On Preferring Genova ...

A shameful admission ... perhaps, but I didn't fall in love with Verona. I don't know what I expected.  I may have accidentally watched Letters To Juliet once and you might say, that serves you right, Di. 

It was a very pretty movie set in an Italian summer.  Meanwhile I was there in September on an overcast day and I couldn't help noticing how much they had tidied things up for the movie.  And I think I was disappointed.

I really like Genova.  I like the extremes of Genova.  And it doesn't pretend to be anything it's not.  The gritty is there, right next to the pretty, in that northern Italian city located on the edge of the Ligurian Sea.

Trieste didn't seem to be pretending, not at all, during the few hours spent there.  And the local restaurant we found served food that I'm still dreaming about.  I love Rome but not like Genova.  Rome is simply something else.  Magnificent.

Acqui Terme has fabulous food and wine.  And the people were lovely but still, I preferred Genova.

Venice ... rainy, overcast, crowded.  I don't know, it didn't capture me but perhaps I need to go back there in summer, or spring.  On a sunny day anyway.  And Cinque Terre ... I'm still muttering about the crowds I found there.

Naples, that was something something else!  It was like nowhere I've ever been before.  Not like Istanbul, nor Cairo.  Not Singapore.  Naples was just its ownself.  I loved it but I imagine it's obvious by now ... not like I love Genova.

I write all of this in a bemused state of mind.  I need to pop in and visit Florence one day, and maybe drive through this Tuscan countryside everyone raves about.  Even if it only confirms what I suspect ... that Genova has everything, and more, of what I prefer.

Maybe Italy is like a pick-a-path story.  Maybe you simply find what you love best there and stay loyal to it.  I don't know but that's how it is for me.

The Colours of Genova, Italy

Then there were the colours of Genova. Perhaps each person experiences them differently but my over-riding impression was of a city painted in colours that ranged from pale yellow through into a deep orange. Deep green shutters, sometimes blue.

I was invited to write for a website in Genova and above is a small extract.  But I had smile, my passion for that city is huge and my first draft of the article was more like a 'let me count the ways' list.

I used some of my photographs in storyboard form, attempting to write of concrete things.  This was one series.  It gives you a sense of the colour there in that beautiful Italian city.

On Writing ...

I had forgotten the glorious agony of writing an article for a particular audience ... such is the luxury of writing whatever I want on my blog.

I have been carrying this idea that I could only write this particular article when I was ready ... when I was sure that all I would write would be perfection itself. 

Weeks later, I was still wringing my hands about it because the deadline had been far into the future.  Then the future arrived and what would I write?  How would I incorporate my best images into this text? 

I had raised the bar fairly high in my mind ...

Last night, as I was going to sleep, I thought of the series of fountain images I had added to my previous post and I knew that I had it.  A beginning point, an inspiration, a concrete image of the feeling I wanted to capture.

And so it was, after our Sunday Belgian breakfast of pastries and coffee, that I sat down to write.  And how I wrote ... and wrote, and wrote some more.  Finally, slightly lost, I handed it over and asked the more level-headed Belgian bloke if he might read it through and see where I was. 

Whimper.

He handed it back and told me ...   It seemed, to him, that I might have attempted to squeeze the outline of my entire book into 5 pages of text.  It was a little incoherent and he couldn't find a clear line through it.  Of course, I had wanted my best stuff in the article ... all of it!

Perhaps a prayer was needed.  Something like, Oh enthuisiam, oh passion ... be still so I can write more coherently.

Anyway, that explained my lost feeling and allowed me to pull back out of the work.

And so I reread and found the story I wanted to tell.   I had to remove some favourite photographs from the article.   I had to disappear some favourite tales too.  Paragraphs were slashed as I read.

I need to leave it a few hours now.  Weeks would be better.  I have always preferred to spend time away from a first draft, sneaking up on it at some later date and hoping to read it as a stranger.  It's more effective than you can imagine.

When I write here on the blog I write fast and, for some reason that must be entirely frustrating to those with blog readers, I edit best after I've published.   It's a luxury that I don't have when I write for others.  Even when I edit for others, the final draft is with them.  The post-publish quirk is one that has probably lost me more than a few subscribers.  I must work on that.

The thing about writing so intensely, and I had forgotten this peculiar pain, is that when I write it all out like that there is this horrible emptiness when I stop.  As if all of my intensity and energy has been poured directly into the writing, like an IV that pumps my blood to a new location ... outside of me.

I came here in an attempt to step back from the intensity of the last few hours.  Actually, I did have rather a lot of fun creating storyboards to focus me down on the writing.  Here's one I can't use ...

My borrowed 'desk' in Genova.  The one by the open window that looks out over the carruggio, and a selection of the flowers that I always buy as that first thing I must do in the city.

Conformity ...

If you eliminate that private realm, you breed conformity. When all your behavior is public, then you’re going to do the things that the society insists you do and nothing else and you lose so much of who you are as a human being.
Glenn Greenwald, an interview with an interesting man.

I put this quote up on my facebook page today and it sparked some interesting conversation.

Women called by to comment, women I respect, and in the end we decided that the journey is the destination ...

It came up because we're all out there, either self-employed artists or living in countries not our own and the temptation, on the bad days, is to simply put down our passions, our impulses, our work, our funny little dreams perhaps ... to put them all down and turn back into that world where a weekly pay cheque is guaranteed and our souls aren't so tied up in our work.

But I suspect we gave one another courage and voila, I'm back at work here again ... in Belgium on a Saturday night but remembering that beautiful fountain in Italy.

And now ...

Chance encounters change lives.  Close friends, passing acquaintances and even characters who emerge from old books often leave footprints across my heart.  By opening mysterious doors, the influence of others has inadvertently altered the direction of my life.

Colin Monteath, extracted from Under A Sheltering Sky.

And now ... I am beginning work on a long-talked about book.  Years of ideas have reached a point where I must begin working with them.

When I walk on beaches, I pick up shells ... I'm a sometimes collector.  Stones too, when I wander along the edges of rivers and lakes.  Since I was small.

My photography, I think, emerges out of that same desire to collect, to handle, to pore over later.  But to collect, without ever stopping to enjoy, that seems somehow sad.

So here I am, commiting to this book, for months ... at least a year I think.  That is something I haven't excelled in.  I have so many ideas, so many passions, project ideas.  And I try to follow them all. 

These last two months have been months of insanely beautiful chaos and whimsical impulses ... of action.  People. Places.

But I must have been maturing somehow ... like a wine (I hope, avoiding the old and smelly maturation process we call rotting).  I feel ready to attempt to breathe life into a multi-layered story, using the words and images I have been collecting, to create a portrait of a place I love.

In my people portraits the intention is always about capturing a soul ... something of the true essence of a person.  Now to lift that impulse, that desire, and fit it over a city, over a region, and tell how place can capture a heart.

There will be a photography exhibition in December, here at home I am hoping.  A party.  And there are plans for limited edition print runs, postcards ... but woven so very closely into this book project that I think it will all work.  There will be a series of photography workshop beginning in Spring 2014, and I will leave my door open for one-on-one workshops too but mostly, I'll be here at the desk and working on images and ideas collected since 2008.

And so, here I am, announcing it ... the intention.  Now to work.

Street-Scene, Genova