He says Silvia Salemi that every time a new album of his sees the light the emotion is the same as always if not a tad greater. «The team has expanded a lot, and the bigger the team, the more you can share the emotion that before was all over you. Every time it’s a baptism, because an album corresponds to a meeting of souls between me and my audience”, says Salemi, fresh from the release of 23 hoursthe collection that contains the remastered songs from Silvia’s last album never released digitally, united by a common thread that has its roots in Opportunities by Eugenio Montale.
What does he mean?
«Montale talks to us about opportunities, and for me the opportunity has become the time. The hour of redemption, the hour in which anything can happen, in which you can play the match with a goal that marks a result that changes the whole meaning of the match and, perhaps, of a life. Nothing may happen, you could miss a train or catch it but, in short, you can always play a point. As long as there is breath in the lungs and as long as there is a desire to do, there will always be that sense of optimism towards a word that we all hold onto today: the future.”
What is the future for you?
“A gift. I am very grateful for the fact that I exist and have two daughters who are the future for me. I experience the dimension of the twenty-fourth hour as a great magic where everything is possible and everything can happen.”
Staying with the sporting metaphor, how many points do you think you have scored in your life?
«I’m still playing. Sometimes I shoot with my feet, sometimes with my head, other times with my hands. Depending on the game you are playing you use a different medium: sometimes the radio, sometimes the theatre, sometimes the writing of novels, but the meaning is always one, and that is to reach people’s hearts.”
Is this a mission for her?
«A necessity. I have never had the truth in my pocket and I have always liked to observe others to improve myself and to fuel that healthy competition that the ancient Romans spoke about, who said that one had to observe one’s neighbor not to envy him but to get the best from him for be able to compete with ourselves. As a child I lived in a modest house with two parents with very limited possibilities or even poverty: I remember that upstairs lived a wealthy family who had a perfectly clean house and many comforts that I stole with my eyes: I saw the folded sheets in a certain way and the foods served at the table in a certain way and I said to myself “now I’ll do it too”».
It would be easier to feel envious towards the other.
«It takes training. It is useless to look at those who are better off and envy them because it will never lead anywhere.”
What scared Silvia Salemi as a child?
“The poverty and limited possibilities that, although with great dignity, my parents faced. For this reason I have always felt the need to give them something back in some way, hoping to give them a moment of satisfaction after my sister’s death. I still remember the joy in my mother’s eyes when she removed that veil of pain after she held her niece in her arms for the first time: I have fought all my life to redeem that pain both materially and spiritually, and I hope I have succeeded.”
Her sister passed away from leukemia when she was very young.
«I was born in a house where a very serious illness was hovering which at the time was a death sentence. I absorbed her in the language and movements. For some years I didn’t speak and music saved me in this. The meaning of my whole life has been to emerge from a big no to produce a big yes. Because the big no was the no of life. My mother had to choose between me and my sister because, to take care of my sister, she didn’t know whether to carry on with a pregnancy that would have involved a lot of physical commitment, yet she looked ahead, giving us an opportunity.”
In Lighthouse at night He talks about “a life that has destroyed me too many times.” Can we always get back up from destruction?
«Absolutely, beware of letting go and remaining on the ground among the rubble».
Reading some of her interviews it seems that she was forced to grow up too quickly: is that right?
«At 4 years old I was a fairly emancipated and courageous little girl, with a mother who gave me a lot of trust and who brought me to manage the house when I was 9. My mother went to work and I had no fear of tidying up the house and to prepare a plate of pasta for my brother and my father: this shaped me for what would later be my life. God, as Manzoni said, gives burdens to those who can carry them on their shoulders.”
Has she regained the lightness that she lacked in those years?
«Only when I close my eyes and sing: in my voice there is all that nostalgia and intensity that I have always felt inside me. I am happy with how I have become because only in this way would I have been able to face the life I have, away from home for 27 years but still with those Sicilian values which are embrace, welcome, the sense of family and sacrifice. All things my grandparents taught me.”
When was the first time you realized that singing made you feel good?
“When, around the age of 5, I couldn’t open my mouth and speak. It was when I listened to my voice through a microphone where I recorded myself that I became aware of what I had inside and I saved myself. Music was my great therapy. When I sing I’m happy, I smile, and I go to bed as if I had made a sporting effort. Like the great athlete who runs and is full of endorphins and serotonin afterwards, I am satisfied with myself.”
That’s a very romantic answer.
«I’m a person who tries not to think because, when I start, I go down and the depths scare me if I look at them too closely».
If she leans out too far, who helps her get back up?
