marco gaddi
About me
I was born in Turin on the 28th of December, 1958. Since 1987 I’ve been working as a family doctor in Venaria Reale, a city near my birthplace, famous for its Sabaudian Royal Palace, according to many people the building that really inspired the well-known Versailles Residence, near Paris. In 2010 I released my first album “La tana delle nubi”, with twelve songs written by myself. On March, 2011 I published my first novel, a funny story about a general practitioner in search of the Universal Remedy (Edo Franchi alla ricerca della Panacea Universale). I’m married with Enrica and I have two sons: one human, Alessandro, and one almost human, a shitzu dog named Asia.
ARTE MINORE (A MINOR ART)
It 's like a minor art / Made of wood and rags
That wants to tell you of my love / That tries to paint it like a picture
It 's a love that doesn't run, but it walks/ And that almost hides itself
But it's a love that is coming closer / moving along deep streets
It 's a love that satisfies itself / only from the “just” and the “maybe”
But it's a love that grows, becomes / And you don't know how much... (As)
The coin found in the street / The relief that gives the Friday
The fog when it clears / The smile that follows your yes
The wind you feel down / The warmth of a wool scarf
The bag with the surprise / The fresh water of the fountain
It's like an Arte Povera (1) / made from hemp and words
Simple like the things/ of which my love is made
It's a love that shows its patience / And stands to be apart
A love that deprives, lives without / And anyway it doesn't come, but it starts
A love that costs nothing / Apart from the pain to take care of it
But it values more than the greatest / And it would like to say to you ... (As)
The soft shade of the arbor / Or the sigh after the examination
The scent that you feel in the market / the snack that quiets the hunger
The answer to the riddle / The bench in front of the fireplace
The trunk with inside the umbrella / As the last but one step
(1) Arte Povera is an artistic movement and style mainly flourished in Italy during the second half of the past century. It promoted the idea of a revolutionary art made with unconventional and ordinary materials.
LA MISURA DELLE COSE (THE MEASURE OF THINGS)
(In 1735, under the patronage of the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris, a scientific expedition sailed to South America in order to make an accurate estimate of the terrestrial meridian. Chief of the expedition was the captain Pierre Bouguer, hydrologist, and Charles Marie de La Condamine, military mathematician. It was an important chapter of the newborn Geodesy — the discipline that deals with the measurement of the Earth - but also one the most unfortunate ventures in the History of Science)
From there, everything ends and begins again: in the heart of the volcano,
Where God Pichincha boils.
In the meantime Quito is looking, with its dark eyes and judges and condemns everyone
Depending on its meter.
We, Instead, with ours meter and with the help of the height
We’re trying to measure the circumference of the Earth
But it is the stature of the Andes to put limits to the goal
to make it so great that rather than challenge it seems instead to offend
Monsieur La Condamine Reason is our belief
But sometimes even Science has to deal with superstition
As the charts are accurate and so are the scales,
why in this world there are things that still are going wrong?
As this expedition, born under the starlight
Of the French Academy, but then crippled by bad luck.
Almost ten years of misfortune, of rebellion and treason
Of broken legs and obscure fevers, leak and mutinies.
Inaccessible paths on this hostile Cordillera,
That takes your breath away and breaks your nerves.
And that keeps us prisoners
A mission sailed from a too much far place:
Climb up to the equator just to measure a meridian
And maybe one day we will go even to the Moon
But will we ever discover the law that governs and explains the luck?
Certainly, we’ll invent a cure for Death
But will we be able in the end to find the antidote to the poison of bad luck?
Monsieur La Condamine, I'm going away
From this vicuna’s land, from its poisonous curare
This place too much infested with bad luck
So, Sir, I'll ask You with respect:
Please, You and your Geodesy ... Fuck you damned hell!
