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Corriere della Sera

http://www.corriere.it/foto-gallery/la-lettura/maschere/15_luglio_22/mika-cotroneo-badc840c-3089-11e5-8ebc-a14255a4c77f.shtml

«Quando scrivo non devo proteggermi. Non ho vergogna di me e mi sento a mio agio. In genere ho paura di come posso essere interpretato, di ciò che sono. Quando scrivo, invece, posso parlare di tutto». Anche se il controllo è un’illusione:

«Mentre creo vado oltre le mie intenzioni».

Mika ha incontrato il regista Ivan Cotroneo al «Corriere della Sera» (guarda il video) e il loro dialogo - sorprendente e sincero - sarà pubblicato sul numero 191 de «la Lettura» in edicola domenica 26 luglio.

Qui il servizio fotografico realizzato da Monica Silva

 

:uk:

Translation

"When I write I don't have to protect myself. I'm not ashamed of myself and I feel at ease. Generally I'm afraid of how I can be interpreted, of who I am. When I write, on the contrary, I can speak about whatever I want". Even if control's an illusion: "When I create I go beyond my intentions". Mika met the director Ivan Cotroneo at Corriere della Sera and their surprising and honest dialogue will be published on La Lettura item 191 out on Sunday July 26th. Here's the photoshoot by Monica Silva

 

 

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Edited by Kumazzz
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Corriere della Sera

http://www.corriere.it/foto-gallery/la-lettura/maschere/15_luglio_22/mika-cotroneo-badc840c-3089-11e5-8ebc-a14255a4c77f.shtml

«Quando scrivo non devo proteggermi. Non ho vergogna di me e mi sento a mio agio. In genere ho paura di come posso essere interpretato, di ciò che sono. Quando scrivo, invece, posso parlare di tutto». Anche se il controllo è un’illusione:

«Mentre creo vado oltre le mie intenzioni».

Mika ha incontrato il regista Ivan Cotroneo al «Corriere della Sera» (guarda il video) e il loro dialogo - sorprendente e sincero - sarà pubblicato sul numero 191 de «la Lettura» in edicola domenica 26 luglio.

Qui il servizio fotografico realizzato da Monica Silva

 

19959844102_6397645726_b.jpg

 

Translation

 

 

"When I write I don't have to protect myself. I'm not ashamed of myself and I feel at ease. Generally I'm afraid of how I can be interpreted, of who I am. When I write, on the contrary, I can speak about whatever I want". Even if control's an illusion: "When I create I go beyond my intentions". Mika met the director Ivan Cotroneo at Corriere della Sera and their surprising and honest dialogue will be published on La Lettura item 191 out on Sunday July 26th. Here's the photoshoot by Monica Silva

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Translation

"When I write I don't have to protect myself. I'm not ashamed of myself and I feel at ease. Generally I'm afraid of how I can be interpreted, of who I am. When I write, on the contrary, I can speak about whatever I want". Even if control's an illusion: "When I create I go beyond my intentions". Mika met the director Ivan Cotroneo at Corriere della Sera and their surprising and honest dialogue will be published on La Lettura item 191 out on Sunday July 26th. Here's the photoshoot by Monica Silva

 

Thanks a lot !!! :wub:

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GLI ITALIANI HANNO SEMPRE RAGIONE

 

Here you can find the two videos of the two parts with Mika!

 

http://mikaitalia.jimdo.com/2015/07/25/mika-a-gli-italiani-hanno-sempre-ragione/

 

Anteprima: Fabrizio Frizzi e Mika  http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-dbdadd6e-89b2-4322-8da3-47d3490b7a11.html

 

 

 

Mika canta Good Guys e Grace Kelly

Gli italiani hanno sempre ragione : 24/07/2015

 

Mika canta Good Guys e Grace Kelly

http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-1f0b6e28-23f2-479d-9dc9-bfa3107c2af7.html#p=

 

"Good Guys parla dell'ammirazione dell'artista per i suoi eroi gay adolescenziali, citandoli per nome uno per uno:

Rufus, Auden, James Dean, Emerson, Bowie, Wilfred, Owen, Kinsey, Whitman, Rimbaud, Wharhol, Porter e Cocteau.