“Nobody. We cannot throw the burdens of our lives onto others. But we can talk about it. I have a very good dialogue with my mother, for example: she remains my lighthouse at night, a woman who inspires me in everything, but I try to avoid making her feel the pain that I carry inside her.”
It seems easier said than done.
“I hear so many people feeling sorry for themselves: then, when they’ve finished complaining, they’ve freed themselves and the person who listened to them begins to suffer. You have to have a lot of respect when you talk about yourself, because then others absorb it and risk feeling bad.”
Do you trust the other?
«I start with a total credit line, but at the first dissonance, if there is something out of place, the revocation is harsh and definitive».
In human animals talks about trust betrayed when a woman realizes she is being used and violated by a man.
“More than trust, it’s a question of observing and asking: if we receive strange sentences, we need to delve deeper and immediately understand what they mean. If we let them fall, those sentences risk becoming thorns that give the other the possibility of expanding inside us. We need to make it clear from the first out-of-place sentence what we are suffering and what it could become.”
In your personal experience, have you ever been “consumed like a meal” by a man?
«No, because I’m one of those who puts them right at the first word. I have been married for twenty years, but I have always viewed haste in love with great suspicion. When we get to know each other and get engaged we must demand attention and care: at the first sign of little respect it’s time to ask yourself a few questions.”
In an interview she said: «I have always penalized myself from an aesthetic point of view». A very strong phrase.
“As a girl, I wanted the message to get across that making music wasn’t a matter of image. Today, there are beautiful colleagues, like Noemi, Annalisa and Elodie, who use their bodies in a serene way: at 20, I thought that wasn’t consistent with me. I was afraid that looking at my body would take something away from the song and the path, but I was wrong. I was insecure and extremist, I thought: “if I show myself, they’ll think I’m easy”. I was afraid that, if I did that, I would be less of an artist: then I covered myself up to my nose, I wore military clothes, baggy trousers. Today, at 46, I’ve understood that you can do anything, and the fact that my daughters wear my clothes, recognizing that I have a certain elegance is a source of satisfaction”.
One thing that, however, she still has is her short hair.
“It has become not only a trademark, but a way of feeling life. I have an open face, totally listening to others, not to mention that I would have little patience in taking care of a very thick head of hair.”
She once said: «When I decide I want long hair it will mean that I will be ready to take some time for myself». Do you mean he hasn’t allowed himself to do it yet?
“Exactly, I never took it and I don’t want to have it. If it happens, it will mean that I will have hung up the microphone and inaugurated another phase of my life. Short hair is the sum of a lifetime’s thought, it is not a simple cut. In my case, it corresponds to a declaration of independence.”
When you put your career on hold to focus on your daughters, did you take that time more for yourself or for your family?
“For the family. I spent several years in the pits at the start to dedicate myself to my daughters and I’m very happy to have done it because I had the pleasure of dressing them in the morning when they went to school, waiting for them at lunchtime and helping them in the afternoon with their homework. When they became independent, I slowly reconnected with my world. They throw it in my face, they say “but who asked you?”, but I’m happy with the choice I made.”
What did you miss about your job in those years?
«Nothing. Only the contact with the audience because it has always been an old friend. I look into the eyes of my audience and they understand me, without considering that in the four minutes of a song there are always the tears and blood of an entire year. In those four minutes we say everything we feel showing ourselves in our best shape, but in those years I was not ready for that kind of exercise and effort».
Is she happy with the work she has done as a mother?
«I’ll tell him after adolescence. Now we’re in the “mom, get out of this room” phase, and it’s very hard, especially because I’ve always been very physical with my daughters, seeing as I kissed them a lot. Now they don’t let me touch them anymore, but I hope they’ll come back soon.”
Does this also apply to dad?
“He is beloved, woe betide anyone who touches him. For daughters, the father is untouchable, the mother is the problem. Even if seeing them around with my clothes makes up for all the arguments we faced previously.”
In all this, he is slowly approaching 50 years of age: are you afraid of it?
«Before that, 30 years of my musical journey will arrive, and it will already be a nice birthday because it will force me to take stock and reflect on what, however. I tolerate little. Beyond everything, I think that today’s 50s are wonderful: my grandmother, at 50, in the photos she seemed old, while now I see that she is an age full of stimuli and life.”
What are you afraid of?
“I’m afraid for my daughters: how they might be, how they might grow. I fear that they might meet the wrong man and that they might not find their way and wander aimlessly, but I think mine is a healthy fear.”
Who takes care of Silvia Salemi?
“Myself. Because only I know what I need to fix to function better.”
Source: Vanity Fair
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