Sunday Nov 22, 09

Sunday November 22nd.

Highlight of the week was our night walk along the Tiber Thursday evening. LA artist Doug Aiken’s install was spectacular in its way but raised issues of: what did it mean? A kind of superficial, ad-like portrayal of Ed Ruscha as arch-typical white Western guy wandering the desert landscape dotted with neon and at one point walking on white marble steps of the EUR here in Europe (the fascist city built by Mussolini). The music was overpowering, uncredited (of course) and seemed a mélange of sounds, at one point breaking into a polka? There were rectangles cut through with fancy glass so that the interior image was smooth(er). I thought initially it was to imitate a blank billboard that appeared in one of the more interesting images, but no, I believe it was to let the light and image out to the audiences up on the bridge above and on the shores—so they could see something: a glowing sharp edged light.

So— spectacular but meaningless, or if meaning-full, with a meaning that simply put a poignant sentimentality onto the West (dying) and heroic white men (rich famous and indifferent—no expression as befits the western hero?).
I guess I could be pleased he chose to focus on an artist but somehow—all the black men, or perhaps only one, shot from different angles? were street musicians! Yikes.

Particularly compelling issue to me since I am to do an install here and have not settled on what….but knowing I want meaning and spectacle. I want to make my audience conscious, not merely ‘feed’ their desire for spectacle, and to relate definitively to Rome itself. Thinking of the gladiators and the way the Empire utilized spectacle to keep the masses in place. Of course this is the origin of popular movies too: once considered only working class entertainments, movies were intended to keep the workers ‘happy.’ Or “Happy happy dogs” as the poet Bruce Andrews would say.

The rest of the trip more startling as we came up to a 2000 year old bridge still in use and one of the architects here Kiel Moe described how it was built with travertine (the white stone) that was stronger than the black (pepe-tine? Something with pepper in it as that is what it looks like indeed. Pepe=pepper in Italian). He talked about the open arches in the middle to let the waters run through when they flood and floods were/are common in Rome. Last fall, the water came up to within a couple of feet of the arches of the bridge which would be a good 15-20 feet higher than last night! We walked on the island in the middle—isola—the only island in the Tiber and saw how the island is built up like a ship. Kiel had the poetic comment that they conceived the island as moving (a ship) within the river, when it is the river which is moving and the boat=island still. There was also a carved caduceus, serpent around a sword in the 2000 year old stones, symbolizing how the island has been a hospital for these years. The island was suitable because it served as a natural quarantine for plagues et al. Then onto the “broken bridge”, as old as the other but ruined. It lasted 1500 years (only); a flood destroyed it. Kiel explained why it went and not the other: in part, it is situated where the island ends and the two sections of the river come together. Since the river is narrower there, it runs faster (higher too I presume) and the bridge itself was made of smaller pieces, thus weaker. Now I want to see how the bridge is built: Kiel said it is originally wood and then stone put on and the wood removed. Fascinating and a bit inconceivable when you are standing under this Piranesi structure.

Friday the political returned with Rachel Donadio, Italian correspondent from the NY Times visiting us and giving an informal talk on Berlusconi and the Papacy. I enjoyed the informality though others wanted more startling news. For me the interest was the book—literally a large quarter inch thick magazine (like a design magazine a bit) —that B. sent out to EVERY Italian before his first election. It’s a gigantic advertisement: B with family, son, workers, soccer teams et al. A lot like Bloomberg is what many of us New Yorkers were thinking! Such is the power of money. The questions at end included a Hungarian woman speaking of this time as post-ideology which has become imag-ology (Kundera coined word) which of course I agree with being completely conscious of meaning and image, and how much this is unconscious in the public mind. Again why the Aiken and much video art is disturbing to me: what is it really saying to its audiences? And why are audiences so taken with spectacle that they become passive automatons? Or at least unquestioning uncritical minds? The question of freedom vs pleasure, or really, how is pleasure defined: as soporific sleep? Or conscious thinking? We need a Karl Krauss to analyze public structure and reaction, in Italia the USA art world.

