Sigur Ros in Ferrara, Italy

sigur_ros
Originally uploaded by aabitia.

My favorite band, Sigur Ros, played a concert at Piazza Castello, in Ferrara, Italy on June 23, 2003. Ferrara is in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy along the Po River, south of Venice and Padua. It is a city of bicycles, but you'll probably want to arrive on some sort of motorized transport, as it would take quite a while to ride a bike to Ferrara from, say, Los Angeles, especially underwater. This particular venue has become a "place to play" amongst a lot of the indie bands; Radiohead has played there too, for example. Incidentally, Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, has proclaimed his eternal devotion to Sigur Ros, and has stated in various interviews that he considers them to be at the top of the heap. Or at least the top of his heap.

Anyway, if you'd like to see photos of the Sigur Ros event in Ferrara, Italy, click here. The concert was ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS. Don't most people get to go to concerts in ancient Italian piazzas like that? Of course they don't. I was not there either. However, I was at their Los Angeles show a few weeks earlier; click to see photos of that show.

Closing word about Sigur Ros: If you're one of the MTV masses you probably haven't heard of them, nor will you like them. Nonetheless, if you're one of those lovers of Limpbizkit or Ashlee Simpson (now sponsored by Pepsi!), it would give me great joy to see the look of horror on your face as you run screaming from the CD player, hands over ears. Here's the website: www.sigur-ros.com

Italian and its Translation

A word about the Italian on this blog. I like Italian. I like to speak it and write it. However, there are some issues. First, it is not entirely possible to provide accurate translations for the Italian selections; that is, if you were to translate them word for word to English, a lot of the meaning would be lost, or would not quite be the same. For example, the part that talks about the Italian girl with the downturned eyes might get all messed up and you'd think I'm talking about a girl whose eyeballs keep popping out of their ocular cavities, or a girl who has glaucoma, or a girl who has a glass eye. Translations can be tricky. So, I won't always provide translations, but only occasionally will. Second, the aforementioned first point presupposes that my Italian skills are any good, and to be honest, my Italian is actually quite pedestrian. (As an aside, you can take all the Italian language classes you want, but you'll never know as steep a learning curve as being dropped in the middle of the boot-shaped land. "Oh, but English is the universal language," you say; wrong, the universal language is love, so unless you think you can order a Prosciutto panini by batting your eyelashes at the little old Italian man who is already way too weary of all sloppy-faced tourists, you'd better get cracking.)

Anyway, I know all this talk about Italian and translations and "getting the real meaning" might sound silly, so please let me say that the best way for you to get the precise meaning of the Italian selections on this fine blog would be to simply invent some kind of mind-reading machine (or just buy one on the Internet) which uses advanced satellite technology to find specific persons via DNA profiling, obtain some DNA from me, and then once you find me, focus the "laser" (?) energy on my forehead at night when I least suspect it (and hope I'm not tossing and turning from insomnia, thus focusing the energy on some other body part, such as my clavicus); then, you'd simply compile the raw data into usable form and then to English. During this process you'd have to cross your fingers and hope that your mind-reading machine has good Italian-to-English translation "algorithms", or else you're back to the same problem as before.

Well, it does appear that obtaining accurate Italian translations is a lot of work, so why bother? Why make the effort? For the sake of Art? Literature? Even Romance? Those things are pretty much dead anyway, thanks to the wonders of Instant Messaging, cellphones and Reality T.V. So you may wish to close this window and do something more apropos for the average American--google the internet for Lindsey Lohan's HOT new video, "I Gotta Get You Outta My Mind And Into My Semi-Germ-Free Hot Tub And Then Eventually My Lawyer's Office For Prenuptual Negotiations".

Really, I'm sure it'd be more interesting than all this boring Italian culture stuff.

Mio Più Nuovo Senso

Cari amici,

Precedentemente ho detto que desidero cancellere questo Blog e cominci sopra, soltanto nella lingua italiana. Ciò era ed è un'idea fine, ma ho realizzato quello se facessi questo, l'una o due gente nel "e-community" ampio; chi può realmente inciampare su questo, statisticamente, molto probabilmente non potere leggere o capire l'italiano e così mancherebbero questo lavoro importante, a che gradisco riferirsi come "my art". Così, ho decisare inviare principalmente in inglese, ma occasionalmente in italiano.

Ciao
(Traduzione: Uhhh, see below)

My Newer Direction

My Dear Friend(s),

Previously I had stated that I would erase this Blog and start over, only in the Italian language. This was and is a fine idea, as I would like to continue learning the Italian language. However I have realized that if I did this, the one or two people in the vast "e-community" who may actually stumble upon this site whilst looking for bizarre oddities of the world, would, statistically speaking, most likely not be able to read and/or understand Italian, and thus would miss this important work which I like to refer to as "my art". So, I've decided to post mostly in English, but occasionally in Italian as well. My Italian is, sans my dictionary and other aids, somewhat sophmoric, so don't be too impressed.

"Ciao"
(Translation: "See you later")

My New Direction

Dear Friend(s),

I've decided to erase all entries in this "blog" and start over, only from now on all entries will be in the Italian language, in keeping with the title of this important blogging work. This new-found direction will commence immediately, or when I get around to it. Soak in these last few words of English while you can.