Venetian-ness | Venice: I am not making this up

O Christmas Screen, O Christmas Screen…

December 6, 2020 22 Comments

Seen from afar, it’s the Little Christmas Tree that Could. The bright glow in the glum is admittedly rather pleasant.

You might wonder how a Christmas tree could possibly make people mad (though considering the year almost past, you might not). Whatever your Yuletide habits, a lot of Venetians would have welcomed a honking big Norway spruce to its traditional place in the Piazzetta, some looming aromatic conifer loaded with scintillating lights, sumptuous ribbons, glittering glass baubles, etc. It would have been greeted with open arms, many smartphones, and shining faces.

But because we haven’t had enough computer screens in our lives this year, now we have the Christmas Screen.

It’s art, naturally, art that, from afar, sort of resembles a tree, though this structure isn’t even alive. But it does have the consolation of being, as I mentioned, art, groaning beneath loads of symbolism and verbiage.

Installed in the usual position last Thursday, this structure is the creation of artist Fabrizio Plessi, sponsored by the Assicurazioni Generali. No way of my knowing who had the final, or even the first, word in the discussions that led to this creation. It can’t be to attract tourists, because at this point in the evolution of the pandemic it would be easier to attract a Great Auk than a tourist.

It’s tree-ness, on closer examination, is looking a bit eccentric. Also, it’s moving. Literally.

The public has not been amused by a novelty that appears to be more like a refugee from the Biennale than a festive fixture.

The artist explains: “It’s a message of hope.”

The public responds: “A heap of scrap metal.” “Hanging ingots.”

Anything wrong with this picture? In addition to everything else that’s wrong about this tree, Lino notes that it’s between the two infamous columns of “Marco” and “Todaro,” historically the place for public executions. I realize it’s not precisely between the columns, but to him that’s where it is. Not good.

“This year we need a message of light,” Sig. Plessi told La Nuova Venezia. “The 80 modules represent the flow of that many different cultures.” Furthermore, it would seem that the installation symbolically unites earth, water and sky.

“I understand whoever would have preferred a traditional tree,” Plessi continues, “but this is a message of hope. The use of digital in this context becomes spiritual emotion and expresses itself in the only possible language today, permitting us to reach others even if they are physically distant.”

Not sure about you, but while this is the sort of hot air that keeps the Biennale aloft for months on end, it doesn’t do anything for the spirit of Christmas. My own view is that the more you explain something, the less that something actually communicates. If you have to tell people what to think or feel about your creation, you’ve acknowledged that the creation is mute.

If there’s one city that isn’t suffering for lack of works of art, it would be Venice. But there’s always room for one more.

There is more. “This tree is well planted in tradition, but it is also a tree that wants to talk to the world,” says Simone Venturini, the city councilor for Tourism. “Personally I find it marvelous because it shows that Venice knows how to be, together, the city of great history and of the future. It shows that you can make contemporary art without waiting for the Biennale.” Of course you can, as long as you have a sponsor. I don’t want to put a pricetag on Christmas, but this installation, along with 50 kilometers of strings of lights in the Piazza San Marco and on the mainland, not to mention the lights shining on the Rialto bridge, cost a total of some 800,000 euros. So he could also have said that you don’t need to wait for the Biennale in order to spend money. I knew that.

Many years ago a homeless man at the entrance to the subway in New York stopped me with this request: “Hey lady, could you spare some change for an old wino?” How could I say no? His candor was irresistible.

If Mr. Plessi had said, “I like to make art using digital stuff. I don’t know why, I just like it. Maybe because it’s shiny. So here’s sort of a tree made of digital stuff. Kind of made me think of Christmas. Hope yours is happy, in spite of everything,” I’d have started a Fabrizio Plessi fan club.

And yet, at some magical moment in the last four days, some indomitable soul(s) did what they could to put things right. “Thanks, we brought our own….”

Despite the condensation on the plastic, the cardboard sign is clear. The “opera d’arte” (work of art), is straight ahead. Christmas, on the other hand, is down and to the left.

This is what some people (not tourists, I’m thinking) consider Christmas.! I’m just sorry there aren’t any fish to stick in the branches, like the baby owl in New York and the baby koala in Australia.. In any case, Christmas has been saved. This time.

Venetian-ness

Halloween, bite-size

October 31, 2020 8 Comments

At mid-afternoon, families and costumed kids began to roam around via Garibaldi, shaking down all the shop owners they could find. “Scherzetto dolcetto!” they cry (trick or treat), bouncing into shops and holding out bags or buckets or whatever container was available to receive some sort of placatory offering from the owner. I give a bonus point and a handful of bite-size Milky Ways to the kid who painted his soccer ball to resemble a pumpkin.

