I have now been in Florence for 3 weeks, to the day. A month here is clearly not going to be enough time, but I have been fortunate enough to come back to my city, so I'm not going to complain.
A lot has happened these past three weeks, and I expect this upcoming week to be no different. I'm prefacing this post with these points because I think this is going to be an ongoing post. Hence the parts.
Yesterday was a wonderful day. The three of us who are here doing the residency have been hanging out quite a bit. One of my new friends is a girl who it still in college, the other is a young man who has been out of school for a while and works at a workshop type place in Maine. The three of us get along quite well, and it has not only been nice to make new friends, but I think the relationships are helping me grow as an artist. We discuss everything from the perfection of banana gelato to love of dead writers.
Yesterday the three of us went to Pitti Palace to see a Caravaggio exhibit as well as check out the museum/palace in general. Pitti is a fun place to see, just in general. Throw some Caravaggio's in there and you have something even cooler.
What was REALLY fun was that it all of a sudden it stopped raining and the sun came out (this is literally a miracle as it has been raining non stop for just about forever). So we booked it out of Pitti, grabbed some delish lunch, then walked up to Piazza Michelangelo, and then on to San Miniato. The views were clearly (as you can see from my pictures in the post below) spectacular. I forgot how much I used to enjoy walking up into the hills on the other side of the Arno. I'm so thankful I got to go back and enjoy it, especially on such a wonderful day.
San Miniato is a really beautiful church, with a lovely pre-renaissance facade. If you are in Florence, make the trek up to it. You can see what inspired the exterior of the Duomo, then turn around and look at the Duomo.
Another really awesome thing about San Miniato is that there is a beautiful, expansive cemetery behind it. Anyone who has ever made the mistake of mentioning Paris around me knows that I LOVE Pere Lachaise and I love a good cemetery. Let me tell you, the cemetery at San Miniato is almost as cool as Pere Lachaise. Almost. Delacroix isn't buried there, though.
Being in the cemetery yesterday was perfect timing for me. The sun was getting low and golden in the sky, there were birds chirping, roosters were yelling, the air was moist and cool, and I could faintly hear the organ playing inside the church. I was also alone. My comrades had gone off to explore, and there wasn't anyone else in the section I was in.
I find cemeteries to generally be very contemplative, meditative places, and this one was no different. The atmosphere was enhanced by the time of day, the general wetness from the rain, and all the mist and clouds.
One of the things that has happened here in Florence is that my brain has literally not shut up for the past three weeks. I have been thinking about a myriad of different topics, and its all sort of constantly swimming around in my head. This is always happening, but when I'm constantly with my friends or family or co-workers, or just generally in a place that has signs and music and posters and people speaking a language I understand, I can get away from this constant thought for large chunks of time. Here, though, I cannot.
It's not like I'm sad or thinking dreadful, angsty things. Quite the contrary. I find myself consumed with thoughts about paint/colors/textures in general, Keats and the richness of the landscapes he discusses, the patterning on the Duomo and what it all means, my own musings at the place of the artist in todays society, how we are all interconnected, and, and always, I am trying to listen to and understand my ever-changing emotional interior.
Back to the cemetery. Being there yesterday was perfect timing, as I said, because it allowed me time and a specific space to let all my thoughts, dreams, and musings to wiggle around and grow. I just kept looking and looking at the statues, the names, the flowers, trying to figure out what it all means. Staring at the Duomo, at all the beautiful reminders of life and death around me in the cemetery, I tried to reconcile it all in my head. Why we do all this weird stuff when people die, like put their pictures or fancy writing on gravestones, or why we bother to make these beautiful spaces, or why I even bother painting at all. I couldn't "figure it out". And then I realized that NONE of us can, really. We all don't know why people die. We don't know really why we are alive (though most of us have a pretty good feeling as to why, we feel we have some purpose pushing us onwards). But we all are here, we all have time, we are all connected. And why we do all this weird stuff-like build beautiful monuments and erect statues over graves- hell we do this stuff because we don't know what else to do. We just do what we CAN do.
I'm there trying to figure out what it all "means" like some angsty teenager when there isn't some huge great meaning to it all. It's just all of us, being humans, being all interconnected and stuff. It's all just there. We've all put it there because we can. We don't know what else to do in the face of life, death, and the whole great big universe. We built beautiful spaces because we can, because it helps us to feel more connected to God, the Kosmos, and each other. We put grave makers and statues down over the bodies of our loved ones because it helps us to feel closer to them, as well as helps us to remember they are part of bigger things now. We don't know what else to do, so we do what we've been given the tools to do. We're all grasping at straws, but we're grasping together, and thats actually really beautiful. That's the meaning right there.
After the cemetery I went to the English mass in the Duomo. As always I cannot help but be humbled by the amazingness of the universe. The priest talked all about living your vocation, the importance of working hard at your calling, be it doctor, student, policeman or artist. We have to do what we can do with the time we're given.
Everything is so beautiful. I love you all.