BELLA
Bella, wearing almost regardless your life
But when you loose the buttons of your glance
You can see the silk wearing your face
And all the pearls that make all of your smile
Bella, of shard and corn' s done,
Made from charcoal and iron
Water surrounding the coral
Bella, like deep blue sky
Bella, from all the things that give grace to the world
Bella, from sugar and salt
From love that really is able to hurt
Bella, a journey which takes a room
And how even much is never enough
Bella, tender and soft thrill
Hidden heart under a blanket of snow
Bella, the sun warms it and melts it
Or maybe it's your embrace that opens and welcomes me.
Bella, flowerbed in the street,
unexpected gift,
a found shilling but spent,
Bella, you were a bit of my journey,
But so beautiful it was when I stood beside you
ESTERNO NOTTE (OUTDOOR NIGHT)
(The Reggia of Venaria that night, almost seemed to move ...)
Great as a boat / Light wind aft
And a full moon / That climbs on her back
She moves into the Gardens / Then sets sail towards the mountains
Because she has no boundaries / Not horizons at all
Flocks of black crows / Turn upwards from the lawn
Like serious kites / Follow her from above
Hedges open themselves / fences hatch
Hares sniff / almost indistinct rustles
The Power of the Kings Shines through the windows
While outside the onlookers barefoot crowd is struck dumb
The one that leaves no mark
Neither on the portraits nor on the sealsPoor men and horses,
They leave only fleeting footprints
Great as a sailboat / She sails without wake
The Court and the Gallery / both just skims on the ground
Vague murmur of woods / Strength of stretched antlers
Misty and dark lakes / She laps before the “Gran Paese”
Time governs her/ and it does so without rudder
It guides her always / in the same way
Which is the one of the huge projects / The ideas and the earth
The sky and the theorems / The blood. The war, too.
The austere voice of the Powerful
Echoes in the halls
While outside the missing people dark chorus stands up
The faceless History,
Which anyway moves and supports
Because are the free men’s arms
That push forward the Temples and the Royal Palaces
NICK
(If songs were lines in a conversation, the situation would be fine — Nick Drake)
And if indeed there were pink moons and clothes of sand
To shed light on the dreams and shelter the rage
To have had a fragile and wrong life
With great wings but so little sky
To have first given back it and then later have sung it
In that way , so suffered and so beautiful
And if that song was really the line of a conversation
A square that becomes rhyme and then gets emotion
It would be much easier, even to love each other
In the same way to apply an exact proportion
To take half and to give the rest
Equal for all, without exception or remains.
Then you'd be here, maybe you'd be here
Singing again.
You were a seaman or better a desert island's dweller
With a paper airplane to bring you back on the dry land
The land of those who feel different
With their feet always off the shoes
The disconsolate and disappointed land of the missing people
Who are back but do not know how to go
You were a river man or perhaps an indecipherable affluent
With the soul left on the shore
Without a boat to travel upstream
To come back to a house without walls and corners
To avoid injury from the artificial light
In a room with windows without glass
To breathe without getting hurt
Then you'd be here, maybe you'd be here
singing again.
And if indeed there were clothes of sand and pink moons in the sky
I like to think that everything would be easier
As the difficult art of being in this world
Desiring to achieve without doing it
And going forward, following through
Because dreams are more land to be sown
LA TANA DELLE NUBI (THE CLOUDS’ NEST)
Maybe there is a place where the clouds hide themselves
It’s been a long time I’ve been chasing them
Following the route of their migration
Looking for a sign, a trace
Like a raindrop or an unstable wake
A footprint of fog or the echo of a thunder
There will be a passage or a way
Something that takes me to them
Them, the clouds, which are both shadow and storm
That is to say, silence and noise
Foreboding of snow or sometimes illusion
Thin matter, eclipse and glimmer
Harmless or cruel they observe the world
They weave around it a kind of a veil
Them, the clouds that are not a place
Because there is no land or sky inside them
Maybe there is a place where the clouds shelter themselves
Something that protect them from air
From the human eye, from maps and tools
Even from light and sound
A place away from the forces and the streams
Where they can stop
Where they can conceive the rain
A rain to give back to the land and the sea
Maybe there is a place where the clouds nest themselves
It’s been a long time I’ve been chasing them
Pursuing the meaning of their escape
Looking for a sign, a trace
Wild and stray, they are moving slowly
Between the equator and the pole
And like them, me too I'm looking for
something that could be both haven and flight
CINQUE QUARTI (5/4)
Funny, to tell you with another time
Maybe a 5/4
In a electric suburb of the late twentieth century
With light trails and passers-by flashes
Vitrified things everywhere moving around
Saturated, even dissonant colours
A livid sky injected by lifts
Thrown over bristly and burning antennas
So, try to follow me
I've dedicated to you an entire labyrinth
Made with crumpled sheets, waiting and appetizers
And then, my God, I even pushed myself
To search reasons and aims
Only to find myself losing balance,
Slipping on your heels and your delays
And finally booking period photos and memories.
