Today I toast for the second …fourth…maybe seventh time to the reconquered life!!! How many times I have risked to loose it, to be not able to carry out the path I fixed in advance when I was borne….
When we are born we do it without memory or better at the moment of our birth we forget our choices to be able to realize them more freely. I’m persuaded of our role of protagonists in life, of the ways we ourselves chose the environment where to be born, our parents …researching the spurs that will make us evolve in this passage. As parachutists we know where and why we want to land, the target to reach innate in our will….but we can do nothing against the wind …the chance that, irrational strength of this world, blows from the beginning undermining our growing, creating situations that sverwe us from our destination, deviate the course, nearly a further challenge to our outcome.
parachutist ….. knows the destination!!
We perceive it…we know that something negative it’s going to happen…but often we are not ready to put a remedy and we fall into the trap set by our destiny with both our shoes. We should succeed in putting into effect the signs that comes to our conscience, without just observe them. It doesn’t matter, after an accident, saying “I knew it was going to happen”…we must learn to stop on the edge of the road straightaway and change attitude, just as the Top Guns: they shall be able to put thought into action at the speed of light, it’s not easy but there is who can manage to do it.
Top Gun’s thoughts
On the contrary, I don’t practise what I preach…if, until now, I haven’t succeeded yet to make a better use of forewarnings ….So every time I manage to recover my way after going through the suffering of disease, of an occurred accident, I raise my eyes to heaven thanking for letting me survive that trial that, on second thoughts, I could definitely avoid if only I had stopped…. I thank…. to be able again to go on with my quest, I know what I must learn …but I still don’t manage!
I am only deeply happy to live in this time that allow me to make up for those obstacles that in another historic time would have proved fatal to me, that let me share speed in transfers, immediacy in transmission of ideas, that permit me to use a technology, at least in our towns, really at service of mankind.
So I think I have chosen the right time to make the way of my experience on this earth, I have all the opportunities to carry it out and any excuse to leave off….I’ll verify to have my sandals well laced and now: come on…. I can’t hold back anymore!
1970…when I was seventeen life smiled on me in hot pans holding for me traps and snares at every turn while walking through it…
Italian play-bill English play-bill
We should reach in London the troupe of the movie directed by Lucio Fulci: “Una lucertola con la pelle di donna”; in the cast Florinda Bolkan brasilian actress with masculine feature, the bright french Jean Sorel, the liberal teutonic Anita Strindberg and my marvellous venetian friend Silvia Monti.
Silvia at Venice’s Carnival
In Rome we had shooted some interior scenes with the great Carlo Rambaldi, the inventor of Et and Alien, creator of the special effects both in the movies wanted by Andy Wharol and directed by Paul Morrissey and in the movies by Mario Bava “Reazione a catena – Ecologia del delitto” with whom I have shooted, at the beginning of my career, the detective film by Agata Christie “Cinque Bambole per la luna d’agosto” with William Berger and Ira Furstemberg
Me at Dear’s Studios
In the movie by Lucio Fulci the special effects director had to give life to the nightmares of Carol, Florinda Bolkan, who put into practice a murder hounded by fancies of putrefaction and death, in which she placed her hope of a perfect alibi, just as the homonymous protagonist of the cult movie “Repulsion” by Polansky.
After Velasquez ” screaming Pope “(Innocent X) by Francis Bacon
Carlo Rambaldi had created images in Francis Bacon style to give life at those nightmares propitiatory of death which real terror was given by the torn apart, decomposed bodies of Carol’s relatives, so as she saw them in her sleep, clear metaphor of the social rottenness that these hid behind their features, rottenness so widespread that didn’t fail to overflow also in the very reality. Playing the role of Carol’s daughter in the movie, I was present in the scenes of the nightmares….I can never forget the horror I proved in shooting them….Carlo Rambaldi had planned in the Dear Studios a set with very high chairs, the legs were more than two meters high, they had made me climb on this kind of structure and then fill my hands up with putrefied offals…..the camera below should shoot the horror that transpired from my face while pieces of entrails were falling down….We had already shot two good slate but Fulci lost control of the situation and desired keep me a little more in that uncomfortable position, as if he wanted me to atone for my social position, comparing me with the character of the movie to the point to make me feel the same aversion implicit in the role even in reality. I informed him politely that I was not going to stand, beyond what is allowed, that uncomfortable position. But he seemed to appreciate my discomfort even more and insisted on leaving me still at the top of that chair nightmarish with my hands full of those stinking offals…….they fell all entirely on him……in a outburst of rebellion, that deeply marks my temper, I had thrown them all against him….at the end of the umpteenth shot…. I remember the conspiratorial look of the crew, the grip that, even not having the possibility to express freely their indulgence to my act, shared entirely its autonomy.
