apples and oranges

November 4, 2009



Furniture exhibit at the civic museums, Castello Sforzesco, Milano

It's not so much that there is a fresco hanging in a gallery near a furniture exhibit in a gallery.
It's that these frescoes are hanging everywhere. I would not be surprised to see frescoes hanging over the toilets and leaning against walls in closets in my apartment.
As I come from a country several centuries younger than most of these frescoes I don't have to explain why this is novel.

The image as microcosm of the city itself:
Italy is littered with 2,000-year-old stones, preserved saints' bodies, most of the wonders of the art world in full restored glory, and boasts an incredibly rich cultural and military history.
Cars whiz past the Colosseo in Rome. People on cell phones or headsets weave through tourists on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
The subway system in Milano houses several glassed-in ruins they found while digging the tunnels.
It's 1200 and 2009 in Italy right now.
Milano is an incredibly modern city. It's on the very edge of design and fashion, and the Milanesi strive to one-up each other with the latest in this technology, that runway trend, this car, that artist. There is some serious money here, which makes it all possible (there exists the other extreme, unfortunately, and I have yet to really define a middle class). Although like in other great Italian cities, the ancient presides silently over the progress and the velocity and chaos and traffic and noise of modern Milano, there seems to me here a tension between the old and the new.
This is really only speculation, but let's take Rome. It is really, really difficult to ignore the Colosseo and the Foro Romano, and the rocks strewn about the city, and eventually you make peace with the fact that your past will always haunt you, kind of like the old-fashioned stodgy uncle you really hate because he's always talking about how you should be more like he was at 20-whatever but you can't really hate him, because he's family and you can't choose your family.
Milano, on the other hand, has little ancient treasures hiding in unexpected places. I turned a corner yesterday and came face to face with an enormous Baroque church I had never noticed before, because it was obscured by a modern building housing a bank (Milano is the financial seat of Italy... let's call this symbolism).
I was a little shocked but in a pleasant way, as I am discovering the city as an outsider/tourist and everything is a little bit magical. But humour me and imagine I am a Milanese: I am a self-styled Modern European. I am on the cutting edge, always. I can't find the balance between where we came from and where we are, because I move forward, not in circles, contemplating, pondering. I like fast lunches and long work days like they have in America. Sometimes I eat McDonald's. Maybe I have an inferiority complex... maybe that's why I can't stand the backward, old-fashioned south.
It's hard to put a finger on it. But in my opinion, the table wasn't happy about being next to the old-fashioned uncle fresco.



Emanuele Arciuli played a great solo piano program on Monday night. I sat above him in the gallery and watched his hands.

The Liszt and Schumann were played beautifully with a lot of sensitivity. Visually, they make so much sense to our well-conditioned brains. The keyboard is used in the ways we expect -- up and down and up and down go the hands, moving together or away from each other, moving in parallel lines from left to right and making broad strokes in one direction or the next. There is always a linear relationship between them. Tension grows and is resolved. Western music is so satisfyingly predictable.

The Carter he played, Night Fantasies, took linear relationships and said, "This crap is useless." I described Arciuli's hands to a friend as "robot spiders"; not only was the piece full of 64th and 128th notes (I don't know, it just seemed that way), it worked out musical ideas in circular, repetitious patterns that left the listener stewing over them even after the piece was done. There was cadence and discernible shape to the form, to be sure. But in terms of pitch content and for lack of a better word, musical "shapes", it resembled a scatter graph or an Etch-a-Sketch when realized. While Liszt and Schumann seem to muse out loud, Carter seems to need to brood introspectively over musical "problems" in order to develop and resolve them. In fact, I think this says a lot about the sociocultural "mood" in each relevant epoch. Extremely provocative; caused me to realize all over again that I think of music visually and how important that element of it is.




Today I went straight to the practice room following a particularly harrowing reading comprehension lesson with my class from hell.

Some things just don't feel like work. Some things make you forget anything that's bad in your life and obscure stress, worries, insecurity. They clarify priorities and put your life in perspective. Even a passive experience, like being a spectator, instills calm and replenishes what soul has been sucked that day.

Some things are a job that make you money while you pursue more lofty ambitions and don't deserve time or energy off the clock. This is taught to you by the enlightening experiences you have singing Verdi and Massenet, a clandestine locked away in the corner of the conservatory where no caretakers will find you and evict you from your not-booked, totally not-yours practice room, before a concert in which you hear the Brahms string sextet and Verklarte Nacht.
Or... I mean... other enlightening experiences.

