MaRtIn I would like to write a last message and answer you. I finally succeeded in sleeping a few hours in that terrible night and you can easily imagine how your message hurt me when I woke up. Let me tell you that your decision is the most unfair I've ever seen. Perhaps my decision of accepting Italy from
✨ Forrest ✨ was the worst I've ever made. But you probably understood that I love not only Italian music, but Italy more than my official country France. Every emotion is largely amplified when I play with it. I had to withdraw from some contests with Italy because dealing with the emotions of defeats with that country is very difficult to me. I think for example about Mysterious Song Contest. I decided to make a pause with Italy when I failed by a tiny margin to obtain the AQ spot I was looking for since the beginning - and I'm actually still looking for it - and then I decided to not play at all with Italy again is that contest when ironically Italy won with its new host and with a song I would never had sent myself. I took that like a signal that MSC didn't want let me win with Italy. And I tried to react in the smartest way by exploiting the rule that allows me to change my country every edition and host countries that I don't have the opportunity to host in other contests - there are so many countries I would like to host... - and make other players discover these countries in a more complete way. So when I received this message proposing me to take Italy, a country that I wouldn't permanently host for obvious reasons when you read what is above, I wondered if I could really manage it in this contest.
But I accepted, for several reasons. The first one was that I was thinking about my song for the 21st edition, and that I was not sure that I would qualify again with Belarus. Actually, I found later another song and I think that I would have found it before the confirmation day if I hadn't stopped my work after this proposition, and I think I would probably have run for Belarus again with that song. Another option I was taking in consideration was making the debuts of Algeria (with another song that the one that was actually chosen by the player who finally took it). And speaking about Italy, there were so many recent songs that I liked from this country that I thought that I would always have a better result with Italy than with a random country. And I loved Bouchra's song so much that I absolutely wanted to use it in a contest. But there is another reason why I accepted Ashley's proposition. Perhaps you don't remember that, but when I arrived on this contest the first time, I misread the rules and thought I was able to confirm with Italy and a drama started after that. And Ashley reacted saying that she would never give Italy to me. Of course, she was right, and she didn't know how much she would hurt me saying that, because she didn't know how much I love Italy. But I still remembered that and when I read her message, where she said that she noticed my work with Italy in other contests and that she chose me to manage Italy for her, I thought it was the nicer recognition I never received on this forum, and therefore, there was absolutely no way to refuse. Even with the tremendous pressure of managing my country of heart - and probably the country where I'll finish my life - it was a great pleasure and a big honour to host Italy during these two editions.
Now I would like to explain my reaction of yesterday night, because you are completely wrong about that. Of course, I was extremely sad to see that Federica Carta was eliminated with only a 15th place. You can easily understand why if you read again my reaction after my qualification with Bouchra because the situation was exactly the same. There are four singers that are able to give me more emotions than anybody else in the world: Giorgia, Emma, Annalisa and Laura Pausini. Don't even ask me to make a ranking of them, it would be like asking a mother which of her children she likes the most. And we had a quite unique situation with all of them releasing a song recently. I was perfectly conscious that my feelings with these singers were able to make me fail. The choice was not that difficult for the first song: the simple fact that I preferred personally this song to the others, and that I wasn't even really fan of her before (I would have been surprised six months ago if someone had told me that I would send Bouchra to a contest), was a signal that Bouchra's song was probably the best choice for Italy. And that was a big relief for me to see her qualify. The choice for the second edition was even harder, and I already knew it in January: there was already a song that made me hesitate (another one than the songs by Emma, Giorgia and Laura Pausini), the song by Annalisa that would for sure be a serious candidate, and Federica Carta made this choice even more difficult. I finally decided not to use the first song and the final choice was between Annalisa and Federica Carta. I thought I would probably send both (one in March and one in April if Ashley doesn't come back before) but in what order? And then I thought that Annalisa, with a song of Sanremo, in an edition where there would potentially be other national selection songs for Eurovision, could be a risky choice for this contest. I didn't know what kind of reaction could dominate: the satisfaction to see Annalisa in the contest, or critics about the quite unoriginal choice of my song. And vice versa, how could people react to the reverse choice, with a less known singer when players were waiting for Annalisa? I took another criteria in consideration when I took my decision: nobody had sent Annalisa yet in any contest. So potentially the song didn't have as many supporters as expected. And finally, I considered that Federica's song was really good, and it appeared extremely unlikely to me that she could actually fail - and I still don't understand what is wrong in the song: that is certainly not the voice, not the music, not the chorus, not the choreography, not the music video, and I'm sure that if someone uses this song again in another contest, people will like it. This fail is a big mystery.
But my song actually failed, and the fact that Annalisa could have qualified amplified my sadness. And I also thought of course about the consequences: I would have to find a new country during the bloodbath period, and probably I wouldn't be able to find a country where I could settle. I've been wandering from a country to another one since I joined the contest a long time ago and I dreamt about having a country that I would like to host and big enough to have a reasonable chance to qualify each edition. This dream became a bit more accessible when countries became free, and there was a country in particular that I would have loved to host in NNMC and make it my home sweet home, but with this NQ, all these hopes were devastated in a portion of a second.
