September 10: Italy I love you.

I was thirteen, my trousers were too short, there was sweat on my brow and my suspenders were rubbing against the back of my neck. That summer evening in Bordighera, I decided I hated Italy. Here, everything was difficult. I couldn't get served in cafes, I felt uncomfortable and unfit and my sisters got all the attention. Foreign women have no idea what Italy really is; ask an awkward teenage boy instead. He knows the truth.

Growing up, our summer vacations would almost always be spent in the south of France. We would drive from London in our white Toyota Previa, crammed with luggage, pillows, my parents, a few family pets including a rabbit hidden under my seat, and my four siblings. Siting on the floor of the car wasn't an option it was a necessity. As long as the trunk was able to close and the police didn't see us, we would be off from London on our 20 hour journey to the sun. To this day, driving by car is still my favourite way of getting around, even on tour.

When you come from a big family, everything in theory should be harder, but in practice everything is easier. Even if we didn't have much money there was always somebody making a joke, starting a conversation or more entertainingly an argument. The south of France was always our destination because for us it was cheap. We would stay with family, go to the beach, and drive to Italy as often as possible.

Bordighera and the streets of San Remo, were my first experience of Italy. My mother loved the food and the people and they loved her back. With her big colourful dresses, rounded figure and swarm of children, she was welcomed in Italy where in France it was always frosty looks. My sisters, with their good looks and smiles, revelled in the attention. My brother was only a child, and enjoyed the fact that in Italy he was never told off or told to be quiet. My father, who had lived in Rome, spoke Italian and had charm. Charm! That was one thing I certainly did not have at 13. I was awkward. Quiet but with sudden outbursts of expression, which would make people around me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps I was seen as odd or effeminate. My clothes were often things I had made. Shortened trousers, suspenders, collared long sleeve shirts and bow ties. I was not at ease with myself and I felt the Italians were not at ease with me. I would drift around the streets on my own, ordering ice cream at every shop I came across. The easy- manners of Italian young men were devastatingly intimidating to me. I would run away from them.

It is precisely this unease that drove me so intensely into music. Through music I could turn into anything or anyone. I could be charming, I could be listened to. Through music I became comfortable with myself and through music Italy eventually accepted me. There are few places in the world where I enjoy playing live more than in Italy. Playing the Milano Forum was the proudest moment on my last tour and it reminded me what a strong influence Italy had been on me when I was very young.

My second encounter with Italy happened much later and far from Italy, in London. I was 19 and was studying opera at the Royal College of Music, where for three and a half years I sang as a baritone. From the moment I walked into my Italian song class, with my professor Marco Canepa, I felt like that awkward 13 year old all over again. Professor Canepa was a short middle aged man. He spoke frankly and honestly, in a heavy Italian accent. He wore red suspenders and loved opera. In the three and a half years of teaching me, I sang to him only five times and always the same song; Scarlatti's 'Gia il sole dal Gange'. I was terrible. I was now a pop singer pretending to be a classical singer and sounding like a 60 year old baritone. Canepa was desperate. He called me "the mute". When I had my last lesson with him, I told him that one day he would be able to see me in Milan but that it would not be at La Scala, as it would be too small. He thought I had lost my mind.

Fast forward five years and I find myself playing my first Italian show at the Alcatraz in Milan. Half way through, I sit down and play a very quiet song called Over My Shoulder. After singing the high long high notes, the crowd starts making a lot of noise. I am horrified, I think they are booing me and just about get through the rest of the show. It wasn't until afterwards that I realise they weren't booing but cheering because they liked my singing. I had never come across an audience like that before. Professor Canepa never felt so far away.

My teenage hatred for Italy has turned into love. I now realise that Italians get it. Whatever "it" is. They see beauty and the extraordinary in things that others consider ordinary. They see beauty in sadness they and are not afraid to make themselves heard. Italy reminds me of of my family, screaming and laughing and our long journeys in our old Toyota Previa.

October 10

Before going on stage I have a ritual. Its normal - most singers do. I put on my show trousers and shoes, take off my T-shirt, brush my teeth, chew on a piece of fresh ginger dipped in honey and say a prayer. Every part of my pre-show ritual is as important as the other. The prayer, however, consists of four ‘Our Father’s and a couple lines on each element of my show.

After a year and a half of touring around the world, I asked myself at my final show in Warsaw, why I could not do a performance without this routine and in particular, without the prayer – especially as I am not normally religious. Perhaps the ceremony focuses me and also gives me confidence. But more than anything, this is just a habit which has its roots in childhood.

I was born a Melkite. It is a version of Christianity from Lebanon that has traces of Greek Orthodoxy but follows the Pope and the Vatican. From the age of eight I was educated in Catholic schools. This was not a conscious decision by my parents but a happy accident. I was expelled from the French state school I went to, and ended up at a small private school for boys, which we lived next door to. Religious history and ethics were drummed into us every day and religious music was the first serious singing I did.

Today I find myself with a contradictory opinion on the Roman Catholic Church and religion. I hate so much about it yet cannot get away from it. Religion has given me a code of ethics and an ability to embrace spirituality. Whenever I see a church I am attracted to it. I step inside and love the escape and detachment I feel within those walls. As an institution, it has never felt more detached from the world we live in. I seek refuge in their buildings, I say prayers, I believe in God, but my God is tolerant and inclusive.

At my school we had a close association with the Roman Catholic Brompton Oratory. We knew many of the priests, had confession and lessons with them. It was a general assumption among the boys that quite a few of our priests were probably gay. We had no issues with this. But for me, as an eight year old boy, I started to feel like the Church was used as a hiding place, that homosexuality was wrong, and that repression was encouraged.

I quickly realised this was rubbish. I had the luck to have life and family teach me so. All organized religions need infrastructure, money and have political influence. But in the world we live in today, when power and influence can be found at the click of a computer keyboard, the religious organizations feel more out of touch than ever. Gold crosses and wealth do not impress and are irrelevant when compared to the most important things that faith can offer. Bin the gold cross and get a wooden one. Let the Church impress with an open heart and not a heavy wallet.

It is an organization, it has good and bad and we must be brave enough to take what we like and not have them impose what we do not believe in. The Church is in crisis. Its scandals are being made public and its faults are more evident than ever. In order to survive it must welcome back with open arms the people that it has driven away. I am 27, I am pro choice, pro contraception, pro gay union, pro tolerance, and most of all pro faith if not religion.

November 10: MIKA XL COLUMN 3

My mother was a hippy. Or at least I think she was for a while. Then she became an anthropologist and before being a hippy she was a dedicated follower of the Rolling Stones, "before they were even famous", apparently. She was even asked by the band to head their fan club in the USA. Each phase of her life seemed to take a couple years. Each phase of mine seemed to last a few months. As I'm writing this, over a hundred books are on shelves to my right. Books that cover different periods of music, art and style. From the clothing of the punk era, to the costumes from freak shows that toured America in the 1920s. Phases and trends of different cultural periods have fascinated me since my teens. Around the age of 19, I spent a few months tracking down the only professor in the world who specialised in the science and study of trend. He called himself a trendologist. I wanted to study with him but music came more naturally. Looking back on my choice it seems strange that I could have been interested in both music and trend at the same time. Good music is only created when you forget about the world around you and start to create your own little world. Trend and fashion can kill creativity.

About a year ago I went to see an early show of Lady Gaga's in Los Angeles. I had just finished recording my second album and had become very curious about what she was doing. Back stage at the Wiltern theatre I ran into Kanye West and we decided to go for a drink after the show. Over the course of the evening Kanye spoke a lot about fashion. He discussed almost every type of trend in art and style that you could think of. I was amazed at his knowledge but completely confused. How can he keep on creating if he is so immersed in the "now". He seems to be able to do both, I can't.

When I write, I am lost. I loose contact with my friends and throw relationships in the air. I become desperate and really quite dirty. A shower is the last thing on my mind, so it’s a good job I don't see anyone. That’s because I choose to focus on myself, my ideas, and create my own thing, far away from the current trends. I admire Kanye enormously, but the clothes confused me. I think he thought I would have something interesting to say about fashion and brands, but he quickly realised I was ignorant. Growing up with my hippy/ anthropologist/ groupie/ dress maker mother, meant that we always made most of the clothes we wore. Buying them was offensive to her.

I am not obsessed by trend in the way that I used to be. Trend has changed. Its not that trend is dead, its just that it moves too fast to be interesting. We are fed information so quickly nowadays and of course we consume it just as fast. But do we really remember all the things we come across? Trends are not just about the cut of a dress and the height of a heel. Trends are the result of a massive collective feeling and can shape art, culture but also history. If a trend moves too quickly however we are left with nothing more than a passing fad. I guess you could say that Trends are not made by pioneers of counterculture any more. The image of the London punk or the New York fashionista has never felt more dated. The trend makers are in front of a computer. Probably not very well dressed and on appearance would look terrifically unimpressive. But trends are made in forums and online. When Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash in 2003 whilst studying at Harvard, he had no idea that what he had created would turn into Facebook and would spark one of the biggest collective trends of all time. Love him or hate him for intruding on your privacy, he is one of the leading trend setters of the century and he still dresses like shit.

Looking back on my mother's various phases its clear that she was doing her duty; spreading her beliefs and in turn helping spread a trend. Her efforts and the time it took made her value her involvement, she felt like a pioneer. Now that trends spread so quickly, no one has time to develop a sense of attachment to them. Trends without soldiers who care are never going to win the battle against time.

December 10: News Flash! The British have cracked!

On the morning of the 10th of November British students in their thousands took to the streets of London to march in protest of a major university fee increase. This government plan would see the cost of university rise to over 10,000 Euros a year by 2012. At a time when cuts are being made all over the world, internationally, this is not a very big story. With a few broken windows and a rather pathetic looking bomb fire, this story turned into front page news of the Wall Street Journal. Over the past few months we have seen countries in their true colours, as each nation have reacted accordingly to cuts in public funding.

