Milo is out of this world. When you arrive there you look around and you ask yourself if you used a time-machine instead of your car. You can hear the buzzing of someone who is speaking from away, see two people chatting on a seat, or you can look at the Grande Montagna, the big mountain, from the small square.
It’s like an old-time postcard. Mount Etna is silent, the volcano is at peace with people and things. Two blond girls run down the stairs of a yard, then they disappear.
The houses are low. Just one floor, maybe two. The walls are red. You can catch a glimpse of the terraces from all the leaves and flowers.
The butcher on the main road sells the best sausages in the world and he advertises it with a red pen.
There are no cars, but traffic is not forbidden. People don’t seem to need them. You can go everywhere on foot.
The church looks at the Grande Montagna, with its sombre and anonymous style.
Franco Battiato lives a couple of hundred metres away from the town. Five hundred metres away there is Lucio Dalla’s house and in Sant’Alfio, Carmen Consoli’s.
Lucio Dalla hasn’t been frequently in Milo, nobody knows why. But it isn’t Milo’s fault, maybe he’s just too busy working.
Franco Battiato’s home is sombre, and gentle. You go in using through external stairs. There is a terrace and a garden with a palm in the centre.
The garden is well-kept. Everything in the right place.
Once you are inside, you realize that the gardener’s disciple has nothing to do with the owner of the house.
The house hosts a comfortable mess. Franco Battiato lives in the middle of books, DVDs, CDs everywhere. The wooden shelves have no colour, they just do their job: hosting books. On the wall next to the door of his office there is painting of an old man with a beard and a cloth covering his head, white like his beard. It’s impossible to seize the details of the picture, it could be Franco Battiato with a long beard, who knows?
Two sofas covered with a white piece of material are the only clear space. Battiato hosts his guests there, entertaining them with attention and certain hospitality. While you are talking with him, you realize that you are still in Milo, out of this world, until Battiato speaks with a guy on the phone and tells him to watch only the Bbc and Cnn, not Italian television.
Milo is part of planet Earth.
The conversation goes by and you cannot measure time. It remains outside the door, like the world. Neither the world nor time were swept away, they behave as guests, just like us.
We should ask questions, obtain information, do our job. Success, fame, projects. Music, cinema, painting and philosophy. And obviously Sufism.
From where should we start?
From other things. For example from the desire to talk about yourself, that is never-ending for Battiato. Speaking about yourself through thoughts, doubts, questions. A gentle look over the world.
Not our world, but the world of Milo.
And this is what Franco Battiato will do for the readers of SiciliaInformazioni, ItaliaInformazioni and Now Italy.
The picture was taken by Giovanni Canitano
Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute
