist listening to new albums, but at the same time I am not doing much to follow trends and releases. More importantly, whereas I favour certain types of books and films, when it comes to music I do not stick to a particular genre, which means I do not shy away from radio-friendly pop sensations just as I am always excited to discover underground musicians and independent labels.

On the other hand, this cautiously vague approach to new music does not welcome change easily. Take summer time, for instance. To my ears these months call for easy listening, good-for-driving songs, something to chill out without overthinking too much because we already have to take care of our sweat. So why does Olympia Mare’s SEI ALMENO UN PO' FELICE? have become my go-to record in the past weeks?

It is difficult to put into words. It is true that nowadays I mostly gravitate towards deceptively simple music, picking up quiet vibes instead of loud riffs. No wonder then Olympia Mare found their way to me. Their songs are as far away from complexity as possible, beautifully naive in their lack of pretentiousness. They sing of everything and nothing really, they play as friends invited over to not surprise anyone but the host of the party that is all in their head. With the risk of sounding a tad too nostalgic, one possible explanation for my devoted attachment to Olympia Mare is the way they remind me of how I got to where I am right now.

Again, it is hard to explain. When one relies on their feelings to describe something being objective becomes impossible, and so to me Olympia Mare is trains and subways and buses and all the cities I lived in and walked through. It is nights spent chatting with long-distance friends on a fragile internet connection, the Greenwich meridian and breakfasts on tiny tables in tiny apartments, furniture that does not exist any more, pubs out of old churches, parks where everything seemed possible and beaches where little made sense, people on stage screaming at me screaming back at them, buying tea with not enough experience to understand the difference among tea leaves and not really caring too much about it, political thoughts I cannot put my finger on, relatives that are no more and habits that never leave, an old man younger than his son and a young woman that I want to be young forever, waving hands and a wedding dress, a book of love and loving books. All of this and the only laugh I care for in between.

When music overwhelms me like this I know that I have a record I will hold dear for a long, long time. And even if it is all so relative I am absolutely convinced of it.

Everything that is born dies

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I am still processing the contents of a message that one of my favourite bands shared early today. A gravestone, that is.

This annoucement hit me hard. They published what looked like the first half of a new record five months ago and then they toured Italy for a while, hence I was ready for the new record and another chance to catch a live show. However, unless there is a cruel joke behind those dates up there, this is never going to happen now.

I have their records to return to, obviously, but a huge part of me is no more. More importantly, people who had been keeping the spirit of underground music alive since the early 2000s have put an end to a long, beautiful story.

Maybe they will be back some day with a new name and new sounds, new ideas and new friends. I sincerely hope so. And yet all will be different, me and them.

My 2023

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Another year, another recap. 2023 has been a strange bunch of months for different reasons. Last year I complained about not finding enough motivation with my studies and the book clubs I had joined. 2023, on the other hand, has been definitely better in these regards. I will return to my studies later when I will deal with my favourite books, but in terms of book clubs I am now a member of the Proust Society of Greenwich and I have found myself deeply involved in monthly discussions on my favourite author. A rewarding experience to say the least, something I would like to expand on soon.

Anyway, let’s proceed.

Emacs

I have to say 2023 has seen few experiments with the one and only text editor. I have moved around completion solutions just to rely on the standard, built-in one eventually, because it has been much improved in Emacs 29 and therefore in the development version I use as well. The one thing I was missing is a predictable behaviour for the window containing the *Completions* buffer. Basically, I want this window to always pop up at the bottom.

(add-to-list
 'display-buffer-alist
 '("\\*Completions*\\*"
   (display-buffer-reuse-mode-window display-buffer-at-bottom)))

Furthermore, I have been relying a lot on project-compile to run unit and integration tests and execute shadow-cljs when needed. Speaking of Cloure, I have played around a bit with clojure-ts-mode with nothing to be sad about, although I have yet to find corner cases which regular clojure-mode seriously struggles with.

Learning French

Early this year I briefly mentioned my intention to learn French in order to read the entirety of Proust’s oeuvre. I started with the popular Duolingo, but after a while I was tired of random phrases without context. I cannot learn a language like this. At most this is good for practising and revising.

Therefore I went with the good old way: a proper course with a professional language teacher. I looked for one on Preply until I found the teacher with the right qualifications. Everything has been great so far, my basic knowledge of French has already improved a lot.

