Palermo, 22 October 2021
For 1 week I have been rehearsing in the most unusual, beautiful and terrible place ...
Formerly Palermo's beach - here the rubble of demolished palazzi is gradually piling up, rubbish and sewage flows over the small river into the sea, the waves wash cliffs from the shards of the city.
It is hot, windy, you can hear the sirens, cars and the sea. Horses graze on a small meadow between scrub and ruins. People live in crumbling huts and in huge apartment blocks towering behind them, hung with laundry and air conditioners.
I play, talk and play with broken pieces and rubbish and viola, think about a lament.
Every day Melo visits me with his attack dog Kira. He tells me how he fucks his wife, that he has three children, that this is his neighbourhood. And that he knows everyone in Ballaro too. He asks me if I like being fucked from behind and how big my asshole is. Every day the same.
I stand there with my viola and wait so I can keep playing, keep talking about an attempted dirge.
Giorgio tells me in the evening that in that place the Mafia makes people disappear in acid.
On the horizon, ships go and come. Big ferries, wooden fishing boats, sailing ships, sometimes people collecting things from the washed up jetsam.
I listen for a moment. Then I start playing again.
Once Francesco Bellina comes and takes this picture of me.
