Today I spent a large part of the morning discussing with a photographer friend of mine about Italian tax laws for everyone: companies, freelancers… we came to the conclusion that if things go well for us, we would be forced to emigrate.

This scares me because leaving one’s native country is always difficult, but… maybe it will happen! I have a cousin who is living in Germany, acquaintances who live in Ireland and Sweden. Maybe the beginnings will be difficult, but it’s a matter of habit, getting into the swing of things in the society that is hosting you and becoming one of its inhabitants.

Anyway, I’m already very anxious, I don’t need any more. If I were to find myself in a situation of extraordinary earnings above one hundred thousand euros, I would start thinking about it, but at the moment it’s pure fantasy because I’m a nobody and the path is long and full of brambles to prune.

I’m moving on to the real goal of today, talking about the first album I made my parents buy for me when I was 9 or 10 years old, Michael Jackson’s – Dangerous! At the age of 7-8, I wasn’t yet allowed to play my brother’s Commodore 64 games, so I was forced to play with toy cars (I simulated accidents) and with Transformers puppets and Saint Seiya action figures (to simulate light-speed fights, I would throw the Bronze Saints against the wall)… I always liked to play seriously. When I wasn’t playing, I would take my dad’s record player and listen to songs like Atlas UFO Robot (I used to love it, now I hate it), Goldrake (I used to hate it, now I love it), Vega (always loved), Shooting Star (always loved), Isotta, La Tartaruga, L’Isola di Wight (maybe my favorite).

Sometimes I would also listen to audio cassettes of various Italian artists like Baglioni, Celentano, Venditti, and then Michael Jackson, and I would have fun making charts like a DJ, a crazy thing, but I had so much time.

I would listen to Baglioni first just to get him out of the way, incredibly boring, it was that album with “Poster” and “Questo Piccolo Grande Amore”…My mother used to love him! I preferred Celentano and Venditti, specifically the album “In Questo Mondo di Ladri,” spectacular! Needless to say, Michael almost always won because between “Bad” and “Thriller” I was spoiled for choice, all superlative tracks!

Then a friend of mine, also a Michael fan, told me that “Dangerous” had come out, and I went crazy, starting to bother my mom to buy it for me; one morning I forced her to go all around the neighborhood until we found this audio cassette for ten thousand lire. An album that I really liked, and I didn’t understand why my friend had called it less beautiful than the previous ones… I probably didn’t understand because I was in love with Michael’s musical approach and I wasn’t looking at too many details, unlike what happens when you grow up, very often you become picky, reaching levels of pretentiousness that would deserve a beating just to bring you back down to earth. Logically, I too am a jerk sometimes, especially musically, sometimes I approach things with prejudice, risking missing the opportunity to learn something.

Anyway, going back to “Dangerous,” “Heal the World” is a really cool song that puts me at peace with the world, now I don’t know who he stol… I mean, who he was inspired by, but it’s excellent; I’ve always hated “Will You Be There” or “I Cigni di Cabala” (call it whatever you want), even before the plagiarism accusation, I never connected with it.

Next time I’ll tell you about the origin of Apocalypse Now, it was originally called… well, I’ll tell you later, otherwise what the heck will I talk to you about then?