I have been convinced since I learned Italian, that the real reason I wound up being able to learn it, was actually down to something very simple:
It was my sadness.
But what do I mean, my sadness? What was I sad about that prompted me to learn Italian exactly? To give as much effort and time as I needed to, to this language? What threw me into the "embrace" of Italy, pretty much a perfect stranger to me at the time?
Most people I meet who realize that I can talk Italian pretty well, after being mostly "self taught", usually chalk it up to me being intelligent, or particularly motivated. They might think it has something to do with me having a "gift" for another language, or even a particular love for Italy. I suppose it all has a little to do with everything, but whenever I really dwell on it these days, years later, I always just think that same thing: I flourished in the Italian language, because I was as sad as could be, at that period in my life. Not just sad either, but also tragically lonely. As in, when I started learning Italian, I had no girlfriend, and no friends whom I was really in contact with on the daily.
This might not seem like an important factor when it comes to learning a language, but in my opinion, it actually is, for a few reasons. For starters, when you're learning a language, it's very important that you are able to give as much of yourself over to it, as often as you can. Giving yourself over to something, of course, is pretty hard to do, if you have tons of people you are always talking to in English (or whatever your native language is). It is also pretty hard to do, if there are a lot of things you enjoy in English, like music, films, and books, etc.
When I started with Italian, I wasn't really in a period of heavy reading or writing, like I am now. Instead, I was still in my period of poetry and music. I used to listen to records, and pretty old ones at that, pretty much around the clock. Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and old black blues artists were pretty much my best -- and only--friends.
The trick, however, was that, by the point I started with Italian, I had been listening to those artists for literally years. I knew all their songs by heart, and was probably a bit tired of re-playing them. I needed something new; but I didn't really know what, exactly. I have never liked new modern music to the point of being filled with passion, and yet I didn't know where else to look for a thrill. I was lonely, like I say, and now I didn't even have my recvords to keep me occupied. I also wasn't going to go out and search for friends or a woman, cause that's just...too hard! Plus, there was that other major detail about searching for friends and a woman: If I did it, I would have to do it in English, and even then, it was almost as though English was just making me sad. Mostly, I think, because my whole own narrative of tragedy, by then, had already played out in it.
Sometimes I look back at my learning of Italian and I really see it as though I was "resurrected" in some way., and that a huge part of my "English self" died. I also really often think that , if I hadn't of learned the language, I might not have made it to today. I think I would be deceased. And, not surprisingly, I am often most reminded of how I feel the Italian language "saved my life", whenever I get very sad these days, years later, too. Because guess what the first thing I always do is, when I am having a bad night here in the USA, nowadays? That's right: I start reading in Italian, or watching something in it, listening to it, etc. It's as though the language has now become this escape hatch from reality.
When I am thinking in Italian, I feel so very far from everything and everyone I have ever known. And this is not an upsetting feeling. If anything, it's downright relieving. None of the people who I feel ever hurt me, or betrayed me, or cheated me, etc., none of them, more likely than not,
will ever experience , what I have experienced, in this other language. There is essentially no chance in hell, that they'll ever hear the same sad songs I have heard in it, or see the same movies, or know the same characters, etc. From an American standpoint, in this little New Jersey town, it's all very much like everything in Italian is just "for me".
Who else here knows Fabrizio DeAndre, or Jovanotti, or Vasco Rossi, etc? Nobody.They're all just for me, and there is something very relieving about that to me. It's like this experience I have solely for myself. No one can "intrude". None of the wicked people of my life, that I feel hurt me over the years, have ever said the words in this language. This language, you see, is actually almost "purified" in my mind. I have watched movies where people scream in it as they are killed...but in my
reality, the language exists in some very "protected" place. It's like a piece of jewelry that you nevr want to put on, because you're afraid you might lose it. Englihs of course does not have this for me: In my reality, it has been being used by everyone and anyone, for all my life. The worst people have spoken to me in it. My uncle has belittled me and degraded me in it, called me a loser and a moron. I have had my heart broken in it. I have been threatend with death in it. I have been forced to read terrible books in it, or to read boring documents in it . I have been handed out detention slips and suspension slips in it, been accosted by lunatic American cops in it.
Italian, yes, I've had some experiences in it, sure, and read many things, but not nearly as many as my own tongue. Again, it's mostly just totally pure. It's an art language to me. Most days I hear it, I am only listening to it in songs, or silly films. And when I hear it, I never, at all, have to be reminded of anyone from my reality....
This part about how I never have to be reminded of anyone from my past, is really more incredible than most people think. Take, for example, something like the Boston accent. Years ago, I had a girl I dated whose mother was from Boston, and she had a very, very strong accent. As a result of this, whenever I hear it, I am obviously instantly reminded first of the mother, and then of the girl. I had many bad experiences with the girl: I do not like remembering her. Well, now imagine that I am sitting down for the night to watch a fun movie, and halfway through it, at the saddest scene, a character enters in with a slight Boston accent. What do you think I feel? I was already at the sad scene in the film, and now I've just been reminded of this old character and all the stuff that came with her. So maybe I wind up turning te film off, listenign to sad songs, and descending for the rest of the night into a deep, dark misery. All the dark, rotted past is instantly brought to the surface. I am swimming in a sea of bones and death.