Wed night another kind of politics with Edmund White reading from his latest CITY BOY. A quick glance told me this was a gossip book, each chapter another person. And indeed he read the chapter on Sontag. I was interested, he was witty, skewering her at every point. By the end he spoke of his own “impulse towards treachery” and that seemed to sum up his ethics nicely. He mentioned Robert Gluck for all you writers reading this and told me later I should tell Robert he mentioned him! So much for fame in the city of light.

On this end, shot the rowboat scenes with Mary and Percy Shelley in the pond at the Villa Borghese—beautiful, elegant autumnal colors and motions, and went back yesterday to get the sound for my Puchinella show. But we came a bit later (he had said he started at one but it was noon!) and then somewhere on the way back it seemed I lost my wallet with cards and id, not much money and it has not shown up yet. Wish for me all you non-anonymous readers that someone has found it and will return!

And indeed since I could not post till this morning, a gardener found it this morning! Our wishes are granted.

And
an amazing night of contemporary music from 4pm to 11pm at the Villa Aurelia this weekend; a great Morricone MULTIPLY in which 12 or more musicians were scattered throughout the first two floors, in hallways, underwindows—haunting and wonderful. Another great complicated piece with voice by a Coen family: father violinist, son clarinetist, mother the poet and much later at 9pm our Fellow Don Byron improved on his clarinet, singing the last verse of a popular blues tune. Glory and play. Magnifico.

un abbraccio
Abby

November 17th Rome.

Tuesday nite November 17th.

Russell gave his talk tonight. Very fine letter and book designer: funny and classic in his way.

Tomorrow we go to Villa Borghese to film at the pond with the Shelleys. The sunny mild weather has held (some people are still wearing sandals...) and we will be on the water. Last weekend on Saturday the 14th we shot at the carousel by the Castel San Angelo. Very beautiful. Unfortunately (purtroppo) the photos I’ve included were taken by an intern and she didn’t switch from electric light (!) so they are bluer than the real.

The other fotos are from today when I went and got fingerprinted (!) at the police station for my permesso de giorno, i.e. my visa to stay the year at the Academy. Jason, another fellow was at the same time so we walked out with ‘black hands’ (from the ink prints) and had a coffee and decided to visit a local church. The statue is a late Bernini and in the back was a “secret” room, a "camera" in Italian which I now understand since my bedroom has become a kind of clock with the light moving through it, across walls, armoir, now back wall, above the bed, circling. Our guide didn’t know how to operate the machinery of the secret doors so we saw some fine medieval paintings of St. Francis who presumably slept there waiting for the pope to give him his permesso! Ahhh the round.

Now backwards for all you followers (please do comment; it lets me know who all is reading this)

Thursday night November 12th
Before the dire Friday the 13th which turns out to be lucky ( I am sure) this has been a week of hard work on my China film: new title: RIDING THE TIGER: Letters from Capitalist China incorporating new recording Monday morning from my collaborator Danica M. in NYC via web—aiff (sound files to you) via usendit. Lovely and it works! Happiness. Then hours of cutting and pasting and then Wednesday spending most of the day rendering…so that I could play pool after dinner and watch (even) the first show of Mad Men…while my computer grinds away. Felt bad that I missed Maxxi invite Tuesday night, the new architecture marvel by the Iranian that opened with a dance performance by Sasha Waltz, (another great name) a German Fellow at their academy. Ahhh even gave up a walk this morning to Syrian vault in nearby Via Dandolo, a curvy S of a road right round us. But got a version of the film to send to Berlin. So cross your fingers for me. It needs more work but good to get this far.

I did take a break and walk down Dandolo to pool which I am to join—Friday I hope and swim regularly 2x a week say for the next 8 months. It’s down a wonderful flock of stairs. This neighborhood percolates with stairs coming and going in all directions and it makes the trip that otherwise would be 45 minutes only 25 min. door to door, and far more fun. I had to have a doctor examine me but we practiced our mutual broken languages. His English better than my Italian (but of course) and I was declared healthy with 120 over 70 blood pressure— lower than in New York I believe.

But sadly folks no fotos for this week’s report. Unless maybe I put in fotos of my new stairs in Nova Scotia that just got rebuilt and re-sanded to match the 150 year old ones? In a city of 2000+ year old bronze green doors, 150 years seems very young indeed. It’s amazing the relativity of time and also how impressive the empire was— its shared knowledge and civic reach.

