12 agosto, 2019
We knew the world backward and forward,
so small if fit in a handshake,
so easy it could be described with a smile
and as plain as the echoes of old truths
and a prayer. (Wisława Szymborska)
Last days in Rome…
As I said, Laura had
invited me to her house Thursday evening. It sounded like she had an
interesting family and that was true. She framed it also as an occasion to
practice my Italian––even though they all speak English. She met me by the
Circo Massimo and walked me about a mile to their home. I felt a little bad;
she had asked me a few days before how I liked Rome and I had said that really
I didn’t like Rome very much––too crowded and noisy and too darn many monuments
to popes and cardinals. She only showed a micro-emotion of disappointment, but
I caught it and tried to cover my culo
by saying that I preferred Florence because that was my first experience of an
Italian city and that by this time I preferred living in the woods, etc. etc.
etc. But, undaunted, here she was telling me all kinds of tales as we walked
about all the famous ancient places and stories about the various
neighborhoods. Maybe suffice it to say I am still daunted by the place, but I
have found a few neighborhoods that I like. (I actually was not all that fond
of Florence either the last time I visited. I found it too very crowded and
noisy.)
As we approached their
apartment, her son Ricardo and his Dutch fiancé were just arriving along with
Laura’s sister Paula. She exhorted them immediately, upon greeting me in
English, to only speak Italian. Ricardo is involved in some kind of start-up
dealing with fashion, and his fiancé is studying for her doctorate in Milan.
I’m not sure what Paula does except she is well traveled and a student of Asia
and its religions, having been to India often.
As soon as we walked in
it reminded me a lot of my friend Stefano’s home in Florence where I spent many
a happy evening, which was also the first place I went outside of the protected
walls of a monastery when I was studying Italian there in 2000. As is usual,
there living spaces are smaller than ours in America––we are so spoiled!––but
there were shelves floor to ceiling filled with books and all kinds of objects
scattered around, and pictures and images hanging on the walls. Obviously, like
the Rossis, I was dealing with a pretty cultured and educated family. This was
no surprise after my conversations with Laura. (One of the first things I saw,
coincidentally, was a book of the poems of Wisława Szymborska in Italian. I have so
rarely run into her poetry, but apparently she is better known in Europe in
general. I had just sung a setting of one of her poems for the first time at
the Merton Conference.)
We met Laura’s husband
Piero as soon as we entered the apartment, and he too was told sternly to only
speak Italian. Piero is an economist by trade, but also an amateur guitarist,
and a pretty good one. Well, he had already watched some of my You Tube videos
and very much wanted to talk about and share music. We went immediately to a
room that was pretty much dedicated to guitars with at least six in a row
hanging from the wall, three electric and three acoustic, including a 12-string,
a Martin and a big box Gibson, and of course a couple of small amplifiers.
That’s when I suddenly
realized that I knew none of the vocabulary that deals with music or guitars.
The one thing you would think I would know a lot about maybe? Tuning. Bridge.
Frets. Pick. I did know the word for “song,” at least.
I got out of the
discussion about guitars by asking him to sing something for me and he did so
gladly. He first sang two songs in Romanesco, the dialect of Rome, which he had
written, and then a third in English, which he had also written. And then he
brought me out into the living-dining room to play for me another song off the
computer that he had written and recorded, called “Christmas Don’t Be Late,”
also in English. In it he was addressing the economic crisis in a humorous way.
He was a little disappointed when I told him that there was already a song in
English called “Please, Christmas, Don’t Be Late,” and even more taken aback that
it was sung by chipmunks. I was trying to explain all that, but that’s pretty
subtle in any language. (“And just why would there be a song about Christmas
being late sung by chipmunks? And who the heck is Alvin?”) In the end we pulled
it up and YouTube but he didn’t listen to much of it, deciding that the
chipmunks were really no competition for him because their song was un diverso genere di musica.
We then sat down a
wonderful evening meal prepared by Laura––fresh pesto, deviled eggs with
stuffing unlike anything I have ever tasted, and a lemon pudding prepared by
Paula with fresh lemons from the Amalfi coast. ‘Nuff said? And that’s when the bufera di parole began––“a storm of
words” (a phrase I got from my Italian confrere Marino in Fano).
I had passed onto Laura
the article by David Brooks about Marianne Williamson and the dark psychic
force, and Laura wanted me at some point to explain that to everyone else as we
had spoken about in our lessons. So she primed the pump by mentioning climate
change, and then son Ricardo started holding forth at great length, speaking
very fast and maybe with a Roman accent. Then he and his father got into a spar
and it seemed to range from climate change to Italian politics and every now
and then I heard the word fascismo (many
are worried about Salvini moving in that direction, with a Rosary in one hand
and a DJ’s microphone in the other) and the press and Donald Trump. Every now
and then Ricardo would turn to me and ask me something. I would ask him to say
it again a little slower. No help. They were all polite enough and carried on
without me. At one point Laura asked me to translate the article for everyone,
which I had on my phone. I just held up my phone and showed the article to
Ricardo, and he read it to himself and nodded, and then turned back to argue
with his parents. The only thing I was able to interject was that we needed a
spiritual revolution and solution.
Anyway, after that Piero
suggested that we move up onto the terrazzo
and perhaps I could sing a few songs for them. So we climbed up to the roof
where there were already chairs set up, and where it was indeed quite a bit
cooler, and I set myself to play and sing. There was a lot more successful––and
I was actually able to explain the songs in Italian in that more controlled
environment. I have always found that Italian audiences are more appreciative,
and in a different way, than American audiences. I am not sure why, perhaps
both the combination of someone from outside of their culture singing and the
depth of cultural experience that they naturally have.
Anyway, they were kind
of mesmerized by the songs. Piero certainly knows American/English pop music
pretty well, and we were joking about this being my version of the Beatles
concert on the roof––“concerto sul tetto”––except
that I first of all called it my “concert on the ceiling.” Piero really wants me to come back when I pass through
Rome again on the way back from Sicily, but I am not sure I will have the time.
All in all it was really
a fun and memorable evening, and a fine summit of a wonderful week in Rome.
After that, nothing much
on the weekend except enduring the scalding Roman summer, wow. I headed to the
gym again for another nice long session on Saturday, then had Mass with
Innocenzo and the nuns at Sant’Antonio on Sunday, pranzo with the brothers, and then headed to the train station for
the always enchanting journey from Rome up to Arezzo and Camaldoli, from where
I write to you now. More on that later…