But my huge disappointment about my results was only a tiny part of my feelings when I saw the whole results. I also felt extremely sorry for the 7 songs that are not qualified from SF1 and that I wanted to support - and there were more than 10 songs I would have given points to if possible. I felt extremely sorry also for the 5 songs I voted for in my semi-final and didn't reach the final they plenty deserved. There are also probably songs I liked that were unfairly eliminated in SF2 too but to be honest, I didn't have the courage to check that after the devastation of the other semi-finals. You think I overreacted but sincerely, I never saw so many songs I liked eliminated in semi-final. Like I said, I never gave 45/58 points to songs that finally got eliminated before. This is a new extremely sad personal record. And I would probably have reacted in a similar way about that if I had qualified. So you can't tell that my "overreaction" was about my NQ, that is not true, it was mainly about the whole results, and I'm not the only one who wondered what the heck happened there. Could somebody explain to me how the Hell the Latvian's masterpiece was completely massacred? There are always songs that are unfairly eliminated in semi-final, but this is the very first time in my life I see so many of them getting crushed, at the point that there are much more songs I like among the eliminated than among the qualified. This is really what I think, and I don't pretend to convince everyone that the eliminated songs were better, but my opinion is as respectable as the others. So you can't blame me for saying that.
And above that, there is the Gregory affair. I'm sorry but you are also completely wrong about that and you don't seem to conceive how much I felt betrayed when I saw that:
1) A part of a private message had been revealed, and for me, being free to add comments to my votes or to discuss about the choice of my songs with the absolute guarantee that these conversations will stay confidential is absolutely essential. It's fully part of the completely necessary credibility of the organisation of a contest.
2) - and it is perhaps even more serious - this part of a message has been used to make me say something that I never thought: that I would dislike most of the songs in competition. That is absolutely untrue. The only thing I said, and I absolutely maintain it because this is really what I feel, is that there are more songs I like among the non-qualified than in the final. I always hated when people quoted me and tried to make me say things that are completely opposite to my actual thoughts.
Martin, you also describe me as someone always defensive, creating dramas and so on. Well, your contest is the only one where I'm still involved in dramas, and it's the contest where dramas are the most numerous. That is painful for everybody, you, me, the other persons involved in these dramas, the silent spectators, EVERYBODY. Have you ever asked why there are so many dramas in your contest, and very violent ones where people even delete their account? I'm not talking about the way you're managing them, that is not the point - even if banning me in a moment of extreme sorrow was the most unfair decision you ever took - but about the extreme pressure of results - this is the only contest on this forum where people may be eliminated from the next contest if they have bad results - and the unsaid but perfectly distinguishable opposition between the ancient members who have a secure spot in the top 25 and a country they like where they were able to settle and wanderers like me, who struggle every edition and try to get a country they would like and strong enough to reach, ONE DAY, the famous top 25. You may say, of course, that there are also players who don't care the country they obtain and the results they get, but I don't think there are many of them who work harder than me on their selections.
Why did I come on this forum? Certainly not in order to create dramas but to share music. By the way you probably noticed that the relationship with
MG became perfectly normal despite the quite hard conflicts we had, and that it's also becoming cooler with other players like
Julian so I'm not definitely the permanent warrior that you think I am. There are of course some players that will never become my friends, but I just try to ignore them completely.
I didn't start searching songs from other countries after I created my account. This is way more ancient. I'm talking about an era when YouTube didn't even exist, and when you had to go on sites like Yahoo Music or even hidden forums to get videos or even MP3 - because downloading music videos, even in 240p, was not a piece of cake with a 56k modem.
Vinx sent recently a song by Valeria Rossi in Retro WWWSC and I perfectly remember the time when I discovered the music video when it was released. Some of you weren't even born... So there are countries I've been following for many years (especially Italy of course) and what I've already shared on this forum is only a tiny part of the surface of a huge iceberg that I've built through the years. Participating to contest is a good way to share this knowledge, to make people discover artists they never thought they could exist, and even if there are difficult moments, it's always a pleasure when I see that I made discover one artist to someone and that he likes it. Look at all the songs I sent or used in my national finals, look at all of these songs and artists (unknown for many of them) that were re-used in other contests (including North Vision Song Contest). You only consider the dramas I was involved in and you completely forget the utility I can have for the whole community, in this contest and in the whole forum. I'm very sad that you took the decision to ban me and to impeach me to do my duty in your contest.
So I'm begging you to cancel your decision.
If the price for my comeback is to never make any comment again on your contest, well, I'll pay this price. I have only one word and you know it.
I would also ask people who think I didn't deserve to be banned to write down a message of support (nothing disrespectful to anybody please), and those who would be tempted to take profit of my distress to attack me not to do so. I would also ask people not to answer me by quoting, because I won't write any other post on this part of the forum that is not strictly necessary to the contest (like confirming with my countries, posting my entries and organising national selections - if I do that again one day in NNMC).