Firenze

Florence? Even hotter than Rome. There is a fun game to play though which involves winding your way through the narrow streets, crossing sides to maximize shade-covering, and finding out-of-the-way cafes where you can get a drink of some sort. Playing that game is actually a fun way to spend the entire day. You could easily toss your map or guidebook aside and stumble around, trusting that some interesting little church or store awaits you around almost every corner.

Again, as in Rome, there are too many tourists here and everything, even churches like Santa Croce, charge admission. This is my first time back to this city after having lived here for six months back in the Spring of 2001. I was really shocked, though I guess I shouldn’t have been, to find that the Duomo charges tourists to go inside. What’s more, when you go inside you find that they have roped off the center area so you can’t even get a complete view of the miraculous painting (by Giotto?) on the interior of Brunelleschi’s dome. I know now that visiting in the off-season makes all the difference. January through April, at least, there are no tickets needed to enter the Duomo or Santa Croce; there are fewer vendors sprawled about, since there are fewer tourists; and there are shorter lines at the museums. This is the common spiel from the guidebooks, I know, but I’ve just experienced the phenomenon firsthand and have gained a new understanding of the woes brought by the tourism industry to this beautiful little town. You can find actual Florentine Italians lingering in less-traveled coffee houses, restaurants, and bars, but they are scarce in the bigger piazzas. There are more tourists than anything else here, even mosquitoes, and since there is no OFF! for tourists its best to come before June. Yes, I too am a tourist, and, on the one hand, I am part of the problem of which I speak. On the other hand, there is an art to zigzagging in and out of the tourist identity. Michel DeCerteau writes about the perruque in The Practice of Everyday Life, a term that comes from the act of doing your own personal work on the company’s time. The word actually translates as “wig,” but I think the definition expands to include “costume.” In the work place, you can disguise yourself as a diligent desk-jockey while secretly using the company printer to create twenty copies of your resume. In Florence in the summertime, you can disguise yourself as a normal tourist to gain access to restricted parts of churches, for example, and then commence speaking in Italian when back in the café or the bar. It is not the fact that you are a tourist that matters, but rather the mode in which you consume the city’s sights that makes you similar to or distinct from the herds. Tactically maneuver through the streets. Ignore the neon signs.

It has also been difficult for me to be back here. The power of space and place has exhausted me. Within this one geographic area there are numerous emotional traces left in unexpected locations. I ran into them while walking in front of Santa Maria Novella. They were waiting for me at the train station when I first disembarked. Within the city itself, on street level and from the heights of Piazzale Michelangelo, as well as embedded within building facades and inhering within smells of espresso, there exist memories of a way of being that no longer functions. It took me a few days to realize this, but all these years I was actually looking forward to something impossible upon my return to Florence. What I wanted was to re-live the Spring of 2001. I had very few responsibilities in school so I could, and I did, spend all my time wandering around. I miss those days of having nothing to do. Those six months I spent in Florence were very important for figuring out who I was. I wasn’t taking any acting classes, which was a major change from the previous two years of training at NYU. In fact, in distinction to taking acting classes, I was starting to realize that I didn’t want to be an actor. Of course, I wanted to don the perruque (acting is doing), but I was getting ready to leave conventional theatre behind. I was learning about other people and other languages, which showed me that I knew very little about the world outside of my skin. Thus, upon returning to Florence for this long-awaited reunion, I was met with disappointment. At first, I attributed the feeling to the heat, the tourists, and the entrance charges to churches. After thinking about it and talking it through with Joanne, however, I realized that I desired to feel the same way that I did seven years ago. But that desire is impossible to fulfill. It is impossible because since that time I have decided not to be like the Will that existed in 2001. I have made multiple choices in my life since that point, each of which was made specifically in order to change and to mature. Nostalgia is this very recognition in which two very different desires interact. I desire to know those old times again and I desire never to know them again. Nostalgia is this double movement, marked by a harkening back and an anxiety about the unfolding present. Once I came to terms with all of this, I felt more comfortable and was ready to re-explore Florence.

Every nuance of this interesting (non) encounter with my old self is amplified by the materiality of this very old city. Look around. Almost everywhere your eyes land you will find an awkward superimposition of one time period over another. The Ponte Vecchio is covered in jewelry vendors hawking gold earrings and anklets. The ornate, eye-popping façade of Santa Croce masks a plain, stone church that’s only interested in attracting the attention of its devoted parishioners. Cars race along the roads where the Medici rode their horses. Florence is similar to the frescos that adorn its churches, insofar as year after year a new layer of reality is applied to last year’s. Like a fresco that’s paint merges with the plaster wall on which it is placed, the new real soaks into the fabric of the old real and merges with it. Over time, the frescos crumble and the crumbling creates a jagged hole in the middle of the painted scene, revealing earlier layers of plaster that were covered long ago. Over time, the façade of the new real crumbles and the crumbling creates a gap through which older aesthetic sensibilities shine through and clash with the current fashion. On the steps of the church one can by a pair of shorts with The David’s penis silkscreened over the crotch. But the different times must live together. The space of Florence accommodates the jagged superimpositions.

Take a look at the slideshow below. Joanne took these pictures. I have some pictures, too, that I will upload at a later date. We leave for Venice tomorrow and we’ll be there for two weeks.