Nina Zilli: “I dream of my own variety”

Cold January afternoon, Arco della Pace. The appointment is at the home of Nina Zilli, to talk about his first novel, The last of seven (Rizzoli). When I arrive, we are alone. The boyfriend Danti (born Daniele Lazzarin) and their two dogs Mojita and Lucio Dalla have not yet arrived. He offers me a coffee, while he tells me about his excitement at the launch of his very first novel. We start chatting in the middle of a room full of colors and references, where what may seem chaos (an element that will return, in the course of our meeting) is a wonderful portrait, unique in the world. Just as she is. As is his novel.

When did you write it? And why?
“I started writing it some time ago. In my life from the age of 18 onwards I started a lot of novels, and I never finished even one. This time, however, I came to the end first of all thanks to a very insistent literary manager, Enzo D’Elia, who having read my illustration book noticed my flicker of writing and encouraged me to finish this thing I had in mind. . I had already given it up for lost. Among other things, I had included it among my “incomplete works” in Dream City (Nina Zilli’s book of illustrations released in 2019, ed). Then life always surprises us. This time around, he collectively surprised us with a global pandemic and so I had a lot of time for myself. I had time not only to finish this novel but also to work on my music ».

Have you finished the work on your new record?
“Certain. Obviously yes. Among other things, after announcing this novel, I read a news on the internet that talked about my goodbye to music. So here, let’s immediately put the dots on the “i”. No: I just wrote a novel. I have not abandoned anything. Among other things, I can’t wait to let you hear this new album. In my opinion you will hear me coming with spring ».

How are the processes of writing an album and a book similar? And how, however, do they differ?
“They are two really different things. Writing this novel I felt much freer. Usually writing a song is writing syllables, respecting a metric, a tempo, a rhythm, the rhyme, which is a conditioning thing. For writing a book, however, there is much more freedom. One starts first with a flow that is both conscious and unconscious. Maybe reading your book, once finished, can be surprising. But here, compared to a song, it is certainly less so. Writing a book is more liberating in terms of expression but it is less dazzling ».

Eg?
«Sometimes, as Vasco Rossi says, the words come by themselves. And when you get to the end you really understand what’s happening to you. It doesn’t happen with all songs. It’s a kind of self-analysis. The book, on the other hand, is a flow. A flow of images, memories, etc. There are no didactic references The last of seven: it’s all an invention. “

But he seems to have put something of himself into all the characters. Is that so?
“Absolutely yes. I don’t see myself in the protagonist Anna. Although surely there are things of mine in her too: at one point she says she has the hair of the girl’s The Ring. Well … here I am, it’s me (laughs, ed). In the characters of the novel I inserted the traits of my friends, the tour life, my musicians, our jokes, the life I see under the house, the nuances of the different hearts that I tried to imagine. Since it is the first novel, I preferred to talk about something I knew. I didn’t want to embark on distant themes ».

Did writing this novel during the lockdown help you get through those moments of isolation?
“No doubt. I have mentioned places in the world that are very dear to me, such as Greece. I’ve actually been there, on the beach where Anna goes. Clearly this being incorporated at home, in front of a screen, in a fixed and not just temporary condition due to the pandemic, made me travel a lot with my mind and I went to places dear to me. I think Jamaica is the only one missing. But I have mentioned many Jamaican songs… ».

By the way, music often comes back in the novel. It could be considered as the seventh protagonist of the story. I imagine that for her, as well as for the protagonist, music is synonymous with life. But how did he change his emotionality?
«Music has cured my emotionality. It has been doing it all these years, ever since I was still a child and, on a subconscious level, it attracted me, like light does to a moth. Following this example, the moth then goes to die. Thanks be to God, music, on the other hand, saves us. Even if she too sometimes makes us suffer. It is a relationship odi et amo ».