#11 Things to share over coffee

Carnevale, social media, Hasidic Jews and my birth

Hello friend,

1.     A letter from me

This past week was rather strange for me here in Sicily. It started with the last couple of days of Carnevale, which is not officially a holiday in Italy but, in a roundabout way, always manages to become a holiday for everyone. For example, my son is in middle school. While he officially doesn't get any holidays for Carnevale, his school is closed for three days for its regular fumigation. Convenient hey! So it allowed my son to get dressed up and party with his friends.

Last week I mentioned how the Carnival isn't my kind of holiday. I find it weird and pointless. There is a long tradition of masquerades. There are many regional costumes and historically celebrated Carnevale parades around Italy, from Viareggio in Tuscany, Venice, to Acireale and Sciacca in Sicily. And I get it. It's a beautiful big festival in the middle of winter when nothing else is going on. It's supposed to be the last hurrah before Lent's solemn period of prayer, fasting and charity. Still, in an increasingly secular Italy, this seems more of a thing of the past.

I find Carnevale to be a little stupid, but that's because I never grew up celebrating it. I'm a bit of a Carnevale scrooge. So bah humbug!

I can see how children love to dress up as their favourite superhero or Disney princess and how people enjoy frying sugar-covered sweets that warm up their souls during this cold and bleak time of year. I get it; everyone loves a party with wine, friends and dance.

But at times, it is a little too much for me.

They say a Carnevale ogni scherzo vale e chi si offende e' un grand miale (for Carnival every practical joke is permitted, and whoever gets offended is a giant pig.) While I don't consider myself a spoil sport, I tend to sit in the corner and observe the bizarre behaviour that goes on mainly on the festival's last day.

Don't get me wrong; there is nothing strange about getting into the spirit of Carnevale, making floats, and costumes, choreographing dance moves, drinking a little too much and preparing food. But it gets a bit tiresome when you have people vomiting in front of your front door and parties that go on all night.

When my son was at school, the costume situation became a competition between the parents. Even on this last Tuesday of Carnevale, Martedi Grasso, I saw dozens of little Principe Azzurri (prince charming), and principesse (princess) costumes that I know cost hundreds of euros.

I enjoy the irreverence of some people's dress-ups; there is always someone dressed as Jesus, or the Pope, some male nun dressed in drag. Then some take to current affairs and political satire; this year, a few medics were curing Corona, a couple of Berlusconi's. This year there was a Chiara Ferragni who hosted this year's Sanremo Italian song festival and wore a few strange outfits that needed to be poked fun of.

The one thing puzzling me is how so many people permit themselves to go crazy over Carnevale. I've seen perfectly serious people dressed up in the most ludicrous get-ups, dancing around in fishnet stockings, blindly drunk with no boundaries or judgement, and it's just all chalked up to Carnevale fun.

Even though I can never reconcile, it is great to witness people's bizarre behaviour. 

I have seen a high-profile criminal lawyer with real Mafiosi as his clients, dressed like a cowboy, boot scooting down the street, partying like it's the end of the world.

This year I saw my greengrocer dressed like Dolly Parton, flashing his red underwear at everyone who commented on his sexy fishnet stockings.

I wonder how perfectly normal people can go insane for Carnevale. It's a kind of collective release, a permitted glitch in regular sanity. There is a bit of chaos, without any real reason, and then everything returns to normal.

I will never understand Carnevale, but I do enjoy witnessing the spectacle.

2.     What I'm reading

I've dipped into Truman Capote's classic Breakfast at Tiffany's this week.

I have never read it, even though I love the movie version with Audry Hepburn as the enigmatic Holly Golightly.

It's a beautifully written short story, so decadent and evocative of New York in the 1940s. The characters are so wild, free and three-dimensional that they leap off the page.

Apart from a few awkward comments about lesbians and Afro-Americans, the story has aged rather well.

It made me realise how the short story genre can make the most of the details of costume, dialogue, setting and the intimacies of observation. Capote has a natural gift of reproducing this bohemian story which was very visual and ideally suited to cinematic adaptation.

3.     Commonplace quotes

This week I came across the most remarkable book by Jaron Lanier. Lanier is the most extraordinary personality, a creative composer, computer engineer and social activist who was very much at the centre of social media developments in Silicon Valley in California. This makes his book, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, all the more fascinating.

I have been contemplating deleting every social media account I have and just taking a break from it all. Simply because it's all so draining and distracting for me.

Lanier suggests we should all be cautious of social media and detox from it occasionally. Be very cat-like with our interactions online.

Since I am a cat person, I am fascinated by his observations. He says:

Cats have done the seemingly impossible: They've integrated themselves into the modern high-tech world without giving themselves up. They are still in charge. There is no worry that some stealthy meme crafted by algorithms and paid for by a creepy, hidden oligarch has taken over your cat. No one has taken over your cat; not you, not anyone.

This book is about how to be a cat. How can you remain autonomous in a world where you are under constant surveillance and are constantly prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history, which have no way of making money except by being paid to manipulate your behavior? How can you be a cat, despite that?

4.     What I am listening to

This week I added some random things on my big old 'random playlist' that I completely forgot about. Do you ever do that? Forget about bands that you used to love in your youth. 

