I never know – we never know – what’s going to come and find us.
Trifles along the way. You have to joke, and fart, and trip. Forget what to say, mess up.
(And then move on, indifferent, content, if possible.)
Feeling well recently has put me on edge a little. I noticed it in the car, coming home. You start to – you catch yourself smiling, and there’s a catch, you feel: there must be a catch; impending grief.
(O poor wretch, come on.)
Anyway.
(A quote from Giorgio Gaber. — If you read French or Italian I highly recommend the bilingual book Gaber–Brel Dialogo by Micaela Bonavia. It is exceptional, and what Brel and Gaber say, and repeat, how they think and thought out their lives, how they lived and reflected on their lives: it does a lot of good to read and reflect with them, such voices are rare, because bold and honest and serious and nonconformist, recent artists whose aim was higher than conventional success, wealth and popularity, intellectual (in the good sense; the ideas lived by, applied—and refined and reapplied), artists concerned with what’s essential, what matters, not in terms of brief political and social fashions, or enthusiasms, but in terms of what lasts.)
*
E pensare
che basterebbe pochissimo.
Basterebbe spostare a stacco
la nostra angolazione visiva.
Guardare le cose
come fosse la prima volta.
Lasciare fuori campo
tutto il conformismo di cui
è permeata
la nostra esistenza.
Dubitare delle risposte
già pronte.
Dubitare dei nostri
pensieri fermi,
sicuri,
inamovibili.
Dubitare delle nostre convinzioni
presuntuose e saccenti.
Basterebbe smettere
di sentirsi sempre
delle brave persone.
Smettere di sentirsi vittime
delle madri,
dei padri,
dei figli.
Smascherare,
smascherare tutto:
smascherare l’amore,
il riso,
il pianto,
il cuore,
il cervello.
Smascherare la nostra
falsa coscienza individuale.
Subito.
Qui e ora.
*
[And to think
that it would take very little.
It would be enough
to change our point of view.
To look at things
as if it were the first time.
To leave out
all the conformism
that impregnates
our existence.
To doubt
ready responses.
To doubt
our firm,
secure,
immovable
thoughts.
To doubt
our pretentious
and pedantic
conventions.
It would be enough
to stop thinking of ourselves always
as ‘good people’.
To stop thinking of ourselves
as victims
of mothers,
fathers,
children.
To unmask,
to unmask everything:
to unmask
love,
laughter,
tears,
the heart,
the mind.
To unmask
our false individual conscience.
Soon.
Here and now.]
Gray Haskins 