Il pubblico poi chiede a Mika di cantare Grace Kelly"

 

VK http://vk.com/video232312753_171338407

Edited by Kumazzz
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Thank you very much for sharing it! :)

 

Oh, after reading it, I realized that this is another re-elaborated version of what Mika said at the NPIH press conference and in other articles/interviews, with "their" questions put there.

Edited by charlie20
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Gli italiani hanno sempre ragione : 24/07/2015

 

Mika canta Good Guys e Grace Kelly

http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-1f0b6e28-23f2-479d-9dc9-bfa3107c2af7.html#p=

 

"Good Guys parla dell'ammirazione dell'artista per i suoi eroi gay adolescenziali, citandoli per nome uno per uno:

Rufus, Auden, James Dean, Emerson, Bowie, Wilfred, Owen, Kinsey, Whitman, Rimbaud, Wharhol, Porter e Cocteau.

Il pubblico poi chiede a Mika di cantare Grace Kelly"

 

VK http://vk.com/video232312753_171338407

Edited by Kumazzz
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Has no one posted the scans from today's Corriere La Lettura?

 

These are courtesy of Elwendin:

Thanks to both you and Elw :flowers2: interesting reading

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Has no one posted the scans from today's Corriere La Lettura?

 

These are courtesy of Elwendin:

 

Here's the digital scan of the interview if someone has problems to read the pics

 

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I have a bit of free time so I can translate this one but you've to wait a bit 'cause it's long and the structure is a bit different from the others

Edited by Lucrezia
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I have a bit of free time so I can translate this one but you've to wait a bit 'cause it's long and the structure is a bit different from the others

 

Oh, I had already started this, too -- I'm nearly done. Well, it's good practice for me, in any case. We'll see who gets it done first. :naughty:

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Oh, I had already started this, too -- I'm nearly done. Well, it's good practice for me, in any case. We'll see who gets it done first. :naughty:

 

Oh if you're already at the end of it, I'll stop myself ;P I'm still at the beginning of the second page  :wink2: 

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So sorry for the delay -- got sidetracked by lots of other things:

 

The Showman

Michael Holbrook Penniman Junior (Mika) was born in Beirut in Lebanon, the 18th August 1983, from a Lebanese mother and an American father. In 1984, due to the civil war, he moved first to Paris and then to London. The English-naturalized singer-songwriter reached success in 2007 with the single Grace Kelly from Life in Cartoon Motion. Since 2013, he is a judge on X Factor Italia. No Place in Heaven, his new album, came out in June. Among the tracks: Good Guys, dedicated to his heroes when he was an adolescent, and All She Wants, on his relationship with his mother; the deluxe edition contains also two songs in French.

Milano, at 6 on a very hot afternoon, in the room of the director of the "Corriere della Sera." The hand of Mika is writing on a Post-It a question for me: To tattoo or not to tattoo? He gives me the message. We have just met, and are seated in easy chairs for conversing. He has many beautiful necklaces around his neck, he has seen the tattoo that I have on the back of my neck, he has just now said he does not have any tattoos, that he only likes them if they are extreme, if they cover everything. And he smiles at me. "In reality, I could not tattoo myself, I change my mind too quickly and I am always ashamed of what I've done before. I'm always afraid that what I am doing I will not like after 10 years." I say to him that it's true, we are both doing a job in which we continually confront ourselves with what we have done. And we work constantly with dissatisfaction. Fortunately.

"Are you an optimist?" he asks me suddenly, looking me in the eyes. I tell him that I think that yes, I think I am an optimist. He says he is not characteristically, but he is happy. I look him deep in the eyes ready to examine more thoroughly. There is a pause.

"I don't know if I am ready to argue with you," he says to me in his Italian, which by now is rich, with a full vocabulary and nuances. I respond to him that we could chat, not argue. "Ah, OK, yes. There is nothing more important than chit-chat, without chatting there would be no evolution of the species..." There is no dialogue, there is no communication, there is no story, I press the idea. "Yes... there is no mythology," he adds, with a more relevant choice.

