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So it would seem a lot of time has elapsed since my last post. And it would also seem people are not reading my blog seeing as my last two entries went essentially unnoticed. Which is perhaps why I’m less motivated to plop down in front of my computer and churn out these things. That, and I’m pretty unbelievably busy.
Intro to Photo has quickly become my favorite class. Not only because everyone else in the class is incredibly chill or because the teacher is interesting (if often too long-winded), but also because I just really love photography. Being afforded the time to schlep around my camera and capture faces, facades, and flora is bliss.
Our first assignment—“Urban Landscapes”—was due on Tuesday. Thus, on Monday, I spent hours in the darkroom printing and reprinting various photographs of Japanese tourists and vaguely lost-looking Americans. During which I became extremely frustrated several times, particularly when trying to perfect a photo in which the main subject had pitch-black hair and was wearing a pitch-black pea coat. Of course, according to Jamie the TA, I had to allow just enough light so that both items remained black (as opposed to becoming the sort of middle grey all B&W photos aspire to) and so that the viewer could also see the seams of her coat and the strands of her hair. In spite of standing for extended periods of time besides the print processor with my head in my hands, when I presented my collection of five photos in class, my fastidiousness and perseverance paid off—Jacopo said that was one of the two best prints of the five.
* * *
This past weekend I joined the High Renaissance art history class in Rome. I’m using the word “joined” loosely here—I only spent one out of three days with the class and its teacher, Helen Watterson.
On Friday morning, surprisingly enough, I missed the 6:40 train to Rome. Since this was to be my second visit to said city, I can’t say I was too fussed about missing the trip to the Vatican and the one-and-a-half hour wait to get in. Instead I knocked off a few chores I had to do in Firenze—buy new laundry detergent that doesn’t turn all my white clothing blue: check—and took my time heading over to the Santa Maria Novella train station.
My train arrived at the Rome Termini at 7:30. We pulled out of the SMN at 5:52, so I was taken aback when we arrived in Rome so soon. I hadn’t realized I was on the express train, and thus, until the majority of the car had emptied around me, stayed in my seat. Walking along the platform to the terminal, I checked everything around me for signs of Rome or “Rome”. It wasn’t until I recognized the main station from the last time I’d been there that I realized I was in the right place and not getting off at Milan en route.
I managed to catch the correct bus to the hotel, and, even more amazingly, to get off at the right stop. Deciding not to pick up a bus map (as well as not knowing where to get one), I had to carefully check the location sign at each stop. Of course that meant if no one requested my stop, I was in trouble. Thankfully, not only was my stop requested, about half the bus got off as well. Which was fortuitous because, for whatever reason, I was zoning out by the time we got to the Lungo Argentina stop, and only realized it was time to skedaddle when two or so people were still waiting to get off. It would seem late reaction time was something of a theme with me that day.
Helen put me in a room with two girls who were out at the time I found the hotel. Dead tired, I immediately threw on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and turned out the light. Actually, I never had to turn off the light—I forgot to mention that I never figured out how to flick the lights on in the first place. So imagine me doing all the aforementioned activities with only the dim glare of the streetlamps outside. Fun, no?
I’ve been having trouble sleeping again lately, and, luckily for me, at the very moment my hotel roommates returned from wherever it was they were, had someone break down the door for them (naturally, no one had bothered to tell me each room only had one key), and rudely interrupted my attempt to sleep by announcing that I was in the wrong room, I was on the teetering edge of diving into the void of sleep. So I didn’t actually wind up falling asleep until sometime around five. I listened to a lot of Sufjan Stevens in an attempt to calm my mind down.
So naturally I was unable to make it to breakfast the next morning at the ungodly hour of 7:15. Instead I slept in until noon and went leisurely about my day. I read some Harry Potter in French, took a shower, brushed my teeth, the usual. My plan for the day was simply to go out, get lost, and bring my camera with me. I managed to achieve two out of three goals because, strangely, when you are trying to get lost, it becomes impossible to actually do so. Somehow I always knew where I was even when I thought or hoped I didn’t.
Being as in love with nature as I am, I immediately made a beeline for the Tiber River. Or as they call it here, il Tevere. Once I felt sufficiently frozen by the combination of shade and wind, I allowed myself to be swept away by the tides of Rome. No pun intended. Seriously.
