019 ON (more) KINDS OF DÉRIVE

an impulsive summary of a drift into sounds, while still fresh

entering deeper

beyond physical, visual, textual, textural ... into ephemeral; an excursion into voices, sounds, silences; histories

in this post . . . beside the text there is more to watch and listen than ever an urbophilia before; enjoy it!

_ _ _ I always suggest that you should read these posts at urbophilia.substack.com, instead of e-mails; that is in particular the case now, as this is a very fast, truly alla prima response to one event, its vibrations while still fresh (in it) (it in me); rough, as it is (in the e-mailed version), that does provide certain qualities, and – errors; where necessary, those will be edited and corrected, the contents expanded - at urbophilia site; I am looking forward to see you there, too!  _ _ _

_ _ _ Giuseppe Verdi, Aida, last evening in the Peristil of Diocletian’s Palace, in Split, Croatia

a truly multisensorial immersion, an audio-visual feast in a refreshingly windy evening

multisensorial synthesis

beauty. . . . another opportunity to enter (what we are searching for in urbophilia drifts)

deeper

_ _ _ for reasons which are not of primary importance here (but might become later, though), the city of Split has a special place in my life; it treasures many memories; thus, I cannot take it alla prima, it’s never new to me, but – it often takes me . . . alla prima (yet again, in another way ... although not always in the way I may wish to be taken)

as all of us, as cities by definition are, at every encounter is a new me entering that ancient, yet also always new Split, both reshaping it and getting reshaped by it

_ _ _ the locals, old and recent; Splićani, immigrants (willing, or forced); tourists (of the kind that one likes to see here, and ... of some other kinds); to all of them, to all of us there, Split means something; there is nothing new about that, although each and every one of us differently, uniquely receives, perceives and lives this (as any other) place; that is an inevitability of life, there, of life – situated, of life transforming spaces into places

_ _ _ uniquely Split, uniquely split (not an empty word game)

_ _ _ Giuseppe Verdi, Aida, last evening in Peristil of Diocletian’s Palace, in Split, Croatia; first time performed in Split in 1897, first time in Peristil in 1897, before becoming a regular item, the absence of which would always be received with disappointment, for sure

_ _ _ Giuseppe Verdi, Aida, last evening I was there for . . . I have no idea which time . . . the same ambience, that is never the same; the same performance, which is never the same; the same audience, which is never the same; the same me, it that situation always feeling the same, feeling the power timelessness of a truly rooted urban complexity; when we think cities, we indeed always think about something else ... about something else, which stems from something that never changes, something that is impossible yet necessary to define; something that I have accepted and call . . . urbanity

_ _ _ Giuseppe Verdi, Aida, last evening, in Peristil my Sphinx was also there (a scenographer has added another one, for the sake of symmetry to, perhaps, say – “Egypt”); my Sphinx was there; it was very windy (the start of the performance was delayed, so that some potentially dangerous coulisse could be taken off the stage) . . . and then, the time machine turned on . . . to me, another dérive, a dérive in time without changing places . . . for decades; this time, I was lucky to get the tickets at the very axis of the scene (so that we can experience that “Egyptian symmetry”, precisely as the stage designer wanted us to have it); everything was as before, nothing was as before (to watch and listen the movie, click below)

_ _ _ Giuseppe Verdi, Aida, last evening . . . a palimpsest of memories, emotions, in me as ever, there (accidentally, while reading Tarkovsky’s Captured Time (as mistranslated to English language; I am reading it in language closer to Russian, which keeps the original meanings of "Запечатлённое время")

_ _ _ Aida, last evening . . . the event made me drift . . . real Riva of the city of Split was a hundred meters away, real Adriatic Sea (named after Emperor Hadrian, who preceded Diocletian by mere 150 years), wind blowing from it

_ _ _ urban texts, urban textures (Mario Gandelsonas and his, technically and referentially useful book which I have reinterpreted to my students for decades first come to my mind; rootedness vs. rootlessness; autochthonous vs. imported patterns, patterns which never are (only) physical, yet can shape the other . . .); urban texts, urban textures and an understanding cities as stages (as this one in Peristil), the stages which last and change, which ensure continuities and invite change (or . . . which suffer continuities, suffer change); the idea(l) of urbanity; juxtapositions of urban and sub-urban as, at least, different qualities, different stages and realties of lives, lived, there

_ _ _ the idea(l) of cultural rootedness in an uprooted world (N.B. Japanese 江戸っ子, literally meaning a child of Edo [former name of Tokyo] traditionally denotes a person whose ancestors have [been born and] lived in that city for at least five generations); cities need their own (hi)stories (when searching “Rome”, the almighty AI powered Google lets me chose among 25 places named Rome; only in the US there are 18 of them); urbanity can be seen as a kind of nobility, nobility linked to lasting, to place (not blood), a time-honoured chance for the residents of certain places to be(come) urban(e) . . . time . . . (by the way, another AI miracle: when I type letter “e” in brackets “( )”, I automatically get . . . an euro . . . € !)

 _ _ _ urban texts, urban textures are never only physical; I believe that we all can recognise them but, alas, it seems that not everyone can claim to understand them; generations might, indeed, be needed . . .  and AI cannot help with that

_ _ _ comprehension of what urbanity is demands a significant dose of . . . urbophilia, of love

P.S.      _ _ _

you have, I am sure, noticed that my references are always urban

I have become fully aware of that only when I first found myself living in suburbia

that was less based on discovery of what was new to me there, but on a strong sense of lack was, an almost paralysing lack of something that, until then, I used to take for granted

something so ordinary that I could not easily name it was not there

born in a city, having lived cities all of my life (up until that dramatic drift), urbanity was always an essential quality of my being, the quality that one does not think about, precisely because it, simply – is (everywhere); life in presence, in vicinity of the other, the normality of being with, next to . . . “them” (as they were near to us); often not knowing, but certainly not seeking difference between them – as them, and us – as us; we all, simply, were the citizens of that city

[that realisation has led to many discussions, both useful and banal, sometimes confrontational (mis)understandings with/of colleagues; robust, yet fertile exchanges; I used to passionately refer to etymology, how conveniently they always point at the suburb + an coinage, while to me the point was in sub + urban, reaching back to ancient times, which I have learned to touch in Salona and Split, where “sub” meant not only the proximity (“near to”) but the level (“lower than”), as in the Latin original preposition sub "under, below, beneath, at the foot of"]

again, CUT ! . . . to be continued