BUY IT NOW
On the Studio Tonnato website READ A CHAPTER
It’s free without obligation GO DEEPER INTO THE MATTER
read interviews and exclusive content

Interview with Dominique Positano

Estimated reading time: 4 hours

The appointment is fixed, the shirts ironed and the hearts completely immersed in the thick honey of life. It is not Acacia what you feel in the air, it is not Eucalyptus or Millefiori. The scent of roses and tears that is perceived has the same aroma of a summer morning, of an ice cream melted on the fingers, of the sun that spins around you like a fly and kisses your white skin.

Sitting in a bar with Arabic-like writing, a man is waiting for us motionless, a statue in a turtleneck and sunglasses, is Dominique Positano and the prey is waiting for us like a hunter; sitting silently on a plastic chair. I introduce myself without receiving an answer, Dominique seems to look beyond, scrutinizes the horizon of parked cars and streetlights, my partner and I sit down.

“I’ve been waiting for you” he says, lowering his glasses. As an unwritten signal we realize that the interview has started, looks at us with bruised eyes, those eyes don’t lie. We are face to face with the writer of Tramonti Bollenti.

Hi Dominique, first of all we would like to thank you for meeting us and for giving us the opportunity to interview you, we know that you are a reserved character. But now that we are here we cannot not know more, who is Dominique Positano?

“Dominique is me, but you can call me Dom or Ducaconte as my friends call me. People mistakenly call me a writer, but people have lazy, bored hearts, hearts with small, incomprehensible signs like Albanian Autogrill.”

By this do you mean that you don’t call yourself a writer?

“By this I mean that yes, I am a writer. But I am defined as such only because people need schemes where they can frame me, cages where the ferocious lion of their feelings rests. I am a writer because we are too afraid to find a different definition to define myself.”

And what definition would you give of yourself at this point? Artist? Poet?

“Angel of love? I do not deny that there are paintings that depict me in these garments. Messiah of feelings? I admit again that I thought about it. Fearless hearts ferryman? Petal and coral musketeer? These are all definitions in my opinion.”

At this point Dominique orders a drink with a distracted hand gesture. He says nothing, as he had tried that gesture hundreds of times. The Pakistani-born waiter hastens to bring us cups of tea on silver plates that settle in front of us steaming in a few seconds. “It is an infusion of flowers of Rosa spina and sweet elder, here they do that like a dream”. We sip the burning drink smiling like two children at Christmas dinner, that pulp is washed in a cup but we cannot show ourselves weak in front of the Ducaconte that meanwhile has drained half of it. It would be like not smoking the calumet of peace. We burn the tonsils, the trachea and I also lose a molar and an incisor that I swallow without a word. The infusion has a slight Kebab aftertaste. “It is true, it is a dream” mumbles my partner.

Where does your passion for romantic writing come from?

“I have to admit that I’ve always been a sensitive kid. I often found myself observing the hard part of the asparagus coming off the stem like headless duck necks and think about love. As a child I explored my essence, I analyzed myself deeply digging into the now-torn pit of my chest and extracting gold from it to melt, molten gold to pour into molds in the shape of emotions and then…”

Sorry Dom, your words are a lively source of inspiration for our readers and we would never want to trim the wings, but could you be more concrete? When did you start writing about love and why?

“Let’s say that everything was born when I was about fourteen. One day at school, I remember it as if it were yesterday, the Spanish substitute arrived and I fell madly in love with it. She had raven long hair to her feet and in her spare time she played in a metal band called ‘Fucking shit maddafukkers’. She was one of the sweetest and most sensual women I had ever seen, a kind and polite soul who tattooed pure words on me in the damp walls of the soul.”

And then how did it end?

“It’s over a few years later, as often impossible loves at that age end. I had begun to follow his concerts and to frequent the heavy metal bands of the city, I tattooed the head of Satan all over my back and got beaten up by a group of Norwegian motorcyclists; at that time you also know what a kind soul can do for love. I was spinning with the studs and a nose piercing, I knew Spanish by the finger and even to say I had managed to get to know his boyfriend who they called ‘The infernal Viking’. I was like…”

Did you meet your teacher’s boyfriend? Was she engaged?

“Yes, she was engaged to ‘the infernal Viking’ who was named Eugenio. He was the bassist of ‘Fucking shit maddafukkers’ and he had that classic charm of glasses with an aluminum frame and bandana and then yes, he wasn’t fourteen. When I met him he pulled a headboard through the face and broke my nose and I smiled because I knew that for him it was a gesture of affection. That love didn’t last long, however, Eugenio and my teacher moved to Spain and ended up in prison for savagely beating up a Methodist priest. I have not met so many delicate souls, after the end of that love I decided to write, to let the robin fly free of my feelings. Perhaps my book will also come to you in prison, it is also written in Spanish.”

Dominique this is a really interesting story, do you still listen to heavy metal music?

