LONTANO BLU

FLIGHT 

(AUDIO) 

The big question was where to emigrate to?
A lot of people were going to Argentina in those times, right after the war, and a lot of people were coming back. 
Things weren’t too good there. 
We met a brigadiere di  finanza, a customs man, 
and he said ‘I got a brother in Australia, why don’t you go there?’
 I didn’t even know what Australia meant. 
I didn’t know anybody who had ever been there.
I didn’t even know anybody who had any relatives there.
 But I said yes.  

(Antonino Margio, interview)

(AUDIO)

I didn’t really want to come here.
 I hated everything that coming here represented. 
I had all my friends back there with a future that I would never know. 
It could have been a future that is better than what I have here.
 I didn't ask to come here.
 But I thought it might only be for two or three years
 and then I could always go back. 
But once you get here, you can’t go anywhere. 

(Adele Murray, interview) 

(VISUAL) 

Sono andato all'estero
Per trovare fortuna.

Ma ho trovato
La stessa luna
E la stessa disperazione. 

I went abroad
To seek my fortune.

But I found
The same moon
And the same desperation.

(Mariano Coreno, 'I Went Abroad", tr. Walter Musolino) in in Piero Genovesi. (ed.) Compagni di viaggio, CIS Oublishers, 1991)

VISCERAS

(VISUAL)

Sacrificio Australe

Ondeggiante oro riarso
Dinamica erotica/mostruosa
D'una terra che s'accende
Sui miti
Cresceono frutti spinosi
A ingannevoli fiori alati
Volano oasi nel deserto
Muschio liquescente cola
Dai rami
Foreste enorme e ragnatele
Ancora piu enormi le soffocano
S'ode la ristata dela donna-Luna
Quando la notte diventa una lunga
Scia lattea: tutte le stelle e
A;ltre nuove son qui raggruppate
Tronchi anneriti d'eucalipti
Custodiscono spiritt indomiti
Propagando echi e fiabe
Foglieossidate strisciano su orme
Tiepide e caccia di cibo
Dai fuochi soffi di fumo e
Aromi di serpi e lucertole

Australian Sacrifice

Undulating burnt gold
Monstrous/erotic dynamics
Of a land that sets itself on fire
With myths.
Thorny fruits grow
And deceptive winged flowers
Oases spread in the desert
Liquescent moss grows
From branches.
Huge forests and huger spiderwebs
Suffocate them.
The laughter of the moon-woman is heard
When the night becomes a long
Milky wake: all the stars and
Other new ones are clustered here.
Blackened trunks of eucalypts
Guard untamed spirits
Spread echoes and tales:
Discoloured leaves creep on warm tracks
Looking for food.
From fires: puffs of smoke and
The scents of snakes and lizards.

Rosa Cappiello,  (1985) 

(VISUAL)

Follia

Intorno a me! In me! Come
Una tempesta d'ecstasi
Hahaha. Hahahahaha!
Rido, mi trascino, grido
Mi percuoto, sanguino presa
Nei vortici d'una tromba d'aria
Sfolgorante
Il fuoco sale e scende
I soli si sgranano
A milioni gallegiano in aria
Sfiorano le vene fino a farle
Scoppiare ed erompare in risate
Laceranti
E chiaro!
Al di là dei cerchi di fuoco
Dalle fauci della pura animalità
S'ergerà la dea/bestria.
A te!
Danza sui tizzoni ardenti
Squarcati il ventre  e metti in
Mostra le budella, brinda dai teschi
Nutriti dell'umano degradato
Ahahah. Hahahahaha!
Contorci I fragili meccanismi
Della ragione, evoca le apparizioni
Demoniache, il ribollire schiumante
Dell'immaginazione catastrofica
Le bestemmie, le scommese
Gli arcobaleni caotici nei cieli statici
Le illusioni ottiche, echi, miraggi
Fame, sete
La dissoluzione
La potenza della natura.
E tutto!

Lunacy

Around me! In me! Like a
Storm of ecstasy.
Hahaha.Hahahahaha!
I laugh, I drag myself about, I shout,
Ibeat myself, I bleed gripped
In the vortex of a blazing
Whirlwind of rage
Fires rise and descend, 
Suns shatter in a million pieces
Floating through the air
Grazing my veins
Making them burst and erupt
In agonizing laughter.
It's obvious!
Beyond the circles of fire,
From the jaws of unadulterated animalism
The beast/goddess will emerge.
Set free delerium,
Flaming folly, 
To you!
Dance on the blazing embers,
Rip open your belly and show
Your guts, drink from skulls,
Feed on degraded humanity.
Hahaha. Hahahahaha!
Twist up the fragile mechanism
Of reason, evoke
Demonic apparitions, the
Bubbling foam of 
Catastrophic imaginations,
The curses, the rebellions
Triggered by profoundest
Pain, the waves of hot and cold,
The chaotic rainbows, the optical illusion
Echoes, mirages, hunger, thirst, dissolution
The force of nature.
That's all.