Over the past few years, Halloween has made inroads into the autumn-festival calendar here. I would say I’m at a loss to understand it, but then I realize that any excuse for a kid to wear a costume and score free candy is bound to be a success.

Venice had its own version of this sort of maneuver (without ghouls and skeletons) in the Saint Martin’s Day fun: Walking around the neighborhood banging on pots and pans and singing a doggerel song about St. Martin, annoying people and asking for handouts. So now the kids have managed to have two sugar-laden feste in the fall, and very close together. This shows either high intelligence or at the least, as a friend of mine used to put it, a form of low cunning.

The lady took so much time talking to the pharmacist that, hopeful as these marauders were, they finally gave up.

The only thing more Halloweeny than fog in the daytime is fog at night ( here on the rio di San Piero). You totally expect to hear or see something creepy.

On a brighter note, a morning row to our favorite farm on Sant’ Erasmo — “I Sapori di Sant’ Erasmo” — is a sort of orgy of autumnal goodness.

Checking out all the pomegranate trees lining the canal on Sant’ Erasmo. There were plenty, but mostly loaded with disastered fruit.

As you see. Somewhere there is a bird asking itself “What was I thinking?”

The best tree was at the farm. Looks like it’s practicing for Christmas.

Venetian-ness

Watching LinoVision

October 15, 2020 24 Comments

Back in the depths of the summer heat, about the time when the sun began to set and the air to cool, we liked to go outside and sit on the edge of our little fondamenta and watch everyone going to and fro along Fondamenta Sant’ Ana on the opposite side of the canal.

Many were hurrying along carrying boxes of pizza from via Garibaldi, presumably going home; others were dressed in ways showing various degrees of effort, heading toward via Garibaldi. Tourist couples and families were undoubtedly going in search of somewhere to eat, but where the variously adorned teenage girls were going is something of a mystery. They were dressed for bars and clubs, and while we have plenty of bars, I have no idea where the nearest club might be. But obviously they knew, and they meant to get there.

There were homeward-bound mothers dragging strollers over the bridge, and old ladies (and sometimes men) dragging loaded shopping trolleys, either from the Coop (if they’re proceeding from right to left) or the Prix (left to right). Speaking of dragging things, there were also a few rolling suitcases somewhere in the mix.

This is the fondamenta Sant’ Ana; early in the morning there isn’t much to see. Watching this now would be like watching the color bars on TV at 3:00 AM.

And of course there are always people Lino knows, or who know him, which is almost the same thing. I thought of those early evenings sitting outside as watching LinoVision.

Example: A 30-ish man was walking briskly with his little girl, who appeared to be four or five years old. He stopped and waved to Lino. His daughter’s little voice asked him “Who’s that?” He replied, “He’s someone who taught me how to row when I was little.” Smiles and waves. It’s really nice. They move on. I ask Lino, “Who’s he?” He replies, “I have no idea.” He’s taught thousands, probably, to row. Can’t be expected to remember them all.

A middle-aged blonde woman goes by. “See that woman? She used to work in the bakery in Campo San Barnaba.” (“Bakery? You mean Rizzo?”) Of course that’s what he meant, but it wasn’t always Rizzo. I’m a latecomer on the scene. But she herself isn’t what he’s remembering.

He grew up two minutes away from the bakery, down Calle Lunga San Barnaba, and it was owned by a man by the name of Morasco. “I went to nursery school with his son,” Lino said. This is not a startling thing to hear; by now, the people we encounter generally are sorted into a few broad categories: Went to nursery school with, went to school with, was in Scouts with, worked with, and a couple of “I used to be in love with”s.

“The family lived over the shop — the bakery itself stretched the entire length of the building from the campo to the rio Malpaga. They had an enormous room upstairs and it was full of toys. We didn’t have toys, but this room was full of them.”

“Was he an only child?” I guessed.

“Yes, he was. Died young, too. I don’t know of what.” There you go: Your next novel all sketched out.

I would bet you that these two have known each other since birth. Anything they ever had to say, they said it long ago.

Another blonde woman, somewhat younger than the first, was going over the bridge. She’s a nurse in the blood-test department of the hospital; Lino used to go there occasionally for some intermittent checkups. Her technique with the needle would leave purple marks on his arm that looked like the Nile delta, and after the first two times he was sent to her station, he rebelled. He just said to another nurse nearby, “I’m not going to her.”

Why not? I didn’t hear his explanation, but it didn’t seem to surprise her. “Never mind, I’ll do it.” Maybe that’s why the blonde nurse never says hello.

Then there are the occasional individuals from his working life. For example, the silver-haired owner of the fish-stand, usually somewhere in the background cleaning fish. One day Lino noticed his resemblance to a long-gone colleague named Biagio.

“Are you Biagio’s brother?” he asked, as he was glancing casually at the array of fish.

