"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
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