The choice of words, of stories for telling... I confess to him that his last CD (while we're speaking Mika doesn't know that I am a fan of his for many years) seemed very beautiful to me, and very personal. One cannot write those words without really thinking them. No one can write for you, I say to him. "It's true, it is a very personal album. The passage in my life from interpreting to writing was fundamental. When I write I don't have to protect myself. I'm not ashamed of who I am. In general, I'm afraid of how I can be interpreted, of what others make of what I am. When I write, probably like you, I can talk about everything, I feel in control."

It is an illusion, however, this control. When you write you go beyond your intentions, where you end up is always another thing. "Yes the momentum takes you. It is an illumination, you don't know what you're doing but you do it, you don't know really how you will end up. Surely, everything that we write is the result of what we live. But in those moments it is as if I were not really me, it is like I was a container for an idea that arrived and I am able to carry it. Does this happen to you, too?" Yes, I tell him, and it also happens that I stray from careful intentions, then discover that I have told everything about myself. Unknowingly.

I ask him about a piece that really struck me, Good Wife, in which he writes in a dialogue with a guy: I would like to be able to say that if I were in your place, I would be a good wife, I would not ever doubt you, we would have a good life. A simple text, direct. Written and sung as a piece of life. It ends however by being a statement. Perhaps destructive really for this, because it is transparent.

"Yes, I almost recited that piece. That happened to me only once before with another piece, Origin of Love. I recited that like a sort of liberation. I thought of the situation that I live in, the story of love that I have, the simplest, the most beautiful. I am not optimistic by nature and really for this reason I can celebrate the positive moment, because happiness is a victory. It's like for people born rich, perhaps they are too comfortable to really understand. Discomfort is important. Challenges make you capable of being happy."

And able to tell about harshness, also. I speak about the lyrics that he writes, of No Place in Heaven, in which he talks of the absence of a place in paradise for "one like him" or of All She Wants, which notwithstanding the upbeat rhythm talks about thwarted expectations, and of a mother who wants something different for her son wishing, in effect, for "completely another son."

"Yes, the lyrics are hard, even those of Good Guys. The way in which they are sung is another story. They are light, or even humorous. I think of the scene in your film "La kryptonite della borsa," the grandmother, the chick who kills herself, they make me laugh. I believe that you have a very dry outlook, a dark humor, I like it a lot. This is also in my songs."

It is difficult to sing about the hardness of life, and the beauty of love and happiness all at the same time, these feelings come together if you have struggled, if you have fought to say: I want to make this, I want to be this. "Now I write, but I never thought I'd be able to do it. At school I couldn't manage to write anything. I was a mediocre student, I was bad in mathematics and English literature, and when I studied music I felt uncomfortable. And this pushed me to do more. If you are not, or don't feel you have a clear, recognized talent, the things that you do are more original, requiring another way. At school when others said something to me, I thought: OK, OK, it's part of the film. You go on, you go as if you were in a film of yourself in the future."

I did this, I confess. He tells me that he felt it was also part of the film when he worked as a waiter and emptied and cleaned glasses. And that he began to compose the "form of his life" right away, as soon as he sent his first demo to a record label looking to get a contract. "I wanted to build a world where I could find the key for being free. I wanted to escape from prison, I told myself when I was 12 or 13. I wanted to construct a musical world, but also an esthetic. With my demo, I invented my place in the world. I composed a fake interview buying Q magazine, taking the layout, putting in it my songs and the photos that I had taken with a friend. We remade the photos for five days, until we were satisfied. I had only 40 pounds in my pocket, but I had studied a box set for the CD, it was not enough for me to have a simple container. And finally the case I sent, I created with my sister. My sister painted, she didn't want to make the illustration, but we had to make this work, and from that moment we stayed together."