“I listen to metal only in certain circumstances. When I’m having dinner with my her, there’s a romantic atmosphere and a soft light and… that is the perfect time to enjoy metal. But I do not deny it, even the neomelodico, the Mexican folk and the trap are good on these occasions, I have some reservations for jazz, that basically only those who does it likes it.”

How come Tramonti Bollenti?

“I believe that there is nothing more exciting than a sunset, the sunset reveals our poetic soul, it creates an abyss in the rough cooked crush that we wear reaching the buttery cream of sensitivity. In that cream I wallow like a dolphin with blue eyes, flash in the rippling wave of that opening and scratch with my nails. The sunset is for me the symbol of sensitivity that reaches everyone, which spreads like a disease and excites the lawyer like the bricklayer, the Parisian artist like the Neapolitan street urchin.”

From your words we seem to understand that Tramonti Bollenti wants to refer to a wide audience, to speak to the feelings of all men and women even of different social classes, is it correct?

“It’s true, I hope my words reach as many people as possible just like a sunset that illuminates everyone’s eyes and everyone, maybe not in the same way, it warms and excites. Talking about love as about sex is slippery, but people need it desperately.”

We do not want to go into the merits of the story but the question arises, will sex be expected?

At this point Dominique takes off his glasses by repeating the same gesture with his arm which seems to acquire a different value. The Pakistani waiter appears from behind as if he had always been there, he puts his sunglasses on a silver plate and disappears behind us, taking everything away from us. Our languages tried by the demonic infusion are now dissolved in the palate, he stares at us with infinite eyes and we perceive its magnetism. He remains silent for a few seconds, taking his eyes in ours as if to inspect our thoughts, then answers.

“Sex is like a goblin that opens its belly to bites, overturn the guts on the kitchen table, the smell of stomach and the sound of waves breaking on the shore. I can’t anticipate anything about it but I certainly don’t deny that there will be strong emotions, carnality, frugality, sadness and redemption. The human soul is like that kitchen ravaged by the goblin’s guts and I am the Algerian cleaning lady who will have to clean up the mess the next day.”

We believe we have understood Dominique, then we conclude by talking about the future. What are your plans? Do you already have any other project to work on? Maybe a sequel?

“My life is in the folds of a sunset, I don’t know what I will do yet. One thing is certain, I will throw myself headlong into love and bring the whole world into that immense crack.”

We thank you heartily, do you have a last farewell Dominique?

“I would like to leave you with a quote from my favorite musical group, a quote perhaps a little sweetened of the ‘Fucking shit maddafukkers’ which says: ‘If you were to take off your head with an ax and feed on the blood that runs off, I would steal the arms of the beast for perpetrating the blackest revenge’. That as we understand, as well as being a very beautiful rhyme, speaks of the desire to discover itself, of that human desire to feed on the other. Plunge into love, take the head of solitude and throw yourself into feelings.”

With these words Dominique gets up, doesn’t even greet us, doesn’t utter a sound like he had finished the words at his disposal, as if he didn’t know us. I try to say something but my partner stops me with a look, Dom is already standing on the door of the little bar and sparkling in his turtleneck sweater. He makes a gesture with his arm that at first glance seems the same as all the others but obviously this time it is not so. The Pakistani waiter arrives on a scooter, stands alongside the sidewalk and loads him up, the two disappear into the sun in a cloud of black smoke and I, without a throat and windpipe, watch it dissolve.

– Interview by Studio Tonnato

Why, Studio Tonnato?

“When you look at a screen, what attracts you is its content or the light it gives off? Like modern narcissuses we abandon ourselves to the luminous charm of the mirror and, helpless, we immerse ourselves in it. Once wrapped in the neural liquid we find ourselves calm in the amniotic state of the pre-birth, we become beings of pure intellect capable of everything. The more we stay there, the more we pay the price of our stay. The network changes the world around us in its function, requires us to adopt its shared consciousness logic, everything becomes artificial, perfectly integrated, returned to its physical state and then becomes post-digital. The price of our stay is the modification of the state of nature. We become unable to recognize the atavistic nature from that of the technique, the latter has become such an elaborate reproduction that it is capable of integrating the paradigms of artifice with elements of ancient nature. In the comparison between the parts however, the new natural objects generate a very strong friction with the primitive nature, revealing their own mask of artifact and become capable of disclosing new languages. Grammars made of unexpected events and mixtures, integrated to the point of becoming hidden. Our work aims to bring out the threads discovered, unmask the matrix, show the carcass behind the simulation, aims, in an eschatological system, to bring to life the friction generated by the comparison with the new natural aesthetics, re-proposing the eternal theme of the relationship man-nature, introducing in the equation the revealing element of the integrated technique. For this we take the most powerful means at our disposal to work: the imaginary. We use them, distort them, hybridize, strech and renew, in a continuous process of remixing and cut-ups to generate the unexpected, the bug that breaks the system.”