far too much writing, far too many photos

runswithscissors


Saturday, March 01, 2003

Florence is starting to get a grip on me. I felt it this morning as I made my way through a barrio of unbelievably narrow flagstone streets on the south side of the river, heading to el Palacio Pitti, the Medici's one-time stronghold. There is something haunting about this place, and I'm not sure I can get at what I mean with any other word. It's a strange city -- unique, distinctive, overrun with tourists and the ghosts left behind from many centuries of life.

Last night I went to yet another concert, in a church right around the corner from the concert of two nights previous. A different church with a whole different atmosphere. Not austere, not restrained. The more standard Catholic-Church-overdecorated-grandeur thing. And okay. A nice place to be for a couple of hours. High, vaulted ceilings, lots of paintings, little of the graven-image business (except up around the altar which, compared with the church of three nights ago, was a hotbed of graven-image frufru).

Classical music yet again, this time with three musicians: a violinist, an organist, a flautist. Started off with Summer from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, just the single violin supplying the melody with the organ providing everything else. Nice, very sweet. The violinist then disappeared, the organ player did a solo number. Again, nice, but nothing more. No fireworks so far. The organist started up with another solo piece, Bach's Toccata and Fugue, a number we've all heard far too many times. A trite, overdone son-of-a-bitch. I resigned myself to sitting through it. The instrumentalist lit into the bugger, taking it a bit fast, a bit too fast I thought. And shortly after that something oddly dramatic began to happen. The music began to assert itself, the organ player began to feel it. And his playing started to change, slowing, becoming stronger, filled with different energy. His bearing changed, the way he held his body, his way of moving, of touching the keyboard. Right in front of us, his performance transformed into something drastically stronger, the music streaming through him and out through the massive array of pipes up in the choir loft at the rear of the church. As if a merely competent musician had somehow connected with something far deeper within himself, something transcendent, with transformative power.

These are just words that I'm stringing together here, they do not get across what began happening. The power of that music rolled through the church and all of a sudden we were listening to something fresh, getting a glimpse of the music that Bach actually wrote instead of the usual rote bit of Toccata-and-Fugue-hackmanship. The power of that creation began shaking the place and I found myself sitting forward, adrenaline moving through me. Witnessing a genuine transformation, an electrifying happening in which the performance took over, blotting out time and thought.

Blah blah blah. I can't really get across the feel of the thing, so I'll stop poking at it. Trust me, though, whatever expectations I had for the evening were surpassed in spectacular fashion. And afterward, out walking through the streets of some of Florence's older neighborhoods, passing young couples walking close together, passing clusters of chattering people outside gelaterias, looking up now and then to see looming domes and steeples, the crowning elements of beautiful structures thrown together when the renaissance was in full swing, I found myself grateful to be alive, in the middle of it all.

So, let's see -- field trips.

Yesterday: took myself to see La Galeria de los Uffizi. An enormous, majestic building just off la Piazza della Signoria, near the Arno River. Packed with a staggering overabundance of renaissance art. I mean, dear god, the building itself is beautiful. The hallways (lined with sculpture, the walls densely hung with portraits, the hallway ceilings themselves painstakingly, intricately painted) are beautiful. The galleries, which just go on and on, are packed with an embarrassingly extensive collection of renaissance art. It's unbelievable.

On the other hand, I've seen more than my share of religious paintings done by dead white males, so I burn out pretty easily on that at this point in my existence, if you know what I mean. Therefore a collection of this magnitude is a double-edged thing. The solution? Keep moving, don't feel like I have to stop and scrutinize every single "%*$^#!!! depiction of annunciations, holy families, crucifixions, doubting Thomas's, blahblahblah.

I can do that. And did.

Many, many, many religious scenes. Scenes from mythology. Portraits, scenes from history. And every now and then a bit of cheesecake, usually under the guise of mythical happenings, but once in a long while in the form of an out-and-out, no-pretense-made naked Renaissance babe.

And the artists. You got your DaVinci's, you got your Botticellis, you got your Titians, your Caravaggios, your Canalettos, along with an infinite number of pieces by lesser-known paint-tossers. Plus a bunch from outside Italy, including three Rembrandts (one a killer self-portrait of the young-20s artist), two Goyas and one lonely El Greco, surrounded by canvases of Italian religious mayhem, probably thinking to itself How in god's name did I wind up here?