We continue to eat well, crepes tonight with cherries and amazing lunches and many interns coming and going . I am beginning to think of the installation I am to do in the basement in March. How to make it match the marvel of the space, with its arched skylights circling the cortile, its sound potential and Rome itself circling in our brains. An old aqueduct runs under the floor—could it be incorporated? Must think and muse deeply here. The space and perhaps films previously shot in Rome will determine what to do.

Reading Holmes from FOOTSTEPS: his: “falling upwards into someone’s arms.”
Or on an adder: “It was small and handsomely zigged, glossy black on soft beige, and moved aside with perfect diginity.” On love and this is Robert Louis Stevenson whom Holmes is following (in his footsteps) a backpack trip through France:

“How the world gives and takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again into distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet which makes the world a garden; and ‘hope, which comes to all’, outwears the accidents of life…”

lovely lovely: RLS again to a friend: “I want—I want…I want to be happy. I want the moon or the sun or something. I want the object of my affections badly anyway and a big forest: fine breathing sweating sunny walks and the trees crying aloud in the summer wind and a camp under the stars.”

On that:
un abbraccio e buona notte.
A

later that same Sunday November 8th, 3pm my time (no idea how the blog names the time of my uploads—perhaps google California time? Since they are approximately 9 hours off….):
The day has been melodramatic: sun rain then a brief rainbow, now torrents of rain, lovely sound as if we are under a waterfall on a summer day, about to dive in. Exciting rain, trembling rain, rain of details and promises. Here you hear it as if thousands of years of ears have heard it over years. —Okay that was awkward but you get the idea.

I have taken out my video camera at least twice today, as insecure as the weather (whether) trying to catch the last golden leaves before the rains destroy them. Have I missed this time?

Fierce and powerful and I am told there was a storm last night. I can’t remember if I heard it since there have been a number of thundering storms in the early mornings. Now a plopping sound; the storm passed in 4 minutes. My trusty heater purrs. I bought a large electric one mid week last for the hours the heat is NOT on—presumably the city of Rome allows only a certain amount of total hours—[this is not New England nor Minnesota!]—thus, from 11:30am to 6pm and after 10pm there is no heat.
Toasty though with heater at feet and sun burning through again even as I watch grey clouds roll in in my heroic arched windows. What did the painters do? Skylights for the brightness of diffuse light? Likely.

sun November 8th 2009

Sun Nov 8th

The Indian films Thursday night convinced me once again that form is politic. A “TV style” frames reality in a particular way that governs, freezes, your response. A Dutch artist Roma Pas (great name) at the Academy said to me she doesn’t believe art is political. It strikes me (again) how small a definition of the political we have–our very denial a kind of politic and definitely an ideology—i.e. that art has no public relevance, that politics is government, that art is private space. So many assumptions here whereas it seems to me art is about the bringing of life to the overlooked, restoring energy and attention to all parts of existence, making it come alive.

I read in a wonderful book that Catherine Payling director of the Keats-Shelley house loans me: “while the names of the dead are carved on gravestones and gradually wear away, the names of loved ones are also carved in living materials and slowly bite deeper into our lives.” It is Richard Holmes talking about Nerval in FOOTSTEPS, his memoir of writing biographies of writers. Wonderful and especially relevant to me when he discusses Mary Wollstonecraft who experienced Paris during the Revolution and the Terror. It was there she has her first lover and gives birth—wonderful detail and poignant sleuthing on Holmes’ part. My characters become not only richer and denser to me, but their lives begin to entwine with mine, their obsessions and mysteries reaching into hauntings, below fallen leaves, into the bark—

It is fall now, the rains have come shot with sun. Many mornings I find my familiar sun-shade staccato on the wall above me, and then it disappears into the day’s clouds. Saturday the sun is strong, full, present. We shoot at the carousel opposite Castel. S Angelo in the morning. It is glorious: the carousel an early 19th c. copy, gilded with half-clothed nymphs on painted ceilings, horses going up and down, spinning tea cups for lovers and hopefully hid from view: cars! Nick (who plays Shelley) brought his daughter who will be (perhaps) a stand-in for William or “Will-mouse”, the son of Shelley. I called to “Mary” with no response since I was addressing Eileen who plays Mary S–so, the real and the hauntings entwine in the present—as well.

