Or Anything Like It
August 15th, 2026; written July 2025
Required listening:
Three Weeks In Sicily by Peter Peter Hughes on Bandcamp______________________________________________________________________________
It's March 4th, 2014, and Maserati has brought news to Geneva.
Celebrating their centennial, they unveil their futuristic, beautiful concept car: the Alfieri, embodying the DNA sportivo di Maserati. It's named for driver, designer, and mechanic Alfieri Maserati, born mid-pack to Rodolfo and Carolina Maserati. The Alfieri Maserati born in 1887 raced in the cars that he and his brothers built. He suffered a serious injury in a crash in 1927, and died in the long tail of its complications five years later. The concept car here in 2014 beckons to the future, and the Maserati brother lost to racing represents all beautiful things past: a century of sacrifices made by Maserati drivers, mechanics, and strivers of all kinds.
But the Alfieri Maserati lost in 1932 was not the first. In 1885, Rodolfo and Carolina welcomed the first Alfieri Maserati, and they buried his small body in 1886. The second Alfieri, born the following year, was named in his memory.
the Alfieri
In its first line, "Three Weeks In Sicily" summons these two ghosts. Our protagonist, standing in the lobby of Maserati's headquarters in Modena, invites us to consider a third.
a thing of beauty
it taunts you in the lobby every morning
It's summer 2016, two years since the unveiling of the Alfieri. There are no plans for production, and no signs coming down from on high. Another workday, another look at those beautiful sloping lines whose only contact with airflow will be the A/C kicking on. Another night, going home with a nod to the trident on the front grill.
they'll never build it
or anything like it
Every day is another step forward into the future, the world after il centesimo anniversario del marchio. The object here stands in for a hundred years of things already gone. He passes by it again, and again. The Alfieri's engine will never breathe: dead in infancy, long-cold, and without even a little brother to carry its name.
But we're not given any recounting of the brothers, the centennial; not even the beautiful curves along the body, or the slicing top line of each headlight. Across the full four minutes of "Three Weeks In Sicily" you don't hear "Maserati" even once. Our protagonist tells us where he is in his first words, with his feet planted in 100 years of history: he's with Alfieri, and Alfieri, and the Alfieri. And after he visits with them, he's going up to his office, where he'll power on his computer. Another morning of the concept car's proud trident, and the headlight lines pointing sharply down towards it.
but you'll adapt its grill
He'll be at the press junket in Sicily, not with the stillborn Alfieri or even a refreshed namesake.
expertly
He'll be there with the 2017 Quattroporte, bearing only some small traces of what they've lost. He's communed with the Alfieri every day, and now it falls to him to tell them all: this is the beautiful future of 2016 we were promised. This soothing luxury sedan bears the DNA sportivo too. The headlights curve along the top like a furrowed brow, gesturing to the trident and the grill: see? Do you see?
for an SUV
He recalls, here, the other designs. In December of this year, another Maserati rep will insist of the vanished Alfieri: "The grille and much of the shape and details have influenced the Ghibli and the Levante." The latter is Maserati's crossover SUV. Ah, but the headlights: look at that straight line along the top; we remember our Alfieri. Our protagonist must have wondered some late nights, rubbing his eyes in the light of his monitor. What dreams did Rodolfo and Carolina have for the infant Alfieri, born to them in 1885? What hopes are passed along with a name? Back to design, to styling cues. DNA sportivo. That's his job.
no one will confuse you
with Fioravanti
they only use you
'cause you look good in Armani
Fioravanti suffices here. Speaking to himself, he draws from a cosmology as fixed as any in the Commedia. In the Inferno, when Dante says he is no Aeneas, he summons up the full dizzying sprawl of Roman founding myth presented in the Aeneid: Hesperia, the Sibyl, Pallas and Turnus; the parallels to Augustus, who was also Gaius Julis Caesar; Julius Caesar, who needs no introduction. When our protagonist tells himself that he is no Fioravanti, the great web weaves out behind him to the Daytona; the Berlinetta Boxer; the 288 GTO; to Pininfarina; to the prancing horse of Ferrari, as immovable as Pegasus in the night sky.
But it's only Canto II of the Inferno when Dante says he's no Aeneas. And only two years on from the Alfieri concept, our man has to make his choice. He can let the Quattroporte's styling speak for itself. All those car writers on their press trip will go home and write about driving it, and about the scenery.
you can refuse to
but should you choose to
they'll just spend three weeks in Sicily
talking to journalists without you
When the song's chorus repeats this line, Peter Hughes' sweet singing voice doubles up, adding quiet harmonized backing vocals for emphasis:
three weeks in Sicily
talking to journalists without you
Aeneas went to Sicily, too.
Here, the Garageband drums on the song go from understated background pulse to keeping time with a steady punching snare. The synth repeats the melody: three weeks in Sicily talking to journalists without you. We're on the move.
the hot scirocco
fuels an inferno
that now encircles
the hills around Palermo
Much like southern California finds itself at the mercy of the Santa Ana winds, with precarious ecosystems often igniting into wildfires, so too does Italy live under the threat of the scirocco. This southeast-to-southwest wind, moving from North Africa into the Mediterranean, has a second name in Libyan Arabic that we've glimpsed once here in the Alfieri's shadow: ghibli.
