Communities are all the same. Sometimes you just don't want to be part of one.
As we got recognisably near home from Leonardo's Cresima in San Vincent in Vall d'Aosta, Davide said, 'It's true that the sky is the birds' road, isn't it?' Suspecting a plant from a grandparent we answered yes with a 'yes but...' tone.
Davide's pay-off was, 'So where are the traffic lights?'
His timing was killer, and so we doubted that it had been a plant after all. Just him doing his 'occhi buffi' thing.
Davide is often misunderstood though, and our cynicism is usually misjudged. He got told off at school and then by his Nonna because he'd said to everyone at school that he wouldn't be there the next day - he was going to the seaside.
'But it's not the holidays yet.'
'Why are you telling stories like that?'
'You mustn't tell lies or else noone'll believe what you say.'
They all suspected that he was inventing a story from nothing – malicious lying.
And when I went to pick him up he said,
'But it's true that we're going to the seaside, daddy, isn't it?'
'Of course it is, Davide. We talked about it last night.'
'See, see, we are going to the seaside!'
'Yes, we're going in June; not tomorrow though.'
I forget, and everyone else forgets, that Davide isn't Marta, and he doesn't know the difference between tomorrow and three weeks' time. I'm committing such basic parenting errors that I surprise myself – these are not my first children, and even if they were they'd be pretty inexcusable mistakes.
This is what worries me most – that I'm making mistakes that'll consign my children into the fucked-up bin. You can never be too complacent. And anyway, who's to say what fucked up is?
Fucked up is the blogrodeo. Not that they would see it that way. And in a certain sense, neither would I. But if you're watching someone read a post out loud in front of an audience in a community centre in a depressed/depressing suburb of Milan on a Friday night, it's hard to see things in any other light than fucked up. One forty watt bulb lighting up a hundred and fifty metres of shuttered space. You might even start to question the meaning of your own existence.
Have I really reached the age of forty, practically forty one when I think about it, to end up here, on a Friday night?
Some explanation perhaps. If you speak Italian you can look it up yourself; even if you don't, there are probably photos.
(Incidentally – well, not at all incidentally - doesn't the spread of digital cameras bring up questions about what exactly we get to see these days? Perhaps we'll come back to what the effects of the Web really are.)
Blogging is just becoming a big thing in Italy now. In Italy... I mean, in Milan (I have no idea what's going on in Bari or Lecce or even Rome). An educated person I met last night had to ask what a blog was, and I don't think he was bluffing. Bloggers are at the cutting edge of technological/cultural society, and they know it. But they're still marginalised and they're still Italian and so they still need to meet up.
It was like the Poetry Olympics or Call My Bluff or some such marginal event. 'Practioners' volunteered themselves into teams, were given a limited amount of time and had to come up with a post on an assigned theme. The 'judging' was the applause after the post was read out loud (Hughie Green's clap-o-meter). I don't think anyone referred to any site outside the ones run by the people in the room. What'd be the point , since it was intended to be read out loud?
So then the question arises of why meet physically. Blogging means never having to say sorry for the sad physical wreck you really are, doesn't it?
They met up in Milan, but people had come from Rome and Florence and even Bari. All-encompassing, then.
Not exactly. There was definitely a particular social profile to last night's meeting. I was certainly one of the oldest people there, which just about says everything about the variation. I was definitely the only person whose first language wasn't Italian (okay, I mean there were no black people). There were no minorities represented at all (a couple of rather short men with dodgy facial hair, but they don't see themselves as downtrodden). There were women... about 35% (maybe less)... but I think even in Italy we've stopped regarding women as a minority.
People seemed to regard each other as 'different' because they didn't go to school with each other.
But conformism in Italy is an old subject and surprises noone.
It's very easy to be withering about the blogrodeo: its social and political conformity, the naff music, its self-conscious wackiness (one of the 'teams' wore chefs' hats – imagine that! - and someone was going round taking photos of people's shoes – you never!). The way that everyone in the community is practically perfect in every way is especially annoying.