Our second photography assignment—“Portraits”—is due Thursday, March 13. And since Jacopo is obsessed with photographing people, I figured it was time to overcome my fear of potential public humiliation and start inching closer to my subjects. So I went to a small park I’d spotted near the hotel and just sat down on a bench and waited. After thirty minutes of sitting and occasional photo taking, two Italians came over to my bench and plopped down right next to me. They’d brought all the fixings to make sandwiches and immediately started hacking away at some Parmesan cheese with a large Swiss army knife. Suddenly the perfect opportunity to take extreme close-ups of preoccupied subjects had presented itself. I pointed my camera towards them and surreptitiously clicked away.
I subsequently journeyed through a farmers’ market that was closing for the day, along several small side streets with quirky cafes and stores, and across various picturesque bridges from one side of the Tiber to the other and back. Somehow I managed to end up in Saint Peter’s Square right around the time I’d decided to head back to the hotel, grab a soda, and put my feet up for an hour or two.
My camera was out within several seconds; the square was filled with bustling, incongruous tourists and the lighting was great, so opportunities for candid shots of unsuspecting foreigners were abound. I headed over to what is essentially the only place to sit down in the entire wasteland that is St Peter’s Square—the stone ledge around the central fountain—intending to sit there for thirty or so minutes and to take photos when good ones presented themselves.
Unfortunately, I was derailed in the process by a forty-something male, wearing a black beanie with a small, embroidered Italian flag front and center, who pointed in the direction of the Pope’s bedroom and said I should take a picture. Since I had no intention of wasting one of my 36 frames on said image, I just humored him by nodding and glancing at the unremarkable set of windows on the top floor of an ordinary looking building, all the while hoping he would go away so I wouldn’t lose a lot of the late afternoon light.
Of course, I was not so lucky—he asked me where I was from, and when I said New York, he treated me to a long rant about how New Yorkers are so unfriendly, so isolated, and everything is about money, and Italians are so much nicer and sociable. You know, the stereotypical B.S. you hear from foreigners who are just jealous of New York and the United States and, thus, try to convince themselves they’re somehow better than us. Typically, at one point in the conversation, he made the mistake of saying he’d never been to the U.S.
Interestingly enough, in spite of his claim that Italians were superior beings, he never once let me defend my hometown. He talked over me every time I tried to say something, and, in my opinion, that was far more rude than any of the behaviors he was accusing me of embodying. Personally, I believe allowing people privacy and not bothering them when they’re clearly occupied is far more polite than engaging them in pointless, irritating conversation. Quite honestly, I’ve had it up to here with people hassling me when I’m sitting on a bench with my camera.
Nonetheless, I was still pleased with the course of my day. I finally returned to the hotel around six. At about 7:30, I went to dinner with a friend at a salad restaurant. Around nine we parted ways, and I walked back towards my room planning to get some well-deserved sleep. On the way I ran into a bunch of people in the lobby and instead decided to go out with them for a few hours.
The seven of us went to a pub called Sloppy Sam’s, which was not only your conventional American bar, it was also crowded as hell and extremely loud, the two sensations combining to make the place extraordinarily good at inducing claustrophobia. A friend of mine, Libby, and I slipped out within three minutes.
* * *
And now a special announcement about something of little to no importance whatsoever: Since I’ve been banging out this entry over the course of a week, naturally I’ve been mentally compiling multifarious observations about Firenze and other facets of life, the universe, and everything, and I just felt like sharing this one.
I was flipping through a copy of Esquire my dad had bought me in the Logan airport before my plane departed for Italy, and I stumbled upon an article about Bob Dylan’s influence on male clothing. I absolutely cannot believe I’ve never made the connection between Dylan and that hipster style of clothing I loathe so much. It’s so obvious now: the skinny jeans, the vaguely formal jacket over a cotton t-shirt, the Ray Ban sunglasses (or $10 local drugstore sunglasses for those who can’t afford to pony up that much money for a pair of shades…so 99% of America). The bulky Bose headphones that scream music aficionado, however, were probably the personal touch of the first hipster from Greenwich Village to adopt Dylan’s style. Naturally, it would be illogical for Bob to wear a pair seeing as he’s the one under the bright lights. But, I bet, when our mumbling friend sports headphones—in the studio, at some posh cafe that smells more like weed than coffee beans, at home, wherever—they’re Bose.
