Nothing better when you have to recover than to find a quiet place full of new and old friends. That's what is happening in those days. Sweet weather, good food, mother and father, amazing countryside, some work not to lose contact with reality and lots of dear friends. One new friend I found is Zazà. He is a thoroughbred horse "murgese", from Murge, the hills around Bari. He is black and muscled, he is 4 years old, so it means he is just a young boy, and it seems he is very bad, he looks like always angry and he wants to bite everybody. But it's not true, he is so sweet and sociable, just at the beginning he wants to appear rude. And then I give him lots of apples, so he must love me...
You know, the first time I climbed on him, he also reared, but I can understand him, too much confidence at the beginning can be suspected. But then we became very good friends..
Another friend instead came from far, by flight. Once I am in Italy for a few weeks, it's better not to lose the chance to find me, you never know. So Laura took a flight from Bergamo in the north of Italy and came to visit me. How many things we had to tell us, Laura, after all these years? And we chose some good place as background of our long tales: Matera, Polignano a mare. She just left yesterday. Now I feel like I know a little bit more who I have been, who I am. But who will I be? Too much to know by now.

Now I will tell a story that hardly I could imagine one day to tell. However the details will remain kept in the suffering depths of my remote memory. You will never imagine that a friend, or a so-called friend, could go so far. Far where any thin glimpse of trust is forever shut down. Far where to be bored, or perhaps to be secretly used to think himself allowed to do everything, leads him to rob a contact behind your shoulder, use this contact to full his dramatic loneliness, spend your name to get closer to this third person, always behind your shoulder, and finally abuse of her, of her trust, of your trust, first of all, and finally leave her in a bed of impotence, psychologically raped and almost phisically, under confusion of too much alcohol.
And, after not feeling to have gone too much far, when you discover that and ask him about it, replying to you with threats of lawyers ready to take care of me. If in this page there are no names it's not for fear but for respect. That respect which is something belonging not to those who receive it but to those who use it as something you should never neglect. Respect to human intelligence, which is what this person is completely missing.

Success is one of the saddest illness, especially when it's gone and it's nothing more but an excuse to abuse of any personal relation around.
And so I left Istanbul, until when I don't know. I am saved from the shipwreck of Titanic and I landed on the hospitable shores of Puglia.

So, the end has come. I don't know if it is an end or a new beginning. Anyway the end of something has come. In these hours is like to be on the Titanic in the last moments before the sinking. This is my last connection from this house, still watching the Galata tower outside the window while I am writing.
It's not easy to keep the hand steady on the rudder when the wind is blowing hard and the massive waves are crashing against the boat. But I will not sink with the boat (and this wooden flat really seems like the room of a big boat). I will not sink and I will leave the boat just a second before to sink. Because I can not die here. I have to save something. I have to save 3 hard-discs full of loving efforts. That's why I take them and I run away, once again. To Berlin first.

We got to be strong, right? We must stand up and be good people even when people all around seem to turn crazy. But sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I wonder which is my fault. I got so many problems from those who called themselves "friends of mine". There must be something wrong somewhere, but I can't see. I will ask my nostalgia of Istanbul for an answer in the coming weeks. But I guess I am still not ready to hear that answer.
Hoşça kal, Istanbul, acı dolu olsa bile sevdim seni..

Antalya raining day, spent at home with friends because of the hard rain outside. But the concert yesterday was great. As all the concerts with "Kara Güneş", you know when you start, you don't know when you finish. Normally we are always the last ones leaving the place. And until there are just a few customers, we still keep on playing. Yesterday we started at 21 and we finished almost at 4 in the morning. We make a lot of breaks, it's true, but it's a neverending playing. After all they have hundreds of songs in their background coming from the turkish popular and traditional songs. We normally work on 20-30 songs, but then normally we play half of them and for the rest they start other songs, many of which I don't know, but played on similar patterns that I can easily follow. I wait them to play one time the melody and then I start and follow. Anyway musically is a great experience for me bathing in the deep turkish traditional music, but also a pleasure to be among these friends.
Ah, by the way. In these days some musical turkish tv channels are broadcasting the video-clip I shot for Sultan Tunç: "Bir yol hikayesi".

Last friday, january 29, it happened really something unexpected: I was witness at the wedding. Arezoo and Kaveh were married. Kaveh is a new member of the diaspora from Iran, after the heavy demonstrations in Tehran last summer. Arezoo left Iran many years ago and now she is living in Canada. So, when by chance you are stuck in a country for reasons of visa, it's possible that you need to marry whenever and wherever it is possible. So, by chance, they were married here in Istanbul. And now they are already far apart but Kaveh will hopefully join Arezoo soon.

