Florence and Finding Truth in Renaissance Willies

“Those who believe in telekinesis raise my right hand” Kurt Vonnegut

Florence, Sophistication and Great Marble Willies.

Florence Splendour

Leaving Florence you got the feeling that there are so many things right about this place: The devotion to Architecture and Heritage of Renaissance and Neo-Classicism. The great selection of food and drink. The people themselves seemed pretty friendly considering it a well-trodden tourist haven. And people looked so suave and elegant – almost precious. I couldn’t help feeling sophisticated by day 4. ‘Espresso, grazzie’

Obviously this feeling was totally bogus. But wow! You can’t really get over the sheer scale and historical importance of Florence as the birthplace and heartland all things stereotypically Italian: Frescoes, Italian Renaissance and all persons connected to it (here’s a list that just proves the all-encompassing change and importance it held from the centre of Florence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Renaissance_figures), Chianti wine, gelato, abundance of great food and the archetypal ‘renaissance man’ of science, religious scholar, art and architecture, and probably really good offspinner  – Leonardo da Vinci.

Man in perfect proportions: Leonardo da Vinci

The City Hall

The renaissance lasted roughly from 14th Century until the 17th Century, so things took a while to catch on as people were still basking in the murk and penitence of the middle-ages. The Renaissance is instantly typified by clarity  and clear lined proportions and symmetry in white marble and an instant love of Classicism typified through a ‘modern ideals’ of humanism. Questionable evaluations arise, but Florence seems to be the most important place to start for Renaissance.

Like all good movements one needs a place or person that can finance and interest the advances of other industries. That person was the Medici Family, possibly the richest and most important family save the Beckhams. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medici_family. As a rich bankers and great investors in gold this dynasty had some sort of financial part to play in every piece of commissioned art work, building, scientific design, or social network – kind of Microsoft of the Renaissance era.

So, back to some sort of adventures. What I did was just walk around Florence going into gallery upon gallery and resting my eyes on more masterpieces and saintly views of the surrounding Tuscan hills. A lot of queueing for the private views of Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’.

Places of wow:

The Uffizi Gallery – http://www.uffizi.com/. Which did consist of queueing for hours, so as all guide say get advance tickets.

Florence Cathedral and Giotto’s Tower – Great views of the hills and more precious frescoes and messy renaissance-graffiti on the walls.

Piazzale Michelangelo – for fantastic views of the city, grab a beer and look out yonder. Looming willies exist on this look out.

Florence Accademia – Get a glimpse the most famous nude. Michelangelo’s ‘David’ – great arse!

City Mayors: Palazzio Vecchio – Damien Hirst’s ‘For the Love of God’ is doing the rounds here, but if that bores just walk round the collections of the wealthy benefactors.

Boboli Gardens – Lots of nudes in stately grounds. More views and beautiful vistas.

Vivoli Gelataria – http://www.vivoli.it/ Great ice creams worth trying.

The San Lorenzo Food Market – walk around and sit down for lunch in one of the tratterias. Awesome paninos, salads and wine on offer!!

Wrestling Roman Style

So back to the willies. Why so many naked men in Renaissance Italy, or in Florence for that matter. Well, obviously there’s a strong sense of adoration for the Greek and Roman times here. But, also as technology advanced there was firmer sense of spirituality based in ones existence on the earth as opposed to solely the afterlife. Da Vinci: “The beautiful machine of the human body”. The sense of proportion and perfect symmetry confirmed the mastery and conception of higher powers, thus leading to perfectly symmetrical drawings, sculptures, paintings, archways and buildings. But why is anatomy of willies, well slightly lacking?

“….. [Art] is concerned with the “ideal,” or “what ought to be.” The “ideal,” in most classical writing, refers to the way things would be if the form, the principle, that is operating through them were carried out to its completion or logical fulfillment.

“[Art], says Aristotle, rests upon two instincts in man—the instinct for imitation, and the instinct for harmony.

