Civilizational Ruin

I am riffing off the following news item, reported in the Greek Reporter and elsewhere:

https://greekreporter.com/2025/12/07/trump-administration-warn-civilizational-erasure-europe/

For many of us, moving is not an option. This is generally due to financial constraints, family/personal reasons or the doubt that your destination will end up being any better than where you left. Are you even moving to a better life? Is your desired destination really what you think it will be? Or have you bought in to a postcard or real-estate brochure?

Try an exercise: What would you try and do in your local area to make it better. And what is in your power to achieve? Maybe you can run for local office, start a business, invest in one, or simply dress and behave better. Maybe you can make friends with some of the locals. Maybe you can join or start a club. Maybe you are the best person around to plug whatever the deficit in wellbeing or amenity there is in your local area.

I suppose the reason I’m writing all this is that I always see a heavy NATO prejudice in any commentary on the future of “our civilization”. But why?

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

IN it’s literal sense this is the western half of Europe and the Eastern coast of the US and Canada. Pardon me, but we European-descended people have spread ourselves a fair bit past that in the past 500 years. There’s a whole thing going on in this place called the Pacific for instance, and the little communities that occupy its rim and interior.

If we are just talking countries that utilise a European-based language as its main official language, this includes: Australia, New Zealand, The US, Canada, Mexico (west coast), Chile, Colombia, Equador, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Hondura, EL Salvador, Guatemala, New Caledonia and who knows how many pacific islands. Asian nations like Vietnam and Indonesia use a latin-based script in their official languages. The Philippines have English as an official language next to Filipino.

What do you need exactly? Archways and cobblestone streets? You can find these outside of Europe. Shock, horror i know. European people? plenty of those around. Technically you could be born in a place like Malaysia or Singapore in some merchant-class/ex-colonial family and be called an Asian but still effectively be of European descent. There are white British-Indians living in Aus. Russia has a big stretch of pacific coastline which will probably become more important to them in the years ahead. With every passing year this census data with regards to “ethnic descent” will become more and more absurd. Everyone travelled everywhere and had babies everywhere and this stuff willl just seem nonsensical. Why the obsession with Europe? These geographic designators are feeling fairly arbitrary and shakey as we move deeper into the 21st century.

When you look into African and the South Atlantic portion of South America you see more evidence that life and civilization can go on without Europe, and probably will… once everyone gets over their inferiority complex at not being in cool rapey Europe with Sven and Jahn and Mohammed.

Other things you can do outside of Europe now: Get a coffee, shop at Ikea or aldi, go skiing, eat chocolate, paint and admire paintings, drive a BMW like a wanker, play a violin, go to an old Church with sculpture and paintings etc, make something out of lego, eat a pizza or something like a pizza, dress smart and fancy, smoke (byo in Oz), have a craft beer or an exceedingly-sophisticated and aromatic wine, ride a bike, row a boat, ride a tram, breathe clean air, buy a Kraftwerk album, get a useless degree, admire old stuff and see/partake in historical re-enactments, eat interesting cheese or even a bloody yoghurt. Play soccer. Have a preppy haircut. I could go on and on.

The US is burdened with military obligations around the planet and part of the reason for Trumpism was that everyone was demanding military protection from the United States with little/no reciprocal trade-off. The difference between Europe and everyone else is that Europeans seem to feel like they are entitled to it just by virtue of being Europe, the origin point of the colonial settlers who founded the modern US, and so by beingthis amazing land of European cultural heritage apparently. I sometimes wonder how many Europeans are left in Europe who aren’t Eurocrats who hate European culture and history or the aggreived underclass of counter-revolutionary Europeans they are oppressing.

A lot of us have European stuff at home, in our museums and galleries etc. We don’t need Europe for it. Maybe Europe should learn to take responsibility for itself, including its own army, borders and fuel sources. In seeing this antipathy to Trump anytime he opines on Europe, you have to go back to wondering “whats in it for the USA?”. That’s how he thinks, business-like. I frankly don’t see the problem with this.

As for Australia, well we wouldn’t need anyone at all if we weren’t so stupidly governed. But we are so, we are bloody hopeless.

Also I went to Las Vegas 18 years ago and there was an Eiffel Tower, a Venetian Canal and a Pyramid there, all in my opinion matching if not exceeding the originals.

And all this equally applies to the Middle East aswell, an even more useless part of the map. And don't get me started on mainland Asia.

Where The Hell Is Clio: Investigating an italo musical mystery.

In the cartoon I did there’s this woman in the centre based off an 80s single cover in the Patrick Nagel/pop-art style by an artist named Clio. Real name: Maria Chiara Perugini.

Clio AKA Maria Chiara Perugini. Vanished without a trace in the early 1990s.

The Cover of The non-hit-but-eventually-appreciated single “Faces”. Cover design is attributed to Patrizio Squeglia

Roberto Ferrante, producer of the Clio and Glam projects, who unlike Maria has been visible and active up to the present day.

In the italo world she, with producer Roberto Ferrante, did one of the big fan-favourite songs, Faces. According to accounts of those who were around at the time, the song completely sank without a trace and never got the recognition it deserved. Its only been thanks to the post-era crate-diggers and treasure hunters that it’s finally achieved recognition…. And since I first heard it about 15 years ago or so it seems to have gained awareness exponentially (I don’t know if it was 15, it wandered into my brain at some point, i know I was driving to Geelong on a daily commute against the morning traffic flow when I really got into it, seeing alot of faces stuck in gridlock opposite me). I think what people like about it is how strangely ethereal it is. It’s really unlike most other songs in the genre or pretty much anything 80s except i dunno, Enya or something. But unlike Enya it has a dance beat to it so you don’t feel like you’re waiting at the doctors clinic with a bunch of old people or on-hold in a call to the unemployment office, but instead just cruising along to somewhere, and good times are being had on the journey, as you know it will at the destination also. And then towards the end it changes into this forever-outro that blends the vibe into a happily drunk cocktail bar on the international space station, and the aliens are invited, and everyone is doing coke.