Also the interventions (?) in the video of All She Wants are hers/his. Was it tiring to create this world? I ask him. "Physically, yes, but not emotionally." Because you are a transparent person, I say to him. "Being transparent helps you, helps us. I, like you, have problems making others see what I want to do, to write, to sing, to be. I think everyone that I meet has this small light in their eyes but that they haven't yet had the chance to get out of prison. But there is the possibility for everyone who creates a magical chaos in which everything is transformed. "

I speak to him of the beginners with whom I worked for my next film, and of how I identified with them. "I also see myself in kids that I meet. I always see myself in those who are less good. I recognize myself in those that are not perfect. Because for them everything is more difficult. They clash with reality the only way they know, that's also my way. I don't believe I am a great expert on reality. What I am able to know of reality, I have always wanted to create a parallel world..."

I say to him that I think that writing, singing, communicating is this: not knowing everything, but looking at things in your way, and if you are lucky or good, others recognize your way of looking at things. It means in the end being very limited. It is like an inability to do everything else. He nods. "There is a way of taking your eyes, your way of seeing things and using it to make something else. For me it has worked, I put out the first album. After however I had a terrible period. I was in love with a person but I was kicked out of the house at 5 in the morning, really while the album was exploding. I couldn't say anything to anyone, I felt my public life was more important than my private life, at 23 years old I was ashamed of not managing this experience. I softened, I missed some concerts, I had problems with my hearing. All thanks to that case for the demo prepared in my mother's kitchen. Today I am more than busy, five times busier and I feel five times lighter because I have found a way of being more transparent, like you say." Everything was to make yourself see, without shame. "You had to do all this, too?" he asks me. I tell him yes, through writing. I had to tell, I had to write, and say what I was, also in my case passing from a delusion. "I was not able to do it while I was living it. In fact, it exploded out with health problems. It is incredible, I recall the precise day on which my problems began."

He looks at me, smiling jokingly. "Why have you managed to write and not me?" I say to him that when I was bad I wrote the ending of the rebirth that I wanted for myself, even if in life I didn't have it. Writing and sharing saved me. I tell him that I do not believe people who say they make their way without needing others. "Exactly! Take Picasso, he was obsessed with his person, always clean, always perfect, not wanting to have paint on his fingernails. Also he was obsessed with the idea of communicating with people. He was not an "outsider artist"... putting his heart in a project. What you said is important... you know what I believe? I think that the person that I am is not interesting. The person that I would like to be instead, yes, he is interesting. I write and compose in order to paint the person that I would like to be."

I say to him that it is not precisely true. Because for everyone he is the person that they would like to be. Therefore he is really that person. This is the magic. They are not two different people, I tell him, the person that everyone would want to be exists, he makes things, he is not a trick, you are that. He is not an alter ego. You are you. "Even if I am dissatisfied?" Absolutely, according to me.

I tell him that even in a political sense his message is so happy because he battles for being what he would want to be. The price to pay is your dissatisfaction. He looks at me. "This idea of putting your heart in things, are you not afraid that one day there will be no more to say?" Yes, I'm afraid of that, I respond to him, but what can you do? "I think that we must try, but without forcing it like my great hero Hemingway. He is my hero. He writes in a way so simple. He always tried, and perhaps he tried too much. I would like to know why Hemingway at the end lost contact with his life. Because this makes me afraid."

However, I believe that one cannot play to failure. "No. You must always be sincere. There is another thing to do: change. Try to do other things. Go and then come back." You are a nomad, I tell him. He nods in agreement. "It is very difficult for people in my life. They know that they are always second to everything else. Is it like this for you, too? How do they support us? I don't know. My companion and I are a very simple couple. Everything simplified in order to not have extra rumors. To stay well.

He tells me that he listens to and reads everything, and that then he forgets. He says that he loves Angela Carter and Graham Greene, while the sun goes down. We are moving on. He picks up his Post-it again and he smiles at me. "Then, to tattoo or not to tattoo? On this we are on two opposite fronts. Well, only on this it seems." Someone opens the door, we get up. Mika looks at me and smiles. Here he is. The happy pessimist. Transparent. Or rather, as he probably would say in his beautiful Italian, cristalline.
 

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Thank you so so so so so much Deb!! You've done an amazing work :hug:

 

Did I do OK, then, Lucrezia? Let me know, please, if I got something wrong -- there were 1-2 places where I wasn't 100 percent sure. :teehee:

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