Biennale | Venice: I am not making this up

Petals of love? Petals of pain? Or just something from the Biennale?

August 17, 2013 2 Comments

I came across this this morning.

I’ll never know what happened, but my first reaction was to feel sad for whoever dismembered the rose and scattered its bits to the wind, to the gravel, to the pigeons. To feel sad for the reason why it happened. To feel sad for how they’re feeling now. To feel sad for the rose, too, while I’m at it.

But because I really, really hate feeling sad, especially that early in the morning, when the sun is shining, etc., I let my brain wander around seeking other possible scenarios to account for what had happened that might make me feel better.

Maybe this is an original way for two people to pledge undying, eternal, infinite love. Buy a rose and decapitate it.

Maybe she said, “If I have to choose between having a rose and having you, this is how much I need the rose,” and destroyed it and flung it away. Avaunt!

Or maybe he pulled off the petals one by one and let each float down on her head, saying “I love you” in a different language as each one touched her hair.

Or maybe she hit him with the rose till it fell apart. Maybe they laughed. Maybe they didn’t.

Maybe he said, “If you ever die, I will rip away every remnant of your beauty and sacrifice it to the sun.” (He’d have to have been moderately drunk if he got that far.) (However, I am not.)

I am not going to say that the petals were the color of blood, because that's just too obvious and trite. But they came darn close. — I am not going to say that the petals were the color of blood, because that’s just too obvious and trite. But they came darn close.

I’ll tell you what: I’m going to stop all this, and I’m going to stop imagining writing a poem, or a short story, or a one-act play, or anything else.

I’ll leave the subject — and the carcass of the hapless scion of the family Rosaceae — with two thoughts, either one of which makes me feel strangely better.

One — maybe it’s just some work of art from the Biennale, a fragment of improvised performance art.

Two — this observation from an unidentified person:

People say hate is a strong word; well so is love, but people throw it around like it’s nothing.

Or maybe there's just something about this part of the neighborhood that impels people to strew bits of red vegetable matter. — Or maybe there’s just something about this part of the neighborhood that impels people to strew bits of red vegetable matter.

Venetian Events

The end of art

June 11, 2013 No Comments

This was when it was art. — That was then.

Does everyone remember the gondola loaded with cut-up gondolas that was parked in our canal in the opening fervor of the Biennale?

The opening of the Biennale is, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned, more like starling-swarming or the wildebeest migration than anything else. Dramatic for a short sharp moment, then it’s over and people forget about it.

By now the process is complete. The swarms began to depart the evening of June 2, and although fluttering shreds of tourists remain, the sort who seem to have come actually to look at the art and not each other (shocking, I know), life on the whole is back to its incomprehensible normality.

As everyone knows, the gondola assemblage was art. A week has passed, and this creation has been demoted to Private First Class, downgraded to Economy, put back a grade, however you want to put it.

Having fulfilled its purpose — whatever it was — the object has been removed from its watery pedestal, and taken far away. Not so far in geographic terms, but extremely far in terms of appreciation. You may have heard of “value added”? This is an example of “value subtracted.”

It is now resting quietly in the devastated territory of our rowing club. Evidently the squero here nearby that confected it didn’t want it back soon (or ever); anyway, I was told that in exchange for painting one of our boats, we agreed to let them stash it here.

Sic transit.

Events

Boating Biennale

June 4, 2013 4 Comments

No, this reference isn’t to me or to my (or anybody else’s) oarage, or steerage, or careenage. I am referring to a modest work of Biennale art that I happen to LOVE — just in case anyone thought that I was against everything that had the slightest connection with this event. This little creation makes me smile.

Yes, it's a little boat, 15 feet/5 meters long and made of plastic by Marco Tracanelli, a 577-year-old artist from San Vito al Tagliamento. — Yes, it’s a little boat, 15 feet/5 meters long and made of plastic by Marco Tracanelli, a 57-year-old artist from San Vito al Tagliamento. It bobs around in the waves and is just as jaunty and blithesome as it can be.

Hardly the battleship "Potemkin," even if it does bear the famous name on its hull. — Hardly the battleship “Potemkin,” even if it does bear the famous name on its hull. I don’t know if this reference is intended to carry metric tons of deep significance, but I have to say that somebody who can think up something like this (and make it) can’t be up all night brooding on the unfairness of life, not to mention its deeper profundities. But what do I know.

Venetian-ness

Back to everything

September 10, 2012 No Comments

I regret the lapse in communication. The fundamental problem has been a dysfunctional computer which is still awaiting treatment. That’s supposed to happen tomorrow. So there will be no pictures on this post. I’m sorry.

But the morning is too beautiful to pass without recognition. I don’t mean “beautiful” as in meteorologically, though there is that, too. Light clouds, cooler air, gentler sunshine.

What’s beautiful right now is the entire atmosphere. If it were possible for a hapless seagull to pass through an airplane’s turbine and come out in one piece, that would be me. Apart from having guests coming and going, we have also been deeply involved in the Regata Storica and, yesterday, the Riveria Fiorita. (We still have to put the boat away.)

But there has been more, even if we weren’t directly involved: The Biennale of Architecture (August 29-November 25), and the Venice Film Festival (August 28-September 8) — two world-class events opening on essentially the same day — have created their own special wildness. Our neighborhood — that is, the world — is a major center of activity at least for the former event, what with exhibitions strewn all over the lot. The film festival is on the Lido, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get the collateral damage of troop-transport vaporettos and other issues resulting from attempting to fit 1X of people into 1Y of space.

To change metaphors, the sensation I had this morning, walking outside, was of having spent a month in a large pot of water which had been brought to a rolling boil, and which now had been put on the windowsill to cool down.

People have just gone away. Even the kids are nowhere to be seen, because they’re all getting ready for school to start on Wednesday (if children can ever be said to be ready). There is a pale, hushed, tranquil air enlivened only by soft voices saying indistinguishable, agreeable things. This is quite a change from the shouting and crying and assorted other high-volume communications that have been shredding the air at all hours and far into the night.

The procession of French tourists who rent the apartment up one floor across the street has ended. No more listening to their open-window 3:00 PM multi-course lunches, or dodging the dripping from their laundry stretched on the line from their wall to ours. No more (or hardly any more) heavy grumbling from the wheels of overloaded suitcases being dragged to, or from, hidden lodgings somewhere beyond us in the middle of the night (one group arrived at 1:00 AM, another headed to the airport at 3:30 AM. I know because I checked the clock). It’s not just the suitcases, it’s the discussions, though you might think they’d have settled the details before locking the door.

Now it’s just us here.

I don’t want to give the impression that I desire the silence of a Carthusian monastery to reign in Castello. I’m only saying that one savors this particular silence with particular appreciation inspired by having experienced its opposite for a just a little too long.

I’m sorry you can’t all be here to savor this delicate loveliness, disregarding the fact that having you all here would mean it wouldn’t be so delicate anymore, no offense. But in any case, nothing, as you know, lasts forever. And school, as I mentioned, will be starting in 48 hours. Tourists make noise? I challenge them to overcome the clamor of squadrons of children meeting their friends on the street at 7:30 in the morning. The winners will be decided by the Olympic taekwondo judges.