Sinister: Psychedelic Flu

[s.santabarbara at xxx.uk]

my dearest

	Might be I spent too much to long hugging the cryostat as I found myself in bed
and couldn’t remember precisely how and why
 I’ve heard (and tested) that helium
makes you speak like Donald Duck but I’ve never knew it can cause hallucinations
and other kind of sixties style trip related effects: if so I wouldn’t have
missed the chance. Getting back to the time I used to be a student, which is
now quite a long time ago, ah, yeah, before becoming a sad old git, we used to
sniff Ether and other rubbish straight from the solvent bottles, that together
with alcohol from the Winchester flask, a sort of Winchester club [drink, not
sniff.. no point sniffing alcohol even if is 96%], if you wish, but again the
main result was feeling a bit dizzy and generally more stupid than before,
which took a bit of effort, pretty much as that special flu feeling or
something like that. Disappearing from the lab, right after having se up again
the microwave delay line was a geniuses move, by the time I was back it was
dismantled again, and someone even ‘borrowed’ a travelling wave tube amplifier,
which, I ensure, is a heavy and massive bit of equipment. But the most
disconcerting thing was that absolutely no one had even noticed I didn’t show
up for essentially an entire week: brilliant! Staying in the ‘house of the
research assistant’ is that much fun
 ehm
 well, apparently the exciting event
of the week is when people bake same bread
 well, yes
 exciting
 good enough
I’ll be back soon, not that anyone notice if I’m at work or not, which is
brilliant, as I can spend the day in the pub and I get paid anyway at the end
of the month, which is what I called be a professional ‘student’
 the bad thing
is, that the pub over here are shite and the beer is even worst, so what’s the
point going to pub? There’s not even someone to play 3-7 with, for goodness
sake, what is the blissful slacker generation up to?      However, in during
the flu, I’ve been illuminated and sort of discovered how to get rid of it, you
need two things apparently, a kind of black sausage, I can’t remember how it was
called, but I guess something like the infinity element, or so, memory faded
away with the secret and the other thing was like a metallic-blue box, kind of
an engine starter, and all had to go into an intricate system of pipes and
junctions and blots and knots but no clockwork. This is surprising as
clockworks and the Nabla operator are quite recurrent in my dreams. that is
pretty much all I can dream about gradients, the Jacobian matrix, Chebishev
polynomials and the Hermittian operator: that’s what it gets when the
psychedelic flu is on its way, yeah, not bad, even better than bread.

[put the book back on the shelve]
Being back home have some slight advantages, one of those is that I can access
to my book collection, which is not that wide, but still there are a few
volumes I bought when I used to read four books per week and have taken dust
till those days.  Amongst those was “La cognizione del dolore” by C.E. Gadda
(The recognition of  sorrow, I guess it should translated like that, or so). I
have read ages ago another book by the same author, “Il pasticciaccio brutto di
via merulana” (An awfull mess in merulana road), which was great, but I haven’t
fully appreciated it, which undoubtedly proves I am a full idiot, if you
haven’t guessed it yet. Gadda is probably one of the most under-rated amongst
the modern Italian novelist. Can be because of it extremely unusual way of
sentencing and the use of many “northern dialectal” forms. However, I am
northern, and it is extremely funny and fluent to read such a sharp and
incredibly powerful book taking shape into a pseudo-colloquial form, that
actually makes it flow, and I’m absolutely loving it for what it matters
 so
much I’m pretty much temped to read it again which is something I haven’t done
(to read a book back to back) in ages
might be I’ll find a copy at the airport
bookshop, but are not generally that well furbished, we’ll see
 in the mean
time I’m still pretty much into the (auto)bibliography of the (in)famous
Italian “bandit” Renato Vallanzasca, a book called “Il Fiore del Male” (The
Flower of Evil, I don’t believe is translated): well, you can tell many things
of this man, but if I ‘d only had half of his guts, flipping hell
  once he
managed to evade from the noise and distraction of his prison cells [he didn’t
missed the bus, surely]  and came back to set his partners in crime free
 he
was shot in the head but survived
 “somebody’s born a policemen someone’s born
as a bank robber” ... talking about colloquialism, underrated northern Italian
writer, if there was someone to whom a statue should be erected in each main
square of any village (together with nick drake, surely) well that’s Guido
Gozzano. If in high-schools instead of all this rubbish about neo-realism and
bla bla bla which has infested our literature would make pupils read ‘la
signorina felicita ovvero la felicita’ [Miss Felicity hence happiness] not the
usual five verses, the same one all the time, “il suo buon padre in fama di
usuraio”, which by himself is purely fantastic) but all if it
 and his blue
eyes, ma azzurri d’un azzurro di stoviglia
 ah god knows how to translated it.
I’ve always been very proud of my poetry collection, and this is one is one of
my favourite
 together with a rather old edition of Palazzeschi’s poems, which
should be nearly original but I got it nth handed and is almost falling to bits
(pretty much as his owner, aging is not a bad thing, aging and having done the
bugger all of all bugger alls well, yeah! Great!) 
 clof clop cloc cloppete
clocchete cloppete chhhhhhl Oh mia povera fonte malata col male che hai finisce
lo sai che uccidi me pure 
 oh my poor fountain /the illness you’ve got/ one day
you know/ will kill me/ as well
 [pseudo-ritmic
 in English
]
 ah well, the
glory, a corridor, a branch of cherry and beneath the name  of Torquato Tasso