She also did two more that are a lot of fun: Eyes, seen here with a very crazy music video. This song never had a music video of it’s own but a few short years ago got a so-called vaporwave treatment by a talented youtuber called TransylvaniaTapes, which splices together a whole smorgasboard of snippets, resulting in a collaged tribute to 1980s capitalism).

And finally the only music video of hers from the era itself, done in collaboration with another artist called Kay, Keep On Dancing, which also features her rapping, surprisingly decently imo. Clio is the dreadlocked one. This video was broadcast on Australia’s longtime Music Video program Rage, as evidenced by the logo overlaid at the start. Rage is about the most unlikely place you would ever have found italo in its original run. Its on our version of the BBC (The ABC) so there’s an underlying leftwing prejudice to everything it does and it was fairly central to politicizing our whole existence. Their musical wheelhouse was all about Grunge, Britpop and English new-wave/post-punk. Anything mopey and depressing and made you want to kill yourself was its stock in trade. Uplifting and motivational were out. If you were happy you were probably on ecstasy. 80s cheese was definitely out, they were hard at work trying to bury that stuff. In fairness though they weren’t as badly agenda-driven back in the 1990s as they would become later on, and so it was natural for everyone with an interest in music beyond the pop mainstream to tune into Rage, JJJ and Recovery to keep up to speed with things. It was the youth network. Apparently this clip was broadcast as part of some house/hiphop tribute. As far as the clip itself is concerned, how can you go wrong with 90s dance choreography, club fashion with dreadlocks, silhouettes, zooming test effects, the obligatory black DJ fistpumping in the air, a ballet-leaping godzilla, fluoro triangles and the artist's’ names flashing in katakana?

Perugini is also credited as the singer and composer on the Ferrante-produced project Glam for the song More Than Ever. Let’s call these the big 4 songs plus a couple of so-so b-sides. By italo standards this is actually quite a large body of good work by one artist.

So why am I talking about this? And why does the image above say “where are you Clio”? Because no one knows where she is. She disappeared completely. And not as in, she is known to be around but prefers not to be in the public eye or talk about her past (though that might be true). I mean, quite literally, no one knows where she is and hasn’t since the early 90s when her career output stopped. No one stayed in touch with her, no one seems to know if she’s alive or dead., or whether she moved countries. There is just no trail at all. Did she get married and change her last name? Did she change her whole name? Did she OD in a bathroom somewhere? This woman had a bona-fide hit and most people say its definitely a solid notch above the standard italo stuff out there. A lot of her peers have resurfaced in one way or another, either willingly (to take part in the nostalgia concert circuit or do interviews, Sabrina Salerno being a good example), or reluctantly (“yeah that was me but i was acting abit …. fifi… as the Argentines say, and i’ve put it all behind me so please don’t talk to me about it anymore, I’ve got kids now and i don’t want them to see mum/dad with hairspray and makeup dancing around like a prat”). So even those who renounce their past have somehow been tracked down and claimed it. I know there’s been a couple of confirmed deaths like Alberto Carpani (Albert One) and breakdancing maestro/disco war-song pioneer Riccardo Cioni…. RIP guys.

But this chick, no one knows. It’s a bit of a mystery. Roberto Ferrante, who worked more closely with her than anyone, has apparently declared that he would like to know, and supposedly regularly posts on anything related to her on instagram. So if he’s in the dark it really is a mystery. Maybe there’s a sinister element and there’s people that do know but don’t want to talk. Who knows, who knows.

There’s this reddit thread which poses the question and a response within it reads:

I'm always torn between reaching out to someone in the ID world and telling them how much their music meant to me. However: A) Not sure if it is especially appreciated, B) Sometimes it's better to keep the mystery of the person rather than the reality.

They have to *just know* how great and timeless their music was and how it is inspiring people today as they discover it (like me) and future generations.

I can see that. And fans would be annoying. Probably unintentionally so. There you are, former aspiring pop artist, minding your own business in middle-age, drinking a coffee outside, being ambushed by some young twat with their smartphone aimed at your face, thinking “I can’t believe YOU are the kind of person that got into my work.” Or maybe its more benignly that your inbox is being clogged by reminders about the past life you worked so hard to ditch. Thankfully I don’t have that problem, because I have no fans. And actually, I’ve come increasingly to the opinion that I probably don’t want my stuff discovered anyway. As it turns out I actually am abit of a racist, sexist and homophobic shit. I don’t need the heat. GImme a break, it’s been another tough year.

The youtube comments section under Keep On Dancing also allude to the possibility that she’s a college teacher in Virginia the US. But the occasional “she[s dead” rumour still pops up. So does the “she slept with Ferrante and it didn’t end well” rumour, which is kind-of what I was assuming went down.

Another mystery.

As well as the reddit thread and youtube comments, this guy here seems like he’s on the case, as well as a general fan of the era. Clio's Biography - Official Website of Ciancio DJ

Bonus Round/Aperetifs:

If you need an era-specific come-down track after all that then maybe this is the way to go.

Motion - You and I (1982). I can’t even find this one on discogs.