* * *
And we’re back! (Does anyone else remember the radio show character Jimmy Fallon created who uttered that particular catchphrase after every commercial break during the sketch?)
So there Libby and I are, in Rome at 10 p.m., and neither of us has any particular desire to return to the bare bones hotel. First we went to this coffee place near the Pantheon called Sant'Eustachio Libby and the HR class had frequented earlier in the day—one that Mimi Sheraton, formerly of the NY Times, called the city’s best—and ordered caffeinated beverages close to midnight. Of course we weren’t the only ones; the coffee bar was packed despite the lateness of the hour. My caffè latte was very good, but it was by no means transcendent. My expectations must have been a little too high.
For whatever reason, Libby really loves taking photos after nightfall, so we made our way towards some of the many ruins in Rome. From there we ventured to Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio, the Coliseum, and a lovely but deserted park. When trying to cross this street that more closely resembled a highway, I pointed out a crosswalk we could use, and Libby said it was “stained with the blood of many tourists”, which is probably one of the greatest one-liners I’ve ever heard. In case you were wondering, we didn’t cross there.
We particularly enjoyed going to places that appeared to be off limits. Through a gap in a wire fence to photograph the silhouette of what was quite possibly the only flowering tree north of Sicily against the magnificent grandeur of the Coliseum, over a short iron and stone fence and down a flight of meter long stairs that dropped off suddenly and which was set between a patch of trees and a stucco, three-story building to photograph the perilous mini highway of Rome.
Our own Rome by night. I can’t even begin to explain how incredible and occasionally frightening those three hours were. (So you don’t worry, Mom, by frightening I do not mean axe murderers chased after us, simply that our imaginations ran aground once in a while.)
At 2:30 we returned to the Hotel Smeralda (yes, I thought it was called the Hotel Esmeralda at first too), exhilarated and very ready to go to bed. Once I got to room 302, I was stunned to discover that my roommates weren’t kidding when they’d said they wouldn’t be back until four a.m.
* * *
On Sunday I had to go with the group because they were my ride home. At about 8 a.m. we hopped onto a charter bus and pulled out of Rome listening to the incessant chatter of Helen trying to squeeze in every last detail and fact she could pull out of her hat about the various places we were passing. Our first stop was the Galleria Borghese.
Okay, so there is a very good reason why I am not taking art history. Which is I don’t have any passion for Renaissance art. Pretty much anything pre-Impressionism bemuses me. Except for the Pietà. And several other statues. Actually, most other statues. Let me revise my original claim: I don’t like Renaissance paintings. Thus the charm of the Galleria Borghese was sadly lost on me. There were many excellent statues; I was particularly charmed by Bernini’s Pluto e Proserpina and this one of a messenger pulling out a splinter from his foot.
Finally, around lunchtime, we arrive at the Villa d’Este. This is why I signed up for this trip. The garden was saturated with beauty. Fountains that looked straight out of Peter Pan were hung with icicles and swathed in moss. Formidable marble statues enclosed by canopies of ivy appeared to be on the verge of wrenching one of their feet out of the ground after thousands of years of staying put. The unperturbed surfaces of the square pools were as smooth as glass and hundreds of little fish wiggled around in the water. Even the few dying trees seemed majestic, albeit sickly and unstable.
Like so many towns and historical sites in Italy, I was in awe of the idea that someone had once lived here. That this was what they returned home to after vacations and trips, not the destination in itself. If the Villa d’Este had been my home, I’d have pitched a tent outside and never entered the house. All three meals would take place in different parts of the garden. I’d settle in a sunny spot and spend hours writing and reading every afternoon.
Even Italian movie theaters are more civilized and humane than those of the United States! Insane. And I thought this country couldn’t get any classier.
I went to see Charlie Wilson’s War at the Odeon, a cinema that shows films in their original languages: The seats were covered in a gorgeous gold velvet, the floor was spotless, the concession stand looked like a counter at a posh café, the theater itself had a balcony reminiscent of those in Lincoln Center, and there was even a five-minute intermission! And, best of all, the film started on time sans previews at the beginning. It was cinematic bliss.