Along with the lessons I have been following the same approach I had used in the past to learn English: language exposure. I watched my first French film without English subtitles (Roman Polanski’s J’accuse), I read my first French book with a dictionary on the side and no translation to help me (Neige Sinno’s Triste tigre), I have been reaching for French news (Franceinfo and France 24), and I have been keeping a grammar book next to me for some extra practice.

All of this would not make much sense if I had not set a goal for myself, which is a DELF B2 certification. It will take time, but I will get there.

Books

First, the usual selection from this year’s readings:

I piaceri e i giorni (Marcel Proust)
Jean Santeuil (Marcel Proust)
Saggi (Marcel Proust)
Vita di Marcel Proust (Jean Yves-Tadié)
Giovanni’s Room (James Baldwin)
Teoria del romanzo (Guido Mazzoni)
Le vite del romanzo (Thomas Pavel)
The Idiot (Elif Batuman)
Sulla poesia moderna (Guido Mazzoni)
Either/Or (Elif Batuman)
Bel Ami (Guy De Maupassant)
Blonde (Joyce Carol Oates)
Fontamara (Ignazio Silone)
Senza intellettuali (Giorgio Caravale)
Triste tigre (Neige Sinno)

There is no need to explain again why Proust is there. Nonetheless, here are some additional notes:

literary theory is a wonderful thing;
I consider Elif Batuman one of the most interesting writers out there. Her newsletter is a nice way to entertain me while I eagerly wait for her next book;
Blonde hit me on so many levels that I have struggled to find something interesting to write about it. I honestly believe it is one of the greatest books I have ever put my eyes on;
Triste tigre started as an exercise because I wanted to read something in French and it has ended up being an emotional tour de force. A Lolita from the other side if you will.

There is another author that has played an important role in the last months, but I have not put him on the list because I have only studied bits and pieces of his writings so far. Still, since it has already been moving me in so many ways,¹ he deserves a mention: Antonio Gramsci. Thanks to a course on political philosophy I have finally had the chance to study Gramsci more closely and work on my rather sparse knowledge of him. The more I dig the more he is leaving a mark on me as great as Spinoza’s.

Music

The new records from RVG and Angie McMahon came out right when I needed them this year. RVG showed up with their best album so far, fiercely personal and less obvious about its roots than the two before, while McMahon healed her wounds with an open letter from her heart to the world, as close to a real-life hug as possible.

I should also put Róisín Murphy here. Even though her controversial statements ruined her party, I still believe her latest effort is fantastic. And let’s not forget about Paul St. Hilaire, who came back after many years with all the dub vibes one could ask for.

As for Italy, I am glad the people behind the music festival I mentioned last year are back with a new place for great live music. Thanks to them I found out about Trust The Mask and their lovely Idiom. It was impossible to stay still at the concert, a sign of undeniable quality. I have also the utmost respect for the intrepid Daniela Pes, whose Spira sounds like nothing else around me, and only good words for Marta Del Grandi and The Thugs.

However, boygenius’ the record and, to a lesser extent, the follow-up EP the rest are what 2023 has been mostly all about in terms of music. The vinyl did not come cheap, but the record has been pretty much my go-to album until McMahon stole its thunder. It does not matter, anyway, because boygenius are a storm and they still have plenty a thunder to share.

As for older music, I have fallen madly in love with Ada Oda, who are clearly here to remind me new wave is as relevant for me today as it was back in my youth, and I have found something worth of attention in Andrew WK’s most recent and less appreciated albums. They cannot match the wild rides of his first two works but at least they do find him at peace with himself somehow.

Cinema

Just as it has been a great year for studying and reading, cinema has found its way to my heart again. The following is a mixed selection of titles from 2023 and from 2022, because I had so much to catch up with.

Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan)
La Nuit du 12 (Dominik Moll)
Novembre (Cédric Jimenez)
Coma (Bertrand Bonello)
Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
Blonde (Andrew Dominik)
Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron)
Malum (Anthony DiBlasi)
Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli)
Bodies Bodies Bodies (Halina Reijn)
Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
Bottoms (Emma Seligman)
Ferrari (Michael Mann)
Priscilla (Sofia Coppola)
May December (Todd Haynes)

As I did with books, some extra notes:

French cinema is still able to say things like nobody else;
Blonde is absolutely fantastic and I wonder if my appreciation for it could explain why I feel so distant from most contemporary film critics;
James Cameron is once again reinventing cinema;
I am so happy that horror films still talk to me;
I did not need Ferrari to love Michael Mann, but I am glad he wanted to make sure my feelings have not changed.

