Ferdinando Bocconi's Questionnaire

If you weren't Severino Salvemini, who or what would you like to be?
At a certain time of my life, when I was a sophomore at the University, I became assistant to the photographers of the Mondadori Group, which was then sited in the old building of Via Bianca Maria di Savoia, close to Bocconi. My living myth was Ugo Mulas, a photographer with a great sense of esthetics who took strictly black and white photographs. I would have loved to become a professional photo reporter like Mulas. But then my sense of duty (and the moral pressures of my distant parents..) put me back on track to end my Bocconi degree. And here I am.

Music, books and movies: which one do you associate with your Bocconi experience?
I graduated in 1974. The early Seventies are my years as a Bocconi student, but also the years of Is There Life on Mars? by David Bowie Hotel California by the Eagles. They are also the years of Sacco & Vanzetti by Giuliano Montaldo, Blue Soldier by Raph Nelson, and the best films made by Mario Monicelli. In literature, it is the time of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez. In Italian society, the novel Porci con le ali (Pigs with wings) by Lidia Ravera and Marco Lombardo Radice symbolized sexual liberation. At that time, in Milan I discovered jazz and that stayed with me. Since first listening to Night in Tunisia by Charlie Parker or Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, I have not parted from these records anymore.

Of all the people you met through Bocconi, who would you travel with and where?
My friend and colleague Angelo Cardani, who is humor incarnate. We would go to Norway, on the Lofoten Islands, where he would surely swear the whole time about the bitter cold.

What if Bocconi were a dish?
I'd say cheese soufflé that keeps on rising.

Who is your hero now? And when were you a student at Bocconi?
Fabrizio De Andrè, poet, musician, a man with a predilection for Faber-Castell pastels and pencils, who was rightly deviant and maudit, but profoundly respectful of other people and the principles of civic association.
There isn't anything better than his record Crêuza de mä, is there?

What are you most proud of in your private life?
I'm proud of being able to reconcile creativity and rationality.

And the professional one?
The same thing. I have been capable of pursuing, without too many failures, the academic path and at the same time the creative path as well.

If you were the character of a fairy tale, who would you like to be?
Since I'm given the privilege, I'd like to be king for once. I don't think it's as bad as they often claim.

What would you never do without?
I could never live without Italy. Life is too short not to be Italian.

Bocconi for you is ...
What has allowed me to make ends meet, and also answer this questionnaire.