“You should write a book about mom.” A comment from Giorgina on Marinella's birthday, years ago.

I heard it, I forgot it. I didn’t take it lightly, but I knew that I was unsuitable as a biographer due to my writing style. Whether for better or worse.

I start from one place and find myself elsewhere, my emotions intervene, I get angry with my heroes, I do what I do so that I am not included among the current literary giants.

I don’t ramble about the accepted “politically correct” and de facto untouchable major issues. With such a character, how could I take on a Marinella, with whom indeed we share some interesting decades, but I wouldn’t be evoking halos and admiring fanfares for the melodic world of the night.

“You know, I…” I objected, knowing my character. The other side insisted: “You’re wrong…”. “But I am entirely a moving mistake,” I replied. In the end, the biographer was “captured”...

“You know me” — Marinella.

“I love you, but I’m afraid you don’t know me,” I replied. It went on for a while with “I know you,” “you don’t know me,” until we made up our minds and the afternoon symposia in memory of Plato and other relatives of similar symposiac experiences began.

And so we proceeded, illuminating with midday light nights or even days of a life made of earth, voice, love, toil, and much love. And it became a book that, without being a priori a biography, started to resemble a novel of my own.

G. X.