“… And in addition to taking general truths and persisting forms as its model, as its subject matter, art also subdues and recast the imitation it is making into a new harmony—a harmonious treatment, this time, of the materials through which a given medium of art works—of line and colour in painting, of sounds in music, of words in poetry.” – (From the introduction to Prefaces to Criticism by Walter Jackson Bate)

So the easy and abridged answer to the question is that: The ideal of Classical (Greek/Roman) art was to produce the truth in art. That ideal in Renaissance art had all to do with proportions of the whole image – termed ‘Verism’ (truth). So, having smaller willies the sculptures where emphasizing the glorious beauty of the whole. Obsessions in proportions meant that anything that would take attention away from the whole image, look disproportionate would break with the ideal of truth and beauty in the proportioned art form. Big willies, no sir! That would be wholly distracting and disproportionate. Godly forms in art should echo the ideal of real symmetry and proportionate beauty = truth. Also, it would add that “oo aint that big” factor for the birth of ‘Italian Stallion’.

One thing of note in Florence. Try trippa alla fiorentina or lampredotto both basically tripe sandwiches which you have with either a green (parsley sauce) or chilli sauce. These tripes mainly the fourth stomach and honeycombed one of the cow, mixed with udders, and tongues and tendons, sound a medieval offering but the offal is cooked for up to eight hours with herbs and vegetables and produce varied tastes and tender flavours. My highlight of Florence. Seemingly office workers, builders and Florentines come to get some tripe on their lunch break. Easily brought from carts or specialist cafes’ selling these delicious offerings. So, had enough of willies, get some cow offal down you.

Good sandwich!

Morocco Adventures: Courtesy of a Birthday Bash

When is a donkey a dog? when it is in fact a mule….?!

Whispering Sweet Nothing to Roy

5 days spent in Morocco with friends to celebrate the birth of me, myself and I. 30 years old was the magic number that persuaded me to book some cheap(ish) ryanairflights from Seville-Marrakesh. So, the itinerary was: 2.5 days spent perusing the stalls and market fare of Marrakesh then a 2 day hike up the nearby Atlas Mountains.

Atlas Mountains

My Western mindset had me considering thieves, knife point muggings, food poisoning, over zealous market sellers and of course any other badly developed Western suspicion of a culture that doesn’t consume alcohol…. Well. There were tea infusions with enough sugar to get your muscles twitching and prevent you blinking for up to 2 hours. Loopy stuff.

Market Fare

Firstly, Marrakesh provided us with enough room to get utterly lost and inspire all of us to use Spanish as the Lingua Franca as opposed to English or French. Thus getting us more confused about the point of the exchange and hard poised glances from locals to whether we were taking the piss or migrants from an antiquated feudal colony. Not the best start. But we soon figured out that English, as our native tongue, would get us further.

Getting Lost

The word that springs to mind when in a still thriving market-culture like Morocco is “barter”.  And yes you had to do this for more or less everything apart from the clothes on your back. Not a problem. But there are rules to the game, which are always open to change.

First: always have a fixed price you want to pay for the goods. Second: always ask for lower than what you want. Third: have the select amount you want to pay in hard cash, showing the seller the money you have usually adds weight to you’re asking price. Fourth: if you ask how much the goods cost knock-off 75% of the price and you should get the rough value of the goods. And Fifth: don’t do what I did on several occasions ask for a ridiculously low price for something worth 60 DRMS and say ‘I’ll give you 3DRMS’, basically as I found out it was highly offensive and got me thrown out of a few stalls: “EXIT!!”

Lampshades for Sale!

Some etymology to get your teeth into:

barter (v.) mid-15c., from O.Fr. barater “to barter, cheat, deceive, haggle” (also, “to have sexual intercourse”), 12c., of uncertain origin, perhaps from a Celtic language (cf. Ir. brath “treachery”). Connection between “trading” and “cheating” exists in several languages. The noun is first recorded 1590s.

