Mark and I have known each other since we were young. His mother ran a school (kindergarten and grade-school) and summer camp for English-speaking children in a splendid old country estate just outside of Rome, immersed in lush greenery and with a dirt road leading up to it so impervious in some seasons as to represent an element of 'natural selection' with respect to social frequentations. I don't recollect how, but maybe, or rather probably, we met through common acquaintances.

At that time I strummed the guitar with a group of friends and, like all adolescent pre-college musicians, I dreamt grand things for my artistic future. Mark, then very thin with a huge beard and waist-length hair, represented for me a paragon of independence with respect to the conventions with which my circle was fettered. With time, getting together in Rome, we found that we had many points in common, a similar view of life and, but this is a much more recent discovery, even perhaps some sort of parallel lives. Very often we are enthused by the same things and our common friends, few in truth given the distance between Rome and Milan (where he moved twenty years ago), seem to elicit the same emotions in us. During the years when Mark lived in Rome I also had the pleasure of playing with him a couple of times, although he claims that he doesn't remember, a clear case of repression of ugly memories that any psychologist could explain without fear of rebuttal. Life has separated us for many years but has benevolently let us continue to keep in touch with unswerving amity and reciprocal admiration.

After realizing that all that my own music was producing was my own starvation, I dedicated myself with great curiosity to computer programming. I remember my first attempts on a cheap crate with a generous 16K of memory. Prehistoric. To make a long story short, "trying and trying again" as the saying suggests, today I direct a small multinational company that distributes material in the information technology field.

When Mark, during one of our marathon chats over the phone, mentioned his intention of setting up a production company, I couldn't resist the temptation to propose a joint venture. I knew from the outset that, both of us having the priviledge of being free of financial strife, we would enjoy the luxury of only embarking on projects that would first of all satisfy our spirit, and then, providing we could attract souls of similar taste, perhaps our pockets. We 'sniffed each other out' for a while to better understand the prospect of founding a company together! In the end, with mutual satisfaction, Compingo was born. I'm principally involved in following the aspects unrelated to the artistic side, having the fortune of being able to delegate that to Mark, even though we obviously spend hours discussing just everything, always with passion and without prejudice.

There's an artist in each of us. Life leads some to acquire, through passion and perseverance, the technique that permits them to express what they have inside with coherence and expressive continuity. I believe that every Compingo project is, above all, a gesture of love towards Art, with economic considerations truly taking a back-seat. Concepts dear to me such as friendship, respect, love shared with others, solidarity and the joy of a job well done are indissolubly part of Compingo and I am very proud to be part of an undertaking that increases my love of music and consequently my love of life itself, for without music each of our lives would surely be sad indeed.

CARLO FOCARELLI