In comparison to the violence of the Greek protests and the scale of the recent French demonstrations, the UK student protests seem almost meek. it is the fact that there has been any public violence and protest in the UK at all, that is important.For the first time in the past two years, the stoic patina of the British public has been cracked. Even Schwarzenegger, in his own way, has been holding up the UK as an example of a nation who are making appropriate sacrifices and dealing with them in the right way. Basically, that we've been keeping our mouths' shut. How very English... Over the past year, a few countries have started to represent the varied European responses to economic cuts. Like protagonists in a serialised novel, France, Greece and now the UK are all stars. But where does Italy sit in all of this? Obviously the Italian economy is suffering as much if not more in some ways than its European counterparts. But why do the French get all the attention and manage to make themselves heard around the world? The answer is Unity. The French public has a way of unifying itself against what they consider unjust. If the English are seen as keeping their discontent to themselves then Italians are seen as doing nothing about it. Stories of classrooms in some parts of the country being so over full that students are being asked to bring their own chairs, are not uncommon. Extra curricular activities at schools have been slashed and university professors are increasingly being poached into other industries with more prospects.

Italian universities no longer appear in the top 200 Universities of the world, even though they were created in Bologna in the middle ages. If these kinds of troubles were to start affecting primary education in the UK, the discontent would be so widespread that the demonstrations would be front page news because of their scale and not their violence. A close Milanese friend often speaks to me about these such problems but admits to have never taken part in a rally of any kind. When asked why, he says its "just not done". There is no shame in making problems heard. How can they be rectified otherwise? That same Milanese friend emailed me last week furious, after Berlusconi had made a comment in the press saying that it was "better to be passionate about girls that being gay". How I ask myself can a prime minister ever get away with a comment such as this without any consequences? In other countries such a statement would lead to a resignation. Its not funny, its not true, its pathetic. Again, my friend apart from emailing me did nothing. Clearly others felt angry too, just like they do about the education problems.

But what will spark a fire and burn away the complacency which stops people making their discontent heard? On the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, perhaps the marches should not just be ceremonial and for the sake of making leaders look even better but should be real people making themselves heard.

January 11

You've obviously realised by now that this issue is about Glam. By the time you've finished reading this magazine (or just looking at the pictures) you would have had enough bright coloured lipstick, smeared sequins and alter egos to last you the rest of 2011.

Imagine if you had woken up in the early hours of 2011 lying on the floor, dressed in a blue catsuit with glitter in your hair and a puddle of drool under the corner of your mouth. Well that mess was me on the 1st of Jan and the Glam rock themed new years party which preceded this ugly scene was to blame. That is the reason why I don't feel like writing about Glam. Instead this article will be far more traditional; the ultimate new years resolution list. Trust me, I need one.

Resolution Number ONE; I shall find myself a canon. After the death of the legendary american writer Hunter S Thompson, his ashes were exploded out of a canon on top of a mountain in Colorado. None other than Johnny Depp lit the taper. This is a very very good way to go. Forget Johnny Depp tho, I don't know him. Why spend so much money on a burial plot when a story like that will travel for so far and for so long. Please note, my resolution makes no implication that I will die in 2011, I just want a canon. A little post life theatre can't be a bad thing.

Resolution Number TWO; Be Kind Not Nice. Who likes Nice? Nice isn't sexy nor is it honest. People are only nice when they want something or when they just want to get you out of the way. Being nice is like being drunk too many times in a week. You feel tired, anaesthetised and very angry underneath. Kind, is sincere and takes more effort. The plus side is that you don't have to do it as often. It does take a lot more control however, and that takes discipline. But we all know that discipline makes you feel better about yourself. So, being nice makes you feel like shit and being kind makes you feel good and zen like. Be careful to not be too pious however, then everyone thinks your just a self satisfied prick.

Resolution Number THREE; Embrace The Posse. I went to see a play about Onassis recently and one thing struck me. Very rarely during the two hour show was he ever shown without an entourage. He reminded me of my Arab friends who always go out it groups, or of rappers who's entourage impose a sense of importance and inconvenience on everyone around them, which is the point I think. I come from a Lebanese background, with a big and very close family. Hardly ever do I go anywhere for work or play, where I am not surrounded by at least 3 or four people. Often this entourage has made me feel uncomfortable. As if, more could be achieved or observed If I were more subtle in my movements. This year I shall embrace my crew. Even if my entourage is not as cool as a rapper's or as powerful as Onassis', I shall walk walk around with my sisters, friends, dog, a couple 80 year old family members and of course my mother, all in line and with our heads held high.

Resolution Number FOUR; Find A Henchman. Ok so this is a bit of a continuation of number three but still merits its own resolution. I want a chinese looking, quiet and elegant, quite small gentleman, in a suit and tie, preferably in his mid thirties, to follow me around, everywhere. He shouldn't say to much but must have a doctorate in something obscure, like the behaviour of a subspecies of amazonian red ant. He will be my confidant, the other part of my brain, my filter to people I cross. He will frighten the seedy and reassure the wise. Aplications welcome.

Resolution Number FIVE; Work All The Time. You know those self help guides that tell you to take lots of holiday and spend time away from work? Well, their bullshit. Those guides are written by self promoting workaholic who want you to buy their books, feel crap again and then buy another one. When you don't work enough you fell like terrible. The things that you used to look forward to, like a drink after work or a favourite TV show, no longer have the same appeal. The more you work the more you value everything and everyone around you. At my age how could this be a bad thing?

I hope I inspire you. I think I've inspired myself. Feel free to borrow some of my resolutions and make them your own, just stay away from the henchman idea, if everyone gets one, it could get a little confusing. Happy new year! Nota Benne, that was said with kindness, I'm not being nice.

February 11

I was 22. I had left college a year before. I had just signed my record deal and had lost myself completely in my music. For one year I did not go on a single date. One night however, at 9pm I received an email on my personal myspace page asking me out. I had no idea who it was and two days later I went. The romance was short lived. Two weeks and four dates. It was perfect, and heartbreaking when it ended. "That's the way it goes…" I was told, "didn't you know?". Internet dating etiquette was something I was truly naive about. A one night stand was one thing. This was different. It felt unresolved and messy. Emotional lines had been crossed and I was angry. In truth it was all my fault, but I still felt like a slut.

That was my introduction to internet dating. Myspace, the Facebook of yesterday. Where our pictures were always better than the reality and our words typed always more entertaining than the ones spoken. Since then internet dating has become so much the norm that out of five of my close friends who have been going on dates in the last twelve months, all of them have been out with someone they met online, and two of them exclusively so. In a coffee shop in London the other day, I over heard a guy my age hitting on a brunette he met in the queue, saying he wanted to see her again he asked her if she had a Facebook. She quickly rebuffed that she "preferred reality". After that, he just gave up. I thought she was just making conversation, but obviously her comment made him feel lame, as if he wasn't man enough to date her in the real world. I think he was better off, she seemed like a bitch and he was better looking.

Isn't that the best thing about the internet? You can approach someone that you would never be brave enough to, or even have time to in real life. And let’s face it, anyone with an internet connection does it in some way. Even if you meet someone for the first time in the flesh, if you're interested you go online and see what you can dig up. We find ourselves piecing together their life, from holiday snaps with drunk friends, to whether they have children or if the pictures of them alone seem too egocentric or staged. At the end of all the online digging you might as well had met online. Perhaps there really isn't a difference any more. I admire people who shy away from all forms of internet dating. Mainly because I wonder how they do it? A friend of mine asserts that internet dating breaks down social barriers, that you can meet someone regardless of their profession or wealth. Funny thing is, she only ever wants to go out with people who earn at least 40 grand a year, and will rifle through someones dirty laundry online until she can assure herself of his "status".

I guess the internet hasn't changed dating much at all. Even if some people say that everyone is doing it, it doesn't mean they're going to 'do it' with everyone, and that's what I didn't understand the first time round. The fact that I knew so much about the person before going on a single date, accelerated the relationship. All this information made me think I would be with that person for a long time. It enabled me to become close, even obsessed very quickly. What I didn't understand was that knowing more about the other person didn't make me a more suitable partner and I should have been more guarded.

As the film maker David Lynch says, we are in a download age. Not one decision or transaction doesn't involve a download of information of some sort. The internet is part of our reality, that's what the brunette in the coffee shop got wrong. What she was really saying was that she didn't fancy him. He didn't fit her criteria and the Facebook jibe was a cheap one made to make him feel like a dork. I'm glad he walked away.

March 11

In life certain things happen which make you realise that no one can or should exist on their own.

On 10th October last year, my older sister Paloma had an accident after a house warming party in her new apartment, which she had only moved into the day before. The move had been an important one. Born with a disability which left one side of her body significantly weaker than the other, she had resisted moving out for a while but had finally made the move. Having helped prepare her flat for the housewarming, my brother and I stayed for the party. The mood was simple and friendly and I went home at midnight having had a great time.

At 5am I was woken up by screaming and banging at my front door. Paloma had fallen out of her fourth floor bedroom window and landed on the railings below. I ran out of bed and to her apartment. I could have killed anyone in my way, but when I saw her I stepped back. I didn't want her to know I was there. Surrounded by ambulance and firemen, she lay crumpled on the railings, the tops of which had gone through her body in four different places. I could see one coming out of her leg. She looked so broken but was amazingly still conscious. I hid with my brother in an ambulance and called my family around the world to have them come home. It was my father's 60th birthday, and when I called him in Dubai, he thought I was calling from the airport and had come to surprise him. It took almost two hours to remove Paloma from the railings. Unable to lift her off them, for fear of too much bleeding, the railings were sawn off and kept inside her until they could be removed in an operating theatre. She was conscious the whole time. I watched paramedics lay her on a stretcher and anaesthetise her in the street. By the time I touched her face she was asleep. The neighbourhood was awake and in silent shock. Paloma was taken by the helicopter unit to the Royal London Hospital, where over the course of 14 hours surgeons managed to save her life. Incredibly, the railings which had caused horrendous damage were the one thing that saved her. Having been kept from falling into the basement she incurred no damage to her head and brain.

