My personal account of living real life in real Venice, and more
I was in a friend’s apartment one evening not long ago, which gave me the chance to (A) stop and just look out the window at a snippet of Venice I’ve never seen from this angle and (B) observe a snippet of behavior so bizarre that it might well have qualified as performance art. More performance than art.
Sometimes people ask me when the “tourist season” or “high season” begins, and I used to be uncertain. Uncertain no more: It’s Easter. Easter is like the starting bell at Churchill Downs — they just start coming. I can’t explain it, but it has never failed; even if Easter were to fall on February 3, November 5, January 22 — that would be the start of tourist season. But that’s not what’s weighing on me.
What’s weighing on me is how so many of our honored guests have come to behave as if they were in their own backyard, or garage, or abandoned lot behind a shuttered White Tower Hamburgers. Extreme bad manners, of which we’ve already had a few starter episodes, get into the newspaper. For example, the drunken Swiss boys cavorting naked in Campo San Giacometto at the Rialto — profoundly repulsive but not DANGEROUS — or the drunken boys (unspecified nationality) who jumped off the Rialto Bridge one night — HUGELY dangerous.
Or the perhaps not even drunken young men who still were jumping off the bridge by the Danieli hotel in full daylight, blithely unconcerned about barges and taxis and gondolas below. The jumpers could easily be injured when hitting the water or, more precisely, hitting something that’s on the water (recall the drunken New Zealander a few hot summer night years ago who jumped off the Rialto and landed on a passing taxi; after six months of agony, he finally died). Anyone in a boat passing under a bridge has to start thinking they’re in some shooting gallery where, instead of bullets, there are bodies coming for them. The prospect of six months of inescapable and increasingly repellent tomfoolery makes me feel tired and dejected.
We know about these shenanigans because people make videos on their phones and post them on social media. That’s the bass line in this chaotic cantata — showing the imbecility by doing something equally imbecilic. Everyone who reads these reports wonders why people are making videos instead of calling the Carabinieri. If you know the answer to this, please step up to accept your award. Right after you call the Carabinieri. But witnesses to the Danieli escapade say that the police were indeed called, and the police indeed did not appear. So there’s that.
In any case, one doesn’t need dramatic episodes to feel repulsed by tourists, and the daily deterioration doesn’t merit much of a story in the paper. Any neighborhood is bound to offer all sorts of examples of boorish behavior. Among various options, my current obsession is the evidently irresistible urge so many people have to just sit anywhere, plop down on the pavement or bridge, when the mood strikes. I realize this is not unique to Venice, because I’ve seen young people sitting on the floor in the airport, as if there were no seats anywhere. I’m not saying we should bring back the corset and the high starched collar, but the other extreme is worse. Why? For one thing, because they’re in the way and public space is already measured in microns. Second, because it makes otherwise normal people, who almost certainly have had some upbringing, appear to want to revert to life as Homo habilis once they get to Venice.
So much for the subject of quality (lack of). In my next post, some observations on quantity (surplus of). There will be interesting statistics.
Memorial Day is now disappearing in the traffic behind us (though my calendar notes that yesterday, May 30, was the traditional date for the same), but what are dates? As a wise person once remarked, for Gold Star families every day is Memorial Day.
In any case, many nations commemorate their fallen with masses of marble, eternal flames, and other worthy symbols of pride and humility. Italy has the “Altare della Patria,” or Altar of the Fatherland, in Rome.
And then there is a schlumpy little chunk of some kind of stone that was sitting in a tangle of green-and-brownery at Sant’ Elena. This last bit of Venice before the Adriatic Sea isn’t known for monuments, unlike the rest of the most-beautiful-city-in-the-world up the street. But in fact the whole neighborhood is a sort of memorial to World War I, its streets named for generals, battlefields, dates and exploits. And there is also this cube on which two words were long since incised: MILITE IGNOTO (MEE-lee-teh Ih-NYAW-to). Unknown soldier.
Lino came across this relic a few months ago, and was startled and more than a little offended. Not that he makes a cult of military cenotaphs, but he stated clearly that he saw no point in having such a significant object if it was just going to lie there, neglected and forgotten. He said this also to a few other people too, especially to some of the officers at the nearby Scuola Navale Militare Francesco Morosini, where he teaches Venetian rowing.
Most comments float away like dandelion fluff (if you’re lucky), but Lino’s particular comment stuck somewhere because a cultural association devoted to World War I entitled the Associazione Cime e Trincee (Peaks and Trenches) got to work, and last Sunday the newly furbished memorial was rededicated in the sight of God and a small but trusty company of assorted veterans.
This ceremony wasn’t matched with any particular date — they could have waited till Saturday and combined emotions with the national holiday commemorating the founding of the Italian Republic. But they did it on Sunday, and we went. We felt mystically involved, even though we still haven’t found out how the notion of bringing the stone back to life, so to speak, ever occurred. It’s enough that it happened.
Almost exactly a year ago, a huge pair of hands was installed in the Grand Canal in such a way as to appear to be pushing against Ca’ Sagredo, once a magnificent palazzo and now a magnificent hotel. They were evidently one of those bits of visual badinage so beloved of the Biennale, which was about to open. I seem to recall they got lots of notice.
But badinage is effective only when it’s fleeting. You can’t have the same old badinage every day, it would be like living in “Groundhog Day.” And yet that’s exactly what we had for a year, to the point where one long since ceased to laugh, smile, or even notice it.
On May 12, 2017, the hands were raised.
On May 8, 2018, the jig — or the contract, or the parking meter — was up, and down they came. And now I discover it wasn’t supposed to be humorous at all.
As reported by “La Nuova Venezia,” Lorenzo Quinn, the artist has said that “They’re my son Anthony’s hands, and they’re as important as the message they give.” There was a message?
Of course there was a message! I was totally mistaken to regard this construction as humorous. Because the message is a serious one (no points for saying “Desperate need for renovation of old buildings”). The message of the hands was to draw attention to the problem of “the constantly increasing global warming. We have to save the world” — that’s the message of the hands, and if you didn’t know that before, now you do.
Actually, I think I liked them more as badinage.
