The Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel (Yelp!)

"The School of Athens" by Raphael

Is it a sacrilege to criticize the Vatican and especially its Museum or the vaunted or vaulted Sistine Chapel? Anyone who has practiced “sex” in the missionary position knows what it’s like to stare up at an often nice hotel ceiling. Ok this one is by Michelangelo "bravissimo!" Been there! On the way, you do pass Raphael’s “School of Athens.” But how can you enjoy a museum which is no more than a human cattle car of culture-- one btw where there are no seats along monstrous narrow corridors. Orson Welles should have used these funnels in his expressionistic rendering of The Trial.  The Vatican Museum is a spiritual space where the creator obviously didn't cotton to any human plantings. Proliferation is the primary idea. Sure there are lots of heads in the antiquities section of the MET, but it’s apparent the The Holy See or Sea is set in eliminating competition. The Vatican is a gigantic box store, a Walmart of sacred artifacts. There should actually be warning signs about how long the corridors are. Is the Vatican Museum competing with El Camino de Santiago? At times after seeing the umpteenth arrow pointing “Sistine,” you may feelin a state of free fall say like one of those unfortunate Everest ascenders who will never hear the angels singing. Getting in to the structure itself is another ordeal. There are barricades everywhere. If you’re lucky, you’ll tag onto a Christian version of the Hajj and find yourself reaching for your credit card in front of the Holey Door. 

read "Died Young" by Francis Levy, The Brooklyn Rail

and listen to "In the Midnight Hour" by Wilson Pickett

Speaking in Tongues

Katz's Tongue Sandwich

Stanislavski, who was Chekhov's great interpreter, was the champion of using one’s own psychology to bring the role to life. In America Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio followed suit. When you see Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, it’s the Moscow Art Theater at work--despite Brando's claims to the contrary. Meyerhold on the other extreme was a director who believed in working from the outside in. You brought the mask to life. Which raises the question of learning a language. A lot of newcomers fumble around. They're afraid to jump into their role, which is to act the part of a creature, gesturing frantically like an Italian or feigning a mixture of insouciance and indifference in the manner of the French. Curiously, though they’re enemies Ukrainians and Russians can sound alike. Not only because Russian and Ukrainian are Cyrillic languages but also by virtue of the fact both languages possess an intrinsic braggadocio. For instance one irate Ukrainian recently completed his critique of Russia, which he described as the new guy in the block, historically, by saying Russians couldn’t write. That included Tolstoy and Dostoevsky too-- which brings back Tolstoy's famously remarking to Chekhov that he was almost as bad as Shakespeare. No mind. If you want to speak Swedish imitate Max von Sydow inThe Seventh Seal. If you're a woman your role models would be either Bibi Andersson or Liv Ullmann in Persona.

listen to Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" (1995)

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

Volti

Contemplate a remake of Rossellini’s Roma citta aperta (1945) just as fireworks mark the beginning of 2025. Naturally there are no caravans of Gestapo. Can you spot your Anna Magnani in the still winding narrow streets, the arteries filtering into the Piazza Navona and the Campo dei Fiori where the roar of Fellini's motorcycles from Roma (1972) has never left the air. The worlds out of which La dolce vita (1960) La Strada (1954) and the haunting Alberto Sordi vehicle Una vita difficile  (1961) are long gone, but their powerful iconography creates a scrim over the present. Have you ever encountered someone you knew when you were growing up? At first you don’t recognize them but then the original face emerges from the flesh and for the moment you have them back.

listen to Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" (1995)

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

Non Compos Mentis

"Non compos mentis" is Latin but "non capire," "not to understand" is Italian. Of course "sapire"  to know is derived from the Latin,"scire." Italian is the Romance language closest to the mother tongue due naturally to proximity. Roman ruins site the past, but it's hard to imagine the past when one ventures into the everyday life of a modern metropolis. Similarly it's near impossible to imagine a conversation being held employing the grammar of a dead language you studied in high school--evolving into the mixture of gestures and words that constitute the lingua franca of Trastevarians (those inhabiting the world of what would one day be Trastevere). Ironically where you find the classical world represented most dramatically is in the facade of the Palazzo della Civilta in the E.U.R. a piece of Mussolini era architecture where the proliferating arches evinces the passion for the order and form of the empire.

read "Rome Journal: the EUR by Francis Levy, HuffPost

listen to Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" (1995)

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

Was Alexander the Great Oxymoronic?

The Persian Gate in Present Day Iran

You know hyphenations like Greco-Roman? They drive from Alexander the Great whose form of empire building involved blurring the lines. Sound familiar? The difference is Alexander studied with Aristotle. Was Alexander a philosopher-king or the prototypic benevolent (or not benevolent) despot? Did he invent the oxymoron as he conquered the Peloponnesus, Egypt, finally the Punjab. Would Alexander's hyphenation lead to Hegel and ultimately dialectical materialism? Empire makes strange bed fellows when you consider that the impulse to free the worker through Communism and the impulse to liberate the robber baron with free market capitalism would result in their own respective forms of tyranny? "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains," said Rousseau inThe Social Contract.

listen to Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" (1995)

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

You Me

Martin Buber

There are a spate of Asian restaurants in Rome including a very good Korean, Igio in Piazza di Cosimoto, and an excellent Ramen, QQ Ramen on on the Viale di Trastevere. There are also a number of all you can eat Chinese/Japanese on the way to Testaccio but You Me is nowhere to be found on any of the restaurant sites. The Israeli philosopher Martin Buber famously authored I Thou  to which I It relationships, with their intrinsic objectification, are invidiously compared. Which brings up the subject of pronouns in general. Gender fluidity is as much a part of Roman life as it is in any other cosmopolitan city, though "they" don't always know what U want when it comes to me.

listen to Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" (1995)

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

Portrait of the Artist as a Selfless Intellect

D.T. Suzuki

Practitioners of Zen seek a diminution of ego. Buddha mind is expressive of an empathic relation to the universe, with the dissolution of self being the ultimate destination of the spiritual journey and ultimate compassion its end. Desire is the beginning of suffering say the high priests of this religion—with the extinction of human agency the mountain to climb. In the meanwhile there are a lot of skins of the onion to peel away. People who live on the sites of ancient civilizations are literally buried by history. "History is nightmare" says Stephen Daedalus. Maybe not for tourists to Rome. However it’s like starting to ascend the Everest of Impersonality with stones in your rucksack.

listen to Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" (1975)

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

and listen to "Twenty-Five Miles From Home" by Edwin Starr