(Rosa Cappiello, tr, Gaetano Rando.)
 
ORPHAN LAND

(AUDIO & VISUAL)

Facts about Australia

The landscape of Australia is all plains and low hills. 
If a man got lost, he could wander about for days before finding his way home. 
In this land you'll see people of every race. 
Agriculture counts for nothing here.
 Everybody works to make a bit of money and then go back home. 
In summertime water is very scarce.
 Hardly any running water, mostly stagnant. 
In summer it's very hot. 
The winter here is almost like summer at home. 

(Antonio Crameri, Bendigo, Sept.1861 in Jacqueline Templeton and John Lack, From the Mountains to the Bush: Italian Migrants Write Home from Australia, 1860–1953, University of Western Australia Press 2003,143-4)).

(AUDIO & VISUAL)

I've travelled to many places, 
but I've never seen people as vile, ignorant and selfish as these. 
I'm very tired of being here among these savages. 
You wouldn't believe how vile they are. 
The black Australians are better.
The Abyssinians and Bedouins are more civilised than this lot. 
Even the police are crooks, and so are the council officials. 
These people have all the vices in the world. 

(Agostino Candiani, 1948, in Templeton 119)

(AUDIO)

We arrived in 1950. I was 14 years old. 
Australia looked different from what I imagined. 
I thought it would be more green.
 I remember seeing all these little houses with a fence and a garden
 and I thought that’s not so bad. 
But then when we arrived at our house in Gray Street, and it didn’t have a garden
I thought it was a bit of a dump. 
We resigned ourselves to the distance. 
As years passed, we learned to assimilate. 
 But you always felt you didn’t belong and were very homesick. 
Now it’s the other way around. 
Italy is still home, and when I go there I feel at home. 
But the real home is here.
 Now I’m quite happy here.

(Anna Niscioli, interview)

(AUDIO) 

To tell you the truth I love it. 
I'm happier than I ever was.
In Italy I had to work 
just to get a piece of bread and a slice of polenta. 
Here I have everything I want,
and manage to put something aside as well. 
I've got a little nest egg, I'm in good health, 
and don't have much to worry about. 

(Pietro O, in  Templeton and Lack, 98.)

(AUDIO)

At 7 in the morning you leave for the bush with a water bag, a billy can,
you lunch, and you stay working until 4. 
We go home dirty - we sweat a lot and the dirt sticks to us. 
We look like those scarecrows 
we used to put in the wheat to frighten away the sparrows. 

(Pietro O, in Templeton p.24)

(AUDIO & VISUAL)

There are far too many new Australians in this country who are still mentally living in their homelands, who mix with people of their own nationality, and try to retain their own language and customs. Who even try to persuade Australians to adopt their customs and manners. Cut it out. There is no better way of life in the world than that of the Australian. I firmly believe this. The grumbling, growling, cursing, profane, laughing, beer drinking, abusive, loyal-to-his-mates Australian is one of the few free men left on this earth. He fears no one, crawls to no one, bludges on no one, and acknowledges no master. Learn his way. Learn his language. Get yourself accepted as one of him; and you will enter a world that you never dreamed existed. And once you have entered it, you will never leave it. 

(Nino Culotta, They’re A Weird Mob, 1957, p.204.)

(AUDIO)

I'd like to stick a bomb up Australia's arsehole
and then go and sell newspapers among the debris. 
You're laughing, are you? 
Well. go ahead and laugh. 
You adapt. You get by on dry fucks from reading books. 
You stuff yourself with dumb words. 
I can't stand it. 
I can't bear this wasteland any more. 
(Rosa Cappiello, Oh Lucky Country, 52-3.)

(VISUAL)

Pawpaw, banabas, ornages, mangoes give a little shade around the house.
The traditions and customs of their paesi mingle with more modern and less proletarian form of Anglo-Saxon life. 
They punish themselves the whole day in the field,
but when they go home in the evening they have a shower, 
and after dinner come down to town in their car to go to the cinema. 
At table, the main dishes are always the great dishes of our indigenous cuisine, 
but among the smoking mountains of macheroni, the tons of salad groaning with oil, 
or the Pantagruelian cabbages, cups of tea are passed around with slices of buttered bread.

 (Filipppo Sacchi, 'The Olive Peril' (Italians in Queensland)  Corriere della Sera, July 1925, in Templeton p.28)

(VISUAL)

Io contribuisco assieme alla massa emigrata a civilizziarti
Ad aprirti la visuale che no va più in là
Della punta del nasone.
Ti strappo la gramigna dalle orecchie.
Ti do un tono.
Ti insegno a mangiare, a vestire, a comportarti e sopratutto
A non ruttare nei ristoranti, nei treni, nei bus, nei cinema, nelle scuole.
A te forse è ignoto, ma ti lo dico in confidenza.
Sa che il tuo paese, e adesso anche mio,
Si basa su un enorme rutto.
Il pennone garrisce al vento
Spinto dai gaz toccici dei vostri stomaci
Intastati come fogni.
Il mito dell'happy and lucky 
Si basa sulle bevute.
E bevi. Ci offendi.
Non ti piace il vino? Preferisci la birra.
Cameriere una bottiglione di birra all signora. 

