Under 20 Q’s with Alessandro Cascio

Alessandro Cascio

Alessandro Cascio is a proudly politically incorrect, insolent, ill-mannered, Italian writer who tells it like it is…or at least how he believes it to be.  Born in Palermo in 1977 to a Sicilian father and an American mother this wonderlusting soul was inevitably inspired to leave his place of origin for the unbeknownst horrors and pleasures of the world at large.  His vagabond shoes have travelled all over Italy, Europe, and even ventured as far as Africa.  It would seem all that’s left for this gem hidden in plain sight is to hop on a plane and invade North America.  Mind you, he’d probably be welcomed here with open arms which is simply not the case back overseas.    He’s studied with some of Italy’s finest minds, won a prestigious literary award, is a published author, a well versed musician, a talented visual artist, and really easy on the eyes–and I don’t mind saying so.  One of the most interesting people I’ve come across on the world wide web and also one of the nicest.  With out further due ladies and gents here is the Under 20 Q’s with Alessandro Cascio.

Q1. You are a versatile artist who is able to express using the visual, musical, and literary mediums. Tell us when in life you discovered a passion/love for these three mediums and how they affected you as a person? I believe that art is a question of sensibility, a sensibility that is often born at a tender age and followed by a negative event that brings a boy (a future man, future artist) to search for an alternative to the reality he is in contact with and does not like. When I was young, by way of great family problems, I was forced to flee from my domestic walls via the art that I was able to express. My brother played piano and when he was out I would sit at the keys and dream of playing concerts for crowds. At New Years when my family and friends were all out having fun I would be stuck at home so I would draw my own characters (Guglielmo was my character, William in English), or Disney characters that I would draw in a comic called "Party for Alex" and I would dream the all up: everything from Donald Duck, Micky Mouse, Fethry Duck, Mazinger and in my dreams they would all come to visit me. I’ve always lived alternatively and continue to do so today, I don’t really know how to distinguish reality from fiction. I wrote my first story at 7 years old, it was a poem and at that time they still put hung up students work on the walls and that’s where my poem was put; up until 32 I’m still doing what I did when I was 7. But art, it’s a deviation and nothing more. A different way to understand reality.

Q2. What made you leave Sicily at such a young age for Rome and what was that experience like? The roof over my head. When I was down I would use the ceiling of my house as a screen on which to project the images that made me feel good or better. Then on day I realized that I was using it too much and that mean I was feeling down a lot. This made me get up and participate in web competitions and six months after I’d surpassed all three of them. I was a finalist for the Jacques Prèvert International Award of Literature and I got into Comics, a school for writing with teachers such as Oscar Mario Monicelli, it’s a selective and difficult school. I had already left Sicily, played music in London Metros for two years, but I never counted in leaving forever and the desire for success. It was a Roman model that made me change my mind.

Q3. You studied and worked with top professionals in your field while in Rome; what can you say the biggest impact of that has been on your writing? The direct experience with academics and teachers didn’t teach me anything because I was too busy being subversive. I’ve never been able to do anything that was imposed on me therefore I used that school to pretend I had some kind of social responsibility like normal people while locked away in my house-I would work, study, and eperiment. Up to today what I do is influenced by the road and by my life and by a lot of little things I don’t remember but I’m sure they have pushed me to become what I am. Teachers are found on the road was even a title of my first paid writing job for a London paper called Visual Line. I believe that the American cinema and the Italian Trash cinema of the 70’s are my main inspirations.

Q4. Why did you choose to move to London?  Because I was convinced I would die at 27 years old like a rock star. I was really in love with Kurt Cobain. My friends and I would cover Nirvana when he was still alive. When Kurt died we dedicated a concert to him. I prayed to God to make me play great, instead I sucked. So, given that God didn’t listen I prayed to Satan to make me famous in exchange I would have died young. I drew 7 vignettes in which I achieved 7 different goals and painted them in blood. To today, 5 of those goals I have achieved. England was the capital of the Underground, it was the home of The Beatles, Joy Division, it was a play of cult and Italian "fugitives" of the time and there was no better place for me to leave for with a guitar strapped to my shoulder and beg in Metro’s with a song. With my friend Darren we’d play for two hours a day and we managed to make the same money we would working as waiters in restaurants.