(Aside: I see most of the concerts I go to alone and it's during this time I usually have weird abstracted brain experiences. I think it's why I have never been tempted to try drugs. Verklarte Nacht put me on another plane tonight; I had forgotten how much I love it.)
a wee taste.

To finish:
Further proof of Italy's schizophrenia follows in the form of two towns on the same lake (Como).


Colico in the north...

and Lecco in the south.

London-town, endless rain, and facebooking around the planet...

Remember how I said the sun was back out? I lied. That sentence was written in a freak moment in which I looked out the window and happened to see light, and promptly turned back to the screen, thereby missing the sun's rapid escape into the nebulous abyss...

Only kidding. But it rains a lot here! No more than it does in London, I am sure, which is my next destination -- I leave Saturday afternoon for a 5-day trip. Apart from my audition at the Royal Academy, I'll be auditioning for the residencies at the Aix-en-Provence festival and hopefully having a voice lesson, if I can get the scheduling to work out. Some cultural highlights? Well, a staged Messiah at the ENO; the LSO doing a concert performance of Otello; Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park; an Auerbach exhibit at the Courtald Gallery; all kinds of curry on Brick Lane; and let's not forget that Britain's museums and galleries are FREE.
I am also pleased to be able to meet up with some good friends from UWO and one I made earlier on my sojourn here, at an audition. I'll be staying with an old friend from a summer program; how wonderful that I can rely on the people I have met over the years. They are still accessible thanks to things like Facebook.

Let's face it -- Facebook and other networking sites have brought global communication to a new level. I am finding Facebook an extremely useful tool, and it's actually enhancing my experience by allowing me to share my experiences in practically real time with people at home, keep in touch with friends I meet in passing on my travels and keep track of where everyone is. I am currently considering an extended trip through Germany, Switzerland and maybe France and for sure the south of Italy; as I look at the possibilities I realize how many people I actually know here and how many couches I could potentially surf, and how many people I have connected with briefly that I may have never seen again, but now have the chance to develop relationships with. I would hope to be able to offer the same hospitality to them and to others when I am settled into a place.

There are networks such as couchsurfing.org that are set up specifically for connection-hungry people. The main function is to set up adventurous spirits on the move with couches to crash on, complete with a host, where there is ideally some level of mutual interest and a potential friendship that could develop, or just a few days of excellent company and hopefully some stuff learned; there is also an option of meeting someone in your own city, or the city you happen to be in, for coffee or a drink, to do a language exchange or discuss your mutual passion for yoga, or pork dishes, or whatever, or show each other around to your favourite restaurants and art galleries.. the list goes on, but the interesting thing here is that we don't just have sites for keeping in touch anymore, we have sites for facilitating meetings with new people as well. Look at internet dating -- still has a huge stigma attached, but lots of people are taking advantage and quite happy with their results. These sites simply widen our pool of possibilities. It is such a paradox that in a world of infinite possibilities we are increasingly limited by our daily activity: commute, work at computer, send text messages, interact via IPhone, watch Tivo. Life is easier every day, but more solitary.

It won't be long now before I leave Milano. A few trips planned -- two to London and a hiking weekend in Cinque Terre -- and then a week in Florence and Rome with my mom, and a short week after that, I move out. I'll miss it, but it's time, I think.
It's been difficult for me to make friends here. I am hoping that a little couch surfing with friends and couchsurfing with fellow couchsurfers will enrich my final month here in Europe. I am still waiting on audition dates but once they start to come in, the month will take shape.

In the meantime...

Getting warmed up...

...Because it's finally chilly here! I had to buy a sweater at the travelling Chinatown in the main piazza in Cremona this morning. Funny thing is, it's just a sweater, and it sufficed; I saw ladies in winter coats and toques today!! It was really only about 12!
There is something about fall that makes me really happy. Maybe it's just the changing of the season, or maybe there is a certain brisk, joyful energy that comes from people bustling in the crisp air of a fall morning, when the sun is still shining but your cheeks get red. It makes me think people are somehow more connected .. there is more energy in the air, people smile at each other as they pass, as if to say, "Yep, it's cold, but we're in this together." It's why I love Act 2 of Bohème so much, actually. That scene isn't the same if it takes place in Australia on Christmas Eve. Or is it? Maybe I'm just Canadian to the bone.
Anyway, speaking of community and people coming together --

Ladies and Gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for ...

my NO-IMPACT PROFILE!!!!