(Rosa Cappiello Paese fortunato, Roma: Feltrinelli, 1981,  183)

Together with the migrant masses
I am contributing to the process of your civilisation
To widening your horizon which doesn't extend
Any further than the point of your great ugly nose.
I tear the weeds out of your ears.
I give you a certain style.
I teach you to eat, to dress, to behave and above all
Not to belch in restaurants, trains, buses, cinemas, schools.
You probably don't know, so I'll tell you in confidence
Your country, which is now my country too,
 is based on a gigantic belch. 
Your flag flutters in the wind 
created by  the toxic gases produced by your stomachs, 
which are all choked up like sewers. 
Your myth about being happy and lucky
 is based on drunken binges. 
You prefer beer to wine? 
Waiter, a large bottle of beer for the lady. 

(Rosa Cappiello Oh Lucky Country, trans. Gaetano Rando, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1984,  193)

ALLEGRO MA NON TROPPO

(VISUAL)

At the Pub

Her breath smells like insecticide.
Engrossed in her taciturn grotesqueness
She ceaselessly sucks on the few teeth
She has left. She's ugly. Christ how she's
Ugly. Already weary when she makes her appearance.
Between one glass and another she strays into
Frenzied advances pushed to the limit of
Amorous assaults. Half naked, dressed
In rags she staggers from table
To table thrusting out her breasts her buttocks
Barley and hop lit up like beacons
Under her loud besplattered dress.
It's blood. It's shit. It looks as though she's 
just used it to clean her bum
or that she's had an abortion in the toilet.
Whoever she is now she loved, was loved.
That right belongs to her. She wants it
Back. She's paying for it. A lot. Too much.
For the forgetfulness they applaud her
They pull her down onto their knees. Go on 
Girl … have a drink. Hurray for us,
Hurray for you, tonight we'll have fun.
What a night! Drink. We'll work wonders.

(Rosa Cappiello, Tr Gaetano Rando) Overland no. 102, 1986, 71.

AZUL DISTANTE

(AUDIO & VISUAL)

Il cielo qui è una rivalsa contro la solitudine.
Azzurro annuvolato. Annuvolato azzurro. Azzurro azzurro.
Non è l'America. In un lontano futuro, forse
Sarà l'ultimo America del mondo.
Ci sono le basi per il decantato lucky country.
Adesso non è il sogno sognato, né il paese della cuccagna.
E una infinità di danze, gighe, gavotte, minuette, pavane, 
mazurke, valzer, tanghi, boogiwoogie, twist, madison, rumbe, 
spesse rutti e scorregge che ti arrivano in piena faccia
nella sala di una cinema, a un party (Cappiello Paese fortunato 7)

The sky here is a revenge against solitude
Blue cloudy. Cloudy blue. Blue blue.
It’s not America. In the distant future, maybe
It will be the last America in the world. 
The foundations are here for the extolled lucky country.
But right now it’s no dream come true, no land of milk and honey.
It’s an infinity of dances – jigs, gavottes, minuets, pavanes, 
mazurkas, waltzes, tangos, boogiewoogies, twists, madisons, rumbas, 
along with belches and farts that hit you right in the face 
in a cinema or at a party. (Oh Lucky Country 1)

HORIZONTE DI TRIGO MATURO

(AUDIO & VISUAL)

ti paragonava a Sisifo
perch è ogni gionro dovevi
tagliare e rotolare le venti
tonnellate di canna sulla scala
traballante dei carri a rotaia
e tornavi a riprendere il macigno
di zucchero che ricadeva nel pendio
finche il sole scendeva
dietro l'orrizzonte dei canneti

(Giuseppe Abiuso, 'I Dubbi Della Notte Alla Canna Da Zucchero')

he compared you to Sisyphus
because every day
you had to cut twenty tons of cane
and roll them on the shaking stairs
to the rail wagons
and go back to get your boulder
of sugar which rolled down the slope
while the sun sank
behind the cane horizon

(Giuseppe Abiuso, 'Doubts in the Night on the Canefields' (trans. Antonio Pagliaro), in Piero Genovesi. (ed.) Compagni di viaggio, CIS Oublishers, 1991)

(AUDIO)

Driving through Melbourne was like being in fairyland. The little houses, all small and single storey, all painted up and with their little gardens, were so beautiful, built of bricks and timber, each with its own car in front. 

I have no wish to be in Italy any more. The air's better here. Sometimes I think about it and wonder why it is that I don't feel homesick. I'm happy about everything, even my idea of coming to Australia, it means my true destiny must be here.

On Saturday I shall bank about eighty pounds. I have never in my life seen such abundance. And if I weren't here I couldn't have done what I've done. 

(Tarcisio Crapella 1952-3, Templeton 108-9).