Ciao Ragazzi! When designer Fabrizio Scippa asked me to write a “bio,” I was baffled. I am more inclined to live than to talk about living. My days are filled with life. Sand on my feet. A walk though the falling leaves. Running late to the next meeting because some piano notes wouldn’t let me go. A cup sitting on the sink when I realize that I forgot to drink my coffee. This is my “bio,” this is my “living.” There is a lot of life in a cup of coffee that is too hot (first) and that becomes too cold (after.) The life is in between, it is in that “becoming” that transcends the multitude of presents and transforms every second into the following one, like arrows that run towards unthinkable targets scattered in time. I start and end my days in the quietness of my prayers. In between - like Italian songwriter Paolo Conte would say - there is a mess. Life is this sublime mechanism created by God that brings people to exist. And vice versa. At times, I feel like I have done a lot. But, most of the times, particularly when I mull over what I still have to accomplish that is boiling in me, the little child inside winks at me, he bounces in me, he’s here-and-now indeed. I was born more of an adult than I have become overtime, and I have then remained a child forever. I need to be a child in order to become a man everyday. Like in a flux, becoming is my living. So, I fell in love. I was 6. She (Elena) will be caught off guard as she reads this, because I am sure she had no clue of what was going on. I had a blast looking at her playing piano. Thus, I transformed this kind of fun into an excuse. “I want to take piano lessons too,” I told my Mom, “just like Elena. But we don’t have to buy a piano at the beginning. We can save some money, I’ll go every day over to Elena’s home and practice with her.” The music began. But the real turning point was about 10 years later, an afternoon, in Pisa. Mrs Caldi was an older piano teacher, a child like me. For the past ten years, I had tried to play piano “my way,” which is the way I felt inside. But, for some reason, the message that I was trying to convey to the world didn’t go through, so to speak. The sound wouldn’t take off, it wouldn’t leave my fingers. The sound was like flattened, trapped, smothered through my fingers. That day, in a matter of 10 minutes, Mrs Caldi “sang” to me that I was allowed to play the way I had always wanted to play piano. She was literally singing every single note as if… “A violin hovering over the ocean,” she said. Suddenly, I snapped out of myself. She didn’t teach me how to play piano. She taught me that all I needed was inside me, I just had to listen to it and get it out. My inner voice was my real teacher. If you learn too much, you stifle the sparkle inside. This 10-minute experience taught me that I was allowed to be the way I was. A refreshing wind started whistling into my neck and walked down through my whole body. So liberating! So innovative for my life! It’s as if my arms had become longer, I could reach out to lights in the sky that, up until that moment, I could only see but I couldn’t touch. Nothing has been the same ever since. Ever since, everything I do, I do it differently. Mrs Caldi scratched the surface of my being. She found me, I was wrinkly hidden into myself. Since that afternoon, I stretched out and, for the first time, I saw the glimmering light of life. I stopped sugarcoating my life steps and got to the bottom of it, the soles of my feet could really touch the ground and I had become, in the meantime, capable of flying. I could feel the earth and I could feel the sky. My shadow was shorter than myself. Not only had the music begun. It also became a whole new way to reach out to myself. I was a pretty good boy. I went to the Medical School for 10 years, long enough not to graduate. I never finished the “conservatorio,” therefore I never got my diploma in piano. From the University of Pisa, I switched to the University of Florence. I didn’t finish the major in Psychology either. I am a dropout by nature. I have always thought that school should serve me, not the other way around. So every time I decided that I learned enough of something, I switched to something else. I need to choose what I want to know before I know it. That is, to me, the only way to keep my passion trembling while learning. It’s as if a new discovery needs to be desired, kinda like a question is on the lookout for an answer. Perhaps I never graduated because I didn’t want to get imprisoned in the same cup of tea for a lifetime. There must be some explanations down there, in the depth of my unconscious. Since I really wanted to learn English I decided to move to California. Upon arrival, I had to create a job for myself and, just like I have always done in life, I felt that my job had to contain the potential to change something for the better. I didn’t want a job to make money. Money has never been the driving force of any of my experiences. I thought about creating a Tuscan Home in America. Here’s Pappalecco! A business is like a human being. It brings out things that you didn’t know you had. Pappalecco is an amazing human being made of several human beings. Today, it also gives me the chance to record my music. Isn’t that great? One day, four or five years ago, I was in the kitchen. I distinctly remember the moment that would turn my life upside down one more time. The moment I decided that it was time to make a phone call was the moment I knew that something was just about to happen. Something inside was dancing. Something was trying to stubbornly find its space and fit in that space. It was the music that was knocking. It’s not that I wanted to do it, it’s that I had no choice but to do it. Marco Natali was still there, maybe in another kitchen, oversees. I hadn’t heard his voice for at least then years. He answered right away. The end and the beginning of time reconnected, as if ten years had suddenly been sucked up by a random dot in time. Ten years suddenly, completely disappeared. A few months later I was in Tuscany, I was recording. Marco was sitting at the console. My voice was oscillating the wavelengths on his computer screen while I was shaking my body into the rhythm. The membrane of the AKG microphone was bouncing. I couldn’t believe that my voice was making it happen. The rhythm was melting in me and I was melting in the rhythm. Passions are the most potent forces. Passions are a call to action. It’s impossible to avoid passions. You gotta do what you gotta do. You gotta do what God wants you to do. Passions are God speaking through you. Every now and then, a man should change route in order to follow his destiny. It’s almost impossible to know what you want to do when you are 20, or 30, or 40 years old. Along the way, one should muster the courage to shake off old dances, capitalize on the experience, and start dancing again. The most courageous thing is to admit that I will always be 20 years old, or less. The most difficult thing is to admit the truth. Once you do that, you are free. Do I know where I am going? Not really, because I am not going, rather I am called. I respond to God who speaks to me through my heart. I am also working on the next album while this one is coming out. I didn’t decide this either. It came out. I was already singing the songs when I was listening to them for the first time. Hope you like this work. I love it, I really do. It’s one of those things that makes me happy when I drive my white car, while my white car becomes colors sliding on the freeway, while the night becomes colors… it’s morning by now.