Today, Paloma is still in hospital. Once she is eventually discharged she will be transferred to a residential rehab where she will re-learn to walk and encourage the nerves in her legs and hips to recover. Her full recovery will probably take years. Growing up in France and the UK, I have always known a nationalised health care system. But my sister's accident made me truly value it. We are cared for from cradle to grave by a healthcare system that feels like it has always been and always will be there. To say that we take it for granted, I think is an understatement.

Having an American father, we have always had US passports. If this accident had happened in normal circumstances over there, my parents would have had to sell their house by now. The US Government sends troops abroad to ‘defend’ its citizens’ rights but leaves its people ‘defenceless’ when they’re injured at home. If you fall out of a window in America - you’re on your own. This is terrifying. Another family member who fainted in LA a year ago, was treated in the nearby Cedar Sinai hospital for 14 hours, only to leave with a $19,000 bill that she is still paying. We have never grown up with health insurance and my sister as a UK resident is proud of the fact that she did not need to.

As budget cuts are made in Europe, the two sectors under threat which are of the greatest importance are strangely the ones that we take most for granted - education and healthcare. Has my sister’s experience made me appreciate the UK more? Without a doubt! I can’t understand how the USA got itself to a point where healthcare is reliant on private insurance companies concerned more with profit than treatment. Obama's healthcare reforms are a step in the right direction, but what will it take to not only change the system but the entire culture a country has for taking care of its people. Many Americans see nationalised healthcare as a foreign threat to the private system they have grown up with. Looking at America, it is much easier to go private than it is to go back to being free and public. With the second best healthcare system in the world - , despite all the problems that we hear of, on a daily basis - Italy, like the UK, has a lot to defend; and more than ever, it looks like something we may have to do in the future.

April 11

The Sacrifice of Anna Nicole

I was late. Traffic in London on this February night, had brought the city to a standstill. It was the premiere of the highly anticipated Anna Nicole Opera at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. I abandoned my taxi and ran. A red carpet greeted celebrities as they walked in and the entire run of the show had long sold out. This was not a normal premiere, but it was not a normal show. Telling the story of American TV and tabloid celebrity Anna Nicole Smith's life, this was a new commission and had been in development for over 5 years. I had been so excited that I had specifically requested to review the opera for La Repubblica. By the next morning I had canceled my piece. Angered by what I had seen, I didn't want to contribute to the media frenzy surrounding something that had missed the point in so many ways.

Since I saw the first episode of her reality programme in 2002, I always liked Anna Nicole Smith. I respected her story, I liked the way she smiled and more than anything I felt compassion for her. I found her eccentricities funny but over all I felt sorry for the tragedy she endured in the last few years of her life. Anna Nicole was born in a small town in Texas, moved to Houston as a single mother at the age of 20. She found a job at a strip club and within a few years was posing for the cover and centrefold of Playboy magazine. It was at this time that Anna began her relationship with J. Howard Marshall, a billionaire oil tycoon. They eventually married, she was 27 and he was 89. She was successful as a model, even replacing Claudia Schiffer as the face of Guess. At this stage, her classic beauty didn't hint at her turbulent life, which would later steal the limelight.

Her billionaire husband died just over a year after their wedding. The legal disputes over Anna's share of her husband's fortune lasted over a decade. Anna eventually filed for bankruptcy and became a household name as a result of her much publicised case. In 2002 her reality TV show premiered on E Network. I was hooked. It lasted 2 years before being dropped. The show was a critical disaster and launched Anna into the final and most dangerous stage of her life. Now addicted to the media attention and living beyond her means, she became a parody of herself. Drug abuse became more and more evident. The worse she behaved the more attention she got. Once again, a celebrities demise became popular entertainment. The death of her shy son Daniel was the beginning of the end. His death was as tragic as they come. He died from an accidental overdose, whilst visiting his mother in her hospital room and some reports say he was in her bed. Five months later Anna Nicole was found dead in her room at a Florida hotel, with seven different prescription drugs found in her body.

It is hard to imagine anyone reading this account of her life and not feeling some sort of compassion. The televised scenes of her sitting in the back of a limousine begging for pickled gherkins, were ridiculous, but if you didn't like her then you didn't have to watch. Some woman pass her off as a gold digging slut, who even posed for pornos. So what? Many people I know are gold diggers and they don't get the same abuse she did. And why judge someone for making porn. It seems to be that as soon as a porn star becomes more than a faceless piece of meat, they become reviled. The only reason she was so hated by american media in particular, is because her and her situation got ugly. It was too in our face, there was nothing hidden. Anna became a mirror to the over medicated and indulgent and a parable to the dangers of exploitive media. She became too real.

I went to the opera with a hope that some part of this story would be put right. I wanted the audience to see part of themselves in her. The first half was full of promise. The score by Mark-Anthony Turnage, was undeniably brilliant. Flicking between a-tonality, jazz and even hints of Sondhime melodic lyricism. The Libretto by Richard Thomas was eloquent and unapologetic, even if it did feel insincere. Storming through her life the audience laughed and laughed but that never that transcended into worry, compassion or self examination. Instead of black comedy or a Brechtian montage, Richard Jones' direction left us with clever but cynical pantomime. Throughout the first half no empathy was established between the audience and Anna. Her son's death in the second half comes as a sudden bump with no real emotional pay off. The saddest thing of all was that that was exactly how it felt when it happened in real life. The Opera could have done this mother and son story more justice. Anna was sacrificed for a laugh and made a villain in the media. The Opera could have created and reinvented an archetype and tragic protagonist as meaningful as any other operatic heroines. Sadly for Anna Nicole the opera failed to do that. It made many people laugh and made me sad because it seemed such a waste of a modern tragic true story.

May 11: l’illustrazione è pop e io cerco dei complici

Guidavo disorientato per le strade ventose del Connecticut, in una mattina del gennaio scorso, finché non ho trovato una casetta in legno verniciato in mezzo a una foresta: la dimora di Maurice Sendak, l’illustratore famoso per il libro Nel paese dei mostri selvaggi. Entrando, mi sono imbattuto in un uomo anziano di bassa statura seduto in pigiama al tavolo da pranzo. Mi ha guardato amichevolmente e ha sorriso. “Sei molto giovane”, ha detto, “io ho 82 anni, siediti”.

Nelle tre ore successive ho sbirciato nella vita dell’uomo che è tra le mie maggiori fonti di ispirazione. Sendak ha illustrato più di cento libri. Ha reinventato l’arte dell’illustrazione e dei libri per bambini. È un lavoratore infaticabile, disegna ascoltando Schubert nella stessa stanza in cui dorme, smanioso di completare e lasciarsi dietro un corpus di opere importante come quello dei suoi eroi, William Blake e Keats. Se non avessi fatto il musicista avrei fatto l’illustratore. Le illustrazioni sono simili alle canzoni pop. Catturano la tua attenzione in pochi secondi. I musicisti creano l’indescrivibile partendo da ingredienti semplici. Gli illustratori idem, con linee in apparenza semplici e immagini facili da capire, ma dietro può esserci la stessa perizia di un dipinto del Louvre. Sendak per l’arte grafica è come i Beatles per la musica. Conversando con lui si vive la sensazione di essere seduti con uno dei suoi personaggi: piccolo, faccia grossa e straordinariamente espressiva, la battuta pronta. Combinazione perfetta tra un cinico feroce e un bambino in ammirazione reverenziale dell’arte e della musica. La sua ebraicità è quasi eccessiva. Parla frammenti di yiddish, con un tocco di teatralità. Molte persone non si rendono conto dell’influenza che hanno avuto sull’immaginario della loro infanzia quegli artisti degli anni 40 originari dell’Europa orientale (soprattutto ebrei). Molti di loro emigrarono negli Usa per sfuggire la guerra e trovarono un futuro in un’industria editoriale in espansione. Con lo sviluppo delle tecniche moderne di stampa a colori proliferarono libri e riviste, e ci fu bisogno di illustrazioni che li riempissero. L’abilità grafica di questi artisti migranti rivoluzionò il mondo dell’illustrazione. I disegni restavano diretti e pop, ma dietro c’era un patrimonio di raffinatezza e perizia tecnica. In seguito Walt Disney mise le mani su artisti come Gustaf Tenggren e Tibor Gergely, ed è a loro che si deve la creazione del complesso mondo visivo di tanti classici animati, tra cui Biancaneve e i sette nani. Il risentimento provato da alcuni di questi artisti non era ingiustificato. Per anni furono gli eroi misconosciuti della cultura pop, rifiutati dal mondo delle belle arti, sottopagati dalle grandi aziende. Come sono cambiate le cose.

A 11 anni sono stato espulso da scuola. Non sapevo né leggere né scrivere, mia madre decise di farmi ripartire da zero, tenendomi lontano dalla scuola per un anno: imparai a cantare e suonare il piano, e studiavo le figure dei libri per bambini. Le figure erano molto più importanti delle parole, e da lì nacque la mia ossessione per l’illustrazione. Un paio d’anni dopo, usai tutti i miei risparmi per comprare il mio primo disegno, un acquerello di Jim Woodring, che raffigurava un coniglio di nome Frank. Frank è droga, sesso, insicurezza, felicità e paura; non parla (non c’è testo nelle sue storie) e vive in una terra immaginaria, surreale. Frank era sovversivo, ma i miei genitori non ne avevano idea. Non mi fermai lì. Se guadagnavo qualcosa, lo spendevo per un’immagine. A 17 anni già scambiavo e vendevo le mie immagini online. Non ero il solo. Un’intera generazione cresciuta con l’illustrazione rifiuta di considerarla come qualcosa da fruire e buttar via. Quei Tengreen e quei Gergely che un tempo si regalavano, ora possono valere 100mila dollari. I poveretti si staranno rivoltando nella tomba!