SEXUAL INTERCOURSE!!!!! No sir! I hope not, an underlying theme of this wholly unnatural custom of buying to anyone from England outside used cars, is that you are always being cheated. Yes, you must cheat the cheater. Not to say this is a totally disingenuous form but like the sophisticated “buy one get free” or stick a .99 on the end of an asking price that usually gets one to handover our hard-earned cash in the UK. Morocco is a poor country but that certainly doesn’t mean sellers don’t know how to generate some capital. Usual fare in Morocco was anything leather, carpet-like, or jewellery aswell as any snack that had enough sugar to send you into a sugar low for several days – kind of like a depression without the circumstance, always colourful.

Which one: The really sugary one or the really really sugary one?

So dodging hawkers and buying right was what we did. The main square in Morocco is called Jemaa el-Fnaa and it’s a cacophony of noise, Berber music and dancers, psalmist, snake charmers and monkey handlers walking around trying to get you to take a photo and then pay. Obviously this is done in a typical style in this area, in demands. If you don’t pay your cursed in arabic. It’s a place which would drive you mental if you stayed there too long. With the sound of snake charmers and the onslaught of traffic horns – it feels chaotic and without the dull effect of alcohol, it would be like being stuck in a lift listening to a strange feedback of Cliff Richard hits played backwards to some Umpa Loompa music cut-in. Oh the hell! Not for the weak-hearted, however the streets around the medina got us lost several times over, never once did I genuinely feel in danger or particularly vulnerable. Maybe ignorance is bliss – it’s worth noting that 4 days after out departure a bomb exploded in a popular cafe we had frequented: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13226117

But that makes it sound like a dangerous country which statistically for tourists it isn’t!!

I'll Have The Hoof Please!

The main square is also the place for food. Moroccan food. Basically all the usual: ummmm tagines, cous cous varieties, snails or some sort of goat offal on offer, and the best foods to eat on the run are at the stalls. Hygiene is not important as you can wash it down with some hot sauces or plates of liver mushed into a paste that fills you up instantly and the ubiquitous fills of bread and olives. All for about 80 DRMs (5-6quid). Was good grub. Just difficult avoiding the plumes of smoke belched out from the stalls.

Leaving Marakesh we organised a 2 day trek into the Atlas mountains. This wasn’t done easily but essentially in good faith. Enter any internet cafe, print or phone shop, usually advertised outside are treks or tours. We opted for the trek and after some half-arsed bartering in broken English found out our trek was organised for the morning where we would walk into the mountains with a donkey or mule and sleep in a Berber village. Great idea! We paid the deposit and with receipt took that total leap of faith that the day after we would be on our way trekking the Toubkal and full of vigour to be in the company of GODS.

Taxi to the Atlas

Thankfully it all worked out. And our man greeted us resplendent in some fine gaudy linen threads and the confirmation that we didn’t need a receipt for 100euros we each handed over – “no problem” was his catch phrase. And so no problem it was. We were whisked up the Atlas via an 80s reg Mercedes Taxi with the Moroccan school of driving which existed without lanes, or simply just a middle lane.

So ease of reading. We taxied up to the base village whilst stopping off at a female run business for some mint tea and expensive soap and oil products made from argon oil. Pictures will do justice to the trek we had. As describing the scenery is like trying to dance to quantum physics.

Dancing to Quantum Physics

Our guide was Mohammed. Spritely chap who said he was 33 years old but looked closer to his early 40s. With a trusty mule who we named Roy. We were sorted to hike in the leisure of bags being carried by Roy and Moe’s insistence that a stone thrown at Roy’s arse or tuneful prompt would hurry her up. However, Roy got her own back and gave a few cursory kicks-backs.

Roy the stalwart

Feeling High

The trek consisted of walks up to see the snow-capped mountains and the main peak Toubkal and then down to the valley where a Berber village was point of rest and….. nothing to do but play cards with the boyish cheat that was Moe. A joyful old man who loved to prove his age wasn’t quite what it seemed. Great Berber tagines and mint tea that gave us an energy burst into hysterics for 30 minutes.