* * *
After several weeks of perfecting, reshaping and carving my clay version of the Degas dancer, it was time to pour on the plaster. At the end of class one day Dario gave us a step-by-step explanation of our task at hand using a PowerPoint slideshow that visually depicted how to make a waste mold. The general rundown is this: first the sculptor pours a coat of dyed plaster on the clay, then a white coat, then you scrape the clay out of the hardened plaster shell, then you fill the mold with yet more plaster and then, after that’s dry, you use a chisel and hammer to carefully break apart the waste mold leaving a lovely plaster rendition of your original clay model.
While some members of my class incredulously pondered why we didn’t just fire our clay pieces in a kiln, I was having far too much fun making a tornado-esque mess. As someone who believes there is no better way to spend the afternoon than rolling around in mud flats with friends, I was unable understand the disgust that played upon the faces of some of my classmates when they were mixing plaster and cold water by hand.
Chiseling the final sculpture out of its shell proved to be much easier than I thought. Thanks to the media we applied between each layer of plaster, the whole process went smooth like butta’, save a few minor nicks here and there. I felt like something of an archeologist, unearthing an artifact preserved by sediment for thousands of years (or, in my case, for a couple of days).
I’m quite proud of my piece. But I cannot say I’m too jazzed about transporting it across the Atlantic.
* * *
Last Thursday, my photography class went on a field trip to the Casine Parco, which essentially means Central Park Firenze. And yet it’s in the farthest west section of the city. Go figure.
On Tuesday, Jacopo had mentioned that we would be going somewhere as a class, and another student asked if we needed to bring our cameras. The rest of the class laughed at this, but, of course, I left my camera in my apartment on Thursday morning. In my defense, I never heard him say on which day this outing was to occur. Thankfully, I hadn’t laughed when she asked the question; otherwise I’d be a retroactive hypocrite.
At 8:45 a.m., I spent several minutes making sure my light-sensitive photo paper and negative binder were safely secured to the back of my bike. When I got to school, I locked my bike up, went inside and, several minutes later, flew back out and sped home. Thoroughly pleased with how the morning was going, I ran up the stairs of 14 Via Castellani, grabbed my camera, gulped down a glass of peach juice, and took a quick glance my pink-tinged visage in the mirror.
Firenze was clearly never meant to be anything but a city for pedestrians. And chariots, I suppose. Whoever tried to make this city mechanized-transportation-friendly did a fantastically poor job. Which becomes especially irritating when I’m trying to bike somewhere and suddenly, out of nowhere, the street on the opposite side of the intersection is sporting a no entry sign. These befuddling intersections are all over the place. One evening I spent fifteen minutes trying to find a route home even though I was only about five blocks away. Since the streets are so narrow here, it’s inadvisable to try and bike against the flow of traffic, although many Florentines do. I, however, have no intention of meeting my death head-on.
Having been here for a little over a month, I have all my regular routes planned out in a way that ensures expediency and efficiency. Unfortunately my daily activities have never taken me to far west Firenze. So I’m on my own, peddling along unpredictable roads, with only a hazy mental image of the route Jacopo showed me on the map back in the photography classroom. I decide to stick to the bike path along the Arno, thinking that would be the most consistent way to go. And yet, several minutes down the road from my apartment, the path suddenly veers off towards the left and over the bridge to Firenze Sud. Then, after finding my way to the point where the bike path restarts, I’m faced with the choice between heading left into town and joining the cars on a freeway of sorts. Naturally I chose to dip and dodge among the cars. I’m totally kidding, Mom; I went into town.
After rather a lot of frustration and rerouting, I finally wound up at the Casine Parco, although only after swallowing my pride and asking several people for directions in broken Italian. Then I had to find the rest of my photography class. On the phone Jacopo vaguely informed me that they were all spread out, taking pictures in “the garden” (for the record, the Casine is just a whole lot of trees; no recognizable garden was to be found).
A few (okay, many) wrong turns later, I found myself on a path akin to that which had been described to me on the cellular. I decided not to wait until I bumped into one of my fellow photographers and whipped out my camera and started snapping photos right away. Several hundred meters of walking and 36 frames later, my film was still advancing. There was no film inside. The vivid memory of loading my camera a couple days beforehand was probably just a replay of one of the many other times I’ve done so over the past four years.
Could this day get any worse? Thankfully, that was the last of the really great errors made on my part. With only about an hour or so left, I took one and a half rolls of film in the Casine (I am, if anything, an expeditious photographer) including some really excellent ones of a closed carnival.