Maybe, to tell you in another way
Even in a way that makes use of words.
But what to tell you, this is the hard matter.
Because, you know, Poets and Screens have stolen everything:
The fire, the questions and the sighs
Not even the buttons or the screws They left me
It remained just You ... but you were late for the tire dealer
And for the aperitif with that dispensing chemist …
IL GIORNO DOPO (THE DAY AFTER)
The day after, cleaning has to be done
Paper bags and scrap to be thrown away
Still cutlery and crumbs left on the table
And empty bottles and dishes piled in the sink
The day after all the people are gone away
You, alone, just with silence together with you
And while you’re cleaning, it almost makes you afraid
Thinking of how much joy every day ends up in the junk
And you feel a sadness / down on the things
Almost it takes possession of them / It touches and corrodes them
And like a caress / eventually it softly touches your heart
The day after is when you let your thoughts running away
And you follow the wire of things
From the first day until yesterday
You look around yourself and then you see everything:
Errors and opportunities, missteps and regrets.
Time, you know, it evaporates and then flies
The more it passes and the more people find themselves alone
It takes away your feelings, all the things you loved
And then you discover how hard it is to laugh and love again
And you feel a sadness / down on things
Almost it takes possession of them/ It touches and corrodes them
And like a caress / eventually it softly touches your heart
The day after is just another day before
The stories are repeated, and there is a continuing life
A window opens, there is sun in the street,
We must bring order,
Cleaning has to be done.
ISLANDA (ICELAND)
Dress yourself, as Iceland,
with ash and silence and mutability
Let the time to run
Let it be island that emerges, let it be wealth
Ford of a river and finally let it be awareness
Shake, as Iceland,
The fire and ice inside and outside your skin
Under an ancient, boreal instinct
Merge thrill and warmth
Because after the soul always begins the sea
Release then, as Iceland do,
The earth’s blood,
Let it to become lava that turns into rock,
Let it to become creek and then cliff wind
Make of this love
Which travels and doesn't reach
A cascade water, an immensity of blanket
always and just make of it something as an “over”
Undress yourself, as Iceland
Leave only the amazement for the eyes
Like a sign that grazes and nearly steals
Like a sign that invisible rests
on the real things’ truth
Look at you, you're Iceland
Highest and suspended voice
Giant’s footprint
So close but so far
Never ending story, tightened
Between the twilight and the life.
Release then, as Iceland do,
The earth’s blood
Let it to become lava that turns into rock,
Let it to become creek and then cliff wind.
Make of this love
An amalgamating and disseminating quake
Make it blood returning into the veins
Make it ice that melts … and rock that blends itself ...
PASO
(On May 20, 1973, in the Monza’s motordrome, Renzo "Paso" Pasolini lost his life during the race. This song was written to remember a great champion of motorcycling but especially to remember that you can win even after coming)
They say you can write a music without notes
At 200 per hour riding on two wheels
And so they say that this music is not made of sounds
But folds and passes, shots and acceleration.
They say you can run with eyeglasses
Because what you need to see the path is just your heart
Feeling the track just below your fingers
The way it rushes, as life is rushing away
Oh Paso
for everyone life has the same goal
But how to get it, each one has his own way
Riding a violin, a heart or a motorbike.