So much so that the critical editions of his Notebooks and Letters are already next to me. ↩︎

Bandcamp and independent music

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When I heard of Bandcamp joining Epic Games I had mixed feelings. Since I have been out of the gaming world for years¹ I know next to nothing about Epic Games. All I know is that an independent music platform has become part of something bigger and way more powerful, but the extent of this giant’s interest in music, and indie musicians in particular, eludes me.

A year or so after the acquisition I read about workers at Bandcamp unionising.² Not too long after Bandcamp decided to react and I am sure the muscles upstairs backed them up swiftly.

I will need more details about this whole story in order to understand what is really going on, but even as it is, I cannot help but question how I should act now with regards to Bandcamp. You see, I love Bandcamp and use it regularly. I buy records from independent artists³ and I don’t remember how many musicians I have bumped into just by randomly browsing the website.⁴ This doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy buying music from my favourite local store, which still makes me feel like I did when I bought my very first CD, or that I don’t get excited when I can chat with musicians selling their merchandise right after the live gig.

However, Bandcamp makes supporting independent music a couple of clicks away, while giving me the pleasure of sending a message to the people behind a record instead of a random seller on Discogs. It’s not really laziness, is it? Back in my twenties, I rarely had the chance to support, say, Australian artists in such a direct way. When Amazon became a standard for online shopping I thought that was it, and to a certain degree it was,⁵ but there is so much independent music struggling to survive that whenever avoiding middle men is possible I am all for it.

Amazon is cheap and used items on Discogs are a bargain, I am well aware of the situation. Not to mention the streaming services I ignore on purpose since stacking records on my shelves is a much more relaxing experience. But even with digital records, which I buy only sometimes otherwise I would have to sleep on a mattress made of vinyls and CDs, Bandcamp does not make me feel like the bad guy who rips off artists shouting “sharing is caring, man!” to justify the ZIP archives frantically downloaded from advertisement-loaded corners of the web.

Don’t get me wrong, I was around during the early age of file sharing and there were tons of music in and out my primitive Internet connection, but that didn’t stop me from buying records. The thing is Bandcamp offers a relief to my conscience, because now I can get a preview of a track or a whole album to get a general idea of its sound, decide if I care enough to spend some money for the digital version, or show some love and order the much more rewarding vinyl edition, all of it without backstabbing small bands or young DJs from rural towns.

Considering that I don’t keep up with music-related news and releases like I used to, this is even more precious. Nowadays when I want to listen to new music I bounce around labels, bands sharing their favourite acts, solid advice from shrewd friends⁶ and that’s it basically. It’s always nice when I hear or read about a new name and I can find more about them on Bandcamp, which means I can learn about their music by actually listening to it instead of reading reviews or other sort of comments.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I used to write —rather poorly, I must say— about music, so I kind of know the value of a good review for the reader, who maybe gains more insights from a different point of view, but especially for the musician, who may actually need as much press as possible to reach a wider audience. And yet, having been a music enthusiast for most of my life, I know the sounds I like and I can easily understand whether that new record is what I am after or not. Bandcamp is just the right place at the right time for someone like me.

What now, then? Obviously I don’t want to stop supporting my favourite musicians. At the same time I cannot afford to attend every single concert in order to buy their last work because the middle man is playing dirty tricks while faking good behaviour to prevent opposition. And of course I cannot just write to all of them complaining about the Bandcamp situation and asking them to find a different option for sharing their sounds. If you love music boycotting Bandcamp puts the artists, and not just you, on a dangerous path. This is not the world a sappy seventeen-year old with an awkward smile, leaving the country side on a forty-minutes bus ride to get to a record store, would have imagined waking up to.