And now the hour is late, and since I have photography at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, I believe it is time andare a letto (to go to bed). In case you were wondering, yes, I do have an Italian quiz tomorrow.
So yesterday I went to the supermarket, and I had the misfortune of standing in line in front of two ugly Americans. First off, the lines in Italian supermarkets like Standa and Conad are usually horrendous. Especially, it would seem, at 5:30 in the evening. At the most, only four lanes will be open. Since the customers have to both bag and pay for their food, preferably at the same time, that slows the process down even more. And we New Yorkers gripe about the three-person lines at Fairway.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is I had to stand there for a long time listening to their inane chatter and generally ignorant comments.
First the mother gets a phone call. To paint the picture, she’s your average overweight, Middle-American-looking woman—mousey brown, closely cropped hair, small gold-rimmed glasses, humdrum wardrobe. She picks up the phone and starts yammering away about where she and her daughter, who is with her, have visited so far—naturally, the Duomo, Galleria dell’Accademia, etc.—whether they were meeting these people or not tomorrow morning, etc. etc. all in an extremely loud and entitled voice. Then she and her daughter start arguing with each other about who’ll be paying for that night’s groceries. And then, “Oh, look it’s those cute Happy Hippo candies. Grandma would love one of them.” After discussing said item for several minutes, the mom gets irritated that she hasn’t been able to reach over an old Italian woman’s head to grab one yet and makes a comment about pushing her aside, hopefully jokingly. And this when they are still about five people from being at the front of the line. “You’ve got plenty of time, lady” was all I wanted to say.
But I didn’t, because I could tell they thought I was Italian! Which was absolutely hilarious. So I decided to keep my mouth shut. When I started packing up my groceries in the plastic bag I’d brought from my apartment, the mom made a comment about how they “bring their own bags here. We should do that next time.” (You have to pay for plastic bags in supermarkets in Italy.) Of course, tons of people could or should be bringing their own bags from home in the United States too… Maybe if the A&P started charging extra, they would…
Actually, ever since I got this newfangled haircut, a lot of people have mistakenly assumed I’m Italian. Also, I had to buy sneakers, and my new shoes are much classier than my ratty, beat-up, paint-covered ones from New Balance. Now when I walk into stores, I’m always greeted in Italian. Sadly, when I open my mouth and try to speak or hesitate and look confused for a bit, they quickly switch to English.
Personally, I believe one of the best feelings in the world is being mistaken for a native. In the spring of junior year I went to Québec with my French class, and myself and two others were wandering around the lower part of the city in the rain. I needed to find a pharmacy to buy contact solution. So I crafted the question in my head before walking into this small art gallery on the corner, and, after I’d asked, the woman answered me in rapid French. I was extremely proud.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night so I decided to get an espresso before the long haul that is video. I was meeting some people at four (class starts at six) to work on the homework—editing some sequences we filmed using the program Media 100, an alternative to Final Cut Pro. I went into one of the many small stores near the school that sell various food items, cigarettes, and coffee. Even after I’d said “ciao” and “espresso” they still spoke to me in Italian! I know those aren’t a full sentence, but it was exciting all the same. The downside was I wanted them to continue to believe I was Italian, so I didn’t ask for milk in my espresso. And since I don’t put sugar in my coffee, I drank a black espresso! Which was an experience in itself. That I’d rather not repeat. I mean, I might as well just inject caffeine in my veins like heroin.
Aside from my hairstyle and footwear, the more significant changes in my routine I’ve noticed are the various Italian mannerisms I adopt up as a means of assimilating into the local culture—drinking espresso instead of lattes, riding a bicycle through throngs of tourists, bringing my own bags to the supermarket, always making sure I’m impeccably dressed.
* * *
What I most love about Manhattan are the small details—break-dancers near Central Park, the man who plays the musical saw in the Times Square subway station, this guy named Lloyd Butler I met with Monica who explained the significance of the number combinations on the billboard in Union Square. Most cities lack that distinct brand of individuality—which is why Manhattan just happens to be one of my favorite places in the world.