The tripartite ghost of the Alfieri stands in for a century of Maserati's history, and for all the noble lives lived and lost within its scope. A century of broader Italian history may never finish counting its ghosts. Italy brutalized Libya for 35 years, and the colonizer loves a souvenir. Italian army troops took the Libyan Arabic "Ghibli" as a nickname for the Caproni Ca.309 recon/bomber aircraft, heavily used in North Africa during World War II. And as our protagonist explains the Quattroporte to car writers in Sicily, the scirocco—the ghibli—returns like Aimé Césaire's imperial boomerang to set Palermo ablaze; ah, well. (Where Sicily's autonomous status since the 1870 Risorgimento situates it, exactly, in imperial-colonial relations vs. Italy more broadly, I am sure is a matter of debate for someone out there. I defer to the Libyans.)
As the scirocco blows north, the Quattroporte's sloping headlights and elegant lines offer enough of a reminder that one of these car writers asks privately: whatever happened to the Alfieri? Well. Our protagonist supposes nothing will ever happen to the Alfieri. We're all looking at the closest we'll ever get.
and in the morning
you wake up knowing
there ain't no way you're going back to Torino
Torino; Turin; what's in Turin? Maserati's primary presence in Turin in 2016 is the Mirafiore Plant, for production. Is our protagonist's mind on the plant? But then, Turin is also home to Pininfarina, to Italdesign Giugiaro, to Carrozzeria Ghia; to coachbuilders.
no one will confuse you
with Nuccio Bertone
they only choose you ‘cause you can pull off Boglioli
Nuccio was a designer, but he was also known for finding and nurturing great talents in automotive styling. Designers like Marcello Gandini produced some of their most iconic designs in the employ of Gruppo Bertone. And if we've mentioned Fioravanti, and mentioned Bertone, another name comes to mind as we return to the great masters. The scirocco lighting up the mountainside is one thing. But a 1974 Volkswagen hatchback bore the name Scirocco, too. And before that, from the same Mediterranean wind, there was the 1966 Maserati Ghibli. Who was headquartered in Turin, again? Our protagonist tells himself he's no Fioravanti, he's no Bertone, as if these are dreams real enough to be frustrated. Somewhere in Turin, old Giorgetto Giugiaro is going about his day, but you may as well be talking about the wind itself. Reach vs. grasp, ambition and delusion. But you might still make a mark out there somehow, right?
you can refuse to but if you don’t go they’ll just spend three weeks in Sicily
talking to journalists without you
The photograph attached to "Three Weeks In Sicily" is of a Canadair CL-415 water bomber, en route to more firefighting work in Palermo. Our protagonist, after talking to journalists about design, about speed, about the car's character, about the Alfieri and the grill and the DNA sportivo, looks out at the water at something else.
the water bombers skirt the darkening bay you watch 'em bounce like skipping rocks
The Canadair CL-415 is not an aerodynamic marvel. It has a top speed of roughly 220mph. At some angles, it looks more like one of those balsa-wood gliders you assemble in a few slotted pieces. A world without fighter planes, without fleets of massive jet airliners, without even the humble CRJ700, would still have use for the CL-415, going about its diligent work. It's a machine designed for labor without excessive thought for styling, and that labor is essential: here in the beautiful future that was promised to us by someone, somewhere, there will be more fires. There will probably, almost certainly, be more and more of them all the time.
The futures we imagine for ourselves—whether as Maserati stylists or car writers, or as precariat U.S. American apartment-dwellers—are always marked with an asterisk. It's getting hotter every summer. The atmosphere of dread grows heavier. There are more fires. We consider the time left to us to make a mark, or what a mark would even mean, with increasing urgency. As people have always done, we record great sprawling webs of connections and meaning, and live our lives as one node among infinite other nodes. A photograph used to show the constellation Pegasus will have a hundred other stars in it, and the ones that mark the horse's shape have to be drawn in for you to understand them. Ferrari's prancing horse may mean something to some future person, but what?
And our time is often shorter than we imagine. Ask our three ghosts. There are small bones lovingly buried somewhere in northern Italy. There's a grave in Voghera for the Alfieri Maserati who died in 1932, gone 40-50 years ahead of brothers Ernesto, Ettore, Mario, and Bindo. A concept car sits quietly in a lobby, only a few years removed from its introduction. In 2025, at the time of this essay's publication, Maserati has found a new centennial, commemorating 100 years of its trident logo. Despite promises as recent as 2019, there is still no sign of an Alfieri production model.
Watching the CL-415s work in 2016, our protagonist stands in Sicily, Sicilia, of the Sicels, known even to Virgil. He's so young, compared to the ground beneath his feet. The water-bombers come back around.
they drone in circles and they never go away
they mark the time like ticking clocks
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Sources consulted:
Other Essays: August 25th, 2024: Exit Blues