I was very honored and I wish you happiness and long life!!!

I met Kaveh a few months ago. We know what it means to leave a country behind. But of course I am luckier than him, the opponents in Italy are not executed by hanging and I can go back to Italy whenever I want.

Meanwhile, in these days "our" 2 roosters, respectively the president of Iran and the premier of Italy, are fulling the sky of Middle East with their threats. It's comic, isnt' it?

It's snowing since 3 days!!! Crazy. It's not something rare in Istanbul, but certainly something unusual.. Sometimes people just leave the car on the side of the street and go on by foot. Especially the first day, when it was a surprise. People don't use to have chains for the wheels in the car. So, for example, here, coming down the hill, cars were just skating down and some guys holding the car by the sides trying to push it into the street. Crazy things...
Now it's still snowing and the tower out of the window is surrounded by flurries of snow flakes.
I upload some pictures below, but beside this extraordinary event, I would like to spend a few words about some video-works produced in Italy which I feel somehow linked with.
I speak today about this because since today it will be possible to watch on italian version of Current Channel the documentary "Una montagna di balle" (= a mountain of balls), produced by InsuTv in Naples, which also I collaborated for.

If I were to just take a picture of these days I should take a photo while riding a bicycle I'm climbing the hill that leads from the Galata tower to Tünel, just down my house after all. Which is a climb of all respect, indeed, it is a chore! It takes about 3 minutes to climb. With the occasional car traffic coming down the narrow alley and me hardly balancing to not stop and lose the rhythm between cars and pedestrians. And passers-by, of course, many of them tourists, who look at me a little strange (someone did not resist taking a picture).
But this is just an imaginary picture, because who knows in which far corner of the world is now that picture, who knows where came from the tourist who has taken it.
Cycling in Istanbul is a form of active resistance. Sure, because the city is full of dramatic height difference, but mainly because the traffic is often fierce, and there is no culture of cycling. That is why cycling in Istanbul for me is a form of active resistance, because it means to express by facts another idea of world endangering myself.
So, this imaginary picture I can not show. But today I have so many more photos. Francesca and Nicola (Nice) came to visit me. And when old friends see each other again years later (as in the case of Nicola and me) is inevitable to try to take a photo of themselves and others.

How much it cost me to admit my defeats? Leave the battlefield, fleeing. A sadness that I carried within me for over a year. And I spent everything I had to open another route to avoid a direct confrontation which was an unequal struggle and to start again to imagine a new assault later. Or the end.

It cost a lot.

Because I lost too many things to make this movie, because it cost me really a lot in every sense.
But what is love if not to be ready to lose everything for love?
And like for all the births, we need so much love because the mules are about to give birth.

Sometimes reality breaks out in a very not understandable way. Especially when violence takes place instead of dialogue. I am really stunned by things happened in these last days.
In Turkey seems that a new era (the darkest imaginable) has begun. After the decision of the Constitutional Court to ban the DTP party, riots and anger poured out in the streets. Even here in Istanbul, in Tarlabaşı, the district where I lived until last August, people came down and fought the police just to express their frustration. In the streets where I used to go and shop, meet friends and, after all, live, I saw scenes of unspeakable violence. It was only a miracle if nobody was dead.

Today 40 years after the massacre of "Piazza Fontana" in Milan. 17 people died. The perpetrators and instigators of the massacre are still unknown.
The same situation applies also to all the other Italian massacres. Yesterday we saw a comedy, yes, it was. Filippo Graviano said he never met Marcello Dell'Utri. His brother, Giuseppe Graviano, has exercised the right to silence. 

Yesterday night, the Turkish Costitutional Court shut down DTP, the Kurdish party. This decision will exacerbate the war in Kurdistan.

"Bourgeois justice has faded", sing Banda Bassotti.

LISTEN HERE "Luna rossa".

Ascolta in diretta la deposizione di Gaspare Spatuzza. CLICCA QUI!

Ore italiane: 12.32: "Graviano mi disse: quello che ci garantisce è quello di Canale 5. Graviano mi fece il nome di Berlusconi e mi disse che grazie a lui e al compaesano nostro ci eravamo messi il Paese tra le mani. Graviano mi disse che avevamo ottenuto tutto quello e questo grazie alla serietà di quelle persone che avevano portato avanti questa storia, che non erano come quei quattro 'crasti' socialisti che avevano preso i voti dell'88 e '89 e poi ci avevano fatto la guerra".

