Tiziano International

September 13th 2003

Take the car, in between all the professional obligations, take a shower, think carefully about how to dress so as not to look too much like a kid pop singer, sift through hotels to find one, send some texts, and go. Again on an airplane, packed with doubts and illusions, already demoralized, but curious. I’m sure that tomorrow I’ll have written another chapter of the story of “twenty-three and a half”. 

Tiziano, don’t hurt yourself.

Rebecca texted me: “A year ago tomorrow there was the concert in Latina, the next one at the Olimpico, eh!!!” Sure, Rebecca, at the Olimpico… empty!!! Anyway, she was still able to move me.

Tomorrow I’ll see the Xverso video for the first time.

Today I’d even humiliate myself in exchange for a warm hand on my shoulder.

June 23rd 2009

The air thickens, the clouds huddle, the tension rises, the silence falls… entering the Olimpico for the first time! The avalanche of feelings that comes over me today is not at all expressable.

It’s the hour of the gladiators.

I don’t really understand why, since I came here, the overwhelming feeling is tenderness. It’s as if I awaited the moment of the debut in Rome under a dome of good thoughts. It’s love that dominates everything, and I can feel it near me. In this moment I could be left without anything and still feel like having everything.

I can’t say that I feel nervous, or that I’m afraid, yet there’s an electric shock that runs through my body, I am charged. I have many thoughts running through my head, and if they were not, in fact, thoughts, they would materialize in their magnitude to fill up every seat in the stadium. I remain seated, looking at the Eternal City from this terrace and I can’t help but tell myself just how beautiful Rome is. The most beautiful in the world.

Just as I entered, put my feet on the field, the Olimpico triggered a clear thought within me: I am fine here.

I am ready.

June 30th 2009

It’s been difficult to put myself back together after the two successful dates in Rome. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed anything like it. Forty thousand people in two days, there for me, and I was looking at all of those people that I had in front of me, feeling tiny.

I don’t remember what I was thinking when, popping up from the trap door on stage, I cast my first glance towards the crowd. While the mechanism slowly carried me to the surface I felt everything: confidence, illusion, doubt, fear, second thoughts, and then afterwards curiosity, joy, excitement and chaos. I certainly didn’t feel like I was able to control it, even if the air that we were breathing was full of good. The surreal thing is that, despite the situation being so unique and rare, I felt comfortable from the first minute. Like I was at a friend’s house, or like I was home. 

There were moments when I wanted to ask everyone present what they’d do in my place if they had to face all the issues I’m dealing with. What would be the advice of each of them? Who’d stay next to me?

It’s this overcrowding of questions and thoughts that lead me here, at twenty-nine years of age, with so much in my head and nothing in my hands. The need to be, above all else, a human being, is now stronger than anything else and I don’t understand why I’m here thinking of this right now, facing life with so much insecurity in my heart.

Maybe because major events like the two concerts at the Olimpico do nothing but exacerbate my need to make peace with myself. Or maybe because all of the good shouldn’t be dissipated by the pain of living with what I carry inside, it’s not right.

At the stadium I spied on the people crammed at the ticket booths, breaking the lines to scatter to the seats and the parterre. I observed them and I observed myself: they were there, they were many, but I was alone. So I’d say that today I feel like the type: “Upon payment everyone wants me, but for free, no!”