Mika: Pop Up! - 2011年5月號xL Repubblica的每月專欄 Mika xL Column May 31st 2011

Mika在意大利月刊xL Repubblica，2011年5月份的專欄
Mika xL Column 31, May

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 were 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 world’s 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, it’s worth having a little patience.

Here are some of the submissions we received for Mika’s illustration contest from last month’s blog. Thank you to all who entered.

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by Mika on xL Repubblica

Firstly posted on Mikasounds

Mika: Pop Up! - 2011年4月號xL Repubblica的每月專欄 Mika xL Column April 14th 2011

Mika在意大利月刊xL Repubblica，2011年4月份的專欄
Mika xL Column 14, April

Mika Talks Art

On a cold January morning this year, I made my way up the winding roads of upstate Connecticut. I was nervous, not only because I was the one doing the driving (I am a terrible driver), but because this felt more like a pilgrimage than a meeting. After getting lost I finally found a discreet painted wooden house, secluded in the middle of a dense forrest. I had arrived at the home of ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ illustrator, Maurice Sendak. Walking into the house, I came across a short, elderly man, dressed in his pyjamas and sitting at the dinner table talking loudly on the phone. When finally presented to him, he looked at me softly and smiled - “you’re very young”, he said, “I’m 82, have a seat”.

Over the next three hours, I glimpsed into the life of a man who’s work has been one of the biggest creative inspirations in my life. Sendak is most famous for the Wild Things but has illustrated over 100 books. His art has reinvented illustration and children’s books, the same way Norman Rockwell reinvented the art of marketing illustration. He lives with his female assistant and friend. With visitors he is generous with his thoughts and time but prefers to work and listen to Schubert. He does this in the same room that he sleeps in, working endlessly, desperate to achieve and leave behind a body of work as good as his heroes, William Blake and Keats.

If I hadn’t become a musician I would have become an illustrator. Illustrations work in a very similar way to pop songs. In pop songs, melodies and lyrics have to be direct. They work best when something indescribable is created out of the most simple ingredients. It can take only seconds for a song to grab your attention. Illustrations have to do the same thing. The lines seem simple and the image quickly understandable, but what goes into it can take as much skill as any painting in the Louvre. In this way, Sendak is the Beatles of the art world.

When sitting with Sendak, it is hard not to feel like you are sitting with one of his characters come to life. Small, big faced and bursting with expression and one-liners. He is a perfect combination of wickedly cynical yet constantly in awe of art and music. It gives him a childlike quality. His ‘Jewishness’ is almost exaggerated. He speaks bits of Yiddish, often with a raised voice and theatrical flair. Many people are unaware of the massive influence Eastern European (mostly Jewish), fine artists from the 1940s, shaped the imagery of their childhood to this day. Fleeing war and political instability, many eastern European painters emigrated to the USA. There they found themselves out of work, with paintings that had no hope of making money. It was in the booming publishing industry that they found a future. With the development of cheap high quality colour printing, books and magazines flourished and illustrations were needed to fill them. The skill of the emigré artists revolutionised illustration. The drawings were still direct and pop, (the publishers made sure of that), but they had a wealth of sophistication and training behind them. Artists like Gustaf Tenggren and Tibor Gergely would later be poached by Walt Disney and many were responsible for creating the intricate visual world of many Disney classics, including Snow White, Disney’s first full length film.

The resentment that some of these artists felt was not unjustified. They were for a long time the unsung heroes of pop culture, rejected by the fine art world, and underpaid by the mainstream companies. How things have changed. I got my first job at eleven after being expelled from school. Unable to read and write, my mother decided to give me a new start and keep me out of formal education for almost a year. During that time I learnt to sing, play the piano and would stare at the pictures in children’s books. The pictures were far more important than the words and there began my obsession with illustration. A couple years later, after I finally managed to save some money, I used all the cash I had to buy my first drawing. It was a watercolour by Jim Woodring, of a bunny called Frank. Frank is drugs, sex, insecurity, happiness and fear. The only thing is, Frank doesn’t speak, there is no text in his comics and he lives a made up surreal fantasy land. Somehow, all these emotions are still communicated and crystal clear. Frank was subversive but my parents had no idea. My Frank picture cost me $300, a fortune at the time. I didn’t stop there. Whenever I made money, I found a picture to spend it on. By the age of 17 I was already trading and selling my pictures online. I often kept this addiction secret from my friends, embarrassed of some of the risks I was taking. It seems I was by no means alone. A whole generation who has grown up with illustration art refuse to see it as merely something disposable. Those Tengrenns and Gergelys that were once given away, can now fetch over a $100,000. How they would turn in there graves!

Now for the illustration on my latest article! My illustrator sister Yasmine, who goes by the pen-name DaWack, thought it would be fun if one of you would illustrate my next article.

So, if you would like the chance to illustrate next month’s column, make your own illustration inside the frame, scan it and email it to feedback@xelle.it with ‘Illustrazione Mika’ in the subject line by the 13th May and we will then choose our favourite…

Check out the paper’s website here: http://xl.repubblica.it/

Translation in Progress

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by Mika on xL Repubblica
Firstly posted on Mikasounds

Mika: Pop Up! - 2011年4月號xL Repubblica的每月專欄 Monthly Column in xL Repubblica, April 2011

Mika在意大利月刊xL Repubblica，2011年4月份的專欄
Mika xL Column 12, April

The Sacrifice of Anna Nicole

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

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 cancelled 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 celebrity’s 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 women 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.

Translation in Progress

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by Mika on xL Repubblica
Firstly posted on Mikasounds

Mika: Pop Up! - 2011年3月號xL Repubblica的每月專欄 Monthly Column in xL Repubblica, March 2011

Mika在意大利月刊xL Repubblica，2011年3月份的專欄

Mika xL Column 11, March

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.

Translation in Progress

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by Mika via xL Repubblica

Mika: Pop Up! - 2011年2月號xL Repubblica的每月專欄 Monthly Column in xL Repubblica, February 2011

Mika在意大利月刊xL Repubblica，2011年2月份的專欄

Mika xL Column 9, February

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.

Translation in Progress

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by Mika via xL Repubblica

Mika: Pop Up! - 2011年1月號xL Repubblica的每月專欄 Monthly Column in xL Repubblica, January 2011

Mika在意大利月刊xL Repubblica，2011年1月份的專欄

Mika xL Column 12, January 2011

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.

Translation in Progress

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by Mika via xL Repubblica

Mika: Pop Up! - 2010年12月號xL Repubblica的每月專欄 Monthly Column in xL Repubblica, December 2010

Mika在意大利月刊xL Repubblica，2010年12月份的專欄

Mika xL Column 6, December 2010

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.


Translation in Progress

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by Mika via xL Repubblica

Mika: Pop Up! - 2010年11月號xL Repubblica的每月專欄 Monthly Column in xL Repubblica, November 2010

Mika在意大利月刊xL Repubblica，2010年11月份的專欄

Mika xL Column 3, November 2010

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.

Translation in Progress

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by Mika via xL Repubblica