This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
It's over. The Sopranos television series has aired its last episode. If you're a fan like I am you've seen them all, and you're going to miss Tony and Carmela and Meadow and AJ and the rest of the family and the Family. At the end of the third episode from the last, AJ is in the hospital, and Tony goes to visit him. A song starts to play and then the credits roll.
Talk about haunting melodies. I had to find out what that song was. I had to track it down, and I did. There was stuff on the bulletin boards about it, including some innacuracies and misinterpretations. But I found it. The song is called Ninna Nanna Malandrineddu, which could be translated, accurately I think, as "Little Marauder Lullaby." It's Italian, but from Calabria, the toe of the boot, on the other side of the Straits of Messina from Sicily. (In the Middle Ages, it was all Sicily, clear up to Naples and beyond.) The song's on an album called Omerta, Onuri e Sangu, La Musica della Mafia, written (I think) by Demetrio Siclari and sung by Saveria. Pia Calamai, a collector of Italian lullabies (ninne nanne) has also been credited on a few sites.
Picture this: a young mother is trying to get her baby to sleep. She's a widow. The baby's father is dead, whacked by a hit man. The mother is seething with rage. What does she croon to the baby? "I’onuri da famigghia ha manteniri / Figghiuzzu a to patri I'ha vendicari." You have to keep the family's honor, little son, and avenge your father. (Remember AJ and Uncle Junior, after the demented uncle shot Tony?)
This is not a song I'd want to sing myself to my own children or grandchildren, but like the Sopranos TV series, it resonates with a disowned part of me, and of most Sopranos fans, I suspect: the part that CG Jung called "the shadow side." (Maybe it should be called one's "Inner Wiseguy.") I liked the song enough that I had to have an MP3 of it, and after some major googling I finally downloaded one. With all due respect to Mr. Siclari and Miss Saveria and all the artists who produced the "Musica della Mafia" album, I didn't pay a cent for it. Let's just say that it fell off a truck.
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