Yes, I am taking the Huffington Post's No Impact Challenge starting October 18th. Inspired by No Impact Man Colin Beavan, it is aimed at people who either have not really thought abotu the impact they are making in their daily lives, or who have thought about it but don't know where to start making changes. It's something I think will be really interesting to try and especially here in Italy, which is not exactly the greenest country.

You can sign up , or just learn more at this link, or read the guide that I'll be following throughout the week.

I would love to have friends do this with me. There are some people in Italy doing it so I belong to that group on the networking site, but there are so few so I've created a worldwide site and there are people everywhere -- Cyprus, South Africa.. one girl from Freiburg, who says her city is an incredible hub of green energy. Something to look into.

Anyway you can follow me as I try this out. I'll be blogging nightly and posting tidbits on there. I'll always link here as well. Looking forward to your comments!

two heads are better than one, I think.

I have weekly Friday afternoon dates with myself.
The Castello Sforzesco Museums, or Musei Civici, are free on Friday afternoons, and they are glorious. You can walk through room after room of ancient Lombardian ruins, Lombardian Renaissance sculpture, and finish at the last sculpture Michelangelo ever worked on, the Rondanini Pietà; you can wander the art gallery and take in the view of the courtyard from the windows; and right now, you can ogle photographs and prints from the original produciton of Madama Butterfly in an exhibit devoted to the opera and guarded by a 400-foot-tall, weeping Cio-Cio San (picture coming).
Or, if the mood strikes and the weather is good, you can just wander the grounds and take in the castle as a sight in itself. It is rather majestic; it's laid out in a large square and fronted by an enormous piazza. In back, Parco Sempione stretches far into the northeast of Milan; previously all that land belonged to the Sforze, who, I suppose, were rich on a Medici scale. The buildings themselves encircle a spacious courtyard and comrise several turrets, a fortress, and a large, imposing central tower.
One of these days I will post pictures. The camera saga ended with me picking up my camera and getting my dad to scour Walmart for an extremely cheap alternative. Consumerism, obsolescence and The Man: one. Danielle's social consciousness: zero.
Anyway, this particular day, I was at the museum in the art gallery alone.
Alone is something I never thought I minded until I came here. I really only mind it sometimes. In fact, I only mind it when I think too much about it.
I really enjoy being alone, so much so that I feared I wouldn't even bother trying to achieve any sort of social life while I was here; I love living alone (I don't here) and eating alone (at home), and I love going to concert, movies, and cafes by myself, and I actively seek out places like libraries and museums where I can move amongst the fixtures and lose myself in my thoughts. Sure, I look at the stuff, but it's like knitting: you occupy your mind with something gross-motor-ish to do so it can abstract itself from reality and figure crap out.
Not that that is why I go to museums -- in fact, I am an avid learner and I like to read all the panels. I really appreciate well-curated collections. But sometimes art or carpets or dead people's stuff can be useful in this way as well. I could never go to a museum and brain-knit with a companion.
Anyway, I, who normally do not mind being alone, mind it here. It's the extremely social aspect of the culture that is a painful reminder of my solitary status. Itlaians travel in packs, and tourists tend to travel in two's, usually lovey-dovey two's; I look twice when I see someone else silently wandering around, because it is so rare. I am still shy about sitting down for a coffee alone here; at home, I have no problem getting my drink at the counter and disappearing into a chair at Second Cup for an hour or two. Maybe it is the lack of anonymity in general that makes it impossible to escape from scrutiny. You have to own up to being alone, because interactions are more personal. But isn't that a good thing? Isn't that what I wanted, or at least part of it?
Also, there are no benches. Because I am too shy to plop down at a table by myself for a coffee, when I have a half hour to kill before a meeting or a concert I am forced to keep walking, walking, walking, until I find a park (few and far between) or enough time has passed. I miss roadside benches.
But you know, sometimes it's nice to be alone. I had a rough day at work and I came to the museum searching for something to evoke a reaction in me, to help the bad mood pass. I guess I wasn't too open to that today. But there is always next Friday.