While having my morning coffee, I overheard a man talking to the waiter:
“I married two sisters. No, really. My first wife caught me with her sister. [Meditatively.] Who do you think is worse: the husband who sleeps with his sister-in-law, or the sister who sleeps with her sister’s husband?”
…there’s a novel in there somewhere…but probably not the sort I would enjoy writing!
Years ago, we visited Enrico’s cousins in Montecchio Maggiore, a small town near Verona. We went to see the local attractions, the castles of Romeo and Juliet (yes, the original Romeo and Juliet), up on two small hills above the town. Riding in the car with us was Claudia, a very intelligent ten-year-old, who had noticed that lots of Americans come to Italy as tourists.
“Why do they come here?” she asked. “What do they get here that they can’t get at home?”
“Well,” I explained, “America is a very young country. They don’t have the millennia of history, the buildings, art, and so on, that you have in Italy. So they like to come and see it here.”
“Ah,” said Claudia thoughtfully. “You mean they come here because of a lack of culture in their own country?”
This summer we went to a concert by Alex Britti, a singer-songwriter as yet unknown outside Europe. He’s popular with the bubblegum set for a few immensely singable songs such asLa Vasca (The Bathtub), but he considers himself more a guitarist – and turns out to be a hell of a good one.Unfortunately, we hardly got to hear him sing during the concert, due to the chorus of teenyboppers who sang along enthusiastically (and badly) with most of the songs. Early on, I asked the girls behind us to stop: “I came to hear him, not you,” I pointed out. Their mother retorted: “Lady, if you want to hear the music, buy the CD. This is a concert.”
Defeated by this, er, logic, I retired from the battle, and had to be grateful for the guitar solos: delightfully un-singalongable, and very well played. These seemed to confuse much of the audience, who muttered to each other: “What song is this?” or got up and went for a beer.
Alex Britti must be frustrated. He’s made lots of money and gained some artistic freedom thanks to his lighter bestsellers, but his audience doesn’t seem to understand or appreciate the stuff that he himself likes best!
Other musical experiences this summer were less than stellar. Roseto, the little town on the Adriatic coast where my in-laws live, used to be a pleasantly sleepy place with nothing to do at night except stroll around, eat gelato, and watch kids on the carnival rides. But now it aspires to the trendy disco status of the Adriatic’s hotter spots, so the beachfront establishments all have permission to play music til 1 or 2 am.
This would be somewhat bearable, or at least understandable, if the music was good. However, it was all REALLY bad, mostly youngsters basically doing karaoke with automated music machines – their equipment was far more impressive than their abilities deserved.
One band started out relatively promising, playing real instruments, with an admirable selection of blues tunes and guitar licks ripped off from Stevie Ray Vaughan. But the guitar wasn’t quite in tune with the keyboard, and the singer wasn’t in tune with anything. After hearing “Pride and Joy” murdered two or three times, we were ready to strangle the drunk who kept demanding encores.
We could easily perceive even that detail, because my in-laws’ apartment overlooks the beach, within a stone’s throw of two of these establishments (alas, I had no stones). After we finally dropped off to sleep at 2 am one night, I was awoken at 8:00 by a group of retirees just arrived on an group tour. “Ecco il mare!” shouted one enthusiastic fellow – “Look! The sea!” (And just what did you expect to find on a trip to the seaside…?)
Note: I have also translated some of Alex Britti’s songs into English.
Tom Robbins has long been one of my favorite authors; every one of his seven novels is a gem, infused with his uniquely loopy sensibility and style. This novel (Amazon UK | US), published in May, 2000, was eerily timely in its discussion of West vs. East and Muslim vs. Christian, in the context of a story about a renegade CIA agent, an Amazonian curse, the third prophecy of Fatima, and a band of excommunicated nuns in the Syrian desert. Among many other things, Robbins glances at a topic which has long puzzled me:
“…the sexual insecurities that among men of the Middle East achieved titanic, even earth-changing proportions; insecurities that had spawned veils, shaven heads, clitoridectomies, house arrest, segregation, macho posturing, and three major religions.”