On the way back we pass a Punch and Judy show that I hope to film upcoming. One of the wonders of this project is whatever delights I see, I can record. Re –cord from the heart, a re-reading of heart. At its most satisfying that is what the camera can do—re –member, re-embody if not replace nor replant. All these repetitions in language and in my films. The students last Tuesday grew either confused by the fact that things repeat with different conjunctions or delighted in it. Of course I mean both, or rather find pleasure in the messes, in the messy, in the conjunctions, ever shifting, shifty shafts of emotional and physical embodiments that change and swirl and resonate. How to be calm midst instability, or rather how to embody instability to its fullest ration? Complications and ambiguities, intricacies---the mess. The way chance and fortuity provoke happy conclusions.

On that—I too conclude for today.

wed November 5th, 2009-Halloween

Wed November 5th:

Saturday was Halloween and I include photos of the magnificent and ridiculous costumes we all wore. The march around the cortile was marvelous—mostly the hysteria of the sound of the children. Three of us went as paintings: john the Baptist (Stefano), Caravaggio’s Bacchus (Elena) and Domenichino’s Sibilla (yours truly). The other fantastic ones included our friend Barry the architect as an anarchist (?), parrot heads by Anna, and various witches and ghosts. We cooked at night together as the next evening we were off to lo Scarpone again as guests of Heather (lo scarpone was not as good that evening to our mild sorrow; the night was fine). I have made a new friend with Rosie, an aspiring and definitely–to-be art curator completing her doctorate.

At lunch this weekend I watch sparrows who have made grand groupings of their fellows circling in the wind on the Rome horizon. They are a forbidding form resembling oncoming locusts but at the same time, miraculous fast moving shivering clouds—an impermanent unexpected installation. I wished I had my camera but couldn’t move. Sometimes it seems too much—to film all this beauty. You want to breathe and let it pass by, through you, purely. But that word has its own problematic. All is impure. Unlegislated. So I let it go by and remember here.

Monday night we make off in the rain—that has begun the fall season —to go to the German Academy for Antonioni’s L’Eclisse. A taxi, then a walk up a line of Mediterranean junipers (?) cedars (?), magnificent entrance to a building completed round same time as ours: 1914, German Jewish industrialist funds for the arts. The Germans have 3 academies, this one for artists—only 8 or 9 in residence. Two other academies house respectively the art historians and the ethnographers. Here in a small room off the entrance the dvd is projected. It is wonderful, touching, a women’s film in a way---Monica Vitti bored by here older communist lover and repulsed by the gorgeous youthful wall street guy (played by a very young and pretty alain delon). Monica Vitti is amazing and the walking woman theme here playful: running after a lost poodle, stopping to hear the metal poles of the sport palace make music in the night winds. Chilling, childish, touching. The bourse (money market) scenes modeled after fra angelica’s war paintings—magnificent contrapuntal movement of shapes and faces and sound. References to neo-colonialism throughout: thrilling and jarring play by three women—without men—going wild, playing at being negro. Elegant, painful. We all sat there thinking of loves that could not be. The men as well as the women, the gay as well as the straight. Antonioni’s referencing of racism is pointed and subtle, his closure an avant movie, with sound peeled up and off, enlarged and reframed. No action , only emotion. Now there’s a recipe for a movie…..
Filled my nights’ dreams.

Tuesday I do a presentation for Cornell architecture students. Only 6 affiliated and one regular Fellow come along for the morning ride. It is fine. The films look quite good—elegant complicated—draw many questions and compliments. The students though have trouble with them, think they are “too fast”. I think as does Barry—did they never do drugs?
Strange but at same time, the students are open and hopefully I have shocked them from lethargy and habituation. How can films 20 years old still be ahead of their time? How? They are. That is the fact.

Then today the schedule does not stop. I am up early, direct my intern to Kodak and I head out to Keats/Shelley house to meet the director. She is tough honest Brit, allowing me to film there without “kits” and then bring on my characters a second day. She will vouch for me at the cemetery which required 4000E for the shoot! Mind you that’s a quarter of my year’s income this year so it’s a definite no go. We shall see. The place itself has a nice feel, smaller than I thought. The director gets the third floor apt. very very nice and there is really only one floor of the museum. It will work though to film the dust motes, have my characters walk through it. It is not authentic from the period anymore, however. After Keat’s death there, the entire furnishings needed to be destroyed by Italian law. Which is not such a bad thing as consumption is infectious—even if they did not know that then.