But I’ve been witness to moments akin to these in Firenze. Tonight when I was walking home from video at nine p.m., I took my usual route in which I cut through the Piazza della Signoria. In the area behind a row of statues that includes copies of the “Rape of the Sabine Women” and “Jules and Holofernes” the shadow of a man was projected onto a wall. At first sight, he looked like he was fooling around and pretending to be a swordsman. Once I’d gotten close enough to see the actual man, I realized he was a painter doing a portrait of a woman in front of a large spotlight and brandishing his brush energetically.
Earlier in the day at an hour when the Piazza is overrun by tourists, I noticed a blonde woman taking a photo of a similarly blonde man pointing up into the sky. I assume they had set up some visual scenario involving the replica of Michelangelo’s David in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, which was immediately behind him. Manhattanites think they are familiar with the worst sort of pigeon; these people have clearly never been to Florence. Pigeons here are fearless; they have a Hitchcock’s “The Birds” quality. One of these pigeons decided to fly about three inches over the top of the man’s finger while his photo was being taken.
Speaking of Michelangelo’s David—yesterday morning when I was walking to Italian class, I noticed a set of small David figurines in the window of a store on the Via del Calzaiuoli. (Four vowels in a row! Holy mother of God! I didn’t think a word like that existed.) The visage of the David is everywhere, so the mere presence of copies of the statue in a store window is nothing to write home about. However, these figurines were enlarged versions¬—what David would look like if he were fat. I was trying to figure out why anyone would possibly want to buy or sell that sort of item, and I finally decided they’re meant to make insecure men feel better about themselves in comparison to the perfection that is Michelangelo’s David. Now Dario, my sculpture teacher, does not envy the David’s physique, rather he feels inept when he remembers Michelangelo sculpted said masterpiece at the age of fifteen. [EDIT: He was actually 26 when he sculpted the David.]
Now, speaking of Michelangelo, on Monday afternoon my sculpture class went on a field trip to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, which houses the corner in which scholars believe the David was conceived. But that’s not what I want to write about.
At the top of the stairs to the second floor is a small circular room in which La Pietà di Michelangelo is situated inside a metal barrier. For those unfamiliar with this particular statue (not the famous one in Vatican City), it depicts Mary Magdalene, either Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimethea, and a third unfinished female figure holding up the body of Christ. Dario told us that Michelangelo tried to destroy the statue for religious reasons I cannot recall, so other sculptors finished and restored it in his place.
I love art. Obviously, or I wouldn’t be studying studio art in Firenze. But I’ve never seen a piece of art that stops me in my tracks and makes me feel a tidal wave of different emotions all at once. A sort of artistic transcendental moment, one might say. I am hugely fond of Monet, Degas, Cezanne, and various other impressionist painters, but I’ve only ever been able to appreciate their work; I’ve never been struck dumb by it.
The Pietà is different. Immediately after I first laid eyes on limp and bedraggled body of Christ, I felt I shouldn’t even speak in the presence of such a work of art. There was a woman sitting on a bench in the room. I’d had a feeling that she had been in front of the Pietà for quite some time and that she had no intention of leaving anytime soon. If I hadn’t had two hours left of class, I would have plopped down right next to her and joined in on the revelry.
Anyone who knows me well enough could tell you I have little regard for organized religion. In spite of all that, the story of Jesus has always moved me. When I hear or read it, I become intensely and painfully aware of his suffering. The sight of Jesus pinned to a cross has never stirred anything inside me. The image has become so common and is used inappropriately so often it has become cliché. Instead I found the image of Christ’s body lying limp in the arms of his followers to be much more powerful and to stir many of the same emotions as his disturbing story of betrayal and sacrifice.
So my first week of classes is over! I now have three whole days to do whatever I want.
I’ve flipped my schedule a bit, so now I’m taking video, sculpture, photography, and Italian. I wasn’t given permission to take intermediate drawing, and, since I really wasn’t fond of the beginning drawing teacher, I decided to drop that course. I had to eliminate at least one class or else I’d spend the next three and a half months running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Or some other equally unpleasant image.
* * *
When determining which class would be sleeping with the fishes, sculpture was the only class I absolutely knew I wanted to continue with. For one, the class is wonderfully small, which, after attending Fieldston for the majority of my life, I know is key to a great learning experience.