They say that everything at 200 per hour becomes indistinct
The wind stops, even the colors change color
So the fear, and even the terror
They become lighter, lighter than love
They say that at 200 per hour it breaks
The thin thread that ties between balance and certainty
And it takes a moment, just a moment
To change the race in a leap or a flight
Oh Paso
life is a track that you cannot study
every corner hides the end or the glory
This is life: it should be played always from memory
And if Life should be, then, it mustn’t be a Life
Behind any of a fashion or a red light
It should be an engine that runs, but also smiles and smokes
Something that burns, but do not consume
They say you can win even after coming
Anyway, the joy of the podium jubilation is short
And it takes more than this to overcome death
They say that for some lives, then, to die is nothing
Because they still keep beating in people's hearts
They become history, they become myth
Like Paso’s one … a blast in an infinite loop
They say you can run with eyeglasses
Because what you need to see the path is just your heart
VADO VIA (GOIN’ AWAY)
I’m goin’ away
Tonight I only want
To go away
Outside there is a city
That is creaking under the weight
Of all its useless frenzy
And how many lights go out the constellations
There’s no magic ... you know ... in a dark sky.
So .. I’m goin’ away
I return in a suburban courtyard
Over the gate there is a thin air
I breath and immediately everything runs slower
Even the eternity, it barely moves
Maybe because the clocks here come from Milan (1)
And enchant time with their.. tick tack ... tick ... tack ... tick ... tack
So ... I stay here ...
To promise to myself the certainty of a well spent life
The beauty of the days to come
And the beauty is just in this sense of waiting
In this beginning that seems to never come to an endIng
In these clocks of Milan
That stop time with their ... tick ... tack ... tack ... tack
Let me try again
The fear that Juliette Greco made to me
Her silhouette in the dark of the Louvre
Wearing the Belphegor’s mask (2)
Besides, the hum of May bugs (3)
You see, they don’t show anymore
Maybe because they have their own mess
Or just maybe because there are no more beetles here.
So … I’m goin’ away
I made a road with my incoming days
And I’ve spent most part of my life
The hope has become more sparse
But sometimes I stand still, waiting,
A perfect and away sound
And I pretend it's a clock of Milan
Which plays with the time doing ... tick ... tack ... tick ... tack …
I still have five stones (1) in my pocket
An oak branch, the jumps over the ditches
A dog made of cloth, a slingshot, a ceiling
The faded photos of Suarez and Bitossi (4)
And even more vague things
As certain memories and certain emotions
That come, in the evening, and bring you awayAway ... inside a song …
(1) The “clock of Milan” and “the five stones” were typical child games in the courtyards when we were boys
(2) One the most terrifying child memories my generation share is the TV television serial “Belfagor” in the sixties, starring Juliette Greco.
(3) The cockchafer (colloquially called may bug, billy witch, or spang beetle) is an European beetle of the genus Melolontha, in the family Scarabaeidae. Once abundant throughout Europe and a major pest in the periodical years of "mass flight", it had been nearly eradicated in the middle of the 20th century through extensive use of pesticides and has even been locally exterminated in many regions
(4) Luisito Suarez was a famous soccer player in the sixties, playing in the” Internazionale” football club; in the same times run on the bicycle Franco Bitossi
SENZA TITOLO (UNTITLED)
How beautiful is Poetry
When She has an entire People to sing for
And the more She dies, pierced and mutilated
The more She revives, more and more alive.
How beautiful is Poetry
When She loads on Her shoulders
The huge weight of an Idea
And the more she falls and hurts
The more She stands up, more and more proud.
Then, how beautiful is Poetry
That even if they humiliate and offend Her
For that People, for that Idea
She doesn’t give up, She doesn’t surrender
But She gets even more beautiful ...
Poetry ...