Too Much Tea!

I liked what i saw and experienced in Morocco and would happily go back to explore some more.

There was no problem with the lack of alcohol. As we found. There are places in the cities where you can buy booze. Just need to discover the real definition of mules and donkeys and how to barter and cheat and betray those western impulses to pay now and complain later. Onward.

Semana Santa Pt 2

“Many people find bald, unvarnished truths so disturbing, they prefer to ram their heads in the sand and start dreaming at the first sign of scientific reality.” Charlie Brooker

There he goes...

Nothing revolutionary to report. GOD IS IN THE HOUSE. Yep, he still is lest you pretend that GOD does not exist in shape, form, idea or hard factual evidence to suggest someone is running with an idea many hundreds of years old…. well come to Seville this week. It’s Semana Santa here. A week long catholic carnival from Palm Sunday up to Easter Sunday (15th-24th April). Spain and all catholic countries are flaming at the gills to project observance and penetance for the BIG J. He’s quite a crowd puller!

Specific information can be superficially scanned from wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Week_in_Seville

Obviously it’s more than that. It’s a party, it’s a time to show off how beautiful you look, intermittently show your belief in god and also to stand for hours and hours all day all week and watch men and women dressed in the odiously familiar Klu-Klux clan garb (thankfully no ritual hangings take place) who stroll in long processions through the city to The Seville Cathedral. Obviously this is done with the looming smell of incense, gaudily ornate ‘pasos’ carried by 10s of willing peneters and the steady chorus of the ‘drums of dread’. He died for our sins lest you bloody forget!

Touch thy holy hand minion

‘coming through mind your backs’

I’m all for it. Except…… Strange indoctrinationary techniques are welcome. Gift sweets, stairways to heaven and a firm belief in sin is the staple diet of all good religious traditions. But also a week long communal party. Two days is enough for me – a week is pure lunacy. Whether you have religious beliefs or a cynical worldview, you really need to be from Seville or Andalucia to be invovled. Or have some family curse that demands you trudge out every year to do the same old thing, perhaps even a rampant fear in the afterlife. This wouldn’t last in the transient beliefs of modern Britian. We’re much happier gauging ourselves on chocolate eggs and finding any excuse to buy something thus validating our own existence as living and soon to be dying individuals. Hey it’s just ideas don’t shoot the messenger.

I walked around today gazing at the knots and cues of exquisitely dressed famillies, who were making a day of eating and drinking their way through the tides of different procesions that filter into the city. The scale of the event and sheer frequency of all these different brotherhoods who creep into the city at various times and stages is impressive – in a ‘how the hell did this come to be’? kind of way.

Street drinking the sunday best

What do I think? Well who cares. People here seem to be really enjoying the excuse for holidays and I have no doubt some people are here for only a day or two. I didn’t hang around long enough to get a good whiff of that repulsive stench some people exude: sanctimony or self-righteousness. But yep religion in such a full-on unadulaterated way is alien to British culture now. It’s a given that austerity and guilt distingusihes Catholicism and Protestantism in some ways, but you really do feel you’re in a totally different culture/country. No matter where the scientific truths lie Religion does exist in some punative form or ritual. Take GOD out the equation and it’s entertainment to enforce mass action. People do enjoy it!

Next time I wish they could have some more dancers, maybe some lighting effects and some sort of human feat of intellect or physical capacity to catalogue the scriptures and saints in a tumultuous tide of words in 30 seconds. Also, Gaga’s dress designer’s were all out in force cherry picking the miscallaneous shock content of the processions and good for her I’m sure I heard a whimpered yelp as she was tried to fit into her Jesus suit, replendant with thorns and stigmatas.

Until next year. Morocco tomorrow and a feast of pleasures ahead….I hope.

Gibraltar: Monkeys, Morrisons and Reptilian Bloodsuckers…..