Q5. What inspired Tre Candele? In London I had a really rough time. I was with out money and my girlfriend and I were forced to sleep in telephone booths and eat bread with salsa. One day she was almost freezing, pale, lifeless eyes, and trembling so with out a dime to my name I went to a Pakistani restaurant and ordered at will. Obviously I had no money on me and the owners didn’t exactly have trusting faces. I pretended to have forgotten my wallet but they answered by closing and locking the front door. It was 5 at night and no one around. We were practically dead. If it wasn’t for a guy named Jazz we wouldn’t have gotten out of there. He took us to his house, warmed us up, gave us to eat and the next day he gave us a bus ticket to go find a lady that would give us a place to stay. It was a welcomed place to stay in exchange for us helping her run her facility/place that gave social assistance to young people with mental illness. There I met Eirhnh, the heroine of my novel. She was schizophrenic and would observe nothing and laugh. I asked the lady what problems she had and she answered me " None, don’t you see she’s laughing?" Jazz the Pakistani man and Eirhnh are the people who inspired Tre Candele along with the city of London and Albertville in France.

Q6. What did being a finalist in the Jacquès Prèvert competition do for you in terms of your career? In practical terms nothing, but, when you present it to an editor and you have a vast curriculum and have worked with people at a professional level and also have an international award you have more of a chance of being read and not written off right off the bat. Then, if you write bull shit they write you off anyways but it’s really hard to get read by editors who aren’t fakes there to make money. Therefore, an award can do a lot or nothing.

Q7. Was writing Tutti Tranne Me a natural progression or was it a more conscious decision on your part? Quite simply I was working for a Roman director who on day said "Ale, we need something to pull out when we introduce ourselves to producers, something like a book, a short one. We need it for credibility." And that’s how I sad down for 10 days and pulled out a story with 8 storylines set in Italy (the first and last thing I wrote set in Italy). But, I did it out of a necessity, sometimes necessity can make you work really well.

Q8. How did your life change after the release of that book? I became a writer. It meant that from that day on if someone asked me what I did for a living I could answer "I’m a writer"; something fantastic to shrug off the feeling of do nothing that every artist feels inside. It was a change that allowed me to continue doing the things I enjoy.

Q9. Along side traditional mediums you also are an avid user of the world wide web; primarily putting stories, political commentary, videos etc on your blog. Tell me a bit about how you see the internet as a medium and how you view your blog and use of the internet as an artist of the 21st century. I believe the artist, the true artist, need independence to make it and the web gives you independence. Television (at least in Italy) isn’t for artist: it’s corrupt, greedy, and in the hands of the government that has sole control. Artists that go on TV and write about liberty and cultural revolution lose credibility. They preach well and act poorly. Whereas, web communication is free, everyone is on a level playing field, and no one is suppressed. The web doesn’t force you to experience it submissively like TV. On the web a farmer can inform the intellectual and if someone makes a mistake the web is always ready to give its judgement. It’s not like Italian TV that keeps silent in exchange for political favours. The web is the communication of the future and is essential in order to get to the future with our hearts. TV is essential to become a star but the artist is something else: the artist is above all someone who wants to communicate and it’s not communication of someone is sitting on couch in front of a screen unable to debate.

Alessandro Cascio wings and serpent tatoo

I have a blog that has 250,000 hits on the home page and 250,000 hits on the gallery and it allows me to say what I want to say and be listened to by a public with out having to kiss anybody’s ass. If someone makes a mistake he/she knows that I will tackle him publicly and I’ll spread the link. This is optimal power. Everyone should have a blog, then it’s natural selection deciding who should be listened to and who ignored-but it shouldn’t be decided by politicians.

Q10. Tell us a bit about The Underground Village and your role in it. In Italy we really need a new movement that gives a voice to those writers and artists ignored and snubbed by the Majors and publishing powers. So years ago I sent an email to 100 people telling them to forward it and keep forwarding it. In this e-mail I wrong to other artists and the average person to give away art (paintings, books, one lady even gave away a home made ash trey). In the turnaround of a month all the Italian cities were participating. The idea rotated the web and there was announcements on blogs and even some schools participated. I called it
Underground Art Village. A little while after I decided it was time to create a band of artists that could help the less fortunate. I got together 7 writers, photographers, designers, graphic designers, and we published the collective works for Il Foglio Letterario. A really beautiful work, well put together, that dispersed profits to charity. But, Giordiano Lupi, the editor, didn’t dedicate himself to sponsoring it, selling it and I had problems with him regarding the charitable side to the point of threatening legal action. We withdrew everything and had to accept the fact that the editor is the one who decides and the artist really didn’t count for or mean fuck all.

