Quando è moda è moda [English translation]

I remember [those times] when I was marveled and maybe happy

To see those fews that refused [the world].

I remember some attitudes and some “fair” faces

Joint together in a whole tide – refusing and resisting.

Now[adays] the world is full of those faces,

Really, it’s overwhelmed.

And this exchange of emotions,

Of beards, of mustaches, of kimonos,

Does no longer hurt anyone.

When it's mainstream1, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

I don’t know what happened

To those faces, to those people,

If it’s only a matter of aesthetics,

Or something more.

[I don’t know] if it’s an afterthought of mine

Or my lack of enthusiasm,

But they seem to me to be faces

[That could appear either on] illustrated magazines or in Tourist Offices.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

If you see them from a distance,

They are not so different from

Petty bourgeois,

Offering Champagne and act [as they were] generous.

They know how to enjoy theirselves,

And make the fortune (and the shame, too)

Of the most remote and biggest beaches

In Sardinia.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

Even if it is different

– Your degree of consciousness,

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

There is no difference

Between the Playboy’s way of life2 –

The most outdated and reactionary one –

To the more sublime one

Of doing either a commune or a “low-cost social service institution”.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

For me, if I had3

the strength and the insolence,

I would say that I’m different

and – almost certainly – lonely.

I would say that I could not tolerate

The old and absurd institutions,

And your inventive craze

And your innovations.

I am different.

I change a little,

I change very slowly:

I cannot tolerate4

The crash courses from Lenin to East.

And even regarding Love,

I cannot conquer your lightness,

I cannot [either] improvise

Or act as an homosexual

Only to change a bit.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

You’re original too:

You just have to listen to some of your sentences

full of new words,

Gradually more cultural, gradually more disgusting

A normal guy,

Full of honest and true feelings –

When he hears you saying those words –

Would have a strong desire to

Knock your teeth in.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

For me, if I had3

The strength and the insolence,

I would say that there is no more time

For mix ups.

[And] that it’s time to distance ourselves [from all of this],

That I don’t want to make up new love stories,

That I don’t want to have you as my friends,

As my representatives.

I am different and – almost certainly – lonely.

I am different [from you] because I do tolerate neither

The good common sense

Nor the madman’s rhetoric.

I do want neither

To stiffle myself

Nor to make a fucking pig's ear of my freedom.

I do not want unrealistic melanges with anyone,

Including you lot.

And I do not tolerate

The widespread “Mind your own business” commonsense5.

I am different, I am argumentative, I am violent,

I do not respect Democracy,

And I have a bad opinion of both prostitutes and prisoners

Because people idolizing them make me sick.

If someone would say

that I am indifferent [to everything] –

I don’t care.

I am no more a comrade

and [I am no more] a feminist narrow-minded6 activist.

Your animations make me sick,

The “Popular Investigations” and other bullshit

And – finally – I do not like your “free women”6

With whom you debate “democratically”.

I am different because, when it’s bullshit, it’s a bullshit:

It doesn’t metter the type of it:

Taxi drivers7, students, barbers, gurus, artists, workers

Gramsci8 supporters, catholics, dwarfs, lighting technician, barmen,

Whores, crawlers, paratroopers, ufologists.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

When it's mainstream, it’s mainstream; when it's mainstream, it’s mainstream.

1. Before the word “mainstream”, we used to say “è moda”, that is “fashionable”. In Italian “fashionable” is extended to non-fashion aspects of life.2. In the sense of “mainstream” way of life.3. a. b. ”Io per me, se ci avessi” is in bad Italian (very close to a dialect translation).4. lit. “digest”5. lit. “Law of …”6. a. b. Actually, Gaber is not against the Sisterhood movement, but he is against the drift that such movement took in Italy.7. Lit. “Square (as in “waiting in city’s square”) Drivers”8. An Italian politician.

• Artist:Giorgio Gaber
• Album:Polli d'allevamento