Les Niobides et une serre

It was a smell of fertilizer, but not the manure kind, no, the chemical kind, there where I drew a letter in the dust for the one who had left that day, a letter, simple, to say good luck bye have fun in Florence this will not be the same now and we will not be the same and I know that but that’s okay because we have to move we have to keep walking forward and soon we won’t know each other I know that but that’s okay because we have to let time move us forward to wherever… and we did, like the day that they were airing out the other’s chambre, car il vivait dans a permanent haze. Steam rose from that window et on la voyait de la loggia.

Isn’t this pretentious?, but I swear, you can understand the light in Titian’s paintings when you have spent days and days living and waiting, forever waiting for something, in a 16th century palace like the Villa Médicis.  Enormous windows that give onto all of Rome, in the salon des pensionnaires where I sang every day at the grand piano God knows how many hands have touched, and whose, and in the little one next to it, room, and then especially in the salle de concert, as I thought of it, mid-morning, when I’d sneak in and be the only one. I can only assume it has an official name that I don’t know.  where I have photos of 3 men in blue the day before a concert setting up pinkish-orangy chairs. -happy accident, no plan to that contrast that somehow made the most beautiful, if out of focus, photos that I ever made there. 3 men in blue in a warm sunset room, the one time of day when warmth filled it, setting up their pinkish, faded chairs…  It is a cold light coming from the windows and especially in that middle room, greenish-grey Balthus color.  Though Rome is anything but cold, and anything but filled with cold light, the light in these rooms, these Medici rooms is cold, and as there are only a few Balthus lamps here and there, during the day, there is no light, other than these enormous windows, and that light is cold, bluish, and everyone looks a little green standing before that cold light. a little dead, though so often beautiful, some more than others. Everyone is beautiful in that cold light where they are green and dead and their shirts seem whiter and starchier, which I’m sure isnotaword, because of that blue hue.  until he put up his chandelier. oh well.

It is said that Giacinto Scelsi would ride to the Villa in a Rolls-Royce and not enter the concert hall, but would have his chauffeur stop in front of the loggia and ask that the doors be opened so he could listen from the comfort of his leathered, plush car to the pensionnaires’ concerts.  The communist elements of (ah, we know who that is) the Roman compositional sphere were anything but amused. Oh, but I am.  -just as I am amused by the sneaking of women and the roaming of lions, epoch Ferdinand, and Messalina’s foray into bigamy, “settling odors into the royal pillows” via Gaius Silius, uh-hum, et autre. -Claude’s three penny C, whose destiny it was to die unwillingly by her own hand.

One night, Florence took me down below the loggia where the 4th ? was it, century Emperor’s floor still sits, marble, and even a dog’s footprint.  4th century dog’s footprint?  Somehow that was most impressive to me. And I watched them, these 4th century people, enter the Emperor’s palace, concentrating hard, really hard, I could see them stepping onto the marble, that night when the cold hit and we snuck under ground because, as always, someone had stolen a key  -the night we ate a $600 lobster because I was in shock that S had left with T in a car named Ulysses, Penelope standing on that loggia, waving goodbye, and what else to do but eat and spend? Their faces were full of fear. Strange day. the day I said I was glad he was gone. I wasn’t. Strange day.  For everyone leaving the Villa, the leaving of the Villa is a strange day. For everyone staying, their leaving is a strange day. -because it seems just as impossible to leave as it is to stay.  seems so silly now. but not then. Then, we truly were filled with fear. How do you leave a palace and pines to re-devenir a starving, or relatively for most, artist in that cold, grey, humid city to the west, the one you had left behind for warmth, concentration, solid work, and orange trees?  and yes, other, less noble things.  yet staying would mean absolute death.

