london (part 1)
After years of dreaming about it, in 2018 I finally made it to London. I’ve not been one of those very brave girls who just followed their hearts and left their hometown right after high school. It took ages for me to do the big move. It took my parents telling me that I had to get a degree if I wanted to keep studying music, a pathological attachment to my sister and loads of other shiny, plausible excuses. I was 27 when I finally wrapped them all up and packed them in my bags, together with my lyric books and some good Italian oil. Many people at that age think about getting married, starting academic careers, or at least look like their head is tightly screwed on the neck. Not mine. Mine has always been in the clouds. And it was never a problem to me, I never felt lost up there, never perceived myself as a loser or a deluded one doing the “music thing”. Instead, I thought I was special. Since I was a little girl, I’ve always known that I’d be a singer - I didn’t have a choice. First of all, I wasn’t really able to do anything else. Secondly, I didn’t really want to do anything else. AND thirdly, nothing else has EVER caused me the same feeling of happiness and fulfilment as singing. I was born to sing and so I spent the majority of my time doing it. I would study every day in order to become better, and then I would sing in hotels and clubs to get some money out of it. Eventually I also started to teach others how to sing. It was great. Difficult and frustrating at times - the money was never enough and the clock would never stop ticking. But that wouldn’t affect me, and my musical mission was always the number one priority on my list.
As soon as I landed on British soil, everything changed though. I realised that so many people were residing in the clouds too, and we were all neighbours up there in dreamland. That was scary - so scary it made me forget that that was the only reason I actually moved: to find some other deluded ones like me. It became so scary that I avoided open mics and stages for quite a while because damn, people here can sing. People here can write a song, in ways that I didn’t feel I would ever be able to do. On the most basic level, people were even having daily conversations. Crazy, I know! They would understand each other when talking - I didn’t most of the time. The English accent wasn’t as I imagined it would be. Definitely different from the one that my Neapolitan teacher taught me in high school - her accent was all but English. And so, I even spent a good three months feeling unbelievably awkward around people, nodding my head like I had my shit together. “They’re going to think I don’t speak ‘cause I’m mysterious, standing here all quite sipping my Guinness”. Reality was, I didn’t know how to translate my Italian thoughts into English sentences. All in all, for the first time in my life I didn’t feel special at all and I started to get familiar with two little words that I NEVER conceived before: giving up. But if not music, what else would I do? I didn’t have experience in any other field. I spent my whole life refining my craft, then left my family and all my people in another country. It had to be worth it. I needed a plan. And so I started to do what most of my dreamer colleagues would do - the part time job. The “oh nice, you’re a musician but what’s your real job?” kind of nightmare. “I work in Bershka” was mine for a while. And by being so scared of becoming a loser, I eventually turned into one. Because that’s what losers do, isn’t it? They create excuses and blame it on different things other than themselves like, in my case, the language or the loneliness. Dreaming or feeling special was never the problem with me. Weirdly, it’s exactly when I stopped that bad things started to happen. It is not something that I’m proud of, but I ended up building the very dangerous “what’s the point?” chain. What’s the point of shooting a video of me singing, why would someone listen? What’s the point of writing songs, who am I? Paul McCartney? And because there’s no point in living at all if I can’t turn daily dramas into notes - the “what’s the point of leaving the bed?” question was right around the corner... and that's when I thought I had to do something about it.
Since I’m not “famous yet” but I am happy in being a musician earning a living by doing music only, here’s a few things I’ve learned that I feel like sharing. Alert: some of them might sound like cliches. You don’t have to be a musician to apply them. Here you go:
Surround yourself with people who support your dreams - even if they don’t understand them
Surround yourself with positive people. Those who get excited about little, magical things and that genuinely believe they can achieve everything they want. You’ll be surprised by how much they’ll influence the way you approach your own goals, on a daily basis
The other way around, stay AWAY from negative people, those who always find problems and NEVER solutions (magically, they are never the cause of the problems). Those people need to figure things out themselves - there’s really little you can do to help and they will too easily impact your daily life negatively, using you as a personal bin bag
Every now and then, reflect on your journey. Give yourself a little pat on the back - it’s good to be ambitious and critical towards yourself, but learn how to be proud of all you’ve achieved
People will ALWAYS appreciate your effort in trying to speak/understand another language - in the UK most of them are actually quite impressed by the fact that you are able to speak more than one
When you’re close to giving up and things get more difficult, you’re probably on the right path (I recommend reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho if you haven’t yet). Keep going!
Don’t use your own flaws as an excuse - yes, you’re great and have all the right to be exactly as you are - but if some of your traits are stopping you from being happy/reaching out to someone/doing what you really want to - then maybe it’s time to change, maybe you can improve. Be open and flexible
As Kevin Twine once said: “I'm not a failure because I didn't succeed. I'm a failure because I didn't try.”
Watch Derek by Ricky Gervais if you haven’t yet.
I owe everything to that feeling of failure and loneliness. I am not Paul McCartney, but writing songs equals happiness to me and this is why I do it. This is why, eventually, I made it work. And it’s only going to be upwards.
Thank you for reading.