“Well, I don’t use the toilet much to pee in. I almost always pee in the yard or the garden, because I like to pee on my estate”  – Iggy Pop

Here we go. Though perhaps not a daily blog but intentions are somewhat relieved by routines and half-baked obligations. An excuse to write is hampered by all sorts…but if I can’t ‘pee in my yard’ when can a man pee unhampered????

So today. 30 degrees + here in Sevilla. The week passed was one of teaching and the day job. Beers after work and tapas with an attractive American. Late nights and early mornings force me to acquire the bedraggled teacher look. “just one more coffee”…

Monkeys, Morrisons, Ale, half formed English sentences and the blood sucking reptiles!?

Gibraltar last weekend provided us with a forced entry into the coveted world of The Former British Empire. A strange mix of accents and cultural cut-outs of England – ‘there’s Queenie on note, there’s a red phone-box, there’s a post box, supermarket, oooo and a generic highstreet’ where’s the rampant alcoholism and antisocial behaviour? Oh yeah, we’re still inside inside Spain, but confusingly British – Where are we?

This is England!!

So as we arrived after being sucked into the impromptu patriotism of insulting anyone or anything of non-British heritage and a rousing rendition of that benign armchair chest beating classic “God Save The Queen”. The party of English, An American, and some Danish girls decamped to the safety and security of British owned soil. Passports checked to allow us over to our ‘Jerusalem’ (of sorts?!).

And so enter Jackie. The determined whirlwind of a guide. Who persuaded us not to miss a trick. In a matter of minutes he had persuaded us into his bus and for a small charge was our guide/driver/hired raconteur. His efficiency for explaining the historical and cultural significance of places was precise to the point of verbatim whether it was fact who knows, he reeled out his spanish/english inflected phrases with staccato accuracy. Each paragraph timed to perfectly compensate the steady climb up and down the rock. His pat delivery was only outdone by his ability to limit each stop up the rock to 5 minutes viewing time. Like a good guide he  knew how to get the punters up and down that Rock with years of practice and coordinated accuracy. He had the ‘diamond geezer’ air about him like a Frank Butcher charged on some Thai red bulls looking for his next punter to buy a second-hand Ford Escort. We all warmed to him.

The monkeys were the highpoint as Gibraltar is essentially a glamorized military base. Bit like shopping in an open air airport terminal at a dilapidated seaside town from the 80s. Duty free booze and fags, smoking inside is permitted and that innate ability of all British people to sit in a smoky dank filled bar sipping ale whilst the sun shines outside was prevalent. (Maybe reptilian – without the Fear and Loathing reference, more the David Ickes intense conspiracy theories “bloodsucking reptiles in positions of power” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke)

and apart from these views, why you’d want to live there. I was scared!

So back to the monkeys. Barbary Macaques. Bold buggers they are, and according to Jackie were brought over by the Moors nearly 500 years ago. Fact: they are the only wild monkey population in the whole of mainland Europe. Over years of human contact they don’t give a shit about us. Any excuse for cheap snack. I didn’t trust them. Especially being their close genetic cousins to us, you get the sense there’s more going on in there monkey minds than meets the eye – like “is this ongoing Cameron & Clegg coalition just a hollowed out version of the Thatcherite dream. All slogan and half-baked promises???”.

dignified and in control

Monkey Brawl

So monkeys of Gibraltar were entertaining. A few monkey brawls ensued and the day was nearing completion. As always a trip to Gibraltar was marked by fish n chips and beers in the midday sun and a trip to Morrison’s to stock up on some British food and beer. Ale is in short supply in Spain so finding the hoppy goodness at any expense was worthwhile.

There should be a ‘Rock of Gibraltar’ jibe/joke here but here’s how we left it. Gibraltar is like England but without the fireworks. They keep drilling for that bit of authentic British trademark but it’s just an old military base in Spain. Strange it is seen as British, but I wouldn’t want to ‘pee’ in this backyard.

Next week continued……

That’s some Rock