Maurizio Carucci of Ex Otago publishes his first book
The journey as an excuse to get lost and ask questions, but also as a way to trace your own path, look inside yourself, find yourself.
Maurizio Carucci, voice of Ex Otago, for his literary debut chose to tell a journey on foot, to look at the world at 5 km per hour, starting from the Ligurian Apennines to arrive in one of the most connected cities in the world, Milan. A journey that he himself defines as “rebellious, against the grain, partisan”. In the book he tells, step by step, the journey he took on dirt and asphalt with his backpack on his shoulders together with his partner Martina. But also what led him to follow the call of the mountains and nature. “There is no place in the world” (released on October 4th by HarperCollins) is a story that begins in Marassi, “the working-class neighborhood of Genoa known for the stadium and the prison”, where the singer was born and raised, and reaches the vineyards of Val Borbera where he lives and grows wine today. A look at the world and things, «a pretext to think about ourselves, about our inadequacy, about our being so partial and about what to do with these biting and dangerous anxieties». .
How did this book come about?
«I have always thought that literature was a world to approach, and the right time to do so has arrived.
In the past, when Ex Otago became popular, the major publishing houses came forward to ask me to write the pop singer’s classic novel, perhaps also because of my somewhat particular story. Let’s be clear, I have nothing against anyone who does it: but personally I wasn’t of that opinion. At forty I experienced a very deep and insidious crisis that changed my priorities and my vision of the world. It was a moment in which I was bored, a little also by the song form, this golden cage with its very rigid and very narrow boundaries, but above all by the mainstream world that is increasingly the expression of an industrial mentality, with all those characteristics that were intolerable for me. It was at that point that I realized that the moment had come for me to enter the world of literature. I needed it badly. I think it will be a world that will accompany me as long as I have breath. It is an artistic field in which one can slow down, there is more space for listening and it does not predominantly govern the fast attitude but that of in-depth analysis. It allows you to enjoy art in a more calm and reflective way.”
“Some things about the world and about ourselves can only be seen by going five miles an hour”, I read from your book. What did the trip allow you to discover?
«In life I have discovered that when you don’t have the tools and words to fix or read a scenario, leaving already contains answers in itself. At least, it’s always been that way for me. Travel allows you to stay in a neutral territory of life and also geographically, an unprecedented state. At that point you are forced to listen, to look more vehemently inside yourself. To put yourself in a condition of fragility and fragility is a very powerful resource that almost never happens to us. Finding yourself fragile means being forced to listen and welcome, to always keep a free space in your backpack.”
In the book you say “making wine risks becoming political”. What do you mean?
«Making wine is doing politics in the most absolute way.
Everything one does risks being political. From doing the laundry to choosing a book, from deciding where to buy food to which means of transport to use. We are in an era in which every action has strong repercussions on everything. Of course, often there isn’t this desire or awareness of being part of a gigantic plan, but I am increasingly convinced that what we do should be part of a choice. At Cascina Barbàn we have decided to make wine without using additional substances. I believe in nature and what it can offer me, I limit myself to doing as little damage as possible and transporting everything that nature has to offer in a bottle. This is a strong position. It means taking a step back into an extremely anthropocentric world, it’s a sort of revolution. We are in an era of unimaginable complexity and it is also impossible to escape certain industrial logics, but this should not make us think that our action counts for nothing.».
How do you keep together, the boy who chose life in the Apennines and the frontman of a band?
«I don’t have the instructions, but it’s simpler than it sounds. Until a few years ago there were reprisals between the artist me and the rural me, today I am calm. When I have pressing and artistic projects I leave priority to them and the time they require. My priority is writing books, songs, doing concerts but I live here, surrounded by nature and I do everything it requires, from cultivating the land to doing the harvest. Obviously I’m not alone in this adventure.”
Music also finds space in the book: what role has it played in your journey up to this point?
«For me the role of music has always been medicinal. I have always found in music a different place, a space to go to when I needed it. I have always attended music with the intention that it could take me elsewhere, making me endure difficult moments or experience what I would not have been able to experience in an ordinary life. Writing this book was also a very powerful thing. I don’t know if I got the result I was hoping for, every now and then I look at the book and say to myself “in two years have I written this little thing here?” (laughs, ed.)”.
What was it like working on this book?
«Demanding, and I gave him all the time he needed. It is a book that I wanted to publish by making precise choices, those that I considered most right, from the title to the cover, even going against the rules of the market. From the beginning I tried to dispel any doubts about what I wanted to do. I laid the first stone of a long path.”
In short, do you want to write another book?
«Yes, I admit it. I already have a story to write, it’s the one about the bicycle trip I told in the podcast “I’m going to visit my father”, but in general for me writing is an enriching and nourishing dimension that I want to hang out in again.”
You are a singer-songwriter and a farmer: what is the relationship between music and nature?
«They are two aspects that interpenetrate and flirt continuously, at least in my opinion. It is no coincidence that peasants were often musicians, accordionists, singers and singers. The earth calls to it and pulls you down, but people need abstraction, the sky, and art, music, are that stuff. A balance is sought. If you’re not careful, the earth keeps you all to itself and makes you sink.”
What soundtrack would you recommend to anyone who reads this book?
«I wrote this book listening to a lot of music without words, generally made up of piano and synthesizers. I have dozens and dozens of hours of this selected music. While I was writing I listened to a lot of ‘Lighthouse’ by Angus MacRae and ‘Woven Song’ by Ólafur Arnalds.”
How are Ex Otago?
«They are my brothers. I can tell you that we are healthy. And we are writing new things.”