Speaking of which we will all have flu shots soon. I never do this back home but here I will. There is so much illness being passed back and forth forth and back.

We have begun once again our Italian lessons this week and plan a lunch table where we only speak in Italiano. It is so wonderful to try, to catch the lilt, speed, to learn they have a word specifically for “shopping for food”—fare spesa—different from shopping for anything else. And in the book we use here there are cultural pages every so often, which our teachers completely ignore but one popped out at me yesterday as I was studying—“the importance of wine in Italian culture” !! absolutely.

Last weekend, drinks after dinner at Carmela’s the director, in her fantastic craft style house with tile patterned floors and futurist wood planks across the thresholds. Beautiful and simple with a great garden!

Tomorrow the Asian festival and party after at one of the directors’ house. I am excited to see more film. It was very inspiring the Antonioni. We shall see if same can be said about contemporary Indian films for the morrow.

Buona notte
un abbraccio
a mis amici
Abby

Thursday October 28th—Rome

Thursday 28th
We go to the Columbarium near us here on Tuesday morning. It is a crematorium of sorts, a burial ground in Doria Pamphili Park, where many of the Fellows jog. We turn a corner and they check all our passports—this is a state site—and we cross and enter a fenced in yard. Downstairs, steep ones, we see niches for burial urns and ashes. All the decorative plaster has been stolen—lime for fertilizer one of the scholars suggests —and the urns too are missing. What is left are holes---like a bee cage with a few incised epigraphs on marble. The letters are beautiful: fine, sure, handmade. One of the fellows in book design photographs them all over the city. These are especially lovely. Then the prize—we go to a columbarium still in the park but one discovered in 1984. Thus it is intact!

We go down, very similar but the plaster is still up and the tiles on the floor: it is from a collegio—a community of freed greek slaves from 2000 years ago. The paintings are nearly folk art, with images of life—fruit, birds, a mirror, a garden and then a long series of figures –that work around the smallish room 15 ft high perhaps 15x 10 feet long and wide—to tell the story of court and justice done: the defendant is found guilty, his hand is put in fire (the man becomes a lefty). The floor tiles are marvelous, three different designs in a small space, with the threshold marked---un patterned largely, fragmented, looking like modern post world-war 2 paintings. Very full of feeling and delicacy. This in the Pamphili backyard, a grand villa with formal gardens and a fantastic 6x6’ vase (I will include photo) and lovely shy marble woman. Touching, emotional.

Wednesday is another walk, this time to artist studios downtown, the first few in the neighborhood where our lab is (take the 75 to Colosseum and get out). The galleries are small with quite good work: in the first using men’s shirts and cloth to make landscape paintings, heels to make decayed orchids (?); in the second full of pattern and print, strong graphics and a large variety of materials and processes that are held together to excite the room (this man had just shown in NY). Then we go to Gagosian in Rome—other side of town, large white space with Alexander Calder exhibit. The Calders are glorious—delicate and not, mobile and stabile, humorous and very human. There was also a series of drawings that were beautiful—Miro influenced and reminding me of Picasso’s notebooks from Barcelona—starry starry nights. The opening is tonight. They were nice enough to show us the day before; the director quite generous and walking about on 6inch heeled purple suede boots! I remain amazed by Rome’s women and their foot capabilities.

Later this morning I thought about that white space and how cut off from life it was, how unlike Rome it was. The artificiality of the museum and gallery, the division between the real and aesthetics, the sacral in art. Feeling uncomfortable with these conclusions. Remembering my 10 year old self, un-theorized, sensing that sculpture was more in life than painting sitting in frames on walls. Of course, I love painting but that child perception was not wrong. It is still an issue. How are things seen? How are they sold?