but women come and go talking of Michelangelo and if lady do, so can I. [self
crowed with cherry branches pretty much as Napolepon]

	Together with the pleasure of reading Gadda, Gozzano and Palazzeschi, I’ve
realised I had totally forgotten how nice it was to play in a real band with
other people and crank up the amplifier as loud as possible
 when one of my
friend phoned me up and asked me if I wanted to play a ‘gig’ with him two days
after with a single rehearsal I thought he was a mentalist, but, hey, why not,
haven’t played in damned ages
  in practise the ‘rehearsal’ was 24 hours long,
which was quite amazing, but understandably as apart from one song, on which I
had only played the saw before  I didn’t have any clue on how to play the other
 ones
 not the other ‘member of the band’
 secondly the ‘gig’ in practise was a
‘hi-school garage party’ for 10 people, so no much worries of making a whole
fuck up, just If I had know I would have avoid to travel 300 km with the
equipment, however the joy of using my 60’s amp as a preamp for that two mule
that are the Sovtek MIG-100 and set it all up pretty much to 11 was quite
rewarding, also operating the lake’s land branded coffee machine for most of
the times made me feel 10 year younger at least
ten years ago wasn’t any better
whatsoever but doesn’t really matter
 I have no clue how it sounded outside. I
felt as being in a hi-speed-spin centrifuge of a 90 degree washing run 
still I
wished I had a little bit more volume, but is never enough, is it? An
anthological and I suppose absolutely planned bugger all:  how could have done
it without myself?  Anyway we had fun and apart from the people who was there,
who were there already, who else would have been interested in the ‘show-case’?
 In fact, I don’t know how, but they even liked it, we surely did.  And by the
way, we rose founds for ‘Associazione Plinio Fernando per la Conservazione
della Crudelta’ Umana’, which we felt was a quite a worthwhile charity  
 in
fact we played tsunami by sonic youth as a cover. And  “Il ballo del qua qua”
as well as, but with the kazoo only. The beer was finished by the time which
was the only slightly unpleasant thing of the evening, ignoring a phone call
from the police and then from the Carabinieri threatening to bring the whole
buck in the local jail, which would have possibly been more comfortable that
the sofa I spent the night one. Almost surely, to be frank!

Getting close to deadline is not scary, is kind of liberation. I can do pretty
much what I like because I do not have to care for consequences, is brilliant!

Supercar gattigher was my favourite cartoon when I was something year old
 how
about yours? I’ve seen a model of the thing in a second hand shop, but, sugar,
it was Sunday and it was closed
 I nearly assaulted the shop
 well, a Gattigher
with all the five cars, I’d say in a 1:24/1:32 scale would have been fully worth
it


 Take care
Gira l’elica romba il motor
Stephano


[The Journal of Fucked-up Gourmet]
http://ilsantuzzari.splinder.com
[Stay Indie get Eaten by Squirrels]
http://www.eatenbysquirrels.org











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