Marina, who is a little different in character from me, as they say in these cases, together we have been making up for each other for over thirty-five years, and who, as I have already said, has no problems falling asleep, says that “this is the sign of restart, construction sites upon construction sites because we were stopped due to the pandemic”. Romantically futurist, Marina.
I believe that my making videos and photos is the result of the twenty-six years spent in Milan, I can’t rationally find any other explanation. When I’m tired I sometimes find myself thinking as if I were born here, even if, please, if I ever had to put an article before a proper name, shoot me down, I would be incurable at that point. I took them and turned it around, I imagine, then thinking of sending them to the Municipality, via email, protesting sincerely about the inconvenience, or perhaps to the Corriere della Sera, for a letter that I hope will be published in the appropriate section.
This is how it works here. People feel like protesting in a civil manner, because it claims a civilization that it believes to be fundamental, and which does not find residence elsewhere, much less under the Rubicon. So, to say, if he suffers a wrong, one of those that would drive you crazy anywhere, here he takes pen and paper and writes an email to the Courier of heartfelt protest, or to the building administrator, or to whoever. He doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t even raise his hands, and God forbid, he protests by sending emails or letters and in fact he promptly takes it in the ass.
When I find myself making a fool of myself in company, focusing the attention of those present on my oratorical art, I always tell these two episodes, thrown in there, in the middle of the speech, to set up a comparison, and to make them understand the shock I felt. and I feel having to deal with this alien way of doing things on a daily basis.
Years ago, around 2000, Nanni Moretti found himself shooting one of his films, the first tragic and in which autobiography had no place in the plot, in Ancona. In Rome there was the Jubilee, it was impossible to ask to stop traffic or anything else to shoot a film. Ancona, on the other hand, welcomed him as if he were God, modified traffic, everyone at his service, often even doing extras or other things in the film in question, Son’s room. At the time, obviously Moretti didn’t say it, damn it, but while everyone there was boasting about his choice, hypothesizing, I swear, that Ancona would become very famous throughout Italy and perhaps even a new Hollywood, but the choice fell on my hometown for two specific reasons, we needed a place that had the sea, for a question related to the plot which, despite being an old film, I won’t spoil it for you, and because we needed a neutral, unrecognizable place, Ancona, in fact. Ancona which will never be mentioned as such in the film, so to speak, in spite of its fame. However, for almost two years everyone was very nice, helpful, grateful. Moretti asked to be able to have parking lots and spaces otherwise used for citizens and street vendors, the so-called “stalls”, which at the time occupied an important portion of one of the three main city streets, Corso Mazzini, and so it was. He asked to close the avenue to traffic for days and days, which in the film became Viale della Vittoria, as per the toponymy, but no one there calls it that, and he achieved this. Then one day people must have busted their balls. So it happens that the production truck arrives in Piazza Cavour, the building where part of the scene takes place is there, on a small road a stone’s throw away, it has taken the curve and in what until the day before was the car park that the Municipality had given it generously used he found a couple of vans of the “stall holders” parked. The truck driver, Roman, got out of the truck with an arrogant looka detail that changes nothing in the narrative, he rudely pointed out that there was a parking ban, and in response he got a punch in the face which, due mention, shattered his mucous membranes and his blood by the hectoliter. So he got into the truck and left, recording finished, the film can go to editing.
A way perhaps not very civilized to resolve certain issues, but undoubtedly effective. And in any case the only one applicable in certain latitudes.
The scene moves to Milan, to what was my building until five years ago, but we are much further back in time. We lived there, a few hundred meters from the building where we live now, from 2006 to 2018, a long period of time. A low building, two floors, with two families on the ground floor, two on the first floor, and three on the second, where we lived. Plus a couple of studio apartments with access to the courtyard. A very lively courtyard, the children, including ours, who played there, the residents who met there to chat. The absence of an elevator, then, makes everything very familiar, if you meet ten times a day it doesn’t take you long to break the ice, unless you’re antisocial. A delightful setting, which I would never have left if the apartment hadn’t become too cramped for us, there are six of us, you’ll understand.
However, in one of the apartments on the first floor, entrance right in the atrium, a golden door that you couldn’t help but notice, at every solstice, therefore four times a year, a party was held and still is held. A big party, with dozens and dozens of participants, each bringing something to eat and drink, the host, Riccardo, playing very Eighties music, but also sophisticated stuff, from Wall of Voodoo to The Cult, alongside slightly less refined stuff, Raffaella Carrà and similar. A party that starts around ten and goes on until two or three in the morning. There is also a fifth celebration, Carnival Saturday. Five parties like this every year. Now, I lived on the second floor, so between me and the party there was an apartment to act as a filter, but I swear to you that, in bed, I could distinguish not only every single musical part of the song that the stereo was playing, but also all his words. It felt like sleeping on top of the stereo, the walls of the house shaking from the bass. The first time I went crazy, amazed. Then I waited until someone from the building, or even from the nearby buildings, our courtyard bordered on another much larger one, there must have been around thirty families, giving the word family the maximum possible interpretation, looking out there. Instead, nothing. He waits and waits and three o’clock arrives, goodbyes, the music ends and we can sleep. A shock, but all in all you can get away with it once. Once at the solstice, though. We would discover this shortly afterwards. And every time, I swear, Marina stopped me while, in my pajamas, I walked towards the front door and then the stairs and then the golden door with the face of Michael Douglas from the film A day of ordinary madness, the aforementioned baseball bat in hand, ready to take justice into my own hands. She there to tell me, “But if those below don’t protest, why do you have to, then what will they say about us?”. What will they say about us. One comes down, calmly, to point out that it’s two in the morning and it seems like he’s under the Tomorrowland stage and the problem is what people will think of him. Civilization, a Milanese would say. Softness, I think. In fact, one year, let’s say halfway through our stay in that building, when we had now become quite close with Riccardo, he invited us to the party, suddenly eliminating any possibility of protesting, even if we had decided not to take part, as that is, the family on the first floor, who, unlike most of the condominiums, except for the elderly lady always on the first floor, began to participate. So we went there, had a lot of fun and that was the end of it, but in Milaninvitations to parties or not, that’s how it works, you get angry, here they would say indignant, and you write a letter to the building managerwho in the meantime is cheating you out of your money by exaggerating the costs. Or write to Corriere della Sera. In Ancona we move on to de facto manners, rejecting the problem with our bare hands.
2023-10-15 16:26:35
#Parking #car #bans #night #construction #sites #Beppe #Sala #hate #Milanese #MOW