Francis Bacon in his Studio
Fulci, a misogynous par excellence in that social period hid himself behind the intellectual alibi pointing with his accusing finger at a system of which he was, first, a perfect servant…..Unfortunately it’s not possible to improve society prosecuting singles, we only create innocent scapegoats, it would be better to begin a work of change with a beautiful and vivifying introspection….but in that time there wasn’t yet the culture of recognizing oneself in the other….Nobody thinks at the psychological shock suffered by the little Isaac in the moment in which he realizes that his father wants to offer him in sacrifice, innocent among the innocents; he has to suffer that moral abuse in the name of other people’s intellettual growth. At the end it is of little weight the fact of not being sacrificed …he is returned to life shocked, devoid of every moral sense, of every skill for discernment between good and evil…. traumatized for life…..saved by a poor lamb sacrificed in his place.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Il sacrificio di Isacco (1590-1610)Galleria degli Uffizi Florence.
But had it a sense to sacrifice anyway? Wouldn’t be better to come back home hands clean and forget the insanity of that day?!?…In time they would have tried to understand maybe guessing better morals!
…During our travel towards London for the course of the outdoor shots, during the week end, we had stopped in Paris. I had gone in that occasion to eat les Huitrès Belon at Relais del Plazà with Silvia, her sister Renata and her cousin Bali ….never eat oysters at the end of the season…never at end september….I gained a fulminating “hepatitis A” that affected me in the first days of the shooting of the movie in English territory. I couldn’t follow treatment adequately at Strand Palace Hotel, without quarantining all the troupe, so I followed a strict plain diet all through the period of the shooting…I went to eat every day in an italian restaurant, the San Lorenzo in Beauchamp Place, lovingly nursed in my meals, then as now, by Franco Rapetti’s friends, Mara e Lorenzo Berni. Yes, because London is a wonderful town …but the pleasure of sitting at an italian table is for me always incomparable…
London Beauchamp Place
When shooting ended and I embarked on the flight to Milan I had only empty space around me: yellow as a lemon, I had frightened all the passengers that kept themselves at safety distance….I still remember, the evening of my arrival, the mix of astonishment and horror on Rocky’s face when he opened the door of his flat in San Babila…! Vanished as if by magic the memories of the marvellous summer spent together in Sardinia before the beginning of London shooting: free, happy, with all the possibilities to enjoy life, me without a penny in the pocket “as usual”, but guest for all at Rocky’s on his small motor cruiser, complete with sailor and captain, moored at Porto Cervo ! In that summer of 1970…it served as base for our summer raids, few guests, owing to the smaller scale dimensions: only me and his friend “il Gorla”, regular customer as we all of the mythical Derby Club in Milan where in those years was growing the everlasting irony of the “Gatti del Vicolo dei Miracoli”…. How forget Jerry Calà, who faced the audience sending his conspiratorial look ahead or Umberto Smaila, Umi with his unmissable sarcasm, ripened in virtue of his own irony and of his little neurosis, that he always kindly cultivates as the pots in his garden,…with the inner skill of reading and telling the irony of life.
On board I occupied the upper bed of the cabin, I liked wake up in the morning sweltering in those white sheets, glimpse from the porthole the flash of the day reflecting on the water, feeling the immediate desire of a dive into the sea, a natural rejoining of life through its elements.
Incredible water in Costa Smeralda
The water that was winding you as in maternal womb, was standing you up depriving your body of worldly weight, washing away all the bad dreams, water… made me happy….The captain managed the little yacht every day in a different bay, he ought to do it with much discretion if we manage to wake up only when manoeuvring had taken place, how many times, from the bottom of my heart, I thanked for that renewed miracle….Sometimes I liked letting myself down in the bed downstairs, while my boyfriend was still sleeping, caressing his body with soft gestures that will induce him to awakening, I kissed him in the most sensible points leaving to my fair hairs the task of lightly touching his abdominals….my lips filled him with kisses awakening his desire…then I kissed him on his mouth…tempting him to take me. Our hot bodies slided one on the other, I loved feeling the pression of his hands on my skin while we melted our desire in the heat of the morning…Standing I leant to the bunk arching my back and, glancing at the mirror of the door, I tried to see his figure while he was possessing me…it was very exciting looking at our reflected image ….glimpsing the moments of deep pleasure appearing on his face’s features…with his hands layed on my hips…stealing with the eyes the moment of the final pleasure…Satisfied we run out together to forward-dive in the transparent sea, still filled with love, full of one of other’s life, to re-emerge then revived from the water to begin a new day of summer…Salt on the skin in tiny white little crystals made us feel happy to exist without anything other to desire!
…such a transparent sea
(I’m looking for a lasting centre of gravity) Cerco un centro di gravità permanente…Rocky knew how to do: he told to be able to lift me with two fingers without any evident effort…an evening intrigued I followed his indications: I stripped, he lifted me prizing on my natural barycentre, he put two fingers inside me and the thumb outside…so he could cancel my body’s weight and throw me in the air….I smiled at the idea that …here, just here …there wasn’t the tie of the earth’s gravity, my pussy could be made light as the air, could be taken in the sky every time it wanted…what a enthusiasm in that thought…!
