Pino Forastiere: a homemade interview #2 (manifesto)

Let's start: a new life in a new town, a new instrument, a new record, "Village Life"

Certainly these three news are connected: moving from Rome to Tivoli gave me a new opportunity to think of sound: in a smaller city there are fewer sounds, but they are much more intelligible and clear. I can hear less noise from the traffic jam of a thousand cars, but the sound of the main street instead, where I can listen to people talking, or walking (the sound of the shoes on the cobblestone is very interesting). In short, in Tivoli I found a different order of sounds, and even the rhythms are different: I can perceive them one by one, while the time is much more dilated.

What is noise? 

Noise is a sound that everyone has to deal with, and that certainly has its charm. But here, in Tivoli, I feel like I can participate in the creation of the noise that surrounds me, while in Rome I felt totally passive.

Village Life is a new step on your way as a composer / performer of original music. In the meanwhile, people go crazy for cover songs.

The first thing I would like to say is that art is an individual expression. What then is shared, performed, loved, and becomes famous, is something that honestly does not concern me. Let me explain: music is my necessity. I need to compose, to play, and above all not to get bored doing it. If something is already there, I do not find any interest in re-doing it - in case, I am very curious to understand it, but just as a first step to go somewhere else. If we have reached point A, I do not see why we should stop there forever; personally, I work to try to get to B. If ten, a hundred, a thousand people are pleased to share my research, my music, of course, I'm happy; but the happiness of giving voice to what I feel is greater. So, about playing covers, it's very simple: I don't enjoy doing it, and I don't do it.

Covers, however, also create great misunderstandings: nobody knows anymore who's the original composer of the songs.

It's a symptom of the confusion we live in, where there's no before and no after. And the more we feel confused, the more we need to be reassured by something we already know, something easy. A faded copy of point A is fine.

Isn't it a case of fake art? 

Fake is not just a fact related to news or information: today fake is human existence, because people raise their mediocrity to absolute language, without asking themselves a single question. Everyone has his truth to assert with extreme certainty, from food to medical care to art, while doubt is a sublime thought (if it does not limit action). Doubt is necessary to evolve, to move away from the famous point A. If people instead put themselves in a fixed, rigid and static point, then they can only share the repetition of something that already exists: again, a faded copy of point A. But I think it is a passing phenomenon, and destined to run out.

I don't know if it's destined to run out. I believe that a limited approach to knowledge in the long run will make us more limited. In a physical comparison, I would say that after staying at home for two months, it will be difficult for anybody to go out and take a walk of only 200 meters. Our brain needs to be trained, like everything else.

We need to get back to the carbonism, a secret society where people who want, who are able to move from point A, must endure in doing things, hoping that sooner or later the general sensitivity will change, and hoping also that the cultural mediators, the so-called art/music journalists, will return to be insiders, with the ability to discern what has value from what does not. Most of the things I find today in the world of art and communication have no value, they are so poor in spirit they make me feel uncomfortable. But I am convinced that what we see on the surface is not the whole thing. In an unexpected moment of optimism, I believe there are some beautiful things under this surface, so I think there is a possible salvation, it's only covered by this magma ... We must be patient in waiting for this surface pollution to vanish.

What would you like to suggest to a young person?

I would tell him/her to think strongly, and always with his/her own head, whatever the result. And also to widen one's horizons, to choose things beyond what is unconditionally offered by someone else, to go in the opposite direction to that polluted surface, just to become oneself. And this not only to become artists, but human beings. The reasoning must not be right or wrong, but must be a reasoning: something that makes one say "I have come to this conclusion working on my doubts, and not on the certainties that others offered to me".

About certainties, Money topic. Lots of clicks, lots of money.

I've always lived trying to get by with the minimum necessary to live, but I cannot give more importance to money than to a thought, a project. Besides, I don't think that clicks make content producers really rich, while most of the money is put in the pockets of very few people, those who invented the platforms hosting contents. Anyway, I wouldn't be able to post something to make money, it's an existential conduct that doesn't belong to me.

What's your wish?

Specifically related to the guitar world, I hope that this glorification of the copy, this reference parameter of the confusion between technique and art, and this craving for pennies on the internet  will finally end. I don't want to feel alone forever, but I cannot devote all my life to the ultimate goal of buying a house, or an extra guitar, or a bigger car that I don't even fucking know where to park. These are just things, not ideas.

Let's stop here. I'll leave the technical questions to the journalists-guitarists, since I don't know anything about that stuff.

Clear. But don't worry, I am very prepared to answer fundamental questions on what strings I use, what amplification system I use, what guitar I play, and especially how much it cost me because it is important to evaluate how much an instrument costs, how original it is, and how much it becomes more important than the thing that is done with that instrument, that weird thing called music.




Pino, are you saying that the guitar must be original, but the music must not?

Exactly. The instrument must be original, must have many strings, many necks, must be built in absolutely fine woods, must be inlaid in a very exclusive way, so that its owner actually has a unique and unrepeatable object. What is he then going to do with that instrument, that's just an accessory. Yes, it is an extraordinary paradox, on which I would invite everyone to reflect on: we try to invent very original instruments to reproduce music that already exists, that is a copy.

So, the means became the end, and the end became the means.

Right. But it will pass. Don't know when, but it will pass.