high tide in Calle de la Madona

When hot scirocco winds blow in from Africa and the moon phase is just right, the tide is exceptionally high here. The water burbles up through drains and washes over canal banks. The people don wellies and soldier on.

 

Could living in Venice build brain cells and boost longevity?

Recently I heard an NPR story on Reversible Destiny Lofts – living spaces designed by Arakawa and Gins that challenge rather than coddle occupants — and was struck by the resemblance of this post-post-modern concept to the Venetian experience. “These places have bold colors, concave floors, doors too short to walk through and columns to hold on to when you lose your balance,” according to NPR’s Alison Bryce. A fuller gloss, offered by we-make-money-not-art.com, describes the lofts this way:

 

Inside the apartments…the floor of the dining room slopes erratically, the one in the kitchen is sunken and the study features a concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out. You constantly lose balance, gather yourself up, and occasionally trip and fall. There’s no closet space; residents will have to find a way to live there. “[The apartment] makes you alert and awakens instincts, so you’ll live better, longer and even forever,” says Arakawa. (http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/008304.php)

They might consider periodically flooding certain parts of the living space, as well… perhaps the common areas.

Nando

Neighbor-kitty Nando comes to visit almost every day, usually by way of the kitchen window.

choral culture shock

I unwittingly disrupted my rehearsal tonight, in a very subversive and eggheaded way.

I noticed that in a particular section we were singing in unison — and that “unison” didn’t match my part.   Look over one shoulder. Look over another.  Yep, we should be singing harmony.  I ask my fellow singers if we’re supposed to be singing unison.  Yes.  I clumsily point out that the music says otherwise.  Confusion results.  We check with the conductor, and, yes, they had made a change.  Nobody made a note of it, because they’re going by ear and memory (and keep their music in sheet protectors).  Now… they were doing just fine before I asked the question, but once I’d pointed out the discrepancy, many took the time to write in the correct notes (which were all just a third below our part and which, furthermore, they obviously didn’t need since they’d been singing the unison correctly all along).

Aside from feeling guilty about raising needless cain, I came away realizing that I’d underestimated the degree to which this choir is working on a purely aural basis.  From now on, I’m keeping all my fancy-pants questions to myself.  But I will  track down a four-hole punch so I can jettison the sheet protectors and write all over my music.

San Giorgio Maggiore

Today I was at San Giorgio Maggiore — the big church on an island right across from S. Marco — where there’s a library in a former convent. One corridor of the library consists of a huge second story cloister, glassed in, entered from the courtyard by a regal double staircase. Cold day. Bright sun. Absolute quiet punctuated only by periodic bells. As I slowly made my solitary way out, the silence was nudged by the softest possible twittering of three sparrows flying above my head. At first I thought they were trapped, but the enormous stairwell is open. There was something that quiet, and that sunshine, and those three little birds and their gentle, intimate chirping that struck me to the core. Made me want to cry. How? Why? I don’t know, but it was a beautiful moment. (And knowing that pms played a role doesn’t detract from it at all.)

Singing in choir

Thanks to my friend N., I’m now singing in a local choir and am having a blast.  The music is easy: a handful of contemporary Italian Christmas pieces and Britten’s Ceremony of Carols.  The singers are all adult women studying voice at a local music school.  Most of them don’t have much musical experience and several brought recorders to the rehearsal so they can practice at home with the recording.  A smaller group of more experienced singers is performing the Britten.  From a social and cultural standpoint, this is great stuff.  I’ve met some really interesting women, and it’s fun to sing modern, everyday Italian.  It’s also great to hear an entire rehearsal run in Italian.  I never thought of all the musical words I *don’t* know in Italian — especially the terms for note values.  And it’s fascinating that they use a “fixed-do” system of solfege to navigate the music, even in an ensemble of inexperienced singers.  Note names (C, D, E, etc.) aren’t used, only solfege syllables (do, re, mi, etc.).  Interesting.  I smiled to myself when I realized the conductor wasn’t saying C-flat but “si”-flat, i.e. B-flat.

I knew the Britten was in English, and was looking forward to being a mother tongue speakers in the group, for once.  My choir in Chicago always has a ringer or two every year — a visiting German or French person who becomes the pronunciation authority for works in those languages.  Not knowing the Britten, I didn’t realize that the texts are old — medieval and renaissance English.  Now, I’ve studied Chaucer in Middle English and have had my share of experience with choral pronunciation issues…but do we even want to TRY to be “authentic?”  The whole pronunciation can ‘o’ worms opened up yet again, and I’m left shrugging my shoulders when the other women nudge me and ask how to pronounce X.  Rats.

Some November photos

November 2007

Getting resettled has been the major excitement of the past couple of weeks in which I haven’t posted. Meanwhile I’ve taken a whole lot of pictures, though, and here are a few. This album is a mixture of neat pictures and touristy pictures — a mixture I’m not all that happy with. I’d prefer a leaner, cleaner approach but don’t have the energy. Score one against perfectionism!

new digs and Goldoni

The big news is that I’ve moved. While there were many plusses to the living situation I arranged over the summer, the minuses won out in the end. Physically, the new place is not so far distant from the old one (am now right behind La Fenice, the opera house), but in every other sense, I am light years away. Will miss the adorable baby and tiny doggie, but otherwise: whew. An enormous kitty — Nando — visits here on a daily basis, traipsing to the kitchen window via adjacent roofs, so my pet fix is covered.

Two nights ago I lucked into tickets to Teatro Goldoni. With another dottoranda I met at the Marciana, I saw Goldoni’s La famiglia del Antiquario (The Antiquarian’s Family). What a treat to actually see a play by Goldoni, about whom I’ve read so much. Even better, I was given the tickets by subscribers who have fabulous, second row seats. I can’t remember the last time I could actually see performers’ faces. And “go me” — I understood the whole show. Not 100%, but still… I’m pretty pleased.

news of the season, skill building, etc.

I’ve been working on expanding my mental map of this part of town, and spent several hours last night and this afternoon working quasi-systematically through all the wee calli that are off my own beaten tracks between Campo S. Stefano and Piazza S. Marco. I’m finding wonderful short-cuts and some nice views, too. This is a long weekend (for All Saints Day), so visitors have descended on the city in what feels like random fashion. My barista tells me it’s the last hurrah of The Season. That makes this weekend a good time to either stay home or go off the beaten track. I’m not much interested in doing the former lately, so the latter it is!

Apropos the season…. Without fall colors on the precious few trees and without the Halloween/Thanksgiving discourse I’m used to, this doesn’t feel much like November. Plus there are still mosquitos in my room. I killed what I thought must be the last one a few minutes ago, and just now another one flew by my face.  Bloodsucking bastards.

News from the library: After a week of flailing around and not finding much of interest — *pointed, relevant* interest — I finally saw a manuscript today that actually looks very useful and is quite large. Finally, something to put on the definitely-look-at-this-closely-later list. So far, I’ve spent most of my time trying to squeeze the little bit of interesting material I’ve found in each item, since there hasn’t been much to justify coming back to it later. This find also signals the fact that I’m beginning to understand how to select materials to consult. The accumulation of small lessons learned is starting to add up to something.