June 11: How a dancing goat changed the world Over the past few months I have been splitting my time between the USA, Montreal and Stockholm. I am now half way through making my new album, which will be my third. There are certain things which are almost unavoidable when working intensely in the studio. Firstly, you go slightly deaf, or in my case, even more deaf, and secondly you live at the mercy of a takeaway menu and most of all takeaway coffee. Coffee gives me a break from music and more importantly a break from the people I'm working with. We all have coffee ceremonies, and mine is a solitary one. I sit, drinking and bitching to myself about everyone around me, think about how everything going wrong is everyone else's fault and list their never ending habits that drive me crazy. Once my cup is finished, I'm ok again and re-enter the studio in a much healthier state of mind with all my negativity thrown away with the paper cup. All this coffee drinking has made me increasingly curious about how so many of us have ended up addicted to this black brew. Coffee is today the most traded agricultural commodity in the world and in 2004 the total value of retail coffee sales was over $80 billion. What do we really know about coffee?

It all started with a dancing goat apparently. Legend has it that in the 9th century, a goat herder in Ethiopia called Kaldi noticed his goats moving excitedly from one coffee shrub to another, grazing on the red berries containing the beans. Curious about the berries he tried it himself. The effects of the coffee beans on Kaldi was noticed by monks who also gave it a go. The buzz the coffee beans gave them made them feel more alert during their prayers and in short, closer to God. What followed over the next 500 years was astonishing. Having made its way across the Red Sea to Arabia, coffee was being roasted and brewed, like we know it today, by the 9th century. It still had religious uses however, as the coffee aided religious worship. This important link tied coffee to Islam. So, where ever Islam went coffee went with it and this included Turkey. From Istanbul, coffee beans were imported into Venice and that was the first time coffee had travelled away from the Muslim world. The beans that were exported however were always sterilised and boiled, making them infertile. This protected the Arab coffee merchants who wanted to keep control of their valuable crop. Many tried and failed to smuggle out plants and beans, but it was not until an Indian smuggler called Baba Budan that anyone succeeded. Baba taped a few beans to his chest and got them to India where he immediately, under armed guard, set up plantations. From there the plant made its way to Holland and then to the Caribbean (via a theft in Paris) and only after that did it get to the Americas in the 1720s. Now, this was the result of a bouquet of roses apparently! Sent to French Guiana on a mission by the Brazilian government to smuggle out some fertile coffee beans, a Brazilian Lieutenant has a affair with the governor's wife. She offers him a bouquet of roses with fertile coffee beans hidden inside the blooms, as a token of her affection. From these seeds, the largest coffee empire in the world would be built. Brazil is now the worlds largest producer of coffee, all thanks to a woman who thought she was in love.

Walking around in Venice Beach, in LA, I came across a coffee shop where a queue of people were standing in a calm line with numbered tickets in their hand. They were waiting for a cup of coffee at Intelligentsia Cafe and the waiting time was over 45 minutes. California saw the birth of the coffee shop chain. Way before Starbucks, there was Pete's, a chain that started in 1966. In most European countries, you can not cross more than three street corners without stumbling into a Starbucks. How then has Italy managed to avoid this? Growing up in France we always thought Starbucks would never be able to compete against the cafe culture, but we were wrong. Italy should of course be proud of resisting Starbucks, but this new craze for gourmet responsible coffee drinking in the US has got me thinking. At Intelligentsia, people were not only queuing because the coffee was delicious, but because there was variety and a story behind every bean. Every cup served, has been made from beans that have been bought directly from the growers, on small independent plantations. The relationship between the coffee shop and the farmer is a direct one. that means that there is hardly anyone between us as the consumer and the farmer. The coffee shop doesn't represent exploitation and price fixing, but shows how a partnership can benefit everyone. The emphasis on organic coffee also has environmental benefits. Just because Italy has resisted the Starbucks empire doesn't mean it couldn't learn something from the hip (and very patient!) coffee drinkers of Venice Beach.

When a bean has such an ancient story dating from the 9th century, and to this day 25 million families around the world are completely dependant on it, its worth having a little patience.

March 12

«Hey!! I’m back at XL and I have a twitter account now! Check it out its @mikasounds! My problem is, its shit. A couple months ago, just before Christmas, I randomly sent out a tweet from the studio saying how much fun I was having working on a track with Benny Benassi. It was my first tweet in a long time and I didn’t get the response I expected. I was barraged with a stream of angry messages from disappointed fans who wanted me to communicate and tweet more. They wanted honest and more regular tweets. I think its fair to say that I never put much emphasis on my twitter page. In the past I have had a lot fun with twitter… One afternoon, just before the release of my second album, I thought it would be a good idea to invite fans to the pub, as a sort of last minute release party. Over the course of a day I hinted at where the party would be. People thought I was crazy and that it would turn into a mess. In the end 600 people came together in a pub, hung out with me until 11pm and danced on tables and I took care of the drinks. It was perfect; a last minute London street party with not one nasty person. I even threw a free gig via Twitter at the Roxy in LA with the blogger Perez Hilton. Perez and I tweeted clues to the location of an ice cream truck where we handed out tickets. We expected 300 and almost two thousand showed up.

Twitter is one of the most powerful tools for mobilising people. Unlike newspapers or TV which are guarded by editors and politics, Twitter information feels personal and unfiltered. When you receive information through twitter, it feels like it belongs to you. The power of the journalist is handed over to you and in turn to the public as a whole. Never before could an urgent piece of eye witness news be passed around as fast. When a young photo journalist, James Buck, was thrown in jail during anti government protest in Egypt last year, it was the power of a one word tweet that got him the help he needed to be freed. Shortly after his arrest, Buck tweeted the word “arrested”. Within seconds, his colleagues and bloggers in the USA knew what had happened. The use of twitter in the reporting of recent events in the Middle East has been astounding. For the first time, we can get un controlled information and opinion. We can get a sense of an individual’s concern of fear like never before. Perhaps Twitter is humanising war in the same way that a novel would have in the 1950’s post world war II. The unflinching, stoic BBC voice of war reporting in the 30’s has never felt more like a thing of the past. The problem I have, is that I find it impossible to constantly use it. I can go for weeks without tweeting then write 10 tweets in ten minutes. I only really want to use it when I have something I feel is important to share. Whenever I write about something trivial I feel bad. Not because I am worried about what people will think, just because the words are not necessary. Sharing my everyday feelings or personal life in a tweet seems like a complete waste when I can only use 140 characters. Am I really the only person who finds sharing what you have eaten for breakfast kind of gross?? But perhaps I’ve missed the point. Perhaps its the trivial things we tweet about that, when grouped together with millions of other tweets over the course of time, will actually be the most important and revealing to historians. In 2010, Twitter donated the entire archive of every single public tweet ever sent out, to the Library of Congress in the USA. This library, the largest in the world, considers this information priceless for the future. Historians will be able to study not only our individual reactions to major events, but also use the data to understand how trends and major events came about. Imagine if Twitter existed in Europe during the rise of the Nazis. That sort of information could help us further understand how even the most terrifying ideas and politics can gather momentum in society and in turn shape history. Perhaps every tweet is not just a brick in a Tower of Babel after all, but part of major tool in telling the story of society in years to come. Perhaps there is no such thing as a useless tweet. Even the breakfast tweet, in a hundred years, might just be interesting…».

April 12

The Return Of Pulcinella «A woman with dark brown hair, sits on the subway on a January afternoon in New York city. She is conservative looking, wearing khakis a sweater and a long black coat to shield her from the January cold. As she reads her book, she has no idea that she is being secretly filmed and that she is about to star in a piece of absurdist theatre that would make even Ionesco proud. The train stops, a man walks onto the carriage and stands in front of her. He is normally dressed, wearing a coat and backpack. The only thing missing are his trousers. Over the next 6 consecutive stops, 6 more men are waiting to get on to the same carriage, all of whom are also not wearing any trousers. As they each get on to the train, they do not react to each other, leaving the brunette baffled and somewhat intimidated. It is only when, 10 minutes into the video, she makes eye contact with the person sitting in front of her that her nervousness disappears and she breaks into a smile. By sharing this moment with another observer like herself, she is able to enjoy the absurdity of the situation and no longer feels threatened. It is this moment, where she shifts from being a solitary whiteness to part of a group sharing a remarkable experience, which makes it one of the best pieces of street theatre I have ever seen, and it set my mind spinning; could more moments like this actually help make the world a better place?

This video from 2002, is the work of Charlie Todd, founder and director ofImprov Everywhere, a New York street theatre company that has overseen over 100 Flash Mob ‘missions’ around the world. Over the past few years the term Flash Mob has become part of popular culture. Who could deny the rush of stumbling across 50 people standing in the windows of a department store in New York doing a choreographed dance, for no reason what so ever. Or the joy of seeing a few hundred people all break into random dance in the middle of a train station, whilst listening to the same song on their iPods. In a public flash mob event, the accidental spectator is as much part of the performance as the volunteer in on the surprise. Flash mobs are now often looked upon with distrust, as a pointless disturbance by unemployed time wasters with nothing better to do. This is not true and although the concept has been exploited and abused by corporations trying to push their products, in its purest form, it is culturally significant and a reaction to the time we live in and is a continuation of absurdist theatre that goes back hundreds of years.

According to folklore, the absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco, used to do similar things on the Paris Metro in the 1950s. He would strike up a conversation with a woman, who appeared to be a stranger. They would take turns asking each other questions, reacting with great surprise when they shared the same answer. The questions would get increasingly personal and the conversation more and more excited, as the rest of the passengers would watch it all unfold. The climax would be reached when Ionesco and the woman would finally discover that they were in fact husband and wife. Happy with the news they would embrace and get off together at the next stop, leaving behind them a dumbfounded ‘audience’ in the train car. Like in the New York missing trousers sketch, what the fellow passengers didn’t realise was that they were unified by the experience and probably much happier and more alive than before it. As human beings we are often our own worst enemy. We are always so desperate to find value and meaning in life, yet we know that finding a real answer to that is humanly impossible. There is just too much information out there and too many uncertainties, so how can a certain answer ever be found? This chase for an answer is in itself absurd. So often, I find myself sitting on a train completely divorced from the world around me. My ambitions and ultimately my goal to justify why I am here and my self worth, take control of me and leave me unhappy. Witnessing a moment like the missing trousers sketch, would make me re-engage with reality and find beauty right in front of me.