It's more challenging to look for its original points, but they are more interesting. And this is probably my thesis: underneath the obvious facade of things Italian there's a more original twist on reality.
Let's go back to Davide. I heard a story the other day which is likely to go into the family annals and come back to embarrass him. (I realise I'm doing exactly that.)
He was pretending to write a letter to his mum - copying his sister, who often sends notes to Valentina to complain about this or that injustice (like some paranoid Tory MP writing to the Telegraph). He was drawing things on the sheet of paper and reading out the words at the same time.
-Dear Mummy, Thank you for all the nice things you cook for us and all the games we play. But can you please, please stop tickling me. I love you'
and at this point his descriptive skills failed and, dropping his pen, he held his arms apart as far as he could,
'Like this. But please stop tickling me!'
What's the point of that story? Davide is a blogger. He writes because he wants to communicate something and wants a reaction to his message. At a certain point in his communication he realises he doesn't have the words to do it so he resorts to a completely different medium.
Of course, the cute-kid aspect of the story is also the strong point of blogging. It's good that there are ways of people communicating that aren't tied to pure articulacy. Unfortunately, at the moment, in Italy, that's not the case. There's a real sense of league- tables of bloggers. Who's top? Who's best? Who's got the most comments on their blog today?
'He's definitely one of the best bloggers writing in Italy at the moment' was a comment I heard a few times (about completely different people).
(And it's like saying 'he's one of the best English-born left-footed defenders playing in the Premiership today'. In other words, there's noone else doing it.)
But what there is in Italy, is a strong sense of what a community is - or at least should be. And there's a sense of responsibility towards encouraging it, or preserving it at the very least.
What Thatcher destroyed in Britain, some might say.
That sense of community is so strong that it drives even the least outgoing people (and that must be what bloggers are) to meet up. They meet, they introduce each other, they share the community. They go to enormous lengths just to have a simple social occasion. It's difficult not to feel overawed by their efforts – it would be much easier to stay at home and do a quick post.
I realise though that I'm not driven in the same way. It's not part of my culture. I appreciate it but I don't enjoy it. I need to find a more caustic view of it all, a different voice.
As we got recognisably near home from Leonardo's Cresima in San Vincent in Vall d'Aosta, Davide said, 'It's true that the sky is the birds' road, isn't it?' Suspecting a plant from a grandparent we answered yes with a 'yes but...' tone.
Davide's pay-off was, 'So where are the traffic lights?'
His timing was killer, and so we doubted that it had been a plant after all. Just him doing his 'occhi buffi' thing.
Davide is often misunderstood though, and our cynicism is usually misjudged. He got told off at school and then by his Nonna because he'd said to everyone at school that he wouldn't be there the next day - he was going to the seaside.
'But it's not the holidays yet.'
'Why are you telling stories like that?'
'You mustn't tell lies or else noone'll believe what you say.'
They all suspected that he was inventing a story from nothing – malicious lying.
And when I went to pick him up he said,
'But it's true that we're going to the seaside, daddy, isn't it?'
'Of course it is, Davide. We talked about it last night.'
'See, see, we are going to the seaside!'
'Yes, we're going in June; not tomorrow though.'
I forget, and everyone else forgets, that Davide isn't Marta, and he doesn't know the difference between tomorrow and three weeks' time. I'm committing such basic parenting errors that I surprise myself – these are not my first children, and even if they were they'd be pretty inexcusable mistakes.
This is what worries me most – that I'm making mistakes that'll consign my children into the fucked-up bin. You can never be too complacent. And anyway, who's to say what fucked up is?
Fucked up is the blogrodeo. Not that they would see it that way. And in a certain sense, neither would I. But if you're watching someone read a post out loud in front of an audience in a community centre in a depressed/depressing suburb of Milan on a Friday night, it's hard to see things in any other light than fucked up. One forty watt bulb lighting up a hundred and fifty metres of shuttered space. You might even start to question the meaning of your own existence.
Have I really reached the age of forty, practically forty one when I think about it, to end up here, on a Friday night?
Some explanation perhaps. If you speak Italian you can look it up yourself; even if you don't, there are probably photos.
