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 Got lucky, I guess. The first time I met a Swordfishtrombone was in Via del Pratello the heart of ancient city in Bologna, he tried to lay eggs in the puddles, but they got rotting in naphtha scooters. Those years gathered around dirty and smelling squats almost a refined bohemian rapsody, people sharing barely space and time, growing up together, something unique for a while. Montesino Inn every Monday we held poetry readings and extravagant situationist performances, a giant Fidel Castro poster at the entrance gave you welcome saying: quiet man, you’re home! I’ll take your favourite Pandora! Here you could meet in the same evening, at the same table, at the same drinking glass, a gallery of characters that today you would not say: brothers in arms sharing some wine, smoking and riot beatings. Names that do not want to shout here: it sounds not polite, they now walk on rose petals and sign fairy autographs, but those times everything was different, we had twenty years and no future: via del Pratello uncovered a yard with crazy inhuman of Bacchae, wine and sausages, music on each corner, under the porch; an hom-made urban TV channel with Pleistocenic VHS and a shack held together with electrical tape sent, aired impossible trakcs: beat-poetress chanting upright standing next her terrace peonies, and the first selfie-porn live streaming I’ve ever heard fantasize.
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 No one would have windowed bleach buckets round midnight, the party was right all of us matter. The Swordfishtrombone wagged his tail like a shark, he decomposed and recomposed every time different faces, instruments, mouths, arms and strings, mixing all kinds of sound recital punk skiffle beat funk glam trash yiddish balkan jazz pop art visual cyber techno rag new-wave. Bottom shot fornicated with oil cans, a clarinet harmonized kazoo in parallel fifths, guitar enjoyed buzzin’ magnet and crackling cable! Yet the impossible always happened, all that tangle of stuff you could not tell where it came from, where he went, what carrying, ended up finding a way; maybe it was just the desire to stay together, to feel less alone in the circle-game of urban gear and produce. When darkness fell on Pratello, missing public light, then in the pubs, in the streets, everywhere you could meet the Swordfishtrombone darting between glasses and carboys mounted on the cart, always changing shape, color and substance. We grew up in that wonder pirates world by caring one another, learning from one another, writing for one another; we were not friends, you cannot even say that we loved: mates in boheme may mean much less, or even much more! Think I got lucky, even if did’nt last long. Over time we came to follow a story-board always the same, everyone seemed more interested in showing off. I could see around the sausages passin’ cards thick with nine-digit numbers, addresses of people who matters. There was Europe handbag pissing coins and for a few years it seemed heaven on earth, there was money to print distribute organize, so everyone took his road and someone has disappeared from circulation, the number you have called does not exist. When not felt and saw them over the radio to television in the newspaper, they came back into the bar to complain for that class never finished, but at first opportunity they resumed flight and we did not see them again. Swordfish trombone, I never lost him: when I’m short of ideas I still take him to the newts pond upside the mountain, he happily wallows beating the tail on the rocks and singing his never ending boogie. It ‘a gold fish and shits precious gems. — (To be continued…)
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