But I just wanted to describe a greenhouse. I promise a photo. Les Niobides et le Torse du Belvédère are cast and sitting in there, in silence.  Are surely still there. So, morning coffee with lizards and the fallen, rotting grapes, the occasional dead bird that the cat had offered us, maggot-filled next to the fern we killed and the hydrangea we saved, the jasmine that wormed its way around the railing leading up to the door; jasmine for about 10 days in april and then no more, (I had time to learn these things, two springs, that’s enough, really, to know nature, or think you know nature, to apercevoir something more than just the glance of humanity at that which seems as banal as plastic now that we are all so busy multi-tasking), some sort of lily in a barrel full of water where tiger mosquitos were born in large clouds, in front of the breaking brick wall that housed Diana, though I didn’t know it at the time.  the smell of chemicals, surely dangerous, but who cared? because I could spend hours staring at these distraught faces, legs falling off, broken to pieces, a problem that didn’t seem to bother anyone in particular, pauvres Niobides délaissées. “…car Niobé se disait aussi belle que Léto”. The greenhouse had no green. Plaster, chemicals and a dirt floor where a strange sort of Mesozoic beetle lurked in pretty great numbers, but that’s nothing compared to the flying ant mating festival that took place one day in the heat of the Roman sun in front of the house, above the roses, just beyond the cherry tree, while I talked on the gifted phone and searched the ground for anything Roman, Medicean, Academician isthataword? If you drew a spiral with your finger in that dust, you could be sure that come rain, snow, wind, it would still be there years later, as no one ever walked into that house of green that had no green but only grey, and Niobides would be forever fearing the wrath a few feet above you, there where you could touch the Belvedere Torso, touch it, lick it even, not that I ever did, but I admit I wanted to. empty casts where the cat would sleep.  hollow torso;  were it full, were it alive, were it breathing, I wouldn’t know the difference. I wonder if the letter is still there?

a pou in a grey house, burying letters like some sort of excessively-Romantic, more excessive than any arc-en-ciel-defending Romantic who died on those very steps not so far away, where the fleur de lys ironically reminds the Academy who it is, they are, little romantic mouse, wearing her heart on her sleeve as usual.

mouse. louse. pou.

My friend Didier da Silva tells the story of Scelsi and le coeur du pou. 

It’s the story of a Chinese master, always a Chinese master somewhere, told by Scelsi to demonstrate how to listen to sound (in French) from lesideesheureuses.over-blog.com/…

Vous ai-je raconté l’histoire du pou ? C’est quelqu’un qui voulait apprendre le tir à l’arc. C’est une activité zen. Alors il se rend chez un maître et lui dit : “Maître, je voudrais apprendre le tir à l’arc. – Oui, vous apprendrez cela, mais avant il faut que vous sachiez voir le cœur d’un pou. – Comment ? – C’est facile, vous prenez deux bâtons. Vous les plantez par terre à une distance d’un mètre, un mètre cinquante à peu près. – Oui. Ça, je peux le faire. – Après, vous prenez une ficelle que vous attachez aux bâtons. Puis vous prenez un pou, il y en a beaucoup ici. Vous le posez sur la ficelle. Le pou marchera jusqu’au bout du bâton, puis il tournera en arrière et ainsi de suite. Il marchera tout le temps jusqu’à ce qu’il meure. Il ne peut pas aller au-delà, il ne peut pas voler. – Oui. Ça, je peux le faire. – Après, vous vous étendez sous la ficelle. Vous regardez le pou qui marche sans cesse. – Pendant combien de temps, Maître ? – Eh bien, jusqu’à ce que vous voyiez battre le cœur du pou.” Bon. L’homme se dit qu’il va essayer (…) 
Or vous savez tous que si on regarde longtemps n’importe quel objet, celui-ci grandit. On voit beaucoup plus de détails. Le type reste là longtemps, très longtemps. Les histoires chinoises durent des années ! (…) Puis un jour (…) il voit quelque chose qui bat, comme ça, dans le pou. A force de regarder le pou, il est devenu très gros et il voit battre quelque chose. C’était le cœur du pou. C’est ainsi que l’on entend un son.

 

Devant un loggia, Mercury and water, dust and lily pads, above brique et marbre, beyond a library and a bar, pines hovering close-by, are two enormous wooden doors, open, and notes are pouring over the leather of a Rolls where encore un qui savait vivre sits listening to sound.

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