Now though, imagine I am watching the exact same film ..but it has been dubbed or
doppiato , in Italian. Guess what? I never have that moment of being reminded of my ex-girlfriend. She cannot possibly enter in , for there is literally no one in this language who sounds anything even remotely like her. And don't just think that this sort of thing applies only to Boston accents or big things like that, cause it doesn't. It goes with anything...it could even be a little bit of slang or something like that. For example, take something like the word joint or blunt, to describe how you'd smoke marijuana. I don't think as deeply about those words as I do about my ex's mama with the accent, but somewhere in my brain, I cannot help but think that maybe, after years of hearing joint and blunt get passed around, I probably have a lot of mental associations with the words. Joint, for instance, seems to make me remember this old head shop my buddies and I used to go to, and blunt makes me remember many a day hanging around near the corner store, when I was 16. Now, look at the word that is usually used in Italian, to describe a joint or a blunt:
Un cannone. It looks like cannon (doesn't much sound like it) but beyond that, I have literally no personal associations attached to it. What happens because of this, I feel, is that the word almost has a totally seperate definition for me. I hear an Italian kid tell me he's gonna smoke a
cannone, and I don't remember the kid Andy K, or Joey, from my youth.
A lot of people think learning a language is worthwhile, because they want to meet new people and travel. This was my initial desire, too. I thought it would be really cool to know one, and I thought thats why I was doing it. These days, though, I often just realize, as I say, that learning the language isn't necessarily about new people, so much as it is about dumping the old people right out of your brain. I honestly do not htink there is any better re-invention that can possibly occur for the self, beyond language learning.
Many people nevr realize the beauty of language learning, however, becase so many of them are really, I wold imagine, happier than I ever was. As a result, they wind up staying "contentedly" in their original language box. Their few friends, for instance, that they talk to on the daily, probably sorta keep them locked in it, and they do not realize. This is what takes me back to what I said way before...when I mentioned how I started learning Italian when I had no friends and no girlfriend. Basically, if I had someone in my life back then who I texted or talked to often, in English, my mind would have kept getting constantly pulled back into English land. Since I had nobody, I literally just rolled off into a sea of Italian strangers who began texting me, constantly, and it was like they "re-created" my brain. I did not just study Italian, after all, in books like I was at class. I literally got lost inside of it, in every way someone can: At one point, almost all the people I talked to for a long while daily, were Italians, everything I watched was strictly Italian, and everything I listened to, was also 3/4 Italian. No one ever came and pulled me back into English. I had no one to do that for me.
These days, alas, years later, and things have changed a bit. Mostly they have really only changed just because of one individual person, that being Gina, whom I have often referenced in my texts. Gina is someone I talk to every day and, though she is an Italo-American, she does not speak Italian, and will probably never learn it. I met her aftr I had already learned the language sufficiently, and she basically started talking to me daily...on text... a habit that continues to this day. I enjoy our conversations very much, in a way I Never enjoyed anyone elses in the English language. In many ways, Gina reminds me of the joy I felt talking to Italian women -- and this is really saying something. I can, I'll admit, see myself marrying Gina.. I am desperately interested in her. The problem ,o f course, as my other texts will attest, is that Gina is not nearly as interested in me, as I am in her. She goes away sometimes, oftentimes, even. She does not write me for many hours. She does not call when she says she will. She never comes to get me, even after swearing she will. I get lonely...
And like I said already, guess what happens when I do? I find myself curiously gravitating, every time, back towards Italian land, like old times. This is especialyl the case, I now always find, if I am very upset with Gina. If I am only a little upset and sad, I might just write (like now), or maybe I will read, in English. When I'm severely hit, though, I always wind up in Italian land, and I guess I just find this very curious. I also find it kind of aggravating because... it's almost becoming this situation where, maybe if I could just disconnect myself from Gina completely, I could perhaps re-enter back into that Italian world, for the majority of my time. I could go there and, I could be alright again, and resurrect myself again, as I did when I first learned it. Because, of course, that is the other truth about the resurrection that the language grants you: Not only do you forget everyone else from your dark past, but you also forget
even your own self.
My interests in Italian somewhat mirrored my interests in English, at times, but then again, not really. Italian changed
many things about me, because many things were oddly tolerable in Italian, in ways they never were in English. Take, for example, something silly, like a happy go lucky cartoon. In English, I generally don't watch cartoons: It seems kind of childish, and like a dreadful waste of time. I don't feel bad watching them, like I feel bad hearing Boston accents, but I still feel like I could be doing something better. In Italian? Suddenly the happy go lucky cartoon seems totally acceptable. Therefore, I get to breathe in all of its soothing, childish nature--without feeling any of the attached guilt. This little gift goes right across the board of course: Not only can I tolerate cartoons in Italian without guilt, but I can also tolerate bad womens' talk shows, funny movies, stupid pop music, and even ridiculous people on Twitter, who would probably drive me insane in English, but who somehow delight me in Italian. You see what I mean? The whole world is flipped upside down in another language. I'm a considerably happy person in Italian...because I'm essentially like a bit of a child still in it. In English, I'm a miserable old writer, pondering so many troubling things....
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