Many of the world’s cultures and religions focus to an amazing degree on controlling women, and especially women’s sexuality. (As Robbins points out, it’s a global phenomenon: “The Levant had no monopoly on penile insecurity.”) It is true that much of this nastiness is enforced by women themselves upon their daughters unto the nth generation, but it’s all intended to “benefit” the men.
For example, the “logic” behind clitoridectomy is that, if a woman can’t enjoy sex, she won’t go looking for it outside of marriage. Less brutal methods for ensuring fidelity include covering her up so no one sees her, and and locking her up so she never gets the chance. In many cultures, the punishments for a woman’s infidelity (or even imagined infidelity) are far more severe than for men: death by stoning, murder by the husband and his family, or societally-condoned mutilation.
I guess these men are all afraid that they just aren’t man enough to keep their women satisfied.
Italy has a reputation (in America, at least) as having a “macho” culture, but this doesn’t work the way macho does in other places. Most Italian men would rather prove their virility by seduction than by force. Every now and then some silly pollster does a Europe-wide or worldwide survey on “who’s the best at…” Italians are generally rated the best lovers, a result widely reported in the Italian press. ; )
I’ve met a young Irish woman working in Milan as an au pair. Recently she and three friends were out drinking at a bar. One was mildly propositioned by a man, whom she turned down. Later, apparently, something was slipped into their drinks. The woman who had been propositioned has confused memories of winding up somewhere with the guy, with her pants off, but when she said “No,” he desisted. She and another of the women then slept all weekend, leading them to believe they had been drugged. When they confronted the man a few days later, he looked guilty, but pointed out that they couldn’t prove anything.
I’d never heard of this “date rape drug,” though it’s apparently well known elsewhere, and a fairly common danger in some parts of the world. The Irish woman told me that, home in Ireland, she would never touch a drink in a pub or disco unless she’s seen it poured and picked it up from the bar herself.
I told the story to some Italian women, and they agreed that this is a highly unusual event in Italy. The reason they gave was an insight into the culture: “No Italian man would want to go to bed with a woman unless he’d earned her.”
As popes go, John Paul II is certainly one of the best there’s ever been: he is truly upright and deeply religious, and he has tried to use his position to be a force for good in the world. I respect that, even though I’m not Catholic and don’t agree with everything he says.
But in Italy (as I often joke) we don’t have television, we have Pope-o-vision. Every day the news wires and TV report what the Pope is doing, or what he has to say about the global crisis or disaster of the day. But what he says is usually so predictable! Of course he’s going to pray for peace between the warring factions, for international understanding, for aid to the afflicted, etc. While kind and worthy, this is hardly news: he’s the Pope – what else would we expect him to say?
Occasionally he does come out with something surprising. For example: In Italy, many couples split up without officially filing for divorce (because it’s a huge, expensive hassle), and often the ex-partners end up living and even having children with someone new. The Pope declared that it was all right for these de facto new couples to take communion – as long as they weren’t actually having sex.
The Italian media’s obsession with the Pope is baffling, because so few Italians today are devoutly practicing Catholics. Evidence: The vast majority of Italians are nominally Catholic, and the Church does not believe in “unnatural” forms of birth control, yet Italy has one of the world’s lowest birthrates. (Followed closely by that other very Catholic country, Spain.)
Italy’s shift to secularity is recent. Divorce became legal only in 1970, in a parliamentary decision which the Vatican attempted to overturn by a national referendum in 1974. To the shock of the Church, 60% of the Italian people voted in favor of keeping divorce legal. Similarly, and even more strikingly, a 1978 law making abortion legal was brought to referendum in 1981, and again the Church and its political friends failed: the right to abortion was sustained by 68% of Italians. Since then, abortion has never been a serious political issue in Italy.
Returning to my original topic: My irreverence towards the Church (and indeed all religious institutions) is partly my own, but I’ve also absorbed it from the Italians, many of whom, in spite of their media’s obsessions, don’t take Catholicism as an institution very seriously. They’ve had a ringside seat on the Vatican’s activities for most of 2000 years, and they know how little the Church-with-a-capital-C has had to do with religion for much of that time.
