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". WATCH HERE

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?

Tonight Bandista played their last concert. At least for a while. Çağdaş moved to Paris. All the others decided to have a break. Haymatlos, the concert place, was crowded and all the axes of the floor were shaking under the feet of a dancing crowd. A concert of Bandista is like to say something you can not miss. There has not been any month since february without a concert of Bandista in Istanbul. So, how to imagine our future without Bandista? How imagine the future now when only 20 months ago I met for the first time these guys just playing guitars on the sofa at home? And cause of the warmth of their friendship since then I started to think to move here. And by the way, in 9 days will be 1 year (I said: 1 year) since I moved here.

Things are changing. People went, people came. Weeks just passed by. I worked like a dog, as we say. But officially the shootings are over, now. Tomorrow I will start the last music recordings, it means that I will need a good star over me. It's something written in the drops that are now falling down from the gutter. It's something written in the gusts that blow around the Galata tower, this cold Lodos. It's something written in the notes that a bass line is playing coming from who knows where, now, in the night. A good star, that's all what I need.

Then on saturday I will fly to Berlin for a few days and then a short visit back to Italy, 6 months later. 

Today should be a happy day. I usually try to be happy when someone who was a great man or a great woman dies. Because it's like the last stroke of the artist on his or her greatest masterpiece. Usually when I cry, I cry because I am happy for him or for her, because they were able be great untill their last day.

Today Mercedes Sosa died. In Buenos Aires, Argentina. I already cried for her today. I should be happy. In one song called "Sólo le pido a Dios" ("Just I ask God.."), she sings: <<Que la reseca muerte no me encuentre, vacío y solo sin haber hecho lo suficiente>> ("Just I ask God that pain is not indifferent to me, that dry death not find me empty and alone without having done enough"). What is enough in the life of a human being? I am more than convinced that Mercedes Sosa made much more than enough in her life full of sorrow, troubles, but also hope, resistance and joy.

Mercedes Sosa always gives me the strenght to go on anytime I heard her magnificent voice. There are some persons who were born just to give strenght to everybody else. Mercedes Sosa was one of these persons. A person who teaches in all of her songs to not give up, to carry on the struggle.

I hate September. But I love October. I do not know, maybe it's the summer come to an end. Perhaps I would like to be already a step forward and instead take the first step is the thing that costs more.
Many things I should tell of these last 2 weeks. Anyway I am still here and I am still working hardly. That's enough to know.
Today (all right, today is already October, but the campaign lasted throughout September) in Italy there was a demonstration for the freedom of press. It's not something that excites me. I mean, I don't need to be informed by anybody now that in Italy there's a problem of freedom of press. I already know how it works. Since I am living here now, after 4 years working for the Italian tv, it means that my time in that system was expired. But I don't feel to be an activist in this movement for freedom of press.
First: I don't recognize that to be a journalist in Italy you must pass an exam to get the inscription in their own register. Any citizen is a media. Any citizen is a journalist. Otherwise we have to admit that there are citizens who make opinions and citizens who follow opinions. Citizens who decide what is important to know and citizens who never know things that for somebody else are not important. Any citizen is responsible of the culture he carries and of the news he knows. It's his duty to be a media. Always.