Absurdity could help make the world a more tolerant place. By finally laughing at the situation on the NY subway, the brunette, ‘let go’ just a little. She chilled out and enjoyed herself. She no longer judged the men without trousers she accepted them. She saw that they could make everyone smile and come together and in a small way, saw that they had value. Her smile was probably the most philosophical decision she made that day. Remember a time in your life when you received a fantastic piece of news. Suddenly in your good humour, nothing irritated you any more and things that would normally make you angry suddenly seem irrelevant. Kinda of like being in love; inevitably your love spills over on to others, even total strangers. In this state of mind, there is no need for God fearing heaven or hell, there is no obvious right and wrong, there isn’t even a need for hope. If you are not given the choice of hope, then you forced to make the absolute most of every moment. You don’t just say, like a politician, that things ‘will one day get better’ you say ‘I have just done something which has made life a tiny bit better and will continue to do more of those things.’ By not having a clear right or wrong, no one can be vilified and no one is a saint. Instead we are forced to be more tolerant of each other. We realise that life, and also hate are absurd. These concepts are not so strange. They are presented to us every day, unfortunately mostly in art and hardly ever in politics. We find it in works such asVittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan, Fellini‘s Dolce Vita, Wes Anderson’sThe Royal Tenenbaums, almost all Woody Allen films, Exupery’s Petit Prince, AA Milne’s Whinie The Pooh, and in my hero Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of An Anarchist.

In 17th century Naples, Comedia Del Arte found an absurd comic hero in the character of Pulcinella. Always playing dumb, he made people laugh at himself and themselves. He used absurdity to criticise politics and to humanise even leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. We still need and crave Pulcinella. Perhaps in times of such instability like today, leaders of faith and politics could learn from the beautiful moment in the New York Subway in 2002. However, seeing as they probably won’t it is our responsibility as individuals to show them how absurdity can undermine the abuse of power and by admitting that we all share the same fundamental struggles, bring us together. This I suspect is what governments and religious institutions alike, really fear the most».

May 12: ho riscoperto il ragazzo che ero così sono diventato adulto

Sono le 8 del mattino e sto davanti al mio computer. L’ultimissima scadenza per questo articolo è fra un’ora. La testa mi duole dopo quei bicchieri di vino australiano da quattro soldi che ho bevuto ieri sera, e sono ormai al quarto tentativo che faccio per scrivere la rubrica di questo mese. Avevo pensato di parlare del bullismo, ma era troppo deprimente, oppure della marijuana dato che in studio convivo con gli sballati più simpatici del mondo. Avevo perfino cominciato a scrivere un pezzo sulla salsa al pomodoro, non chiederemi perché. Ma ho quasi finito di registrare il mio album e ci ho messo una vita per finirlo: perciò ho deciso che parlerò solo ed esclusivamente di me stesso.

Dai 13 anni in poi ho studiato nella prestigiosa e antica Westminster School. La mia preoccupazione quotidiana era trovare un modo per svicolare le lezioni e arrivare inosservato al centro musicale. Il mio obiettivo era chiaro: volevo scrivere melodie che rimanessero in testa. Al centro musicale c’erano tanti cubicoli con soltanto un pianoforte e una sedia. Io facevo finta di trovarmi nel Brill Building, il palazzo newyorkese dove negli anni 60, gente come Bacharach e Carole King faceva a gara a chi trovava la canzone pop perfetta, dentro stanzette simili a queste. Quando scoprirono cosa stavo facendo, amici e insegnanti iniziarono a fare gruppo intorno a me: gli amici mi aiutavano a eseguire i miei pezzi; il bibliotecario della scuola mi copriva dicendo che lavoravo per lui il pomeriggio; il mio scandaloso insegnante di francese (ex concorrente al concorso Mr Gay UK) mi dava consigli; il mio insegnante di inglese, che ora è un famoso regista teatrale, mi assegnava dei ruoli nei suoi spettacoli. Ero un cacciatore solitario con dietro un esercito segreto, e non ce l’avrei fatta senza di loro.

Dopo il primo album mi sentivo disarticolato, solo. Affittai una sala nei leggendari Olympic Studios e rimasi lì per sei mesi, scrivendo pezzi per pianoforte e registrando tanti demo. Ogni giorno pranzavo, spesso da solo, in un elegante ristorante italiano dall’altra parte della strada. Avevo nostalgia del mio cubicolo e del mio pianoforte verticale, ma più di ogni altra cosa della mia banda, dei tè con il bibliotecario, dellle punzecchiature inappropriate con il mio insegnante di francese, che è morto, e delle discussioni con il mio talentuoso insegnante di inglese. Le mie canzoni erano per loro e su di loro: scrivevo di me per farli ridere, scrivevo di Billy Brown per mettere in imbarazzo il mio insegnante di francese. Come potevo farcela senza di loro?

Alla fine sono riuscito a fare un bellissimo album, pieno di spessore e melodie, ma in tutti i pezzi mancavano i miei amici. Dopo due anni di tour e un terribile incidente nella mia famiglia, giurai di trovare la mia banda. Sono andato in giro, strappando session e cercando svitati. E ne ho trovati, a volontà. Non volevo fare l’album in solitudine, e se il Brill Building non esisteva più allora me ne sarei fabbricato uno, usando internet e volando di qua e di là. Questo album mi rappresenta più che mai. Ho scritto delle persone attorno a me, ho rubato le loro storie e ho scritto su di me per farli ridere o anche per intristirli.

La paura ti lascia isolato, l’isolamento crea ancora più paura e la paura ti fa chiudere in te stesso. Solo quando prendi il rischio di aprirti agli altri trovi il modo per uscirne. Questo album si chiama The origin of love parla di un uomo che diventa adulto solo quando riscopre il ragazzo che era.

June 12: chirurgia estetica ? non ho pregiudizi, ma difendo le rughe

Da piccolo ero affascinato dalle rughe delle persone. Le osservavo chidendomi che cosa le avesse provocate, le consideravo una sorta di compendio della vita di un individuo. Era diventata un’ossessione al punto che in famiglia mi sgridavano: “Non si fissano le persone, e tantomeno si toccano sul viso”. Mi viene in mente la campagna pubblicitaria per un profumo di cui sono stato protagonista l’anno scorso. Quella foto è il risultato di otto ore di scatti in cui un esercito di parrucchieri si sono avvicendati a domarmi i capelli per dare alla mia chioma la forma desiderata. Persino la posizione della cravatta è stata calcolata al millimetro da un comitato di esperti di marketing. Dopo i ritocchi alla foto, mi piacevo in quella versione idealizzata di me stesso: bello, curato, ma molto irreale. Le pubblicità dei profumi si allontanano spesso intenzionalmente nella realtà, ma in alcune si perde il confine tra fotografia e illustrazione. Se nella realtà avessi quella faccia, sembrerei un alieno.

Sono le imperfezioni che mi rendono quello che sono, riconoscibile a me stesso e agli occhi dei miei amici. Se un cane vero, un cucciolo, si trova davanti un cane di peluche, abbaia furiosamente perché vede un altro animale ma non ne percepisce l’odore. Questo crea ansia e talvolta aggressività. Il paragone aiuta a capire la sensazione strana che si prova di fronte a una donna come Jocelyn Wildenstein, che si è sottoposta a chirurgia plastica per somigliare a un gatto. È un caso estremo, che sfiora l’arte, proprio come la musa di David LaChapelle, Amanda Lepore, una transessuale trasformata in una “Marilyn Monroe estrema”.

Ma a parte questi casi, perché spesso la gente non ha misura nel ricorrere ai bisturi? Tutti ci guardiamo allo specchio, e capita di pensare che ci sarebbe qualcosina da correggere. Riempire un po’ qui e là, rialzare una guancia cadente, o rimpicciolire un naso. Un tempo reputata di esclusivo interesse femminile, oggi la chirurgia estetica è utilizzata pure dagli uomini, anzi, il settore maschile è in piena espansione, ma la cosa non fa scalpore. Quando invece una donna famosa ricorre alla chirurgia, anche solo per un ritocchino, la notizia fa il giro del mondo. Credo dipenda dal fatto che le donne sono più competitive nei confronti delle loro simili. Nelle riviste femminili spicca la classifica delle peggio vestite, delle più rifatte, delle peggiori pettinature. Una rivista maschile non pubblicherebbe nulla del genere. Gli uomini non si gratificano nel criticare il fisico altrui, ma sono attenti all’aspetto esteriore, né più né meno delle donne. Per me la chirurgia estetica comporta due grandi rischi. Innanzitutto di essere utilizzata come status symbol, per affermare la propria ricchezza: molti lo apprezzano, non io. In secondo luogo, isiprandosi ai volti perfetti delle attrici sulle riviste patinate, si rischia di rincorrere un ideale fuori dalla realtà.

Chi dice che l’apparenza non conta nulla sbaglia di grosso. È dal viso che giuduchiamo una persona e scegliamo come rapportarci con lei. Ed è istintivo, incrociando per strada una persona per strada con la quale non avremo mai nulla a che fare, analizzarne l’aspetto in base a una complessa serie di parametri. Le rughe sul viso, le fattezze di una persona, sono rivelatrici del suo carattere, del suo stile di vita, del mondo a cui appartiene. Se vengono annullate possono dar luogo a dar strane reazioni nell’osservatore, addirittura a repulsione. I cani hanno bisogno di annusate per identificare, noi di guardarci in faccia.

July/August 12: Profumo, il meraviglioso odore di un ricordo che non evapora

Se chiudete gli occhi e pensate alla mamma, o al primo amore, o alla paura, cosa vi viene in mente? A me viene in mente la cosa più difficile da ricordare: l’odore. Mia madre usava un profumo di Saint Laurent che si mescolava all’andamento della sua giornata, dall’odore di cucina al lieve sentore di benzina della nostra vecchia Toyota Previa. Questa strana mistura olfattiva mi diceva che ero a casa. Su di me gli odori hanno un effetto potente, suscitando ricordi molto più della musica. In tour ho licenziato un’assistente che portava lo stesso profumo di un’odiosa insegnante del liceo. Se le piaceva il profumo di quella stronza, per me era escluso potesse essere una brava persona. La mia intuizione si è poi rivelata corretta.