An interesting note about the building: the cupula -- impressive from within, very pretty from outside -- sports a metal representation of a flag, a banner, made to appear like it's rippling, eliminating the need for something as unreliable as a friendly breeze. Possibly history's first permanent wave.

Today's excursion took me to el Palacio Pitti, as mentioned at the top of this entry. Another example of an outrageously extensive, overwhelming display of art, housed in what may be the single most grandiose example of opulence that I've personally experienced in this lifetime. Again, far too much artwork, though a few stood out, including a canvas by Titian of la Magdalena, an alluringly naked study of a religious figure that is both unassailably pious, and slyly, undeniably sensual. Pretty crafty, them Renaissance arty types.

Again, many, many ancient sculptures of naked guys and dolls from history, both real and mythical. And as you probably know, these sculptures portray males who are fully equipped, if you get my drift, usually without a convenient jock strap or fig leaf. One difference in this collection: for whatever reason, at some point during the passing centuries many of the sculptures depicting males suffered losses of an extremely specific nature, leaving them with testicles but with no bare pipe. Once I noticed this disturbing lack, I kept finding more and more examples of the same unfortunate defect. Which raises the question: vandalism? inferior art supplies? astigmatism on the part of the sculptor, leading to a very specific blind spot? or could it be that the eclipse of this ancient civilization had less to do with wars and societal entropy than the simple inability to reproduce?

Just a thought.

Two images seen yesterday:

-- a bit of graffiti spotted on the side of lovely, centuries old building in a quiet Florence street: a large image of a young woman's face, done in the style of Japanese anime, her features framed by jet black shoulder-length hair, forehead neatly covered with bangs. Next to the image, in large, spray-painted black letters: EMILY RULES

-- Florence has many, many narrow streets, so frequently traveled by the city's buses that the sight of one turning carefully into or out of one of those streets is common. As darkness fell during yesterday evening's rush hour, at an intersection of a busy main drag and a narrow side street, a bus sat patiently at the mouth of a side street waiting for the green. When the light changed and the bus began to make a slow, wide turn out onto the larger avenue, motorcycles and scooters that had been waiting behind began squirting out around it, shooting along the narrow bit of space between the bus and the curbs, flying out ahead of it. Looking like a mess of unruly, cranked-up pilot fish moving around a particularly enormous, slow-moving shark.

Tomorrow: back to Rome.

Later.

rws 11:39 AM [+]

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MORE FOCUSED BLATHERINGS


Travels:
London '01
Pamplona
Italy '03
U.K. '03
Sevilla
Casablanca
Stoke-on-Trent
Barcelona
Québec/Ottawa
Boston/Lisbon/Madrid
Italy '04
Montréal
La Sierra

Events:
Madrid -- arrival
9/11
Emergency Room I
Holidays 2001
Holidays 2002
Holidays 2003
Holidays 2004
Holidays 2005
A neighbor's passing
Madrid -- March 11 bombings
  and aftermath
Emergency Room II
Israeli friend/Madrid Marathon
Madrid -- Royal Wedding
The DELE exam

GONE, a novel:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

THE BASTARD CHILDREN OF
JOE ROCCO, a novella:
-- Part 1
-- Part 2
-- Part 3

BURBANK SHRUGGED,
a screenplay:
-- Part 1
-- Part 2
-- Part 3
-- Part 4

Short stories:
Murphy's Wife
Another Autumn
La Queja de Una
  Hermanastra Muy Conocida

Autobiography
-- Personal History
-- Hormones On Parade
-- Accidents, Random Mishaps,
    Personal Problems

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OTHER SOURCES OF WHOLESOME ENTERTAINMENT

People/Weblogs:
dooce
foxvox
fudge it
fear not
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bookslut
802online
idle words
madhaiku
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rebel market
letting me be
out and about
kung fu grippe
fanatical apathy
baghdad burning
wfuv's music blog
kexp's music blog
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between the miles
just a hippie gypsy
the impossible cool
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gizmodo
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  generator
strindberg and helium

Makin' Musical Whoopee:
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