You know, it’s not what you typically see people concentrate on when they take photos of Italy, or Southern Italy, since I’m here. I myself didn’t really take notice or want to, but I started reading Hannah Arendt some years ago, which made me remark on it differently. “The break from belonging,” she said, is at the root of our modern feelings of isolation and loneliness and Totalitarian regimes. As I was walking up the steps to the official post office in Naples, which is fascist, I saw a portrait of a Pope on the stair…and we know that the Catholic Church—the ratlines—were responsible for the escape of many many Nazis. Nazism is a form of fascism. And we are in Italy, too, and it’s a part of their history if not global history. My cousin in Rome took me on a walk from exposed Roman ruins, which was a fascist public project, down the Jewish quarter, extremely old, and to the port of Octavia where the Jews were rounded up. I was facing the synagogue and the Jewish museum…and I cannot exactly look away. I’ve heard in the USA, I’m not sure now, “he’s a fascist,” which places the state, to begin, over democracy…and here’s a real example of that regime.
Here was my walk…I’m just taking a stroll…exploring the city of Salerno…
I’m not an expert, but I’m taking more of an interest in architecture…and this was the journey…I just wasn’t expecting it, so I had to stop. What a gate. I just found an article about fascist architecture…what’s left.
What kind of architecture is this?
Fascist, the guard said.
Right.
Can I go inside?
So I did.
I explored this building because it’s an official government building. And it’s always in these buildings that I’m told, eventually, “you can’t take photographs.” I understand that, from a certain perspective, so I stopped. I’m not focusing on this style of architecture…I’m just making a small point, that’s really not that small, and then, I go back in time…through the streets…and it’s a totally different perspective.
After I posted those pictures, I had a hard time sleeping. I had dreams. As the article above wrote, it was one of the bloodiest times in history, but it’s not reflected in the architecture. The domineering effect. The falsehood. Nationalism. I do not have that in my lineage, but I am Catholic right? It was my childhood rage. My parents were liars, they were sick, in one way or another. I dedicated almost four years from 9-13 investigating this church as deeply as possible with the resources available to me. I left at the end of those four years, and I still didn’t even stop my religious education, I suppose. When it came time to get confirmed, I did it because I heard the word “Crusades.” I was filled with instantaneous rage because of the way it was framed. And I didn’t even have to know what it was. I’m just sharing that piece of my personal history just due to the link between church and state.
I was just rocked by the layers of feelings that I worked through last night because architecture really does communicate a lot, which is why it’s so powerful. It’s where we live, it’s where we go to send mail, it’s where we go to conduct official state business, and it’s everywhere. We move through it. History. There are ideas that make up the design. Do I think it’s attractive? No, it’s terrifying. Monsters…that’s what my dreams were last night, literally. I would think that you might just destroy it or you would not put official government business in these buildings. Is that a valid response? There have been many terrible governments, no, but that one was a part of a world war.
I was wondering, what do you do with that past? With that history. The Jews have museums, organizations, and from that standpoint, right, you do not forget. I posted a couple of things in a field of buildings and food…there will be stunning small streets…it’s just do you not notice? I just happened to end up there. Do you erase it, not remark it? I woke up feeling so much…and that’s me…it’s history, and what do you do with that? Again, my question is why would you conduct official state business in one of these buildings? Well, they obviously picked these spaces for a reason. It was state over democracy. Nationalism. And you should be able to ask these questions, I think. That’s all. I wouldn’t, quite frankly. I would not want to conduct official business or anything in these buildings. It wasn’t that long ago. It’s just to say. So I apologize if that was shocking…And people study this time in history…people write about this kind of architecture, so. I often thought you don’t pay any attention to it…you do not acknowledge it, but is that the right attitude? It’s a little different when it’s an official space, I think. And maybe facing it, on my end, is positive in its care. I care.
I think about what the refugee camp manager said: “If you know what happened in the past, you can understand the present, and maybe you can focus the future …” So, I suppose that’s about it. I’m not posting any more pictures…I will continue to bask in the scenic beauty of the region…and keep learning about its history. Again, it’s not everywhere, and I’m not looking for it, but I just found that quite stunning, and not beautiful, I mean, I was stunned.
It’s the fear of that time. The reality of it. And it’s that fear that might be dangerous in some senses. I heard once that France is a culture of criticism and the USA is a culture of fear. When I was speaking to the refugee camp manager, I had to be honest, since I obviously carry my culture within me. He said that the USA, he guessed, is all about freedom. We discussed that in the YSL Jardin Majorelle with plant life protected and flourishing from all five continents. On the edge of the old and new city in Marrakesh, I wondered why I was feeling some fear. Just because of his point of view? The difference between our medias, let’s say? The refugee crisis? He himself was a refugee from Afghanistan. On the one hand, which I didn’t put on him, I came out of a crazy home and I wasn’t fed properly, so I could not get hungry without feeling fear. I worked through that. On the other hand, I just said you know there’s a lot of fear for a country that is all about freedom…
“A lot of fear for always defending that right; it’s a paradox. It’s an interesting point.”
“I think that it must be a large thing to admit, to face what one has done,” I said.
“Imagine if they did that, what would happen to the country?”
So, I am very for the state taking responsibility for the ideas that make it up. And also acknowledging the pillars that are inside of me. I confronted my father on homosexuality, since it was the vocabulary word at the time, and racism, basically, at twelve. It marked the end of my investigation. I staged a clown act, small, to refuse to go to church with him, and I didn’t even abandon my faith in a sense. I wasn’t exactly proud to be a Catholic, quite frankly. He had no idea what to do and yes, I went after him outside. I didn’t understand as a child. I saw a pillar inside of him, let’s say, that he himself was not even aware of…and outside, in engaging with the world, it wouldn’t necessarily appear as racism. Just because he said “I think it’s easier to stick to your own kind…” And yes, he had Alzheimer’s, denied it, and all that came along with it. But that would imply your family. “Mankind.”
Plato said in his vision for a utopia that a leader would be a philosopher-king. From an Arendtian perspective, she was not interested in the thinking man but in the acting man. When I think of a philosopher, I think ideas. Ideologically, what makes up the real material. If you can acknowledge the ideas…and then put forth into action a plan over time to shift…that would be possible. When I was a child, investigating the Catholic Church, I thought that there were fundamental human laws that were irrefutable. You cannot place someone further away from God, but that’s just coming from the textbook that I had. We are all human beings, which might sound like an obvious statement, but you cannot argue that. And people have. If you are not in accordance with that, then you’re breaking a fundamental law. There could be a way to properly handle that. You can address the ideology behind the structures that hold up a society…and make a real plan, long-term, to change. The Notre Dame, since it was the etching in my father’s book of poems that he wrote to his first love, was built in a hundred years. It was a time in history when building something like that took time. People worked on that knowing that they would not see its completion…which is a powerful idea. You don’t destroy history, right, because that’s also an abuse of power that has also been waged.
How do you shift towards a humane system, regardless?
I have to get ready to go to lunch.
Thanks for reading.