I’m flying till the crowds
..But in autumn, coming back from London the situation was different: the transaminase at 1500 called for a prompt admission, so a clinic in Rome opened the leafs and closed them on my person for more than a month! I stayed there laying and isolated for thirtythree days with a phleboclysis constantly fastened to my arm…
Franco Rapetti, my love tutor
Franco Rapetti came to visit me every two days, in november for the festivities of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, he had took me for present a marvellous vase of yellow chrysanthemum, I didn’t finish to pull his leg for that inappropriate present …Then Lallo Palma to put right took a paint painted by himself with three yellow roses blossomed to life…..
Notwithstanding friends was cuddling me I was looking forward to going out, to put an end to that torture of forced immobility. At home I had my room that was waiting for me with a new look: I had the walls painted in brown, a dark fitted carpet layed down on the round and I had asked my mother to have my bed lined in french style with a cloth yellow grain, a big oval pillow leaned to the wall made it similar to a sofa ….Finally discharged, I still remember the uneasiness felt crossing the road, finding me in the middle of the traffic, among the people…..that isolation laying motionless in the bed for such a long time had mined my equilibrium….I felt myself overwhelmed by the movement…weak to face life but eager for coming back to live.
An invitation to spend Christmas holidays in St Moritz …came at the right moment! The whole group of roman friends would have moved in the rooms of the skiers at the last floor of the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel; these rooms were cheaper and so it permitted us a longer stay: all together we occupied a whole floor which had thought to transform in the ideal place for a uninterrupted party….
Badrutt’s Palace Hotel
There were Ruy and Leonello Brandolini, Manfredi Geraldini, Felix Jordan, Caroline Michard Pelissier, Peter Bemberg, and all those …more lucky…. guests by friends’ or in their villas: Gloria and Enrico Pasquini, Lallo Palma, Edoardo Agnelli…
… between Monsieur Badrutt and Caroline
The Badrutt’s Palace Hotel had everything one could desire: swimming pool, sauna, disco, amusement arcade …..and just playing table tennis it was played on me a macabre trick….Lallo had fallen in love with me and, not returned, he had begun to show his jealousy for the kindness I lavished on Ruy…repeating more time to me that his blood was sicilian and for this reason I should take care to my way of behaving….
“..Tu chiamale se vuoi …emozioni…” Battisti words filled our walks in the spotless snow tinging with romanticism every time when our lives were grazing…I was falling in love with Ruy’s gaiety, with his skill to be above the basenesses of the world almost as if he didn’t see them yet, in name of a philosophy that forced, even if not ignoring them, to go beyond them in search of a better life, of a perfect savoir faire… After the first kiss given in the corridor of the hotel, I spent the whole night caressing my lips, he had kissed me here, forced against the wall, without too many words he had made me feeling his ….and I had fallen in love…
Lucio Battisti’s reflections
Lallo wouldn’t stand for this union…at meals I was always sitting by Ruy and as soon as I could I run in his room to reach the plays that aroused my passion so much!
…An afternoon while I was playing table tennis in four…Lallo asked me to talk to me alone: “Okay” I told him and I move towards the wooden stairs to the sides of the amusement arcade, he remained standing in front of me sitting on the second step. Hands in the pocket, legs wide apart, insolent attitude….it didn’t promised nothing good…. “Ely , you know how I am overwhelmed by you” began and “rather than see you into another’s arms, I am ready to an extreme act” ….He extracted from his right pocket a revolver and shot at closer distance, a deafening hiss in my ears, I realized to have been hit…to be dead….but ….I didn’t die…!!! I passed my hand on my forehead…only then I opened my eyes to see if there were blood….no, there was none….It was then that I saw Lallo shook from laughing splitting his sides for the successful joke….
Toasts, constant toasts to recovered life, with heart made every time heavier by the past experiences, but certainly light and happy to be more alive than before….
Toasting to the reconquered life
free to still perceive emotions… “guidare a fari spenti nella notte per vedere se è così difficile morire” …no , there was non need of Battisti to understand, all by myself, how was easy loosing life….a moment and you couldn’t be here anymore…everything useless…the void…denied the possibility of going on…”I wish I had time”….time to live, to live better ….to be able finally to be and to be able to enjoy life.…loving others as mirror-like oneselfs without subjecting them ever and for any reason to what we wouldn’t happen to us…..
…I wonder if, as years went by, Lallo will have understood it…
In a clear morning with the sun that was making the snow even more changing Ruy, me and Manfredi with his car were setting out to Vistorta di Sacile…happy and in love I was listening again again and again Lucio Battisti broadcasting his emotions from the stereo of the car…..