Si stima che entro il 2015 l’industria del profumo raggiungerà un fatturato superiore ai 33 miliardi di dollari. A New York, qualche tempo fa, tutte le mattine vedevo l’enorme pubblicità del nuovo profumo di Rihanna. Ho voluto provarlo e sono rimasto sconcertato. È artificiale, banale; il consumatore non paga la qualità, bensì il costo della boccetta, lo spazio pubblicitario e la testimonial.Oggi i profumi si fanno così: quando un grande marchio o una celebrità decidono di commercializzare un profumo, gli esperti di marketing ne stabiliscono la vendibilità e il target di mercato. Sulla base di precise informazioni incaricheranno un profumiere, o “naso”, di creare una fragranza, spesso sintetica, che sia gradita al segmento di mercato individuato. Capita che i flaconi e le campagne pubblicitarie vengano studiati prima ancora che il profumo esista.

Tutti i profumi hanno tre note componenti: testa, cuore e fondo. La nota di testa è quella che si percepisce immediatamente (leggera, floreale o agrumata), evapora rapidamente, lasciando spazio alla nota di cuore e, infine, alla nota di base. È la nota di base che reagirà o si adatterà alla pelle: spesso è legnosa o muschiata, in effetti molto simile all’odore corporeo che si tenta di coprire. Sotto un profilo strettamente chimico non sono le note di testa floreali a far si che qualcuno si innamori di te, ma è l’odore muschiato naturale del tuo corpo. Quando l’odore del corpo si mescola al profumo nella giusta misura, il profumo, come si suol dire, “ti sta bene”. Purtroppo gran parte dei profumi commerciali sono note di testa e di cuore. Le note di fondo vengono spesso giudicate sgradevoli. Se ad esempio annusate un giglio, sentirete odori intensi, fastidiosi, che però associati alle note di testa e di cuore danno luogo ad una fragranza perfetta e, cosa più importante, naturale.

Da anni colleziono profumi, c’è stato un periodo in cui conservavo in fialette di vetro qualunque cosa avesse per me un odore buono o interessante. Potete immaginare la mia emozione davanti alle creazioni dell’eccentrico profumiere newyorkese Christopher Brosius. I suoi profumi spaziano dalle fragranze tradizionali ad altre particolarissime, come Testa di bambola, In biblioteca o Foglie bruciate. Autodidatta, Brosius non ha seguito il rigorosissimo percorso formativo di un “grande naso”. È un fuorilegge in lotta contro i limiti commerciali dell’arte profumiera. Potendo far creare un profumo apposta per me, vorrei che evocasse un ricordo. Se dovesse ricordarmi l’infanzia, ad esempio, sarebbe l’odore di mia madre, con quel misto tra la fragranza di Saint Laurent, l’odore di cucina e anche quello della Toyota. Il mio profumo evocherebbe un ricordo e sarebbe migliore di quello di un milione di rose.

March 13: Mai toccare due cose nel nostro lavoro: bambini e animali

«In un piccolo ristorante di pesce di Lisbona Asia Argento sorseggia un calice di vino bianco. Siamo in fuga dal set del nuovo film di Fanny Ardant, di cui l’attrice italiana è protagonista. Interpreta una violoncellista e nella scena finale io le faccio da accompagnamento. Preferisco non bere vino, temo mi dia sonnolenza sul set, e mi lamento dei lunghi tempi di attesa. Asia ride: “Non lo sapevi? Gli attori sono pagati per aspettare, non per recitare!”. Ci conosciamo solo da qualche ora e già mi è chiaro quanto possa piacermi questa ragazza. È di una spontaneità direi brutale, totalmente priva di preconcetti. Mi osserva in silenzio mentre mangio e farnetico sull’arte e i suoi limiti. Le spiego che vorrei mettere in scena una piece basata sull’opera di Henry Darger, sulle sue bambine. Ma Asia mi interrompe, alza severa la mano e dice: “Mai toccare due cose nel nostro lavoro, bambini e animali, fidati, lo so per certo.”

E mi racconta di come è arrivata a baciare un cane nel film di Abel Ferrara Go Go Tales. Più tardi sono andato a vedermi la scena. Beh, è un po’ scioccante e molto bizzarra, ma cosa c’entra? “Per poco non mi ha rovinato la carriera”, mi dice Asia poi. “Di tutte le scene sconvolgenti, spinte e esplicite che ho girato nella mia vita mai mi sarei aspettata di suscitare tanto scandalo, di provare vergogna per quei fotogrammi”. Nel film è una spogliarellista che, durante un’esibizione, si protende provocante verso un cane, mostrando la lingua. L’animale le lecca la bocca e Asia indugia qualche secondo prima di ritrarsi e continuare la sua danza. Lo scandalo di quella scena le è costato vari contratti e l’ha messa alla berlina in Italia, attirandole odio addosso.

Gran parte dell’indignazione è giustificabile. Il cane non era un attore, né era pagato per interpretare una scena che alcuni hanno definito di sesso con animali. In effetti era esplicita, frutto di improvvisazione, ma reale. Ma più che sui diritti degli animali i media si sono concentrati su Asia e dallo sfottò iniziale sono andati giù pesanti, definendola una pervertita, una sorta di anticristo, quello che non vorresti mai diventasse tua figlia. Questa donna è in realtà una delle attrici più interessanti e preparate con cui io abbia mai parlato. “Non ho mai visto nella scena la morbosità che la gente vi ha proiettato. Faccio emergere qualcosa che viene da dentro e provoca indignazione perché è una sorta di specchio che mostra il lato oscuro delle persone. Finisco per spalancare tutte queste porte semplicemente essendo me stessa”. Le chiedo se rimpiange di aver girato il film e mi risponde affermativamente. Le chiedo se le piacciono i cani e dice di si, ma che il suo è un po’ avanti con l’età. “È vecchissimo e mi auguro, per lui, che muoia. È come Berlusconi”, aggiunge, “È vecchio, ha un pisello enorme, non ha denti e da quattro anni è zoppo”.

La vicenda di Asia mi ricorda uno scandalo simile in cui realtà e finzione cinematografica si sono avvicinate al punto da creare disagio. In The Brown Bunny di Vincent Gallo, Chloe Sevigny e lo stesso Gallo vengono ripresi durante un rapporto orale reale (e visibile). Benché in questo caso si trattasse di due attori consenzienti la scena suscitò un polverone ponendo molti interrogativi su sesso e realtà nei film. Chiedo ad Asia se si identifica con quella vicenda, ma nega con decisione: “Assolutamente no. Non sono una fashionista e non succhio il cazzo fashionista”. Ripete più volte che detesta tutto ciò che è “cool” e credo sia perché ha sofferto molto crescendo per colpa di quelli che venivano considerati dei “fighi”. “Non ho niente a che spartire con la moda, mi identifico con gli artisti outsider, molti dei quali sono miei amici”.

April 13: Dopo tutte le umiliazioni ora la mia America è più simpatica

Mio nonno materno lasciò Damasco a 15 anni con tutti i suoi averi sulla groppa di un asino e finì a Ellis Island. Negli Stati Uniti costruì la sua nuova vita e la sua attività. Mio nonno paterno, americano, lasciò la natia Atlanta, Georgia, e con in tasca una laurea prestigiosa partì per fare il diplomatico in Medio Oriente concludendovi accordi pionieristici. Vent’anni e molti paesi dopo, i miei genitori si conobbero sulla Quinta Strada, in attesa al semaforo. Una settimana dopo erano fidanzati. Poco dopo la nascita di mia sorella maggiore si trasferirono in Francia e quindi in Libano, dove sono nato io. Fin dall’inizio mia madre aveva deciso che i suoi figli non sarebbero cresciuti in America. Sentiva che il Paese che tanto aveva amato era cambiato. Non le piaceva l’esaltazione della ricchezza e della competizione. Ma, pur non avendo mai vissuto negli Usa, i miei fratelli ed io li abbiamo sempre considerati parte della nostra identità. Crescendo in Europa abbiamo visto molto razzismo nei confronti degli Usa. Gli americani erano “grassi e stupidi” oppure “ricchi e cattivi”. Ora le cose sono cambiate, c’è meno antiamericanismo in Europa. Perché tanti dei miei compagni di scuola che prendevano in giro gli americani ora sono in attesa del visto per trasferirsi lì? Oggi risultano più simpatici di quanto lo fossero alla mia generazione? Gli Usa sono stati umiliati. Undici anni di impegno militare in due paesi hanno distrutto la loro autostima, costringendoli a rivedere lo status di “paladini del mondo libero”. Intanto hanno sofferto la crisi finanziaria più grave da gegenerazioni a questa parte mentre la Cina è sempre più forte. Ho l’impressione che l’America oggi sia considerata in cattive acque come il resto del mondo, se non peggio, e non faccia più paura. Da quando gli Usa hanno perso l’immagine arrogante gli europei ne apprezzano maggiormente i pregi. È come se il mondo avesse trovato un altro bersaglio per le critiche: la Cina. Pare che l’economia americana sia in ripresa: la disoccupazione è in calo, si vedono germogli di crescita e, in confronto all’Europa, la situazione è promettente. Secondo le stime l’America raggiungerà l’indipendenza energetica entro il 2030. Questo potrebbe portare a una svolta diplomatica soprattutto nei confronti del Medio Oriente. È difficile avere un’idea precisa dell’America. In passato gli americani erano dipinti come i buoni nella lotta contro la malvagia Urss e dopo l’11 settembre George Bush definì gli antagonisti “l’asse del male”. Una caratterizzazione troppo semplicistica per i più, e chi si esprime in termini solo positivi nei con caratterizzazione troppo semplicistica per i più, e chi si esprime in termini solo positivi nei confronti dell’America è considerato un cowboy ignorante. Oggi tra gli americani prevale un misto di orgoglio e autoironia. Prendiamo film e serie tv, da Team America ai Griffin: sembra che gli americani si prendano volentieri in giro, cosa impensabile nella tv americana anni 80. Dai discorsi di Obama agli episodi di Homeland, ora l’America ci viene venduta come un Paese che sa ammettere gli errori e si sforza di metterne a frutto la lezione. Quest’America umiliata, ma di conseguenza più saggia, come il figliol prodigo torna ad essere accettata dal mondo. In parte questo rebranding è un ritorno agli antichi valori: la capacità di adattarsi e migliorare che era al centro del “sogno americano”. L’America cambierà ancora – mi aspetto un presipresidente latino americano nell’arco della mia vita - ma se riuscirà a non offuscarli con l’arroganza i suoi valori continueranno ad attrarre gente ai suoi lidi come fu per mio nonno, dalla Siria, negli anni 30.

