A Stranger in a Strange Land

There are many hazards to being American in Italy, not the least of which is a dire slip of the tongue in which you say something you entirely did not mean to say. :) But we will cross that bridge momentarily...

We had our first concert last night (also, that bridge shortly), and to publicize the show, Juri (our bassist and also a photographer) took some shots and mocked up a poster. Manuel (our guitarist) finished it off with a bit of photo editing and voila, Vanessa Peters w/Ice Cream on Mondays was born into print. We took posters to the Garden Underground and to Lignano, a park up on a mountain where we played last night. And then a funny thing happened on the way to fame.

Two mornings ago, I was having coffee at the Garden bar. Behind me, I heard an Italian voice reading slowly: "Vanessa Peters and Ice Cream on Mondays." I turned to see a woman regarding our posters with mild curiosity, and I decided to speak up. "Sono io," I said. "Io sono Vanessa Peters." She looked at me with something like disregard, or maybe even less than disregard, and so I tried again. "Questo e il mio gruppo italiano – Ice Cream on Mondays." Again, the blank, disinterested look. Okay, I thought, and turned back to my conversation with my friend Luca. When he left to go to work, he paid for my coffee and said, "Ciao Vanessa, in bocca al lupo domani sera," which means, "good luck tomorrow night." I said ciao and went outside to finish reading my book (I’ll have to send my summer reading list later on).

I had barely gotten a paragraph down the road when the lady appeared at my table in much distress. I’ll spare you the Italian, but the English translation amounts to: "I’m so sorry! We didn’t believe you! I thought you were just teasing me! Are you really Vanessa Peters?" To which I again replied, "e vero. Sono io." And she proceeded to apologize all over again, to ask about the concerts, and to tell me that she would definitely be there. It was hilarious. I think she thought I was offended. I think I’m just going to have keep a picture ID in my back pocket at all times, just in case my identity comes into question again. I am sure Madonna doesn’t have this problem.

And so we come to the concert. Parco di Lignano is a park up on a mountain about, I don’t know, 10 km from Castiglion Fiorentino. Adriano’s brother, Alfonso, runs a bar up there called La Capanna, and it’s a really lovely place. There is a clearing up at the top of the mountain where the bar and stage are located, and it’s wonderful if for no other reason than the fact that it’s about 20 degrees cooler than down in town.  It has been so unbelievably hot these last few days...paralyzing, suffocating, smothering heat.

Anyhow, I was a bit, as we say, agitata, yesterday. But it turned out there was no reason for my agitated state (as is usually the case). The show went absolutely beautifully. There was a gale force wind that drove a lot of people home before we got started, so the crowd wasn’t as large as it might have been, but there were still about 100 people there, twister or no. We shot a video of the show, and it looks like someone has pointed a fan directly at me, as in one of those cheesy videos where the girl’s hair and skirt always have a life of their own. But other than the wind, it was so fantastic. I even managed to speak a little Italian on stage, which for some reason is totally terrifying. It’s one thing to speak Italian to a friend, one to one, and make a mistake. It’s quite another to have a microphone in front of your face and know that anything you say might make 100 people erupt into spasms of laughter. So I kept it very simple and managed to avoid, for the most part, making an ass of myself.

I wish you all could have been there. I really hope the band can come to the States in January as we are planning. They are terrific and really amazing at making my songs come to life in exactly the way I want. It’s like they can read my mind. It’s fantastic. And we have another show tomorrow night, here in town, that I’m really looking forward to. We are going to record that one as well, and hopefully from the two shows we will be able to garner at least one song to put on the site.

And oh yes – the lingual faux pas. Yesterday, I was trying to thank the guys for the show. I tried to tell them that they helped me rediscover the joy in some of my songs. The word for rediscover is "riscoprire." I said "riscopare." In a dictionary, that would translate to "re-sweep." However, in Tuscan slang, "scopare" means something entirely different from sweeping, though I can’t figure out how anyone ever made the leap from sweeping to this, um, action. I’ll leave it to your imagination – I’m sure it won’t take you long to arrive at the correct conclusion and to imagine the furious blush on my face when I realized what I had said. :)

MANY thanks to those of you who have already pre-ordered the new album. You guys rock.
I will be writing again soon. Thanks for everything.
vanessa