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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 MARCH 2023 6 ALMANAC My essentials MICHAEL AZZOPARDI 35, visual designer I am a songwriter and visual designer from Malta. I lived most of my 20s in London designing software and building my business, but am now sharing my time with creative projects and other passions. I just released my debut album 'Vaganza', a collection of Maltese-language songs, and am working with my band to bring it to life in several live shows throughout 2023. 1 4 5 1. Book 2. Film 3. Internet/TV 4. Music 5. Place I don't enjoy social media and do my utmost to avoid it, but I recently learned that Michael Stipe (REM) is back on Instagram. I've had to re- activate my account recently to promote my album. It was nice to see Stipe, a man I am always open to and have time for, bobbing along curiously in an ocean of memes and time-thieving content. He's a learner, and a thinker, never imposing. He reminded me that there are ways to be on social media productively. IN the summer of 2022, as I was completing my latest al- bum, the all-knowing fifth dimensional being that is the Spotify algorithm introduced a true gem into my life, an al- bum my Brian Protheroe called Pinball. It was released in 1974 and has everything I love in an album of music. It's beautifully written and performed, but is lighthearted, varied, goofy at times. It's an artist being them- selves but wearing multiple hats, looking great in each of them. Always entertaining, but thoughtful and life-affirming. A gift to us all. Thank you, Mr Protheroe. I recently released a song called Stromboli. I wrote it af- ter seeing the film È Stata La Dano Di Dio, Paolo Sorren- tino's latest. One of the most beautiful moments in the film, during which the main charac- ter Fabietto, who's deep in the trenches of grief having just lost both his parents, is com- ing to terms with his truest nature- a seeker, forever peer- ing into the bottomless well of life's big questions, and who's simple yet agonizing mission in life might be that of telling stories – guided and protect- ed by their beauty. The defin- ing moment happens on the volcanic island of Stromboli. A place I barely ever thought about prior to that scene. I vis- ited Stromboli last November. The volcano is alive and well. I will go again, and again. THE Offing (Ben Myers). It's an exquisitely written story about a teenage miner who be- friends an eccentric, sophisti- cated and fearlessly independ- ent older woman as he travels across Durham in the summer and in the wake of WWII. The encounter changes his life. Robert, the main character, gets the chance of a lifetime – to be awakened to his truest potential and purpose, to be guided away from his predes- tined life of a miner and into the frightening, exciting path that is truly his. I recently rewatched Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino) – the fi- nal scene gets me every time. Rick Dalton, a washed-up ac- tor struggling for relevance, still shaken by a bloody home invasion only moments prior, is invited up to his neighbour's Hollywood home – a neigh- bour he idolised and who, in his mind, represented some- thing he desperately needed to belong to. The camera follows Dalton as he ascends into the heavenly, tree-nestled exterior of Sharon Tate's home. She's alive and well, very pregnant, and excited to meet Dalton. 3 2