ITALY AND ME...
If you want to understand a place, being there —with your eyes open —is what matters most.
Days, months and years pass... You watch patterns form... You see pieces come together and break apart.
Local realities take on a life of their own, so quietly you might not even notice.
That, basically, is my story in Italy—as a historian, a writer and an ordinary person doing everyday things.
Italy—real and imagined —has been ground zero for most of my adult life.
In my more fanciful moments, I see myself at a late-night train station waiting for the next load of experiences to rumble through.
Experiences but also facts— historical and otherwise.
For decades, my chief outpost has been the Florentine National Archive (Archivio di Stato di Firenze), with forays to other documentary repositories of that sort.
There I page through heaps of ancient parchment and paper, watching events unfold— seeing them through the eyes of the people most immediately involved, hearing about them in their own words.
Along the way, I lost patience with simple tales of cause and effect.
History—like life itself—is never about just one thing.
As “Source Material”, we can claim whatever we encounter in our journey.
Words on paper, of course, but also people, places and situations. Also, buildings, landscapes and works of art.
Anything that triggers associations and uncaps the flow of memory.
What is a “discovery”—in the archive or beyond?
Sometimes we happen on a seemingly magical document that sheds light on things we never expected to see.
Far more often, miscellaneous findings combine slowly, exposing truths long hidden in plain sight.
DI COSA NASCE COSA. (One thing gives birth to another. )
That is a favorite Italian proverb, profound or damned obvious depending on your point of view.
In the course of my research and writing, I have always jumped into the middle of the story without knowing how things will end.
Intellectual discretion? Yes, no and maybe... For better or worse, that is how I am wired and the only way I can work.
I've written a few books and any number of articles over the years.
These are now filed away on a shelf in my living room, hinting at a cosmic arrangement of some kind.
Other bits, meanwhile, are fixed on my bedroom wall.
But where do I fit into this picture —as exemplified by the device-waving reflection below, toward the bottom of the frame?
I have always been more of a searcher than an explainer, but with an engrained habit of thinking out loud.
That is what I am asking you to share— here on this website.
Omniscient magus with a guidebook? Oh, please!
Still, it is hard to avoid grandiloquent gestures when the most important work of Renaissance art in the Holy Land is covered by a schmatta and generally ignored.
In real life, most discoveries reveal themselves slowly.
Usually we begin with the context, working inward toward the center.
In spite of what you might think, I have always been allergic to "discovery-itis" —the mania for facile revelations based on one-off details.
I think of Carl Spitzweg's Roman guide or top-hatted gentlemen in nineteenth century prints, pointing with their umbrellas at London's Crystal Palace or Philadelphia's Centennial Exposition.
Along the way, I learn essential facts from local non-Academics who live with this stuff day-by-day.
Meanwhile, I poke around— imagining that I am also part of the story.
What do you do about "discoveries", when thousands of others are in your face, making them too?
You keep moving...
You shoot first...
You ask questions later...
And you never know what you will find.
For the images on this website, see WHERE DO THESE PICTURES COME FROM?
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