Though the Wipeout HD online community will always have a special place in my heart. ↩︎
See: Workers at Epic-owned Bandcamp are unionising because “It’s not enough to get small wins alone” and @bandcampunited. ↩︎
The last record I bought is from Lleroy. ↩︎
Off the top of my head I would say RVG, a band particularly dear to me. ↩︎
For English books and specific Blu-ray editions I often have only Amazon to rely on. ↩︎
The list of artists trustworthy people put into my ears is endless. To name just a few of the ones I am more grateful for: Angie McMahon, Terre Thaemlitz, Róisín Murphy, Nina Nastasia… ↩︎

My 2022

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This year I am going to approach my usual recap in a different way. Instead of separating best-of lists I will look back at 2022 in a single writing to keep it simple.

2022 will not be remembered as a particularly stimulating time. For instance, I have struggled to keep my enthusiasm alive when it comes to university. This is not solely because of the whole mess with dual lessons, but it encompasses the quality of the courses and what I have been learning as well. Maybe I will return on this at some point in the future, but for now let me just add that once again I can’t wait to get it over with. Almost the same reasoning can explain why I left the two book clubs I had joined in 2021. I was not pleased by the reading choices nor by the discussions around them, and more often than not it felt like I was putting obstacles between me and the books I want to read. But let’s set aside the negativity for a while and see what really mattered this year.

Emacs

I usually document my Emacs adventures on this website so I’ll be brief. For the ever-present and more reliable software in my computing life this has been the first year fully away from Magit and MELPA. The built-in VC system has been a trustworthy companion, and the combination of GNU ELPA and NonGNU ELPA has provided the few external packages I need. Speaking of packages, Eglot deserves a mention. It’s true that I don’t use it for work, but whenever I deal with academic writings (LaTeX) or hobby projects (Haskell) Eglot has made me appreciate some of the goodies that LSP has to offer. Another package worth being included here is detached.el, which I’ve been using to run commands like bundle, yarn, and shadow-cljs from shell-mode without losing control of the buffer. So neat.

SourceHut

Early this year I moved my projects from GitHub to SourceHut. This was such an important step for me because for my repositories I don’t want to worry about actions, notifications, unnecessary JavaScript, and giant corporations stalking my code. SourceHut firmly avoids all of that and provides the user with a small set of great tools. GitHub helped me to get out of my cave and learn how to share and collaborate with others, something not to be underestimated. However, SourceHut cares. The least I could do was joining them to support this wonderful act of caring.

DivestOS

After almost six years, in May I decided to leave the default Fairphone OS behind and look for something different. The experience with DivestOS has been so fantastic I had to make a donation to this awesome project. My phone battery now lasts longer than ever before and the user interface is generally more responsive, but the true value of this OS is that I have a Google-free Fairphone 2 that works as expected. For a person who has basic needs when it comes to their smartphone and wishes for better privacy, DivestOS is the perfect solution.

Books

From the book lover perspective 2022 has been intense, and I am not referring to the total number of pages I read. What I mean is the profound quality of the works I’ve been through and the hours spent thinking both while reading and after the turn of the last page. Even in the one case where I got angry at the author it was still worth it. Here are the most rewarding readings of the past months:

Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
In the Eye of the Wild (Nastassja Martin)
Cecilia e le streghe (Laura Conti)
Malvina, or the Heart’s Intuition (Maria Wirtemberska)
Le Père Goriot (Honoré de Balzac)
Beloved (Toni Morrison)
Spinoza’s Religion: A New Reading of the Ethics (Clare Carlisle)
Horcynus Orca (Stefano D’Arrigo)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
The Pale King (David Foster Wallace)
In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust)

Most of these are classics so you don’t really need my words to pick them up. Still, it’s safe to say that for one reason or another they all are experiences to treasure, worth the time and the effort that they require. If you are wondering where philosophy fits in my 2022 readings, I can say Kant, Hegel, and Deleuze are the authors I have spent a great deal of days on, but there has been room for Spinoza, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Adorno too.

Music

As an avid music listener and record collector, I feel a bit ashamed in this regard. The only records I bought this year are Big Time by Angel Olsen and II by Liberato, but Olsen’s costed me a small fortune, so there goes my banal excuse for not sticking more with music in 2022.