“No, I’m his son,” was the reply. Discovering connections like this doesn’t strike anyone but me as wonderful. They evidently take it for granted.

You don’t have to tell me there’s somebody in here that Lino knows. I just take it as a given.

We pass two older guys on via Garibaldi. One of them is a man I see fairly often, mixed into the daily mashup of locals. Does Lino know him? Trick question: OF COURSE HE DOES.

He came to the Aeronavali as an adult, as opposed to Lino, who started as an apprentice there when he was 16. He was what Lino termed an “aeronautical adjuster,” specifically a first-rate welder, one of those mythically talented workmen from the days before machines came with instantly replaceable parts. “He was amazing,” Lino recalled. “He could put the legs on a fly.” Just an expression, of course, but a compliment of the absolutely highest order. If you needed to connect anything to anything else, he was your man.

“I don’t know where he came from,” Lino went on. “When the Arsenal closed in 1955, some of their workers came to the airport. Or he might have been with the ACTV” — then called ACNIL — “I can’t say.” He came aboard some years after Lino, so not much more biography is available except that at some point he left to change careers, leaving behind the fly’s legs to work as a garbage collector. “He probably made more money,” is Lino’s conclusion. Mine too. You don’t become a garbage collector for the glory or the fame.

Looks empty to me, but every place in Venice is swarming with memories. When tourists talk about how crowded Venice is, they’re only talking about people they can see. Anyone who’s Lino’s age sees hundreds more everywhere.

Venetian-ness

Sandro: Here’s looking at you

September 27, 2020 9 Comments

A few days ago this simple notice was stuck on the glass of the front door of the Trattoria alla Rampa del Piave. That’s the exactly joint three steps from the fruit and vegetable boat and, more to the point, is by the balustrade where Sandro Nardo would sell his fish.

“Sandro has been gone for a year,” it says; “Today he’s standing drinks to all his friends.” (Giorgio Nardo is his brother, Cristina is Giorgio’s wife.) I asked Fabio at the bar of the trattoria how many friends had showed up to drink to Sandro’s memory: “One hundred? Two hundred?” An amiable shrug meant “At the very least.” A free drink? He was my best friend! I apologize for the reflections on the image, but this is the best I could do.

He was no amateur just out making a little extra money — I don’t know that he had any other source of income. In any case, he was always out, night and/or day, depending on whatever conditions were most favorable for a reasonable haul.

And then he’d weigh and bag whatever he’d caught, and in the late morning he would come and pile the bags on the balustrade. He wasn’t there every day; it seemed kind of random. Monday was often a good day to find him, as the fish shop is closed on Mondays. And the balustrade was a prime spot, being at a sort of crossroads as well as a point where the street narrows dramatically. It slows people down enough to give them time to glance, at least, at what he had caught.

We didn’t often buy from him — his prices were no bargain — but we rarely resisted when he had seppie because it’s not easy to find them fresh.

The very useful balustrade at the bottom of via Garibaldi makes a fine temporary sales counter. The plaque is attached to the iron fence where it meets the marble.

This extraordinary memorial appeared a few months after his demise, and is attached to the metal fence by the canal. “Here Nardo fisherman sold his fish and his history. Here we LAST Castellani will remember him with unaltered affection down to the very last one of us.” This likeness isn’t excessively accurate, but it does at least give him a lifelike aspect. My own few recollections of him at work focused on the toil involved in unsnagging the fish from the net. I speak from modest experience that a fish’s fins seem to have been created to get tangled up in filaments of nylon. As to “selling his history,” I have no idea what is meant by that, but considering how taciturn he was, anything verbal must have been really expensive.

We went to his funeral at the church of San Pietro di Castello. It’s a big place, but it was crammed; I’m sure the entire neighborhood must have been there. This was impressive, though not entirely surprising.

What truly surprised me was Nicola (probably not his real name, but the one he goes by). He’s a wiry, gristly bantamweight Romanian man who showed up in the neighborhood some years ago. At first he seemed to be just an anonymous mendicant who had installed himself between the fish shop and the vegetable boat. Tourists passing — there used to be lots, all aiming for the Biennale — would make their contributions.

Then gradually he wove himself into the neighborhood net, doing odd jobs, mopping boats, helping with the loading and unloading of the fruit/vegetable boat, and so on. By now everyone calls him by name, and he reciprocates.

But now we’re all at the funeral. The service is over, and the casket is being wheeled out to the canal where the hearse is waiting, rolling along a paved walkway lined with everybody from within the radius of a mile. Nicola is standing near us, all by himself, clutching his baseball cap, and he looks stricken. I have no idea what his interactions with Sandro ever were, but they must have been important because he is weeping. A lot of people are sad, but he seems to be the only person in tears.

Having nothing else, he wipes his eyes with his baseball cap.

You couldn’t make a memorial plaque big enough to match that.