On Wednesday we took a field trip to an old haunt of Michelangelo’s at 70 Via Ghibellina, a street which happens to have a delightfully confusing numbering system. These small museums are part of what I really love about Italy—what looks like a normal building in Firenze (my photography teacher told us not to call it Florence; he believes you can’t translate names) will wind up being a sanctuary for beautiful old sculptures and art. And because art is so well preserved and in such abundance here, the city doesn’t feel the need to set these places aside as “culture”. Culture isn’t something separate from the everyday. Italians don’t have to go to the Metropolitan to experience the extraordinary because they live the Metropolitan.
Upon our return to the SACI main building, we spent the last two hours continuing work on our first project. All of us had to make a lovely flat slab of clay (as I mentioned in my last entry) upon which we will construct a drawing by Degas, a detail from an Egyptian pot, an Escher-esque scene, etc. Due to my minor obsession with all things French, naturally I chose to make a three-dimensional version of a Degas. After chicken scratching an outline on my slab, I began to pile and shape small amounts of clay to build my dancer. So far everything is going really well (knock on wood), and I’m quite proud of my work. If I get the chance, I’ll take a photo and post it. Of course, I’ve already said I would post multiple pictures that have yet even to be transferred onto my computer, so don’t take my word for it.
* * *
My photography teacher, Jacopo, is easily one of the most interesting people I’ve met in Italy, if not ever. He has such interesting views on local culture, lifestyles, and politics. He can talk for an hour about something totally unrelated to photography, and we’ll listen the entire time, completely spellbound. To paint a picture of his storytelling ability—I’ve tried to type several of them here, but since I can’t even come close to emulating his diction, I’ve decided not to do them injustice by inflicting my own phrasing. Besides, you need to hear his quiet but commanding voice to get the full effect. He’s not unlike Mr. Reyes in that way.
Our first photo assignment, due Tuesday, is to expose one 36-shot roll of black & white film. Jacopo wrote down seven numbers on slips of paper and had us select one out of a box. The number we chose was the bus we’d ride to the last stop, all the while taking photos of fellow passengers, of the view from the window, and of our eventual destination. Firenze has about 40 bus lines. The line I hoped to get was #25, which ends at the cemetery just outside the city. Instead I drew #14. All Jacopo said was that it would take me south.
* * *
Bruno Spinazzola is the real deal. He even gave us all a snazzy business card with the name of his production company on it. He’s Franco-Italian and speaks in an even more stereotypical foreigner-trying-to-speak-English way than Dario. And there’s a girl in video named Silvi, who speaks roughly six languages fluently (I asked her to name them recently, let me see if I can remember them all—Albanian, English, Portuguese, Italian, French, and possibly Spanish, maybe Greek), and who has absolutely no inhibitions about correcting Bruno’s English. Which becomes even funnier when she corrects him and he doesn’t realize she’s correcting him. As you can see, these conversations often occur in a roundabout fashion.
I was skeptical about sticking with video—I’m not really a film person like my sister Woo is, so endless shoots and reshoots generally bore me—but ultimately the eccentricities of the other students in the class and the personality of the teacher swayed me to choose it over drawing. It’s like picking a college—a lot of people ask which school is “better for your major” (again, whatever that means, since so many of those judgments, like grades, are terribly arbitrary). I generally prefer drawing, but if I’m going to spend three months taking a course with either a genuinely interesting teacher or a didactic, uninspiring one, I’ll choose the former any day.
The first homework assignment was to film a sequence. That was due Thursday, but thanks to my previously whirlwind schedule, I’ve been given an extension until the next class on Tuesday. (By the way, if anyone has any ideas for me, I’d be happy to hear them.) While I paddled my boat against the current of time, the rest of my class hopped into a proverbial motorboat and is speeding along without me. (And that, thank you very much, was my horrific attempt to reference one of the greatest passages in all of literature—the last few paragraphs of The Great Gatsby.) And by that, I mean, I have more than one assignment due Tuesday. Why didn’t I just put it like that before?
Our second task is to film and insert more shots into our sequences. Together as a class, we nominated three of the more promising ones to flesh out. The group I’m in is working on a scene in which a stationary camera records a girl’s feet running around getting ready to go out, and while she flies out of the door, she knocks the wonderfully heavy Anna Karenina onto the floor. Which is an oh so subtle way of implying that our ballet-shoe-wearing protagonist is cheating on her husband. By means of augmentation, we filmed the husband coming home and discovering his wife’s infidelity by watching the tape in the camera he planted by their bedroom door.
