Tuesday, January 4, 2011

The ancient world, pink fur cuffs, rain and writing

Rose and I discussed it on Saturday over tea in the National Portrait Gallery's Portrait Restaurant, this sometime inability to write anything of satisfaction. The view, by the way, from the restaurant, out over Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall past Lutyens' Cenotaph, Horse Guards Parade, and Inigo Jones' Banqueting Hall where King Charles lost his head after Rubens painted the ceiling, to the clock tower, usually and quite wrongly called Big Ben, at the Palace of Westminster, is pretty grand but not dramatic enough to detract from the conversation-stopping tower of sandwiches, cakes, scones, creme brulee, clotted cream and jams, delivered to the table for the delectation of the Celt and the lady, our blind date, dressed in the finest of navy blue bracketed with pink fur cuffs. I nibbled a crumb or two whilst the three of us got to be very comfortable at the table in front of the window - I'd like to say a window streaming with the setting sun but actually is was just rain.


It seems the Celt and I cannot walk by St James's Park without it beginning to rain. There had been a New Year's Day parade that day in central London so our taxi driver, unable to take us near the National Portrait Gallery, dropped us at the end of Downing Street and we scurried in increasingly heavier rain, eventually squelching our way around the Thomas Lawrence exhibition - an agreeably sized presentation of brilliantly alive portraits of the Regency period.

Rain it did too, the day we arrived in Rome - a day earlier than planned because of Heathrow being snowed under, and the day we began the first of our walks around Rome - solidly and torrentially, so heavily in fact that Bernini's great Tuscan colonnade at St Peter's Basilica, sheltering many a dripping tourist, leaked like a sieve. The ellipse in front of the Basilica, centered with a Nativity ensemble at the foot of the obelisk and furred with rain held a long, huddled line of umbrellas shambling its way to the entrance at the foot of the steps, dwarfed both by the basilica and the downpour.


We turned around, umbrella aloft, leaving to another day the path across the piazza to join the queue, and walked back past the Castel Sant'Angelo, talking about the Corridor, that papal escape route to what had been Hadrian's mausoleum, as we crossed the Tiber between Bernini's angels – each holding a symbol of Christ's agony – on eventually to the Piazza Navone with its Christmas market, finally coming to the Broken Boat fountain where we took the Spanish Steps up to the Pincian Hill and our hotel.


So, this occasional inability to write is a merely a symptom, it seems, of the process of discovering, a finding of the one drop in the rain of ideas that could become a river - what one really wants to write about, but rarely that which brings one to the keyboard - in my case, at least.

Silenus and the baby Bacchus, a sculpture I saw on St Stephen's Day in the Vatican Museum, took my breath away - such an unexpected version of the parent and child, the grouping that predates the midwinter festival celebrating the birth of a child. That so much beauty remains from the ancient world took me by surprise and that definitely is a tale for another day - a rainy day, perhaps.

12 comments:

  1. Blue your words, as always, come through so vividly, poignantly that I can see all that you bring us!

    Xoxo
    Karena
    Art by Karena

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  2. Karena, thank you. Italy gave me many an idea for writing and as an aside I must say it probably was one of the best, if not most significant, vacations we've ever taken.

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  3. It may not matter, what brings you to the keyboard. Whenever you get there, you seem to work magic. What a magnificent and touching statue of Silenus and child!

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  4. le style et la matiere, that is a real compliment, and I thank you for it! I too found Silenus and Bacchus very moving.

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  5. London will never the same: the Lady, the Blue and the Celt together! So glad that Italy has been grand. We look forward to the tour of your thoughts and words. Agree that Silenus and Bacchus show wonder and grace from a time almost beyond understanding.

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  6. Your experience in the leaky colonnade puts one in mind of Kurosawa's Rashomon Gate at the opening of his movie, and your comments remark on the relevance of perspective as that story does (without the element of rape, that is). Le S et la M has it right, readers here are patient for what then coalesces into an estimably coherent posting. As for the statue, although all I have seen of it is this photograph, I wonder if you were as impressed as this picture allows one to be, by the sculptural excellence of narration in the child's energy. This will become one of the most important figures ever born, and he is displaying (not to read too much of his maturity into it) the vigor by which we will know him. I like it a lot.

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  7. home before dark, thank you. Italy was marvelous in the true sense of the word. Dinner at Hassler Hotel was terrific, too!

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  8. From Inigo Jones to towers of tea sandwiches and on to Bernini. Your words have conjured quite a vision. Your Grand Tour has inspired your writing it seems. Sometimes I find with blogging, it is better to say nothing if you don't *feel* it. It will come, for now, just luxuriate in rainy pleasures. Happy New Year.

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  9. Laurent, thank you. I appreciate your comment.

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  10. Janet, You're making me blush, but thank you very much.

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  11. Today a blinding flash of the obvious: Blue is a actually a travel-design writer. The Blue-nation is here to walk in your shoes, see with your eyes, enjoy the food and absorb bits of history in the process. Welcome home.

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  12. Hello, Terry. Thank you. Despite having one of the best vacations we've ever had, I'm glad to be home. The food? We need to talk!

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