I giardini di marzo

Mogol: “I believe I have an extraordinary gift. I believe I have a very remarkable capacity for reception.

In my school in Umbria, I deny that we’re creative to the students. I tell them that we’re receptive. I tell them that the artist is someone who is on the balcony of the universe. And there are these things out there, in the universe, in the air. There are movements. And the one who is on this balcony – whose mind is free, with his nose towards the wind, trying to breathe in everything that might be true, noble in the world – can perceive sensations, stimuli and make them his own.

I’m like that, I’m gifted with an extraordinary capacity for capturing ideas. And after writing my lyrics, when I reread them, I swear, it always seems to me that another person wrote them. Because, at times, there’s a kind of compelling coherence, a power I don’t recognize in myself… Yet they pour out easily, like water. How do I know what it was. Maybe it was me underestimating myself in life.For example, as a child, I dreamed of becoming a third-rate employee, because I thought there was no place in the world for me. I was terrified of not being able to get food without my dad.

This whole set of things perhaps compressed me like a spring, preparing me to jump high. Or it’s a sensitivity that comes to my fingertips… that comes out when… I don’t know what it is,I swear I don’t know. I know that something quite extraordinary is released. When they play me music that excites me, not even an hour goes by without me finishing the lyrics. No way is that normal. I wouldn’t want to pass for presumptuous, because I feel that I am only a beneficiary, someone who, when he heard Battisti’s music, spilled rivers of words. What do I know? There was something… mediumistic.

I remember I giardini di marzo: I’d finished it and said to myself, where did I end up? Oh yes. When I’d written, I went to bed and tossed and turned… who knows where I’d ended up… I’d gone off topic… Because each new lyric had nothing to do with the previous ones. But then Lucio would arrive and in the morning he’d let me hear everything again. And he had the faith to say, “No, you’re wrong, you wrote some great stuff.” I’d gone through woods, rivers, lakes, and come back, but no longer even knew which road I’d taken.”

Excerpt from: Pirito, Nino, Volare, Il romanzo del festival, Genoa, De Ferrari, 1997, pp. 111-112.