Feeling ugly, inadequate, empty, dissatisfied and admitting our insecurites, only marginalizes and isolates us. In order to belong, to fit in and be normal, we are not allowed to feel hopelessness and emptiness. However, those are exactly the emotions that we should safeguard because they are our fountain of creativity and expression.
"Niente," which means nothing, expresses my discomfort with myself. I am unsatisfied with the way I look, with the way I feel because of the way I look, and most importantly, with the way people perceive me because of the way I look. I sing about being unable to step outside of myself - literally outside of my body - and express myself, my true self, in words.
Whether I like it or not, my body tells a story of who I am to everybody I meet. Inevitably, we judge others by the way that they look, dress and walk. It frustrates me that when people look at me they estimate my age, judge my appearance and decide who I am.
Because different people have judged me in similar ways upon meeting me for the first time, I realize that there is a universal language of appearance that speaks of you before you even open your mouth. I guess there is only a limited number of identities that a woman with my hair, smile, body shape, eye color and clothing style can possibly have.
My body parts act as clues to who I am, and people relish in uncovering me. As if talking layers away from my body - peeling me like an onion - will lead them into knowing me.
But, like an onion, peeling all the layers of skin away leads to nothingness. The onion unravels and nothing remains.
I am very different from the person my body depicts me as. However, often, I can't find the right words to speak myself into being. I can't find the words or the strength to fight the false images others have created of me.
This song speaks about my inability to speak up and express myself - I sing about losing a sense of my own depth and identity because I am constantly judged by my surface. My body, my clothes, my makeup and my hair speak a different story. It's never my story, but always the onlooker's.
__________________________________________________________________________
NIENTE - NOTHING
This space inside me never fills
And I suffocate beyond belief,
Aware
that inside me there's
Nothing.
This familiar hollowness, commonplace yet surprising -
Reminder of my
nothingness -
Sterile end to a race without respite.
Endlessly struggling
to demonstrate
that I'm not arid emptiness
but space to overtake.
This familiar hollowness, comonplace yet surprising
That feeds my
nothingness
Nurses my every doubt,
Agrees that trying to fly is
In
vain.
****
Daniela Troilo
Country/Countries:
Italy
About Daniela Troilo
Daniela
Triolo studied singing and piano and specialized in jazz music with M.P. De
Vito. She is part of the Kammerton Vocal Ensemble, an a cappella group directed
by F. Cardosa. With Kammerton she has performed all over Italy and the world.
She sang in L. Francesconi’s “Buffa Opera,” performed at the renowned
Milanese Theatre Piccolo as well as Morlacchi Theatre in Peruggia and performed
in Sophocles’ Greek tragedy “Le Trachine” directed by G. Nanni and shown at the
Vascello Theatre in Rome. She is part of an all women’s vocal quartet Tare that
specializes in ethnic-contemporary songs.
She also holds a bachelor’s
degree in political sciences from the University of Rome “La Sapienza.”