Anyway, some of my best experiences had more to do with concerts. I went to a little festival last summer, called Upside Fest, created by the same people behind the loveliest place for beer and live music around here that sadly did not survive the pandemic. The festival was all about independent music, workshops, and being friendly to each other, which is the sort of spirit the organizers always put in everything they do. It took place in the small park of what long ago was the castle of the town, a cozy and quiet environment which invites everyone to massive chill out sessions. It’s impossible to come out bored or unhappy when these people are involved.

On the opposite side of the intimacy spectrum, I finally attend a Liberato’s live performance. The show has been postponed multiple times due to COVID-19, but eventually they did it and it was glorious. I am not too fond of big concerts and huge crowds these days, but Liberato is some of the best music Italy has at the moment so I could not miss it. He pretty much remixed all of his tracks, interpolating covers and extending them with new beats for the entire set. We danced (well, jumped around mostly) and yelled Neapolitan words for two hours. Fun times indeed.

Cinema

I know this is going to sound horrible coming from a self-proclaimed cinephile, but all things considered I have not been able to feel moved, involved, passionate with a film not already part of my Blu-ray and DVD collection. I can mention Elvis and Kimi as pleasant and interesting movies, but titles such as Deep Water, Armageddon Time, and Crimes of the Future were just below my expectations. The only exception to this bleakness is The Fabelmans, which although formulaic, predictable, and not up there with the best from Steven Spielberg, shows love for the art and it understands where the heart fits among the images. It reminded me of Zhang Yimou’s One Second, hence storytelling for the sake of telling.

It looks like I have been approaching films with a precise idea of what I wanted from them, which is obviously not the right thing to do. Cinema owes me nothing and it’s up to me to be open and apply my mind accordingly. I see myself getting tired quickly with recent films, throwing around comparisons and unable to accept what is in front of me. I have not been keeping up with new releases, at least not as much as I used to, so I don’t have the proper tools to understand where cinema is going and why. I hope this is just some sort of vacation from one of my deepest and oldest loves in order to regain the mindset to be at peace with it again.

Forget the old dream

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 14 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Since music plays a huge part in my life, I am always interested in seeing not just how cinema leverages it, but also how music can make use of cinema to offer new angles from which to approach it. I already wrote about music videos and film concerts, and yet Angel Olsen’s Big Time poses a different problem: has music become cinema or is it something new altogether?

Accompanying a record with visuals is not a novelty, of course, nor is using music for a film which ends up highlighting the music itself (e.g., Prince’s Purple Rain). However, Olsen places Big Time in a peculiar position. It’s not a concert film, it’s not a narration of the record’s concept by means of images, and it’s not even a re-telling of the album’s songs via loosely connected music videos. She wanted something different for her sixth full-length work.

Big Time (Kimberly Stuckwisch and Angel Olsen, 2022)

To understand Big Time as a whole one must immerse themselves in Olsen’s present history insofar as she is willing to disclose it to the public. Much has changed in her life since the 2019’s marvel that is All Mirrors. A year later she shared the true origins of that album with the instrumentally more intimate Whole New Mess. Then, collected both records plus demos, remixes, and covers in Songs of the Lark and Other Far Memories, which is to say she wanted to be done once and for all with this troublesome time in her career. In the midst of the pandemic she streamed live concerts from her home among other places, crafted various mixes and covers, and found the time to work with Sharon Van Etten on Like I Used To before unveiling Big Time and embarking on The Wild Hearts Tour with Van Etten and Julien Baker.

This admirable relentlessness is, however, only half of the story. After the breakup that turned the self-imposed isolation to reconnect with herself into the proper space to conceive All Mirrors, life went on with new challenges for the American song-writer. Olsen has recently come out as gay and right before starting the recording session for Big Time her mother died of heart failure, only two months after her father passed away in his sleep. Her music has always been a means to cope with events that are hard to process, let alone control. Yet the songs in Big Time, although rooted in a musical style prone to inward reflection such as country, point to a move beyond the contemplation on loneliness and grief one can find in her earlier recordings. It’s as if Olsen is replying to her own call to action by actually taking the necessary steps to set things into motion.

The Big Time film marks both the beginning and the end of this process. It came out the day before the official release of the record of the same name and it expands on the images and the background story that were already present in the singles that anticipated Olsen’s new adventure, namely All the Good Times, the title track, and Through the Fires. The plot was born out of dreams of time travelling that Olsen had at the time of her mother’s passing. Kimberly Stuckwisch, the director, helped her creating a story arc which crosses reality with events that did not really happen, while keeping the whole thing perfectly relatable for anyone who experienced at least once in their life changes as pivotal as the ones Olsen is dealing with here.