Today, third walk in a week. Almost too much but always interesting. This time down to the papal palace along the via garibaldi. I had just been down this way but without knowing things that made it so much richer. Richard, one of the scholars (and our Byron) led the talk with many interesting facts about our locale, both inside and outside the gates---how this was the site of the French incursion and finally defeat of Garibaldi in 1849. Seeing the arch and the way the path into the pamphili park is a direct route—on which the French army made its way. Learning that our Galileo building was taller and the key building that could see over the wall. Once the French breached its walls, the fight was lost for the Italian army. Walking down the via, the busts are of Garibaldi’s officers and men and were paid for by the families of the revolutionary warriors. Then finally to Anita Garibaldi statue created by the fascists in the 20th c.: she is riding sidesaddle with a pistol raised and a baby at her breast! The style is l9th c. and purposefully; the emotions are meant to raise fascist hopes.

On to St. Peters, not inside but checking out the walls and an early hospital—one for 500 years and then Bernini’s columns---how they form an irregular ellipse to correct the weirdness of st. peter’s façade---built as popes' tore down each others' prior work. On up another set of newly discovered stairs to a well-earned lunch.

This weekend many celebrations: drinks after Friday dinner to celebrate one of the academy’s funders—nice (very wealthy) guy from Cambridge; Saturday Halloween with kids and our adult party—what will I be? And Sunday a dinner at Lo Scarpone. Yes.

In between —work and more work. I must finish the China film! Get more film from Kodak, Italy and present films to Cornell architecture students on Tuesday. buona notte

October 26th, 2009

Monday October 26th

I believe I left off with Thursday’s concert and my illness. Things looked up from then on.

Saturday I had lunch with the Coen Brothers and Frances McDormand. They were here for the Rome film festival and their distributor Focus Features knows the academy's cook Mona —ahhh the way to everything must be through food (at least in Rome). So there they were and Marty so nicely and unexpectedly invited me to sit at the table.

I am telling Ethan about the film I am shooting with my 20 year old Beaulieu and he keeps asking are the Fellows actors? Frances is getting in baby time, picking up the gorgeous 4 month old Caroline who starred in my film as MS’s new daughter while Joel talks about his mother being a professor at u of Minnesota in art history and his dad at the same university in economics. I comment that the two sons followed in a way; he demurred, saying— in such a different field. True enough. For the record their mom joined a feminist class action suit in the 70s, won and spent her winnings redecorating the living room! We had a laugh about that. They live and work pre and post production out of NYC and Joel commented that Rome of all of European cities feels the most NY to him.

To me, Rome also feels like San Francisco with the hills and secret staircases I keep discovering. I traveled up and down on some of them Friday when I had to go to a notary. The office was Kafkaesque—notaries here are like lawyers —with bad art on the wall, on his desk a bronze statue of a young girl (14?) jumping rope, her sheer (bronze) top with nipples and budding breasts quite prominent. The guy himself a politely dressed bureaucrat, he sees me for a minute and then the secretary comes in and out and charges 50 euro (that’s $75 us dollars for a signature and pressure seal!) They wanted to see my passport too. So much for Italian bureaucracy. I got off easy. Next week I go to be fingerprinted for my permesso di soggiorno—permission to stay the year. I’m looking forward to seeing the inside of the police station.

Sat night I have my first motorino ride ! with my friend Lauren Sunstein who gives me wine and dinner at her house. Turns out her mom wrote a book on Mary Wollstonecraft and another on Mary Shelley. Am reading the first while LS tries to get the other back from a friend. A fun night in a Roman apartment. Looking forward to going to the movies with L and attending one of her parties, and shocked again at the charmed interrelations that keep happening here.

Sunday was quiet, yoga, walk to the bio market on via giula, naps to cure my cold and great communal cooking in the evening. I did al dente green beans with a light tomato sauce (fresh of course).

And today see/saw the 11 rolls we shot last week: they are gorgeous. I am going to have to edit them some before moving on to more large scale shooting. They are so gorgeous I fear them: how to interrupt the gorgeousness? Sound will be part of it? And the text…..Its a nice challenge.

Even as we plan a trip to Jerusalem, Cairo and the pyramids for February when its cold and rainy here. I am pinching myself again. 71F in the day all week here.Wish you were here?
which leads to: Hey folks--is anybody reading this? please comment if you are. for now
Baci,
Abby

Wed October 21
First day of shoot without MB. Went really well. Shot at Martin’s, first days of film’s characters when Shelley shows up and chats with William Godwin. We are lucky and the SUN appears! after many days of cold cold freddo cold! People here previously say this is as cold as it gets, but I don’t quite believe them. Even so, the government refuses to allow people to put on heat until November 1st so my studio—40 feet high—has been colder than outside. I need space heaters, maybe two. Many people are getting ill. Not I yet, but I am fighting with garlic and water and ginger and honey.