 

Live of the deposition of the Mafia repentant Gaspare Spatuzza.

Italian time: 12.32: "Graviano told me who ensures us is the one of Canale 5. Graviano mentioned Berlusconi and told me that thanks to him and to our neighbor we had put the country in our hands. Graviano told me that we get everything and this is due to the seriousness of those people who carried this story, who were not like those 'assholes' socialists who had taken our votes in '88 and '89 and then we had war".

The craziest week of the year seems to be behind. I will not go into details, there's no need. What I should remember will remain impressed in my mind, other things will flow away.
It's enough to say that one year later it seems I lost the cause why I moved here, while I already lost one year ago a lot taking the choice to come here. But the most interesting question is still another one: what I gained in this year? Yes. Let's stop for a while on this question. Because, without going into details, the feeling is that what I have in the hands is not little, after all.
That's what I need now. The recordings of the musics for the movie are almost done. There's a growing feeling of euphoria. But I am not afraid of it, there's still a lot to do, let's say that I perfectly know that I am still in time to waste everything. That's the main subject which I have to deal with in the coming weeks. That's the main subject I always suffered: to be still in time to waste everything. Normally this is the best state I like to express the most peculiar side of myself. But this time it must be different. This time nothing must be wasted. This time we go straight ahead.

Today we are on the same sea. I am in Bari. You are in Venice, it seems. We are sharing the same waves of the Adriatic Sea. In a few days I will be back in Istanbul. And somehow this is also amazing. Venice and Istanbul, 2 alleged historical enemies, that fought until almost the total mutual destruction in the notorious Lepanto battle in 1571.
This is an interesting metaphor of what happened to us. Istanbul turned to be Turkish (and islamic) in 1453 and that was a shock for Venice, a terrible threat, more than a simple betrayal. So Venice decided to attack Istanbul and to defeat Turks. This is what History tells us. But, if we want to see under the veil of the Western propaganda, we can retrace some documents of that time that don't say exactly this. It seems that Venice, which was supposed to lead the Christian Alliance against the Moors, in fact joined the Saint Navy only at last minute, under the pressure of the pope "Pius V". Sebastiano Venier was everything but happy to fight that battle, while Genoa and Spain were much more ready to join the battle (as they were much more interested in the Atlantic Ocean and thus they had nothing to lose in fight the Turks, as the pope ordered it).

I don't believe in Truth. Sometimes I believe in my truths. Sometimes, not always. But that means that I never think to be absolutely right. I can only think to be right according to my truths, sometimes. I didn't know that the truths I was looking for were here in Leipzig. I could not imagine it.
Yesterday afternoon I met a person that I know since spring 2007, since a wonderful terrace in Rome. I was just arrived from Palermo, with a lot of nice sweets and sicilian cakes. Yesterday she could find the words that I was looking for since long time ago. 1 year exactly, let's say.
Then, yesterday, we had a night under the roof with Katha and a lot of her friends. I felt like in a dream, even if I am quite sure that for all the people there should have been a very normal night. In this building with wooden creacking stairs, ancient woodstoves in the rooms, dust a few centuries old, revolutionary posters on any wall, I felt to be in my dream. I felt to be in a corner of my own world. I felt at home. I felt in a place I dreamed of for a long time.
Truths just rained on me yesterday. I was walking back home yesterday afternoon under a hard cold rain, in an orange-yellow-coloured park, licking my bitter tears on my lips, thinking it was rain.
I found my truths, 1 year later. Exactly. But still it doesn't help me that much.

So, finally we are back in Berlin. We arrived a few days ago from Istanbul, Seçkin and me. But he already has left to Amsterdam. Instead I will move to Leipzig today. In a few days I will fly to Italy after several months.
A lot of things must be said about these days. I met again Katha and Isabel, back from their 3 months trip from Greece (where I met them) to Israel. I met Ali, Angela and Müge who moved here from Istanbul only 1 month ago, and many others.
Everything is fine. On the 9th we were at “Brandenburger Tor” for the celebration of the fall of the wall (the domino was waiting to be pushed), but finally we left the place under a strong propaganda breeze and we went to the suburbs of west Berlin, under a cold hard rain, in the dark, together with maybe 2 hundreds people (checked by the police), to remember 71 years later the first pogrom against Jews. Anytime you have an anniversary, look better, there's always another one that is much more uncomfortable to remember (like september 11, same day of the coup d'etat in Chile by Pinochet). 100 thousands people celebrating the fall of the wall, 2 hundreds the first pogrom. What freedom we are talking about?