I've gone briefly back into the 90s and have been listening to The Smashing Pumpkins now legendary album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Perhaps it's because my birthday is coming up. I'd forgotten how great this album was. The 90s was excellent for gritty, alternative-based guitar rock with iconic lead singers. So enigmatic and powerful. How could I have forgotten? Just getting old, I guess.

5.     What I've been watching

Another random addition to this week's listening has to be Blanco Brown and his song The Git up, which is just this crazy hip-hop, line-dancing country mash-up. I remembered this song after watching a very cool documentary series on Netflix about the origins of Country Music. If you get a chance, check out Explained on Netflix, a series of fascinating short 25-minute documentaries about everything from monogamy to monarchies, billionaires to the racial wealth gap, and asking endless questions about our world.

I haven't had a chance to watch some bulky documentaries on my watchlist, so these short and sweet docs have been enriching my brain this week whenever I can sit down for half an hour. I watched one while I was cooking lunch the other day. 

6.     Poem of the week

I've had Allen Ginsberg's modern epic Howl on my mind to re-read, but I haven't had a chance to sit down. I have loved this Beat legend's poetry since my uni days. But I have shyed away from re-reading it as he was a terrible person to many people and has been accused of dubious sexual practices and paedophilia.

This begs the question, should we ignore art made by rotten people? Should we cancel them altogether? Perhaps all great artists need to be horrific in order to be great.

Either way, great art is difficult to ignore and somehow takes on a separate life beyond the artist.

I cannot forget the powerful beginning of Howl:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

7.     What I've been thinking about

Returning to my reflection about Allen Ginsberg and how much of a sleaze he was, I was reminded of a documentary by Max Joseph, who once explored whether you need to be a terrible person to become a good leader.

Dicks: do you need to be one to be a successful leader? It is available on Youtube and raises so many fascinating questions about why terrible people succeed.

Take a look at it!!

I am hopeful that not every successful creative person is a total dick, that there are many different kinds of people in the world, and in reality, there's just a random mix of good and evil. Talent is a random gift, so rottenness isn't a prerequisite.

8.     Online obsessions

Getting back to yet another obsession, I've been going into a bit of a documentary binge this week. Since lately I have had the attention span of a flea, I have been dipping into tv documentaries on Netflix in the hope of reigniting my desire for knowledge instead of social media.

Last month I binged My Unorthodox life, the reality programme based around the family of Julia Haart, who escaped the ultra-orthodox life of the Hasidic Jewish community of New York to become this wildly successful fashion mogul. The family has become an internet sensation; their lives are extravagant and make for fascinating reality t.v. Yet the problems with the closed-in and insular Jewish orthodox community have led to many serious questions and documentaries about the serious issues in this community.

This week I watched One of Us, which tells the stories of three former members of an ultra-orthodox community in one of the central boroughs of New York. It is a fascinating expose of the trauma of these communities, the damage the ideology and fanatic religion has on individuals and especially how women are treated in the community. It is fascinating, riveting and heartbreaking to believe so much pain is being swept under the carpet.

9.     Image of the week

This week I have miraculously been keeping up with my posts for Februllage, which will end at the end of the month.

Februllage is an international art project that encourages artists to post collage art on Instagram to refresh your memory. Every day in February, a single-word prompt inspires creators to make something fresh and new. It pushes you to make, create and post every day. It's been great to see many outstanding collage artists supporting one another. 

My sister-in-law is a very talented visual artist, and she encouraged me to participate this year, so we have been communicating and encouraging one another this year. Check her out at Picturette on Instagram, she is amazing!

Here is one of my favourite posts from this month. The prompt was: wings.

10.  Reflections on getting older

Well, it's my birthday today (Sunday), so I've been thinking about getting older.

I've never been one to celebrate my birthday. Celebrating the anniversary of my birth has always filled me with a sense of dread and anxiety. I think another year has passed, and what have I done? Which inevitably sends me spiralling into thoughts of self-criticism. 

I'm trying to be gentler with myself, letting go of all the self-generated pressure.

I need to be more like millennials who celebrate themselves at the beginning of their birthday week and happily spoil themselves. From one extreme to another. It's hard to find some balance. I'm taking small steps towards celebrating myself. 

For example I will avoid the temptation of deleting my Facebook account to avoid random birthday wishes from by random people on the internet. I will leave it there and accept all the messages eventhough it makes me uncomfortable. I will give myself a break and try to acknowledge all of the work I have done. Keep working on myself. And not get anxious. She says as she breathes into a paper bag and attempts to recite affirmations.

Do you remember when you were a kid and when you asked your parents how old they were and they said forty-something and you thought that was so old? Well, now that I am forty-something, I believe it isn't that old. Is it? Middle age, still means you have a whole other part of your life to live still. God willing. It's true that your mind never really ages; it's just the body. Oh well, here's to chalking up another year on the globe.

I hate to be long-winded, so that I will stop here.

I'll try to share something worthwhile, well thought out and new here every week, perhaps more often if I get frisky or in some karmic writing zone.

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Speak again soon.

With love and light from RDB

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