I had planned to write here each day to capture each Italian memory a it blew by, but as is evident by the past few posts, the hypnotic allure of Italy got to me and words failed to materialize in the moment.
So, instead, I write this belated post within 24 hours of return home in the hopes that some of the memories and images are still solidly enough in my brain to try to capture before they drift away like so much pollen and memories into the air.
I struggle to write authentically here because everything I write sounds trite and pedantic when I really want to express the true and genuine beauty of the past 2 weeks. In truth, this trip has been 50 years in the making. It is the next step in my personal growth. I have come to so many realizations about who I am and what has shaped my life and the type of person I want to be in this world.
In many ways, I have shaped myself to adapt to new situations to "get along" and "not rock the boat" as if it was some kind of prize for being agreeable. By trying to adapt myself to others and not fully embracing my internal nature, it has made it difficult to "find my people" over the years as I can get along with most people.
Facebook, through it has lots of flaws, provides an interesting perspective on who and what is resonating with people. I realized through the responses to my posts in Italy who is responding to my posts and who is generally interested in what I have to say. That is my audience. There is no sense catering posts for people who are not interested, much in the same way as is futile to cater to people who are not interested in you. Facebook allows you to see who seems generally interested in your point of view. This can also become dangerous, however as historically, when too many like-minded people get together and go well or extremely poorly.
That was a long rambling distracting paragraph, but I am playing into just letting the thoughts come out.
Back to Italy. I have said it so many times over the past week that what the Italians lack in efficiency and convenience, they more than make up for in style in class. This is true, but after my initial visit, I wonder about the future of Italy. Undoubtedly, their past is filled with beauty and historical significance, but, in my limited travel, albeit in areas aimed at tourists, I wonder about the future of countries that dwell so much on the past. Particularly when at each historic site, there are vendors selling cheap plastic models of everything from boxers with a replica of the Statue of David's Penis on the front to tacky touristy dildos in Pompeii. Does the touristy side circus negate the historical value that the world is being sold about these places of significance?
I am no stranger to hawking crap to tourists, coming from the land of Anne with an E, but somehow I thought that these historic sites would be different, perhaps due to their historical significance, rather than a fictional red-headed character. The reality, though, was that, it was exactly the same, albeit on a massive scale. It is explained how valuable and irreproducible something is, and then they offer you reproductions.
With AI being such a hot topic recently, I wonder about the value of this deep rich history, when a robot could paint in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci, but with a multitude of possibilities. The Sistine Chapel, but darker, or bigger, or happier or angrier. It makes me wonder about the intrinsic value of art in general, as well as the nature and accuracy of our history where we have place so much value on finding shortcuts to make human life easier that we are now on the cusp of machines being able to provide our entertainment. TV, movies, dance, theatre, art, writing, and who knows what new forms of entertainment are still as-of-yet discovered.
The question for me is what do humans do now once so much of our basic existence is provided for and on a side arc and a story for another time, how can we still have war? maybe AI will help us to see beyond our own ignorance. Or it could go horribly wrong.
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