When I was staying in Firenze in 1975, there was a graffito sprawled across a wall that I passed almost daily. It said “Basta con la violenza dei fascisti! Morte ai tutti fascisti!”
“Enough with fascist violence. Death to all fascists.” Was that meant to be ironic or sincere? I’ve wondered now for forty years. Depending on what comes up in the news, or in daily experience, I flip opinions.
I notice that as soon as a thing is written down, even on a wall, I give it credit for nuance far greater than were I to hear the same thing spoken. Is that because when it’s said to me, I can see the person saying it, so if there is no ironic content, its lack can be observed? On a wall, or in a book or a blog post or a comment on Facebook – or sometimes even in a video – it is up to my mood to determine the slant, the implication, the intension.
Or am I just avoiding the obvious?
I was waiting to see Alessandro the immigration expert the other day and fell into a conversation with a woman also waiting. After the customary, and inaccurate, comment of “your Italian is very good” she asked where I was from. I told her and responded in kind. “Moldova.” How long have you been here? “Thirteen years.” Almost an Italian, then. “I hate Italians. Oh, not all Italians of course, Alessandro is a very good man, and so are many, even most, people I know here, but Italians as a whole I don’t like. They’re too dramatic. They generalize, and make a big deal out of everything. I’m calm, I think before I react. None of them do.”
Any irony there?
My creative life today was Trumped. I got fascinated by Facebook. You know, after two or three posts about the peculiar American political shenanigans of the day, I learn nothing further. The rest is repetition in different words. There’s a certain emotional pleasure derived thereby, but that’s it. When I go from an hour of that to a play I’m working on, all my writing looks like crap. Indeed it may be so, but if I wish to continue to write, I need to get past that phase. All rough drafts are crap. They need rewriting. That’s why they’re called rough. That’s why they’re called drafts.
The American Experiment is an ongoing rough draft.
The Italian political evolution is an even rougher draft.
The woman from Moldova is an rough-draft resident, only she doesn’t know it, so every misunderstanding, every unintended slight, every disappointed expectation that some nice American will take her away from all this, looks like crap to her.
After an hour on Facebook I can’t write plays because I want to jump on a soapbox and make my characters say things they have no organic interest in saying. Anything less seems like crap to me. I must save the world single-handedly! And immediately! And I don’t like those other Americans, either, most of them stupid, and all of them “the problem” – they get too excited, too dramatic, while I think everything through carefully before I react as if I didn’t.
That’s not to say there are not genuinely, stupidly, opportunistic people out there entrancing us all, one way or another, but I can’t do what needs to be done if I’m always in a tizzy about them. Being in a tizzy feels too good, feels somehow like I’ve done something just by being in a tizzy, while the crap draft molders in a file, going nowhere.
I keep expecting Trump to reveal that his whole campaign has been performance art, that it has been a send up of what the American electoral system has turned into. Maybe he was masquerading as the woman from Moldova, too. You think?
A friend here asked if I’d heard the rumor that Orvieto was run by the Mafia. I had not. What I have heard people say that the “mafia” (small “m”) has everyone outside their acquaintance as a member; not in so many words, but in essence. The Mafia, however real and expansive, cloaked as the “mafia”, is a wonderful all-purpose enemy that can explain the always unsolvable “problem.” Why did that person sell his restaurant so suddenly? The mafia. Now the conundrum can pass from thought into history, resolved, tied up – and forgotten.
The phrase “stupid people” (or a topical variation) can serve the same function as the “mafia.” Because there are opportunists duping people, as is their wont, does not mean the duped are all stupid. I’ve been duped. I’m not stupid. Most of the time.
No one is “the problem” either. Thinking that “the problem” can be heaped upon a subset of human being is the problem. Individuals who have run amok in their need for attention, however, can themselves be very problematic; pretty astonishingly so. They go forth to dupe and entrance because that feels at least as good to them as being in a tizzy does to me.
Now, to the point. (pause) I don’t think I have one. If I really had a point here, I wouldn’t be rambling like this. I’d have made my point, attempted to justify it, and been done.
I think instead of a point, I have a question or two. And an anecdote or three. And a hope that the question and anecdote do, in some fashion, relate. And that you (whoever you are reading this) will identify a question, ponder a relationship with some part of this post, and come up with a point. It may not be my point, but that’s okay. I doubt I would have arrived at Ultimate Wisdom in this blog post, even if I had had a point – perhaps especially.
In the meantime, let us accept the obvious crap for what it is and work hard to offer a strong contribution to the next draft. That will make things better. To prepare yourself for work on the next draft of whatever is “rough” in your view of life at the moment, you might want to close Facebook this instant. And use a timer for subsequent visits.
Maybe that’s my point. Even if not, it most certainly is my goal.