(Incidentally – well, not at all incidentally - doesn't the spread of digital cameras bring up questions about what exactly we get to see these days? Perhaps we'll come back to what the effects of the Web really are.)
Blogging is just becoming a big thing in Italy now. In Italy... I mean, in Milan (I have no idea what's going on in Bari or Lecce or even Rome). An educated person I met last night had to ask what a blog was, and I don't think he was bluffing. Bloggers are at the cutting edge of technological/cultural society, and they know it. But they're still marginalised and they're still Italian and so they still need to meet up.
It was like the Poetry Olympics or Call My Bluff or some such marginal event. 'Practioners' volunteered themselves into teams, were given a limited amount of time and had to come up with a post on an assigned theme. The 'judging' was the applause after the post was read out loud (Hughie Green's clap-o-meter). I don't think anyone referred to any site outside the ones run by the people in the room. What'd be the point , since it was intended to be read out loud?
So then the question arises of why meet physically. Blogging means never having to say sorry for the sad physical wreck you really are, doesn't it?
They met up in Milan, but people had come from Rome and Florence and even Bari. All-encompassing, then.
Not exactly. There was definitely a particular social profile to last night's meeting. I was certainly one of the oldest people there, which just about says everything about the variation. I was definitely the only person whose first language wasn't Italian (okay, I mean there were no black people). There were no minorities represented at all (a couple of rather short men with dodgy facial hair, but they don't see themselves as downtrodden). There were women... about 35% (maybe less)... but I think even in Italy we've stopped regarding women as a minority.
People seemed to regard each other as 'different' because they didn't go to school with each other.
But conformism in Italy is an old subject and surprises noone.
It's very easy to be withering about the blogrodeo: its social and political conformity, the naff music, its self-conscious wackiness (one of the 'teams' wore chefs' hats – imagine that! - and someone was going round taking photos of people's shoes – you never!). The way that everyone in the community is practically perfect in every way is especially annoying.
It's more challenging to look for its original points, but they are more interesting. And this is probably my thesis: underneath the obvious facade of things Italian there's a more original twist on reality.
Let's go back to Davide. I heard a story the other day which is likely to go into the family annals and come back to embarrass him. (I realise I'm doing exactly that.)
He was pretending to write a letter to his mum - copying his sister, who often sends notes to Valentina to complain about this or that injustice (like some paranoid Tory MP writing to the Telegraph). He was drawing things on the sheet of paper and reading out the words at the same time.
-Dear Mummy, Thank you for all the nice things you cook for us and all the games we play. But can you please, please stop tickling me. I love you'
and at this point his descriptive skills failed and, dropping his pen, he held his arms apart as far as he could,
'Like this. But please stop tickling me!'
What's the point of that story? Davide is a blogger. He writes because he wants to communicate something and wants a reaction to his message. At a certain point in his communication he realises he doesn't have the words to do it so he resorts to a completely different medium.
Of course, the cute-kid aspect of the story is also the strong point of blogging. It's good that there are ways of people communicating that aren't tied to pure articulacy. Unfortunately, at the moment, in Italy, that's not the case. There's a real sense of league- tables of bloggers. Who's top? Who's best? Who's got the most comments on their blog today?
'He's definitely one of the best bloggers writing in Italy at the moment' was a comment I heard a few times (about completely different people).
(And it's like saying 'he's one of the best English-born left-footed defenders playing in the Premiership today'. In other words, there's noone else doing it.)
But what there is in Italy, is a strong sense of what a community is - or at least should be. And there's a sense of responsibility towards encouraging it, or preserving it at the very least.
What Thatcher destroyed in Britain, some might say.
That sense of community is so strong that it drives even the least outgoing people (and that must be what bloggers are) to meet up. They meet, they introduce each other, they share the community. They go to enormous lengths just to have a simple social occasion. It's difficult not to feel overawed by their efforts – it would be much easier to stay at home and do a quick post.
I realise though that I'm not driven in the same way. It's not part of my culture. I appreciate it but I don't enjoy it. I need to find a more caustic view of it all, a different voice.
