‘See if you can write a fatto bello about vacations,’ my boss told me last week, in hopes
of producing a theme-based newspaper on summer holidays.
>Marco, I don’t choose fatti
belli, they choose me,’ I told him in
the voice I save for code-red writing emergencies.
>Don’t get all agitata,’ he said, in fact, quite used to it. My efforts to
be reasonable are almost always preceded by a brief bout of leave-me-aloneness.
I just thought you could do a piece alla
Bridget Jones and jump
out of a plane or something.’
>Alla
Bridget Jones? Alright.
And why don’t you do a piece alla Hugh
Grant and get yourself beat up in a
fountain or something?’
He laughed and dropped the
subject, which meant we were friends again. But of course, I’d been infected.
For as much as I’ve told him never to fiddle with fatti
belli, Marco had me thinking about
vacations. And I’m not even going on one this year.
In Italy, tourism is an industry rather than a pastime and it
serves to earn one’s bread, butter and bruschetta. A breeding ground for hot vacationers who may as
well be using their maps as sweat-towels, the country’s cittt d’arte are teeming with thrilled or desperate individuals
who, in either case, look quite lost in space. Nonetheless, as midsummer
approaches, I find myself planting my feet and crossing my arms-nobody’s moving
me from this sweet, crowded city-I just dragged 112 boxes into a brand new
fifteenth-century flat. And darn it if I ain’t intent on staying there.
Besides, when you live in a city
made for hosting other people’s holidays, the thought of taking a plane to
another town brimming with travellers does not make the Top Ten Attractive
August Ideas. Watch enough people lug around kilos of clothes they won’t wear
and you’ll procrastinate your own packing for as long as your friends will let
you. Besides, I’ve decided that there is nothing morally wrong with staying put
during the bella stagione to bask in the benefits of slightly sketchy Italian
provincialism. So far, I have a sure date for the frog-leg festival, and,
sometime before the end of July, I’m meeting friends up river for a race where
rowers float downstream in bathtubs rather than boats. In a word, daytrips are
do-able. As long as I don’t need a suitcase, I’m game.
Oh, and I’ve also spent my
vacation money on piano lessons, because after a night of ginger ales and musica
all’aperto in June,
it hit me that I can’t read musical notes. And what’s the use getting all riled
up about the cultural treasures of Europe if you can’t even recognize the seven measly signs
that make up all the sonatas in the world?
Taking classes is my way of
protecting myself against delusional teacher-based thoughts like, I know
everything in the world’. And Antonio’s summertime intensive piano lessons at a
left-wing community center interrupts that train of thought quite nicely. He gives beginners a book featuring Poly il Polipo’ a cartoon octopus that, I’m sure, weeds out any
students who are not really serious. It made me like my teacher right away.
It’s July and I’m the only one there to be weeded-no one but a real risk taker
would have the guts to pull out Poly.
As it turns out, Antonio and I
have become quite good friends. Not that he really knows that. Most of what he
says, he says to and through the piano, and, well, my communicative skills via
keyboard leave something to be desired. But nonetheless, in another lifetime or
so, we may be able to produce a rather decent duet together. I sense his moods
by the songs he plays before our lessons and he understands my temperament by
the way I plunk out my nine-note ditties. I come ten minutes early to monitor
his well-being from the hallway. When the man is at peace with the world he
plays the Moonlight Sonata. Chopin means his smile will lack conviction. The
day it hailed last week, I walked in on Disney’s Cruela Deville, and I really
hope it was nothing personal.
Antonio spurs my musical growth
by telling me all the things I need to hear, in piano playing and in life. Don’t stop. Relax. Sit up straight. Listen to
yourself. Stop worrying. Be careful. It’s like life coaching with a soundtrack. Nowhere else
will you hear such sane, completely incongruous directions. In fact, I dare you
to find me a healthy individual on this side of the sun who can follow them
without reaching enlightenment. It could just be me-but if I listen to myself,
it automatically makes me worry; if my posture’s not impeccable, I’m not
relaxing and I can’t be careful’ unless I stop.
Antonio, however, doesn’t want
to hear about my inadequacies unless
they are set to the rhythm of scales, and, frankly, it’s not worth the effort.
So I try to please him by emulating an eight-legged animal with tentacles,
mostly because the man’s piano playing makes me happy. Yesterday, just before
class, I slipped in for my stolen hallway concert. He was pounding out ragtime
with a conviction that shook the panes.
It’s really pretty simple. This
week’s fatto bello is a lesson I learned in Pianoland: vacations can last two weeks or ten minutes. And you don’t even have to jump out of planes-or
even on them, for that matter. When Antonio steps into ragtime, the keyboard
makes space for ten full minutes of good solid holiday.