June 13: My sicilian teacher says I speak italian like a butcher

On the 52nd floor of the tallest building in Tokyo Isabella holds her face in her hands in desperation. She tells me that my choice of vocabulary is “brutto” and that I’m speaking Italian like a butcher. I refute her criticism saying that I’m speaking not like a butcher but a New Yorker. She rolls her eyes and adds that this is the first time she has met someone who not only manages to butcher the Italian language but also speak it with the accent of the Spanish ambassador’s wife. I tell her that in that case, I shouldn’t have hired a Sicilian snob for a teacher. This is just another Italian lesson with my teacher Isabella, and a daily occurrence in my life at the moment as I endeavor to learn Italian in two months. Starting in October I will be putting my new language skills to the test on live television as a judge on Italian X Factor. If that isn’t motivation enough to learn a language then fuck it, nothing is.

After performing on X Factor for the third time last December, I was asked backstage by a very excited producer if I would ever consider judging on the show. I laughed and thought she was joking, or completely crazy, I wasn’t sure. As it turned out, she was serious and at the beginning of the year, to the astonishment of my management I accepted her offer. My managers could not believe that I was going to judge on a talent show (a position that I had recently turned down in other countries) and that I was going to do it in Italian! My reasons were simple. Over the past few years I have become closer to Italy in my work and have spent much of my time off there. Italian X Factor, felt more un-hinged and less controlled than any other show of its type. In my opinion it fits into the tradition of talent and songwriting competitions that have been part of Italian popular culture since the late 40s. Also I would get to learn Italian, with a deadline. For those reasons I have thrown myself into this crazy challenge and this is why my 24 year old teacher is traveling with me as I continue to tour around the world.

How will this all turn out? I have no idea, but I do know that I intend to enjoy it as much as possible. It’s a bit like a roller coaster ride. At the moment I’m on that really boring bit where you are being pulled up to the top of the ride and are terrified of what’s to come but you still want to keep going. The endless vocabulary and grammar lessons leave my head feeling like its been squeezed between the legs of a sumo wrestler and I have started to hate the one person most important to this challenge, Isabella. Last night, in a moment of jet-lagged terror, I had a nightmare. I dreamt of the hotel lobby we had been in the day before in Jakarta. There were a group of noisy Indonesian children running around. The nanny started to scream at them in German and they froze as did I when she turned around only to be Simona Ventura. She made the most glamorous nanny I have ever seen, with perfect hair, Prada from head to toe and diamonds on her neck and ears. She spoke to me in German and I kept telling her in Spanish that I couldn’t understand. I think I’m loosing my mind. And of all people, Simona was the nicest to me on set and the one judge that I spoke the most with.

I don’t want to speak Italian like a brute. I hope to speak it well. Isabella assures me that I have a chance of succeeding without sounding like the Spanish ambassador’s wife, whatever that means.

July/August 13: This is war you, just don’t know (Datagate and you)

You are nothing. You are just a drop in the most enormous ocean you can imagine. No one remembers a drop we only remember waves. You are as worthless and forgettable as a grain of sand on the last beach you stood on or as a single droplet of rain on your windscreen during the last rain storm. That is what they want you to believe. They make you feel as worthless as a piece of shit and you act like one. They are companies, corporations, governments and individuals, who collect data and behavioural patterns, without your knowledge or consent. We are the droplets of water that make up an ocean.

When dealing with the issue of our individual privacy being infringed, we deal with it psychologically by telling ourselves that we are not significant enough to matter. If our slight indiscretions and secret habits are being logged and spied on, what does it matter? Our caprices and secret habits are not threats to national security nor do they threaten lives. I feel that we have been dangerously desensitised towards our own privacy.

The recent Datagate scandal has been fascinating for me. Not only because of the fact that the US and UK government have been intercepting our emails and phone calls but also for the overwhelmingly muted response of the general public compared to the extensive media exploitation of the story. This is not the first time, nor the last, that we will deal with scandals of this kind. The Google and Facebook privacy and data collection policies have been questioned by European authorities. The new X-Box, with its intelligent camera that learns our habits and watches us when on and off, is just another chapter in the war between the individual and his darker, more invisible, big brother.

On my official website, I have been forced to collect basic data as well as notify the user that its happening. This, unfortunately, is beyond my control, but a Universal policy (who own’s the site). On my fan sites, I collect data only from those who sign up to being part of the fan club. We are often told that by posting details of our daily life on Twitter and Facebook, we are eroding our boundaries when it comes to privacy. The essential thing that is forgotten is the importance of choice. We chose what to share, what to show off and what to bury in the closet.

We are not nothing. It is easier to make us forgive and forget and let the problem get worse when we feel like our private lives and communications are inconsequential. Alone, our data may not have power, but to the ones collecting, we are a collective gold mine, and we must absolutely realise our value.

I believe that each one of us is angered and infuriated that the details of our life and habits are no longer our own, and that the choice of what part of our private lives we want to share, is no longer ours. In this ocean of people and information, it easy to forget the real consequences that a single user of the internet out of billions can have on another individual. How many more teenagers must cry in private after being humiliated on Facebook in front of their whole high school. How many young men risk committing suicide after being outed by near strangers online. Our huge numbers make our actions colder even if we aim to warm ourselves up reading up on gossip and placing our eyes and ears where they are not supposed to be. This warmth is a false promise, a cheap drug that comes with a price and this cruel ratio will never be resolved until each of us accepts our mutual responsibility towards each other’s privacy. Only then can we stand united against governments and corporations, the two of which seem more and more like the same thing than ever. Only then can we stop this violent whirlpool towards an Orwelian shit hole of a world.

September 13: An open letter to my older self (turning thirty)

On the eve of my 30th birthday, I decided to write an open letter to my older self. I can not read this letter again until the eve of my 80th birthday.

Dear Mika, I hope this finds you well. I have no idea where in the world you will be when you read this. My life so far has been made up of so many twists, turns and contradictions, that there is no way of predicting where or how you will be. For starters, I just hope you are alive! Even if the world has become a terrible or hostile place, without water and without seasons, I still hope you’re in it. Not because I want to maintain my presence for as long as possible, but just because I’m curious and you’re my only way of finding out.

You may wonder why I’m writing this, but the reason is quite simple. A lot of noise is made about someone turning 30. Yes, you can laugh, you’re about to turn 80. The only reason why I think we care is that childhood along with adolescence has been eroded. The normal transitions of life before adulthood don’t exist any more. We live a sort of ‘kidulthood’ for far too long and suddenly we hit 30 and have no more excuse. A 30 year old, a hundred years ago, was approaching the twilight era. You however, at 80, are probably not even considered old any more. I wonder how your health is and how long you might actually live? 100? 120? Perhaps you live in an augmented reality, which covers up all the destruction of the last 100 years. I hope that’s not the case. I hope things are still green and there is still winter and summer. What scares me the most, is that now as I turn 30, I don’t believe things as basic as seasons and fresh air are guaranteed in the future.

As those around me have been making a fuss about my 30th, this is my retaliation. As a boy, the only secret power I ever wanted was to freeze time. In order to relish a little longer in moments I loved and to reap vengeance on those who hurt me. This is me freezing time just for a moment. Like a capsule or a message in a bottle. Beyond that I don’t care about my age, as long as I am free.

I am writing this from the basement of my house in London’s World’s End. There’s a car engine outside making noise. My mother has just popped over to have a cup of tea and my dog is asleep in the corner. They will all be gone when you read this. I have never faced death, you have. How lucky you must think I am to have those I love around me in the flesh. Don’t romanticise too much however. They are not so perfect up close you know? So far I have seen terrible things happen to people I love dearly, but I’ve never lost any of them. You have and I’m sorry for the pain it caused you. I’m sure you’ve made some pretty amazing friends though. Not just the glamorous famous ones. Those ones I know already, come and go so fast, but real friends. I hope they are strange and keep you weird. Please stay weird.

In the world right now, the US and the UK are spying on us and no one can do anything about it. Even Obama is unable to take a hard line on the subject. The Middle East is in turmoil and the incredible city of Aleppo which you visited at 25 is pretty much destroyed. In Russia, the government is turning viciously and bizarrely anti gay, as a result of the bigotry of the powerful orthodox church, but marriage in Europe and America is looking positive. Except in Italy, God knows about that! I wonder if you have children and how you got those, as I already know for sure that you haven’t hooked up with a chick. I hope you have kids, I hope they look like me. And what about Music!? OH GOD I wish I knew what that would sound like in the future.

I could go on for ever, but I must stop. Please remember, we are not so different you and I. If you read this, and do not recognise the hand or the voice, something has gone terribly wrong. If you feel a little embarrassed, that’s OK. In the words of Doris Day, “che sera sera”. That’s true, but I can’t help but feel, that in the chaos of cause and effect that forms our future, the tiny action of writing this letter might change something further down the line. One thing, I hope your not bald, if so, wear a hat.