Since I have little to nothing to offer my group by way of experience, I decided to come up with as many Anna K references as possible to pepper our extended sequence with. My two best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) suggestions were turned down. First I suggested we name the wife Kitty; one of the other group members who hadn’t read the novel thought I was just being hilarious. Sadly, I was not. Then I suggested we have the husband try and fail to kill himself with a homemade black-painted toilet paper gun (an art project which I only came up with after the director asked where we’d get a fake gun from). That idea, surprisingly enough!, was also vetoed. However, my suggestion that the email the husband discovers on the computer say that the two clandestine lovers should meet at the train station was approved. So I figure if we add credits, mine should say “Train Station enthusiast” or “Consultant on all things Anna Karenina”.
Well, since there are actually few endeavors I prefer to writing, and my cell phone died while I was talking to my mum, I decided to eke out another entry. Besides, this was my first day of classes, so I’ve got plenty to talk about.
I woke up super early this morning (and by super early, I mean 7:30) and had mozzarella, olive oil and vinegar on bread. Not orthodox, that’s for sure, but certainly better than anything else I could have eaten.
Since we didn’t have class until noon, my roommate and I finally went on the cleaning supplies run because we’re just cool like that. We went to Conad, the Fairway of Florence, and spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out what we needed and what all the products even were. When you don’t know the language, even identifying toilet bowl cleaner can be difficult. We eventually went with the green bottle with the toilet bowl on it. My roommate also bought air freshener and sprayed it all around the apartment when we got back. Which made me gag a little.
My noon class was Italian. Our teacher’s name is Marta Martini. Which is one of the best names I’ve ever heard. That and Coco Crisp, the guy on the Red Sox. We went over the extreme basics—greetings (Buon Giorno! Buona Sera!), pronouns, and the verb avere, “to have”. We’re supposed to memorize all that for tomorrow’s class, but, honestly, I’d rather not. After all, there is a very important reason I’m taking four studio art classes. Little to no homework.
Then I got lost trying to find my way back to the main building, for a class I should have been at five minutes before I was let out of Italian. So I was about 20 minutes late for beginning sculpture. The teacher’s name is Dario, and he’s a pretty cool guy. He’s small, looks at the ground a lot when he talks, and speaks English in that stereotypical foreigner way.
After Dario treated us to a long spiel, he took us to the San Lorenzo church to look at some Donatello works. While we were walking across the San Lorenzo Piazza, I kept thinking about the part in A Room with a View when Lucy witnesses a murder. I wonder if can figure out where that scene took place. Well, according to someone online (so, clearly a reliable source), the square was the Piazza Signoria. Which is about three blocks from my apartment. Score!
Back to the field trip—it goes without saying that the church was amazing, but I might as well say so anyway. The church was amazing. Dario told us how, in Florence, most architecture is in various hues of grey, whereas in Venice, everything is bright and cheerful. Having witnessed both, I’m surprised to say that I prefer the understated beauty of Florentine carvings. I feel there’s more profundity in making something beautiful out of something that would otherwise be drab.
In one side-chamber of the church, we stared up at some of Donatello’s carvings that had been partially painted. Dario told us that Donatello had a disagreement with the painter (whose name I have unfortunately forgotten—actually, I don’t think I ever heard it; Dario mostly whispered in the church) because he thought the color messed up the lines of his carvings. Apparently the two never spoke again.
On our return to the sculpture classroom—which is on the edge of the garden in the main SACI building—we started work on the first of two big projects. The seven of us spent roughly an hour and a half pounding out large flat slabs of clay. It was fantastic. I often forget how much I love those basic elements of art. Working with one’s hands is really one of the most vital parts of life that we, as a technologically advancing species, have really lost touch with.
When sculpture was over, I went upstairs for beginning drawing. Because I’ve never taken a “college level” drawing course, I was told I couldn’t enroll in intermediate. I had resigned myself to the beginning level because I figured drawing is drawing, one can make it as hard or as easy as one wants. And then I looked over the syllabus. So currently I am trying to skirt that “college level” roadblock.
Now that I’ve successfully talked about my drawing prowess in a conceited way, I believe it is time to cut this entry short. It’s getting late, and I’m really tired. As per usual.