Big Time (Kimberly Stuckwisch and Angel Olsen, 2022)

This is a sympathy that goes from the record and the film to the listener and the viewer, but it works the other way around just as well. Olsen wants us to listen to and to watch attentively at what it meant for her to live through painful and transformational moments, offering images to support sounds and words to reach wherever chords cannot. However, this is true for every honest artist willing to share with heartfelt confidence the dark side of their existence. Here, more than ever before, Olsen is making her experience an example of intimacy shared not for the sake of art but for that of real life. She needs to move on, she wants to fight to get where she can feel safe. The fact that the film is not entirely precise about the details of her story is not just a way to render the dream narrative with cinematic devices, it’s also a way to make her intimacy something as universal as possible. We need to move on, we want to fight to get where we can feel safe.

Looking back at Olsen’s career and listening closely to her songs one cannot help but notice her research for something through constant shifts to new musical forms and styles. What has she been looking for? The easiest answer to this question is her true identity. But is that really it? She was already alone with the desperate necessity to manage things on her own in Unfucktheworld, the first track of her 2014 album Burn Your Fire for No Witness. “I am the only one now”, she said back then. She was also not ready to open up fearing to be hurt again when she sang “With no promise of the future am I not allowed to think kindly of a stranger” in Woman from 2016’s My Woman. She then made her anxiety even more explicit in the opening track of All Mirrors with the words “If only we could start again pretending we don’t know each other”.

Now it seems like she has eventually accepted why the other matters. Big Time is about looking for the other, reaching out for someone who cares, and in doing so, letting go everything that may impede this dangerous quest. The last images of the film show Olsen’s erasing her past self and kissing her partner at the dawn of a new day. She is awake, now, the dream finally come to an end. Life begins anew and everything is set right in front of her. A new day for her and a new day for everyone she is sharing it all with. Therefore, as inseparable from the music as the film is, Big Time is also a nod in our direction. When the music ends, when the images are gone, we still need help to move on, because by ourselves we are going to make it unnecessarily difficult. Angel Olsen has removed the differences between music and cinema. In doing so, she is urging us to forget about the differences between ourselves and the others. Only among others we will disclose and thus find our true identity, only then serenity and peace of mind will come.

Visualising music

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A work of art reveals an artist ego just as much as it uncovers her persona. Since 4 in 2011, there is more of Beyoncé’s ego and persona in every song she creates. Free from the ties with the father-manager Mathew Knowles, she has looked inward for intimacy and outward for influences. She has found a mature voice, but she has also brought out traits of her identity that stardom can easily garble.

With Beyoncé two years later, she continued down the intimacy path exploring darker corners and another set of musical references. The secrecy surrounding the recording sessions was a self-imposed compartmentalization to explore sides of herself her public persona had obscured by then. She was not the first artist seeking privacy, but considering the degree of exposure fame imposes on a star this big, it felt like the natural approach to developing creative freedom. Beyoncé is also the album where she began building and expanding on the themes of her music by way of visuals. As compelling as they were, they still feel like try-outs compared to 2016’s Lemonade.

Musically, Lemonade is Beyoncé at her most eclectic to date. The span of styles is greater than ever before, but everything fits together so nicely you would think of a concept album even if nobody told you that it was thought as one. As if not happy with an already outstanding effort—a whole record instead of a collection of Spotify-ready tunes, are you serious!?— Beyoncé pushes the music video experience to the next step of its evolution.

A music video is a strange object. In my MTV-fuelled teenage days, I remember skimming through music video channels numbly, partially aware of the music, partially aware of the visuals. It would be hard now to remember the ones that really left a mark on me, and little I understood back then of the marketing effect of these products and the difference between self-promotion and the art in it.

The visuals for Lemonade are more than beautifully produced video-companions of singled-out tracks. It’s a complete film, a stand-alone experience in which Beyoncé uses the poetry and prose of Warsan Shire to articulate eleven chapters of her own history. She pays homage to folklore, traditions, and black power, while leveraging blackness and femininity. At the same time, she is displaying respect for what came before her and what is out there right now, transforming the cracks in her marriage into starting points for several possible stories, the whole greater than the single parts. No other popular music artist has ever reached this far in terms of understanding the film medium and working with it instead of letting it work for you. It’s both the end of the music video era as we knew it and the last nail on the rock’n’roll coffin.