Some other (more) lovely coincidences: met up with friend from 20 years ago at Monday music concert at the Villa Aurelia, a splendid chandeliered room with 5/6 musicians playing modern music from Feldman and Glass through contemporary Italian composers—even one woman—Irma Ravinale. Who is she? Must look her up. I liked it. Too crowded but meeting my friend was fortuitous—my question: are you an American? She lives in Trastevere nearby, has for 15 years and we are headed for an English movie on Friday night. It will be a large change after the dearth of movie-going in face of last month’s constant movie-making.

Yesterday we visited the gallery at the Villa Borghese. You need an appointment. It was fantastic: a glorious bedecked villa (winding turret-like staircase like the villa Aurelia—no elevators in these ‘country homes’), filled with Caravaggio and Bacon show, plus their ‘regular’ Raphaels and Bernini. Truly glorious—the Caravaggios are dark darkest Vermeers—his concern with light, his ability to mold it, paint cloth as white streak, his humanity in gesture flesh emotion unparalleled. I see in my mind’s eye Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes, the surprise in her mouth, the strength of her arm, a honeyed light against the dark; the Magdalane so beautiful and wistful, solitary with a great swath of canvas above in two colors: ochre/grey ; the whited Jesus taken down from the cross in Caravaggio’s last months—so strange it seemed the painting had been too cleaned, but no the Raphael of the same subject matter (in another room)—layered with a mob of folks in green and red and black also surround a whited Christ figure, blood drained. Magnificent!

Too the Bernini-we have been seeing them all over Rome but here you get the chronology, the sweep of his ambition and precociousness. Elena the young art historian was with us and gave us the backstory and pointers. Here an awkward Shepard with sheep from when B was still a teenager. Then an Aeneas fleeing Troy—more large scale, still Hellenistic: a figure carrying another. Still mannerist. Then, 2 years later he does the Rape of Persephone and it is glorious sculpture. In marble, he shows the flesh bending underneath the hand; he shows the fold in the drapery where the fabric was folded, as if just bought— before it is washed —how fabric retains the fold from being on the shelf! It is intense and impossible. You do not believe it is marble. You want to touch it and I am not even talking about the balance and amazement of the figures in action. Three years later he does Apollo and Daphne, where Dapne is becoming a laurel tree. Bernini here lets the process show—where the toes are clinging to the tree becoming simply stone. He takes us from rough marble through bark through flesh through flesh returning to roots (of marble). Then a David where marble is made into a rope and here the face, not of the gods, is human, determined modern. Inexpressible the power of these works. The shock and skill and passion. Bernini is showing off but his talent is nearly inhuman; Caravaggio on the other hand is all human; the Raphael ideal. Such a stretch of elegant immense and deep and true feelings. One is dazzled walking above the ground

Then as we walk out Queen Noor is visiting (wife of Hussein, Jordan’s king). Lots of paparazzi. Light is late afternoon, long shadows, rich with oncoming sunset. We wander through the park, discover the lake where I hope to shoot, alight with ducks and rowboats (perfect for Shelley and his women) and walk on home.

Today we went to the French institute—beautiful villa unpainted so its bones showed. Lovely Versaille-like formal garden and view, its back to the Borghese gardens, its front to the city with a long promenade. I thought of Incognito, the novel which gail scott gave me this summer and wondered if it were still like that—difficult cold, bad food et al. but we didn’t get a chance to really meet anyone. They wanted to lecture us and we left walking back through the city---stopping at a store S had seen and buying yes buying finally a pair of shoes! Very cheered at dinner.

More to come: tonight Marty performs for us. The first piece was interesting for its structure. It was for a program in which Beethoven proceeded and Messian followed, so Marty took that as a structure—moving his piece from one to the other. I thought what an interesting type of bridge ( I wrote bride). The second piece put a poet to music, long vowels beautiful.

To end: I am sick. Late last night my body capitulated. So broad all day and garlic and sleep now.
sogni dell'ora. (version of sweet dreams; literally "dreams of gold")