A few short stories of mine
Le Douanier
In one of the possible infinite parallel universes, there is another Henri Rousseau. He is a snake charmer. He lives in a tropical forest filled with yellow stems, green leaves; full of branches, insects and intentions.He dreams of corridors filled with metal pipes and unlimited balconies surrounded by railings.And he suppose plastics and imagine metal plates.The space is made of traffic lights and buttons. A grid of cables.And he paints it with his fingers on the river stream.
Cats
Patrizia lives in a house full of cats. There are cats everywhere. Cats on the chairs and on the table. Cats on the chairs and in the kitchen. Cats for lamps. Cats instead of television.They are like standing gray fur islands. Soft ornaments of solidified lava.Even Patrizia is still. Absolutely still. As in a painting by Thomas Medugno.Everything is perfectly still in this snapshot of words.Except for the slight sparkle of dust in the air.
Wonders of the World
Mario and Rita have withdrawn from the world. Even TV talked about them. They invented a very special device. Something like a machine by which they have restricted the whole earth into their apartment. A room for every continent. They sleep in Asia. They eat Africa. They read their books in old Europe. Mario plays his guitar in Australia. Rita embroiders in America. They have two bathrooms. One in the north and one in South. No more to say.They don't see anyone. Never. They have a just a daughter who is studying Fine Arts and once a week brings them some shopping. They don't want to see anyone. Do they need any people? They travel all the day. The Great Barrier Reef. Macchu Picchu. The Taj Mahal. The Eiffel Tower. It 's all there. A picture, an ornament, a book. Polar bears on the toothpaste. A sponge with the shape of a lion. It 's all there. The world. Once they even took part in a big game hunting. A bunch of Serengeti ants. Third tile right to the refrigerator.Sometimes they write each other. Letters full of magic and wonder. Travelling is a marvellous thing, they say. And tell each other the wonders of the world.
Twelve little moments
We spent a weekend together at the seaside.I brought with me a camera. One of those disposable cameras. It had a flash, a plastic skeleton and a film heart with twenty-four poses.We spent together almost two thousands seconds. Full of love and tenderness.We chose twelve of them. Just twelve. And nestled them in that plastic body with only one eye.When we got home, she kissed me gently in front of the door of my house.I left the camera in the glove compartment of his car.A week passed.I asked her if she had developed the photographs.She replied that she had not yet had the time.A month passed. And another month yet.Those twelve moments were still waiting in a drawer to come to light.Quite some time passed. A time that went beyond himself.One evening they opened her car and stole two things: a pen and the camera, pregnant with her twelve little moments.Now there is a kind of gravestone on a beach of Santa Margherita. Near a wharf and a hotel.There and only there the sky is always gray and it is always the same Sunday. Of the same April. Of the same identical year.I often go there when I feel alone. I rest in silence. And I wonder what would have been of those twelve little moments. Once they have been grown.
Dance
When the radio aired Harvest Moon by Neil Young, the no longer young man looked into the no longer young woman's eyes. And suddenly he felt the immense desire to invite her to dance.He asked her with a burgundy bow tie. He asked her with his lips just a whisper from her hands.And she agreed: with a chiffon skirt and a few wrinkles around her eyes.What they drew on the floor was not only a circle. It was life and an impalpable sign of soles.This story is beautiful not only because it's nice to think of two human beings, embraced, in the gloom of a dining room. While a vintage radio plays Harvest Moon.It 'nice to think that a radio, much older than them, is the accomplice of a sweetness more and more rare.
The sadness of the twist
There is a place very close to my house, where they welcome and cure the sad screws. It's a true story, believe me. The sad screws do really exist. They are those that, after a while, unscrew. They are those you can never screw. You'll say: it's just a little matter of thread. Indeed, it is not even an issue. Simply you have to replace the defective screw with another one. I think on the contrary it is a very serious matter. At a time when everything is forgotten and thrown away is reassuring to know that even the humble life of a screw can have a sense. That it is clockwise or counterclockwise, nonetheless, it doesn't matter.
© 2010 - Marco Gaddi - Tutti i diritti riservati