Talent

Let's be honest: the world is full of ordinary people, if not downright mediocre ones.
Finding a person with talent in a field — be it music, literature, critical thinking, art, science, or sports — is a rare event.

Yet a lot of people reason in a very strange way. Although they accept without batting an eye the total absence of talent in most people, from these special cases — those with talent in a single field — they expect talent across the board. That is, someone who sings well is expected to have excellent communication skills. A good writer, a political vision. An athlete, moral integrity. And so on.
And yet it's a matter of basic probability: if it's rare, as it is, to find a person who is talented in one field, just think how hard it must be to find one with talent in multiple fields!

Maybe someone is thinking of Leonardo da Vinci as a counterexample. Fine, da Vinci was an incredible figure, with an eclectic talent. But he lived five centuries ago. And people still talk about him as a case that's more unique than rare!
If anything, his is an example that proves the very point just made.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Fun according to me

I've always known how to have fun, in any place and any way, at any moment. I also go to the typical places for fun. Not all of them, mind you, but some. I recognize them right away: they have some ineffable quality that satisfies my instinct.
I go there on my own, too. I've always loved doing that. Sometimes I may seem aloof, absorbed, even gloomy. It's only appearance. Maybe I'm tipsy, and having a grand old time in front of the stage of my mind. Besides, I observe and listen. The music, of course, but not only that.

I know what fun is. I know it better than the person who smiles at everyone and "plays" the extrovert. I have earned a degree, a master's, and a doctorate in fun. All honoris causa, of course. I simply don't have fun in a prescribed, pre-established, prefabricated way. In general, "pre-anything" gives me hives.

For me, fun is something spontaneous, instinctive, creative. My idea of fun is, like pretty much my whole lifestyle, a form of art — forgive me for saying so. It's a somewhat unusual, exotic form of art, though, one that seems to belong to other shores. A bit like the African masks, the Japanese prints, or the Tahitian dances that made their astonishing, disruptive entrance onto the European cultural scene of the nineteenth century.

I don't think I'll ever stop trying to have fun. Nor stop succeeding at it, if all goes well. It's even possible that I'll drop dead having fun.
Yes, come to think of it, I really hope that's how it ends.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

HAPPINESS

Oh yeah, dancing is good!
Fuck tariffs, fuck Greenland, fuck Zelensky, fuck Putin and fuck XiMaoXiaoPing or whatever he's called too.
I'm an old man, why would I give a shit?
Just give me dance music.
And lots of booze.
And give me some Viagra too.

Boozy lingams - Bangkok, Thailand

on the shelf of a loud pub
where they only play k-pop
a file of glass cocks
filled up with sweet shots
of colorful fluids
by lasers x-rayed
are about to e.j.
with some sort of b.j.

PARALLEL - Bangkok, Thailand

...dozens of glasses
on the table top
the dj spins techno
trance and hip hop
the fine tuned vibes
send the mood glide high

Rendez-vous

A man and a woman enter a bar.
What made them a pair is no longer there,
yet something remains, or is born anew
out of the ashes of that vanished bond.
They sit at the counter, the barman draws near,
he doesn't know who, only what and how.
He breaks the ice twice, it's ice of two types:
one needs a tool, the other a joke.

Let us compare mythologies - Leonard Cohen

Most people, including myself until recently, know Leonard Cohen as the deep&warm-voiced singer and songwriter of beautiful folk songs, the most famous one being "Hallelujah".
Before switching to music, though, he began his artistic career as a novel writer and poet (even after he started singing he remained horrified of performing in public for a long time).

Esperanto - Rodrigo Fresán

 

Esperanto is the name of a language that its creator thought could be used by everyone, but that isn’t actually used by anyone. And it is also the name of this novel’s main character. Esperanto is a 35-year-old troubled musician, who hasn’t written a song for a long time. A friend of his and her baby went desaparecidos during the Argentina military junta era, while the baby’s father, a revolutionary fighter, was killed in action. A few years after that tragic day Esperanto was somehow considered responsible for his own child’s death and the resulting mental breakdown of his partner.

Chinese Cinderella - Adeline Yen Mah, Mao's last dancer - Li Cunxin

Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society is one of five books that I picked up from the Chinese literature section of a second hand bookstore in Bangkok. While reading the introduction I found out that it is categorized as children fiction. I was about to drop it, then I decided to give it a try. Well, if this is a novel for children, then nowadays children are very lucky! I read it all. Though I am a bit of a history buff and I have spent quite some time in China and Shanghai, where most of the characters live, reading this book I’ve learned a few things I didn’t know or I had forgotten.

Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world - Murakami Haruki

Murakami, buy-one-get-one-free option. Two stories told through alternating chapters.
The first one is based, as usual in Murakami's novels, in a slightly dystopian version of modern day Japan, where two powerful organizations are fighting an all-out cyber-war, and a band of invisible mutants roam around a web of tunnels connected to Tokyo's subway system.

1Q84, Kafka on the shore, Killing commendatore - Murakami Haruki

These three books are typical Murakami Haruki's style, full of metaphors, surreal events, bizarre characters and historical references.

The story always starts when the lives of the main characters have reached some kind of a dead end. There is some deep meaning that must be deciphered in order to untangle the messy knot, a mystery that is most often hidden among the brush strokes of a mesmerizing painting or the chapters of a fancy novel.

She surrendered... - Bangkok, Thailand

"Even if you're trying your best, at the beginning it can be frustrating, then, all of a sudden, something happens..." This is what somebody told me when I decided to win her heart. And today...something happened. I don't know how to say, I still cannot tell if it's working out but I feel that I'm finally going somewhere.

It's as if she surprisingly surrendered to my courting and felt that she likes me a little bit. I kind of liked her since the very first moment. It's true, she was bulky and made me feel awkward, but I was enchanted by her nice looks. She...well...it was not mutual. Actually I think that she even hated me and tried really hard to make me quit. She sliced my fingers, twisted my wrist, cut through my legs, bumped into the walls and the furniture of my apartment, produced piercing sounds with the clear intent of turning my neighbours against me. But she gave up. After a few days of struggle, at last she said: "OK, I keep humiliating you but you always stand up. Don't get me wrong, you definitely suck, and the way you're trying to use me is even worse, but you're a stubborn one, and I can't stop you. Give me your hand and go ahead, I won't resist you anymore".

I gave her my hand, I gave her both. Now when I touch her she does not hurt my fingers and I feel more relaxed when I am with her. I won't give up, will go straight ahead and I'll keep on trying to play this guitar...Forgive me if you're the ones who live next door.

Photo "Guitar girl", from Allposters.com