The second half of summer is a time when Italian cities and towns come alive with festivals, street markets, night markets, and ceremonial competitions such as coordinated flag-tossing and group drumming in full marching formation. Various horse races mimic the internationally-famous annual Palio race in the central piazza of Siena that originated 800 years ago.
City walls are filled with colorful, “old school” posters. Huge signs on trucks parked by the side of provincial highways announce seemingly scores of events. There is something happening somewhere in the region every night. Oddly, despite this being rural Italy, it reminds me of the cornucopia of events and performances available when I lived in New York City many decades ago; it would not be possible to take in everything.
A town on the coast has a daily schedule of musical concerts in the evenings after everyone has finished their passeggiata (promenading along the main civic street). I watch elderly people on bicycles weave around couples strolling arm in arm, and families with children spilling gelato melting from cones onto their clothes. Young mothers push prams holding their infants. Elderly people fill benches lining the walkways. Aside from the modern attire, it could have been Renaissance times.
Later in the evening, before the concerts, families and restaurants bring out tables and set them up in the streets to have dinner. We were invited by a family to join their table near my wife’s new shop to enjoy pizza, wines, and other foods. A few blocks away, a narrow street was choked with people perusing artisanal products at a night market. Restaurant patrons filled every seat and engaged in loud and lively conversations.
The murmurs and motions of people thoroughly enjoying themselves in a shared setting were intoxicating. Despite the warmth of the evening, I felt my blood racing faster and my brow damp from the company of so many people having fun out in public.
Our own hilltop town has recently hosted a week-long series of community dinners with a live band and dancing. One evening, in another public space, a performing group from Budapest dressed in traditional costumes, played, danced, and sang traditional music. The synchronized male dancers, clad in boots and loose tunics made me think of high-energy leaping Russian dancers. For the concluding number, the leader invited members of the audience to take part in a concentric circles dance with everyone holding hands.
My enjoyment of these events has been dampened recently by a dismaying realization. For years after making the move here, I would receive cheerful messages from friends and colleagues all over the United States. They would recount attending events, celebrating a significant milestone in life, finding delight in a concert or reading a book, or simply having dinner with friends.
These messages stopped arriving about a year ago. So silent have some people been that I feared something untoward had happened to them. Has Steven Bannon’s strategy worked? By “flooding the zone” virtually every day with some new harsh and unsettling action, arrest, shooting, canceling funds for health and social programs, gutting of agencies, openly unabashed bribery, and outrageous lying, finally resulted in a collective malaise?
Even pushback and revelations whether the removal of the East Wing, the bombing of a school in Iran, or the inversion of the food pyramid, adds one more piece of rubble to the wrecking of the country – physical, mental, spiritual, or all three. Has this sucked the joy out of everyday living?
After watching and then pondering the recent cinematic artistry of Christopher Nolan’s retelling of The Odyssey, it now seems to me to be parable for our own times. Humans have acted cruelly without remorse, killed without hesitation, deceived others and accepted obvious falsehoods as facts. There seems to be a straight line between mowing down school children with assault weapons, to unpunished pedophilia, to men drugging and raping their partners and subsequently posting with the videos with pride.
I also realized another thing. I’ve been writing about communities for more than fifty years, my first piece having been published in 1973. In all that time, my observations may have been at times critical but with an overarching sense of optimism. I do not care for this new drift toward pessimism, cynicism, and distress.
Yesterday I spent a large part of the day at a nearby beach. Swimming in the blue-green Adriatic was not, however, the highlight of the day, as it usually is. Nor were the upbeat conversations I had with people from Northern Europe and the Middle East. I always feel a bit awkward to be the singular representative of my culture.
What gave me unexpected pleasure was in the evening, listening to a group of twenty-five women who live in this province and sing as a chorus under the name Bohemienne. All middle-aged, they sang in a polyphonic manner that raised goosebumps. The stone walls of the former monastic cloister where they performed amplified their natural voices. One could pick out strong, clear individuals.
For almost two hours, they presented classic folk and pop songs from America, Italy, France, and Eastern Europe — articulated expertly in the language of origin. At points, soloists were given forestage positions. The program included some religious-themed songs I recall singing myself in church as a child. As memories flooded in, my eyes watered.
This was the balm I needed — to see, hear, and feel a joyous, ecumenical, politics-free representation of the human spirit through vocal, melodic artistry.
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