With all the love in the world, You x

October 13: My family and other animals

Once upon a time there was a boy who was angry with everyone and everything around him. So angry, that one night he decided to run away. Whilst preparing his bag to leave home he thought about what he would need. He packed his clothes but then his books and games. Fearing discomfort he packed his bed. Fearing loneliness he packed his dog. Worried about what he would do with his clothes once they were dirty, he packed his mother, who in turn packed their washing machine and her daughter, his little sister. She, then packed their father, who in turn packed his desk, television and his favourite armchair. Not to be outdone, his mother then packed her dressing table, her curling irons and her set of knives. She also suggested to the father that he pack the barbecue. The boy stood and looked at his now empty house and saw his favourite apple tree, alone in the garden and he felt sad. So he took that too. In the end the boy ran away from home but without knowing it he took all of it with him. Except for the gold fish. Everyone always forgets the bloody gold fish, he died. This is my life. The idea for my holiday this year was a pretty normal one. To get into a car from London and drive through France and Italy, stopping in various places along the way. The only unusual thing about my trip is that I took my whole family with me, all 18 of them, and not only that, but my Dog came too as well as a few friends, my goddaughter, her parents, my grandmother, her nanny (I’ll come back to that) and of course a couple spouses and partners. The grand total? 26 people, 8 cars, 48 suitcases, 1 dog bed and a Magi-mix (for the dog). The story about the boy, is one that I used to read often as a child. Clearly it had more of an influence on me than anyone could have predicted.

To be fair, of all the places we have been in this enormous group, Italy has been the most welcoming and un-afraid of my Godzilla sized family. In France, I couldn’t help but feel like we were as welcome as a barbarian invasion. The only Barbarian in the group to be fair is my grandmother. Although she is more like a Trojan Horse. She enters a room with a coy smile and hobbles with her walking stick, as slow as possible so as to maximise exposure. Slow movement is one of the more refined weapons in her arsenal. As soon as the stranger, often a waiter, is out of site, she accelerates like a lizard in the sun, devilishly cruel and funny in equal measure. This time round I decided to temper this duality with a professional nanny. So I hired a trusted, former Soviet Block drill sergeant to keep her in check, it has worked a miracle.

Looking back on my trip and all the places we have gone to, I realise now that I did something that is extremely Italian. I displaced myself for the summer and brought almost a whole town with me. However the way we did it was very Lebanese. Where as other more sensible groups would have travelled in a coach with a guide, we all wanted to feel independent and free. However, we all wanted to be together all the time and we all wanted to have whatever the other had. You cannot imagine the scene we caused when we would descend upon a small gas station or invade a local coffee shop, demanding espressos, all at the same time. The dog: water; the granny: a toilet; the aunties: space; the walking sticks (three by the end of the trip): always left behind; the secret smokers: behind a bush; the secret eaters: also behind a bush; the under eaters; the over eaters. We were a moving tornado of functional anarchy. What we lost in organisation and calm we gained in joy and that was worth far more. Did I mention the best part of it all? Out of our army of 26, there was only one person who actually spoke Italian and that was me. I am Lebanese, French, American, English and after this trip I can’t help but feel like I have become a little Italian also.

November 13: ecco perché il giornale che state sfogliando non deve chiudere

Otto anni fa a Londra, per caso, ho comprato il primo numero di un magazine che si chiamava Jack. C’era in copertina un’immagine soft porn, vintage e un po’ pulp da colori brillanti. Mi attraeva e lo volevo senza neanche averlo sfogliato. Avevo preso quello che considero uno dei più bei magazine mai pubblicati. Per la prima volta leggevo una rivista maschile che mi piaceva. Non aveva in copertina una donna mezza nuda con le tette finte e neppure un maschio con i muscoli pompati, un pene enorme e mutande bianche. Non era apertamente etero e neppure troppo gay (come spesso sono le riviste maschili). Era ironica, immaginifica, diversa, divertente e soprattutto invitante. Mi sono sentito a casa. Quel magazine non è durato. È stato chiuso presto non prima di subire un imbarazzante ripensamento dei suoi contenuti, che ha ammazzato il suo spirito e lo ha spinto verso la volgarità. Oggi a casa mia ho incorniciato il primo numero di Jack e accanto il numero di marzo del 2007 di XL. Due dei miei magazine preferiti che condividono, o condividevano, gli stessi valori.

Quetso che leggete è uno degli ultimi XL che sarà stampato. Non rende in termini economici, la crisi ha colpito chi fa pubblicità e la cultura alternativa non attira gli inserzionisti. Voi non attraete gli inserzionisti! Non gli piacete! L’Italia sta per perdere il più diverso, e uno dei migliori, magazine di cultura alternativa. A nessuno frega un cazzo. FANCULO! XL? Perché non metti una donna nuda in copertina? Perché non fai casino? Ci deve essere una soluzione! Dai, rompi le palle! Quello che mi fa star male è che per tanti questo sembra quasi normale e “inevitabile”. “Ah, bé, sai non era mica un granché” “la carta stampata è un lusso, tanto poi va online come tutto il resto delle stranezze”. Stronzate! Le pubblicazioni devono coesistere con le versioni Web. Una storia deve essere stampata e poi portata online, arricchita dai video e dall’integrazione coi social media. Perché sottostimiamo l’importanza della carta?

XL è stato uno dei primi magazine al mondo a dedicarmi una copertina e a scrivere di me. Era una doppia copertina, sull’altra c’era Amy Winehouse. Allora eravamo considerati due strani frutti del pop e in effetti non lo incarnavamo esattamente. E questo ci ha resi entrambi molto XL. È stato rischioso parlare di noi, ma solo XL poteva permetterselo. XL vale perché è antisnob, vario, contemporaneo e paladino dell’anticonformismo. Come tante altre testate prima, ad esempio Melody Maker in UK, rappresenta qualcosa di differente. Non è legato al denaro o a certi stili di vita e purtroppo sono proprio questi principi che lo stanno uccidendo. È un brutto periodo per certi periodici, il pericolo è che sopravvivano solo gli estremi, quello che che sta nel mezzo è destinato a sparire: il porno e il trash da una partee la fascia che tratta di stili di vita alta, dall’altra.

Quando ero ragazzo, mio padre mi diceva quanto fosse incredibile Playboy. Poi l’ho comprato. Non era quello che mi aspettavo e ovviamente oggi c’è ancora. Forse tutti gli anticonformisti del mondo, Elio ed io compresi, dovrebbero considerare la possibilità di vendere il loro corpo pur di sostenere le pubblicazioni che amano. XL è un magazine indipendente. Neanche si sa se rimarrà online, mentre meriterebbe di essere mantenuto sia sul Web che sulla carta. Io ne sentirò molto la mancanza. E per usare le parole di una delle tipe più strane (Joni Mitchell) “You don’t know what you’ve got, till it’s gone!”.

December 13: An ode to culture’s favourite women, just don’t bring them home to your mother t happened at the red carpet of the Grammys a couple of years ago. I had been nominated for best dance song for Love Today, much to my own confusion, as I never considered Love Today to be a dance song at all, but I went to the ceremony and was sent down the red carpet of doom, giving interviews and polite little nods to each media post as I walked by. Finally I came across a very excited and warm journalist from a mainstream entertainment network. Broadcasting live, he grabbed me, explaining that he loved the song but couldn’t figure out what it was about. «Its about an old depressed prostitute I used to see every night at 3am» I said. «She never got work and was crippled with a heroin addiction spiralling out of control». The journalist froze with lips curled, my publicist plunged her face in her hands and the interview was cut. The interviewer squinted his eyes angrily, «way to murder the vibe on live family TV dude». I was sent off and not asked back again. When asked why I had said what I said by my team, I told them I was here because of that unmentionable hooker. I owed her the mention and that she gave me more than this chicken run of press ever would. Her name was Carolina.

I met Carolina in my early twenties in Miami. At the time, my collaborator Jodi Marr and I would beg and borrow studio hours wherever we could get them. In exchange, we would lend our voices to bad Latin pop records or Jodi would translate lyrics. We were prostituting ourselves for studio time and for a way out of obscurity. We were making my first demos and money was non existent. This meant we often got the studios after normal working hours, from 7pm to 2am. Unable to drive, Jodi would pick me up and drop me off at a gas station in North Miami where I would then be collected by my sister or a friend. Carolina was always there waiting for customers. I quickly realised this wasn’t such a good thing as it meant she wasn’t getting work, which wasn’t surprising as she was passed it and not in good health. I became fascinated by her, but mostly fascinated by her incredible strength. One day she disappeared and I never saw her waiting there again. The song just happened. I didn’t plan it or think it particularly clever, but I wrote it for her.

What is it about the oldest profession in the world and the arts? Musicians, writers and painters have been inspired and fascinated by prostitutes and courtesans for thousands of years. The works have been displayed in palaces, cathedrals and the songs have even been played at weddings. Places where the people that inspire them would not always be welcome. From The Police’s Roxanne to Guercino’s Mary Magdalene, Degas and Manet’s female portraits, La Traviata and Anna Karenina, all have used the moral quandary of sex versus profit as their springboard. To me it is actually the courage that it takes to engage in a meretricious relationship that is fascinating and admirable. Buddhists believe in the separation of the mind and the body which would imply that prostitution of the mind is far more questionable and dangerous. In a capitalist society we regulate “the mind” by regulating peoples actions and transactions. It seems a logical extension to regulate prostitution. The exploitation and suffering would be aided by decriminalising and supporting those working in the industry.

The finest prostitution pop song of them all has to be Killer Queen written by Freddie Mercury. In his own words which I truly believe in he said that «We are all musical Prostitutes my dear». Indeed Freddie we are, however Churchill wasn’t afraid to get his hands a little more dirty. At a high class party Churchill famously asked a socialite if she would sleep with him for five million pounds. Blushing, she replied that the terms would have to be discussed. He then asked her if she would sleep with him for 5 pounds. «Mr Churchill! What kind of woman do you think I am!» she replied. «Madam, we’ve already established what kind of woman you are. Now we are haggling about the price». God, we could use a leader like him again today.