My Five Year Plan

One of the primary features of travel, especially for those of us bound to the apparati of the modern world, is the way that it disconnects us from our normal flow of life. This replacement - of routine with urgency, passivity with activity, and steadfastness with irregularity - has of course both positive and negative implications, one of the negative ones being my inability to deliver (as of yet) on the promised goods of pictures of Rome. I’m getting my PC back today, and hence I’ll have access to the oddly proprietary USB cable that connects my hilariously anachronistic Olympus D-380 digital still camera (”2.0 megapixels!” the packaging proudly proclaims) that will allow me to download images.

That said, some thoughts on Rome, travel, urban areas, and more:

1. My favorite cities are decentralized ones.

Being in Rome gave me this profound appreciation for the way that the city lacks an obvious geographical center - commercial and social life in Rome seems just as deliriously busy in the touristy districts surrounding the Colosseum as they do in the fashionista district surrounding Piazza del Spagna or the classy restaurants of the Jewish Ghetto. By point of comparison, the city brought to mind the sense of profound disconnection I felt with Moscow, which I found experientially to be one single downtown event (Red Square and the neighborhoods immediately surrounding) buttressed by miles and miles of dismally poor Krushchev- and Brezhnev-era housing. New York is the same way as Rome, which is why I love it so much. Boston is basically like Moscow, which I suppose is why I’ve never been particularly impressed by the city. San Antonio, my hometown and a place I love, has a downtown that’s so deemphasized within the culture of the city’s residents (as opposed to its tourists) that the very notion of the city being centered around the Riverwalk and the Alamo is vaguely ludicrous to anyone who’s ever lived there.

2. The Question of Faith in Modern Rome

Just two blocks from the Vatican is a small region of the city which, though I cannot call it a ‘red-light’ district, certainly has its characteristics. Strip bars, a sex shop, and an adult theatre are here, and while Rome is certainly no London, with its graphically illustrated telephone-booth ads for Indian Sex, Asian Lust, Pregnant Hotties, Chav Bitches, Oriental Beauty, White Girls Only, Ebony Goddess, Dominatrix, Submissive Girls, Horny Housewives (as Paul Theroux has noted, a country’s civilization seems inevitably tied to how many sexual fetishes it can accommodate commercially), I was surprised by the frankness of sexuality in this great religious city. Metro ads for Dolce and Gabbana featured a half-dozen men in homoerotic poses wearing nothing but their skivvies. Another one, for a water park, featured a girl, who couldn’t be more than sixteen, her head thrown back in near-ecstatic display, an image of that water park’s famous waterslide behind her (designed like the neck of an apatosaurus - how cool is that?).

I suppose this isn’t too surprising - Rome, after all, is a baroque city of displays, where the grand sense of architectural ceremony was matched by the beautifully overwhelming sense of human ceremony - the furious shouts of a bar, lasting over a minute, as the US tied Italy during those countries’ World Cup match. The dozens of Italian businessmen wearing immaculately tailored wool suits, even on the hottest days of summer. The unbelievably long mass at St. Peter’s, with full processional of Cardinals, Bishops, and with dozens of women doing that strange sort of ecstatic prayer where they cry as they hold their head in the hands, their arms slightly akimbo, one hand cradling their forehead.

I find this sort of grand theatre baffling and otherworldly - the argument for it, of course, it its conjuring of the sense of the divine, if one, as that statement implies, constructs his or her sense of the divine in opposition to man. I can’t abide by that, which of course explains my tendency toward more minimalist forms of spiritual expression (a phrase which, as I type it, feels painfully and tellingly discreet). I appreciate of course the stunning aesthetics of Roman churches, of the rich cultural and theological tradition they reflect - but the truest moments of actual spiritual reflection on the trip came not in the churches but in the cold corridors of the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, a space rendered devoid of ostentation by 8th century bandits and filled with a deeply personal connection to the divine.

The uneasy relationship between man and religion in Rome planted in me seeds for a project, the first new idea I’ve had for a film in a while - I feverously took notes in the hotel room one night, eventually amassing six-to-eight pages worth of ideas. We’ll see where those go.

3. Highlights of the City

Given the lack of pictures at this point, it’s hard to get a sense for why I loved what I did, but here are a few things that stand out immediately: yellow light cast through a stained-glass window onto the organ at Santa Francesca Romana, the slight breeze coursing through the catacombs of St. Callixtus, the overwhelming aromatic smell of Farinata Genovese, a sort of flat cornmeal cake, the sublime religious terror of St. Peter’s and the infuriating staircase to Castel Sant’Angelo, the numbing indexicality of the Fountain of Trevi, perhaps the most photographed fountain in the world, the fallen-on-hard-times lack of glamour at Cinecitta, and the juicy succulence of scottadito.

All this said, I’m back in Hanover - these past two mornings I’ve woken up at 5:30AM or so - I read a lengthy article from an slightly old issue of The New Yorker on the making of Werner Herzog’s new picture and am now contemplating the surfeit of work I’ve got ahead of me between now and Monday.

In addition to my job working for a certain venerable film festival this summer, I am planning on embarking on a number of projects. A few I have in mind that you should be aware of: a feature-length screenplay for a horror film I’ve been planning for about a year now, to be entitled Proud Flesh. A handful of short films to be shot on my Canon 514XL-S Super 8 camera. A work of animation (guided by the animator and teacher David Ehrlich) - possibly stop-motion of some sort, though I’m actually most interested in working in pixilation, the animated manipulation of human form prominently featured in the works of Jan Svankmajer, Norman McLaren, and Mike Jittlov. Another part of me just wants to create a Ray Harryhausen-style monster. We’ll see where the summer leads.

This summer, my last in Hanover, will likely prove bittersweet, but it’s also a sort of a respite before moving to New York and embarking on this Five Year Plan in the sort of determined way I know I need to in order to succeed.

Pictures later tonight!