Q11. You will be releasing new works in 2010; can you tell us a bit about them. After the release of Touch and Splat in 2009 with the preface of Ernesto Gastaldi of Once Upon A Time In America I understood that Italy is made up of Noir, Horror, and beautiful words, but all the real innovations are happing abroad. There was no such thin as real Pulp before Touch and Splat and Cyber Punk was non existent if not only in the cinema of Ernesto Gastaldi. So in 2010 I’ll release a Cyber Apocalyptic (quickly written, bloody, violent, but with a hug moral on the state of arms in the world) called Domino. It will be released as a holiday Cahier from Historical (publishing company); a novel that speaks of London, (not in a conventional style) and called "London: Brlli, Giovani E In Cerca Di Successo". Cahier is a direct offshoot of the famous Italian writer Francesca Mazzucato (her Hot Line was translated in six languages). Afterwards the comic version of Tre Candele will be released drawn by the artist Valentina Scipioni: a graphic work that is truly sensational that combines the grotesque and the crude of a story caught between dream and death. And then a book all in Italian titled "Datemi tutto sui Baci", an ironic tale about kisses told in a typically Trash style. But, my favourite pass time is writing for newspapers and literary magazines and there are many to keep content.

Q12. Do you think you’ll always be an underground writer or do you think there’s room for your style and content in the mainstream? I believe in Italy it doesn’t matter how good you are you still have to submit to someone or become part of a political group in order to get on TV and breath through. I don’t like the taste of submission, I’m counter political and against TV, any kind, even documentaries (go to Africa instead of watching it on National Geographic). I don’t believe it would be easy for me to break into the mainstream but I am sure that I will be missed by them but they will not be missed by me and that people are far more awake than the newspapers
and TG (news) would like us to believe.

Q13. What is your take on the state of publishing today in Europe given that is your primary market? I’ve looked at Europe as though it was one block but it’s not the case. Every nation here has a very old history ranging millennium. A cultural precursor despite being passed off as a United Europe, really it’s a group of rich old men that get together in big rooms and offer each other coffee exchanging the same money.

The reality is that there are places like Denmark and Sweden that are more evolved with low taxes and low crime rates with high culture and then countries like Portugal where the gap between the rich and poor is vast with out a way between; corrupt countries like Italy with presidents that are investigated for mafia, condemned for corruption and sole controller of television and newspapers, more importantly England where the Queen is still a symbol for a population. The differences will influence publishing. In Italy the best selling writers are on television (journalists, singers, comedians, actors, and presenters), In England there is more freedom therefore you have more diversity: you find everything from comedy to satire and the diversity of genre even in cinema you have everything from Guy Ritchie to Monty Python and the new Underground cinema. Portugal is really behind, everything is release from one publishing house but there isn’t much reading going on. The European market is non existent even if one is portrayed to exist. Many small and disparate realities exist. Even Slovenia is a part of the European Union but people are starving and there you still read the sole existing translation of Victor Hugo from ‘800.

Q14. Do you think your work would be received better by a North American audience or does continental culture make no difference? Yes, America is the land of cinema and I write Fiction, I don’t write my life story or my diaries. America is the land of Trash, Pulp, Cyber, Action and Comedy (even if it’s still believe the latter is the property of the English), and I find myself in better company with Americans than I do Italians that speak solely of love, infidelity, news, and history. It’s all very boring. After which, most of my writing is set in America which for me is the land of everything: an honest place to set stories.

Q15. When you look to the future what do you hope lies ahead? I don’t ever think of the future. My future is today. I don’t believe in conventional values: family, love, God and eternal things. In my opinion, man in incapable of understanding eternity and this is what distinguishes him from God: everything we begin must finish sooner or later because that is our essence-we are made of endings. Therefore I don’t expect anything, but, I would like to see Tokyo before the world explodes in 2012.

Q16. In a distant future when it’s all said and done what do you hope to say and feel when looking back on your life and career as an artist? I would think I could have done better but also that I could have done worse and so I would cry with just one eye and I’d damn myself because time would have passed and I hate the fact that time passes; it’s senseless and stupid kind of like when the popcorn runs out while you’re watching Lord of The Rings. There should be bags of pop corn with out end and eternal lives, that or films should be shorter. 

Q17. In that same distant future what do you hope will be said and felt about you and your life’s work by others? I hope they would say that I tried, that I wasn’t afraid to say what I thought and that I wasn’t afraid to show in my writing the lowly depths of man and myself with out ever being ashamed.

For more information about Alessandro Cascio and his upcoming projects check out his personal blog and his myspace page .

© all photographs and related media provided by Alessandro Cascio and are the property of their respective holders. This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, or reproduced in any other way, without written consent from AnnieGMovies.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Under 20 Q's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.