Before we start I'd just like to recap some questions
I had from the first column. I now have a few answers, though
as with philosophy and questioning your government, they
have mainly involved more questions.
I now have several nicknames. Most of them are because
I look like my father (thanks, Darwin) and some are because
Rupert is a tough name for Italians to pronounce.
Learning Italian is coming slowly but I can now at least
order food and have child-level conversations. Using 'boh!',
which can mean anything, and 'non lo so', which means 'I
don't know', together can get you through all sorts of scrapes.
I still don't know when to order a cappuccino. I've decided
that I don't want them anyway. It's easier.
I have applied much the same principle to 'buongiorno'
to 'buonasera' and now try to use 'ciao' whenever possible.
I want to use 'salve' but I never remember.
My
flat now has a shower curtain. It only took seven weeks,
which I'm beginning to think is quite good going for Italy.
Lastly, I still don't really know what people do between
the hours of 1300 and 1600, but as far as I can tell from
keeping my windows open it involves eating, being loud and
using bizarre low-level swear-words, mainly based on the
Italian for 'dog'. And probably more food.
For non-Italians, the notion that for a proper dinner,
something people have made real effort (and perhaps even
invitations) to produce rather than just the standard gorgeous
fare, should involve several courses each of which are meals
in themselves will come as something of a shock. I will
never forget the evening I spent in England with my friend
Jo Spagnoli four weeks before I came here when, as part
of my Italian Preparations, she cooked me a 'proper' Italian
meal. In fact, she was just trying to shock me and it worked
because we ate antipasto (a starter thing) and then she
wheeled out an enormous amount of pasta and stuff
"Mangia, mangia!" she said. It was delicious
so I ate plenty.
"Right", she says, "now for the main course."
"I'm sorry?" say I, in total disbelief. "But
I've just eaten!"
"Oh no," she says, "that's just the prima
pasta."
"Prima pasta," I think out loud, "first
pasta
Please don't tell me there's more
"
"Don't be silly," she says. I sigh with relief.
"No, now we have a big plate of fish."
Strangely enough, summer
in Barga seems dangerously close to being served dinner
by an Italian family.
"Rupert, would you like some art?"
"Ah, yes, love some. I'll have some opera please."
"Just
some opera?
That's very nice, but you must have some recitals to go
with that. And a few helpings of paintings and photographs.
Oh, and a bucket of red wine."
"That's lovely! Really, you're spoiling me."
"And some ad hoc music on the side. Oh look, there's
still some space on your plate
"
"Well, it's a pretty big plate
"
"Of course it is! Have some more opera. And a couple
more concerts. Two little beer festivals there
"
"I'm not sure I can manage
"
"Yes you can. You can't possibly be full yet! Look,
there's all this BargaJazz
left to come! Lashings of it! Weeks and weeks!"
"Yes but
"
"No I won't hear another word. Eat up or the Jazz
will get cold."
You get the idea. I'm feeling positively stuffed already
and I haven't even made it to the main course.
So
far I feel like I've overdosed here in Barga. In London
I would be working and drinking so hard that the idea of
going to see a movie was a major effort, let alone going
to the opera. All this being said, the
opera was very well done, as was the show that succeeded
it, a collection of pieces by the composer Nino Rota set
to a surreal stage-show involving a man dressed as a clown,
a troupe of the local children and one of the finest
live video artists I have yet seen. MTV eat your heart
out, or better still employ this man.
Sadly the Finns have left town which means that really
insane drinking is, for the time being, off the menu. No
bad thing for my liver's sake, but I grew to like them,
especially as they would constantly rearrange my shoes outside
my door in ever more creative ways. In a quiet moment one
of them, Kai (I am deliberately misspelling his name for
pronunciation's sake), was sitting with me outside the Due
Ponti bar where I live, and I was wondering what I was doing
here and where it would all lead
"You have to love life, Rupert," said Kai. "It's
very important."
"But Kai, I don't really. That's the problem. And
I've no idea how to start."
"You have to be
" said Kai, rubbing his
chin, pausing to think of the right words, "the hero
of your own story." And he grins.
He's
right, of course. In
a town full of artists it's hard to find anything in
myself that marks me out, that I can look at and say 'that's
good work, that's worth doing'. But this is the wrong attitude,
because those are other people's stories. As a journalist
I've been writing about other people's stories so long I'd
almost forgotten that there has to be a hero in mine, or
why bother reading it?
Which leads me to one of the main reasons I'm in Barga
- writing a book.
This week I was sitting in the bar drinking a caffe corretto
(a coffee that's been 'corrected' by adding a stiff shot
to it - admirable behaviour) and wondering where the hell
my story so far was going. It seemed to have foundered.
It lacked a discernible plot, it lacked good characters
and was mainly an enormous, 28,000-word philosophical and
psychological treatise. Of course, it made perfect sense
to me, but that isn't the point. This story needs a hero,
I pondered, and it needs people. It needs boundaries, I
thought, and mainly it needed to be much more like the idea
I had in my head when I thought of it. Which it wasn't.
So,
as I sipped my coffee, smoked my cigarette and stroked my
newly cut hair it came to me. Start again. Use what
you've got so far as raw material, but start afresh. You
know what you wanted to do so, now you've purged all the
pent-up bile, start a real story.
So I will.
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