POP interviews: Giulia Mei, to rediscover beauty

Giulia Mei, born Giulia Catuogno, born in 1993, Palermo by birth and Bolognese by adoption, a few days ago she released a new excerpt from her hail album, We will become adults. The song is entitled, not surprisingly, The beauty and explains how beauty is nothing but what we know how to nourish. It already exists, we must realize it, welcome it, understand it and exalt itsuniqueness. An elegant and timeless piece that, in hostile times like the ones we are experiencing, is a balm, a breath of pure and disarming beauty. Here’s what Giulia told us.

The words of Giulia Mei

Giulia, this chat of ours is designed to talk with you about a theme that is close to your heart, beauty, understood in a universal sense. In this regard, you wrote a song, contained in your debut album.

I start by telling you where the beauty is. Beauty is behind the scenes and not on stage, it is in things we would not believe we would find it in, and yet it is right there. What I know is that it is inside things, it is deep inside, and not outside, or at least not only. I do not want to make Kantian disquisitions about the subjectivity or objectivity of beauty, this is not the point. The point is that beauty is a spark that makes the soul vibrate, restores meaning to this world, and you can perceive this spark with the heart, with the soul, more than with the eyes. Beauty is above all substance.

On the other hand, what is the opposite of beauty?

Beauty is not what we pretend to be, it is not always and only what appears and glitters before our eyes. In the era of images and beautiful photos with thousands of likes, it almost seems that there is no other way forward than to appear, but it is not only from an image that you can be looked at. Everything that is hidden behind it is quickly crumbling, also because perhaps we care less and less. Who does not appear, and even in a certain way, has no value, who has no value is not beautiful, who does not appear is not the bearer of some beauty, this is the syllogism of the third millennium, in which we are ending to believe. So if you want to know what beauty is not, I tell you that for me Beauty is not just appearance.

Look at yourself: what is your beauty?

I believe that my beauty lies in my freedom, the freedom to have always been what I deeply am and to have as an imperative to be like myself. Perhaps my beauty lies in the fact that I am like those children who don’t care about how they walk and what impressions they make on others while they eat ice cream, because that is their way of doing it. I believe my beauty is my freedom.

Instead, look around you now: is there beauty around us?

There is so much of it that you lose your mind. There is beauty in the arts, all of them, there is beauty in people, in things, even the most absurd. And now, in this very difficult period, it is coming out in unprecedented, new ways. And so it happens that even those who did not know they had something beautiful to give, to say, to be, realize they have it, and cultivate it, and give it. It may seem absurd but these days we are living are full of pure beauty.

In the video clip de The beauty there is Bologna, the city where you have lived for some time, but you are from Palermo. Tell me about the beauty of these two cities.

Palermo and Bologna are my two great loves, cross and delight, delight and cross. In Bologna, which for months has welcomed me in its arms, I dedicated this video, because the beauty that this city can give, not only on a monumental level but on a cultural and human level, has filled my heart. The first time I set foot in Bologna I said to myself “I want to live here, at least for a while”. Bologna is full of mysteries, and I am delighted to have talked about it in the video clip of this song, because Bologna is pure beauty and beauty, like her, is full of mysteries. But Palermo is the great love of my life, you never leave Palermo, Palermo is never replaced, Palermo is that look you just can’t forget. But Palermo is sometimes wild, and if it wants it eats you, if it wants it glorifies you but if it wants it buries you, it is difficult, especially for those who want to live in music, even if this is really something that concerns the whole of Italy. . There is no city where it is more beautiful and at the same time suffocating to live, there is no other place where I would like to die. Palermo maybe you really appreciate it when you no longer need it, when you have nothing to ask for, and then there is no other place in the world. What I don’t find in Palermo I find in Bologna and vice versa, but they certainly have one thing in common, the warmth and hospitality of the people.

The beauty, we said, is part of the album We will become adults. Timeless, intense and aware: do you find your work in these three adjectives I used?

Yes, I find there are three beautiful terms to describe this work, and I thank you for using them. Timeless because, I have said it several times, this is an out of fashion record but inside the emotions, in fact the only imperative I wanted to follow in this work was to tell emotions. Intense because inside there is my whole world, all my most intimate feelings, and this record is full of feelings, fragments of life and joy and pain; aware because it is the first small point of arrival of years of writing and musical research. Another word with which I love to define this album is “authentic”: this work is true, for better or for worse, and this is the thing that makes me most proud of the final result.

We will become adults has just turned one. What does it mean to become an adult these days?

Since it came out, a thousand colors have happened and, yes, I feel a lot more adult than the Giulia of March 28, 2019. I have learned a thousand things, beautiful and ugly, but I feel that all of them have served to make me a more and more conscious person and, in the end, better. I learned to understand myself better, in my strengths and weaknesses, in my strengths and shortcomings, but today I feel like a more adult woman, for real. I have always said, becoming an adult does not have to do with how much you earn per year or whether or not you have a VAT number or economic and social independence, it is not an obligatory step given by age, I know a thousand elderly people who they never became adults. Becoming an adult means learning to really live, alone and with others, and this, especially in these times, is an increasingly rare commodity, unfortunately.

Let’s play with beauty. If you were the most beautiful song in the world, you would be …

Bowie’s Quicksand.

If I were the best book in the world…?

The Canzoniere di Saba.

What is, for you, the most beautiful place in the world?

The most beautiful place in the world is the person I am in love with.

Complete this sentence: beauty could not exist without …

Beauty could not exist without freedom.

Let’s conclude like this: our magazine is called Digital Global Times and, for us, the term POP represents something beautiful, exciting, captivating. What is POP for you at this moment in your life?

In my opinion pop, the real one, the one that changed history, is daring, it is having the courage to have your say with your own means and despite this being able to communicate to everyone what you wanted to say. Pop, unlike what one might believe, very few know how to do it, pop is simple, which is why it is difficult.

Video

Here is the video clip of the new song by Giulia Mei:

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