However, Beyoncé is not done with writing history. Enthusiasm about her revolutionary performance at last year’s Coachella was still flying high on the Web when Homecoming landed on Netflix on April 17. The next day lists of the greatest concert films of all time were being updated to include it, and rightly so.

A concert film is a strange object. In my music-charged teenage days, I used to buy live concert DVDs. Some of them are still here, and I’d pick Björk’s Live at Royal Opera House if you asked me to show you the one I watched the most. Then came Stop Making Sense and Sign o’ the Times, and I eventually came to understand the difference between a recorded performance and the art of producing it.

Homecoming is a concert film like nothing before it. It lacks the visceral precision of Stop Making Sense and the controlled grandeur of Sign o’ the Times, but this doesn’t mean Beyoncé is carefree and amateurish. Homecoming, which she wrote, directed, and executive produced, is all about control, albeit not the technical control of Jonathan Demme or the creative control of Prince. Beyoncé is controlling the narrative, and she is articulating her story once again by putting a mirror in front of herself. The vanity of a pop star bathing in the joy of her fans, the giants that shaped her body of work, the personal struggles and the achievements. She doesn’t shy away from anything, but she obviously unveils only what she considers valuable to the understanding of her project. Homecoming is about birth, but it’s about rebirth too. Much in the same way she explored a black woman’s identity in Lemonade, here she is questioning the opportunities and the outcomes laid out in front of the same black woman. Where is she from? How did she arrive here? More importantly, where is she now?

This is where Homecoming offers itself as the missing piece of the concert films realm. Beyoncé doesn’t need to reinvent marketing solutions to sell more albums, nor has she to prove to anyone the strength of her live performances. She could actually just sit and collect the money from the hits created in more than twenty years. Instead, she’s still asking the same question that opened Crazy in Love, the beginning of her solo career: “You ready?”.

Prince on film

manuel.uberti@mailbox.org (Manuel Uberti) — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I refrained from writing about Prince right after his recent death. Not only because I did not want to put myself in the same position shared by most commentators, but mainly because I felt in no position at all.

Graffiti Bridge (Prince, 1990)

What sets me apart is the nature of my affection. I have come to love Prince’s music late in my life as an avid music listener. Rock’n’roll took over my teen days and Jazz filled my ears up to my thirtieth birthday. Of course I knew who Prince was. However, just like it happened with Brian Wilson, I barely noticed the depth of his genius. He did not have a special place in my coming of age, nor his music meant something to me.

There is some beauty in this late discovery, though. Had it not been for Jazz and how it opened my mind to complex and different sounds, I would have not dared to listen and understand Brian Wilson. Had it not been for Brian Wilson, I would never have put a Prince record on. I still do not know where Prince is going to lead me, and this uncertainty is poetry.

Moving on to Prince digression in cinema was just a matter of time.

If you leave the non-music bits out, Purple Rain is a fantastic video clip. As great as the music is, the story becomes interesting only when The Kid faces the family tragedy. When Prince and the Revolution play the title track in front of an astonished crowd, you wonder whether the power of the scene comes from the music alone.

Under the Cherry Moon is delicate and funny, a musical melodrama with more than one charm. This is where Prince really shines when performing as an actor. He twists his gigolo mask, bathing it all in a soft black and white palette. More character-driven than music-driven, Under the Cherry Moon captures the tenderness of a romance with the naivety of a first-time director.

Prince directed his own live concert before going back to the camera for another feature length film. With Sign O the Times he made one of the best live concerts I have ever seen, summing up both the quality of his musicians and the madness of his showmanship.

In his last directional effort, Prince puts himself behind the script in a film that really wants to take Purple Rain on another level of style and amusement. It fails in coherence, but Graffiti Bridge succeeds in its more outlandish dance sequences with a personal and unforgettable touch.

Even though his film works are not beautiful as his music, Prince was capable to interact with a different art. Displaying some of his many faces and masks, Prince distinguished himself from pretty much any popular music artist out there.