Spring has come and my story inspired by a menswear accessory - a reinvented shirt collar - continues (go back to Monday and Tuesday's posts to discover more about this project).
The collar has now turned into a "psychogeographical" element with a precise function, that of moving my protagonist in space and through past memories, present impressions and future intuitions.
It may still be cloudy in London, but there is more than just a promise of Spring in the air. Trees are blooming and the thin petals on tender flowers in pastel colours suggest the main character in my story that change is in the air.
Yesterday she had visions of Naples and today, escaping from reality once again, still trapped in her own fantastically visionary world, she goes back there. This time her own memories and family photographs mix up with images of divas and movie icons and clips of old films.
She thinks about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton escaping to Amalfi, hiding from the paparazzi after shooting the final scene in Cleopatra on the Island of Ischia, just off Naples; she remembers Ingrid Bergman visiting Naples' National Archaeological Museum, Cumae, the Phlegraean Fields and Pompeii in Journey to Italy.
Suddenly, she is transported to another place, Portofino, located on a peninsula in the Tigullio Gulf, east of Genoa. She goes back in time to the late '50s and the early '60s, pictures fuchsia flowers in bloom in the resort of the rich and famous, the paradise of the international jet set where it was once easy to spot Ernest Hemingway, Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman and Aristotele Onassis.
In her mind she pictures Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher walking along the harbour, dining at local restaurant Puny overlooking Piazza Martiri dell’Olivetta, and shopping in the local boutiques and beauty shops.
The dream turns into a glamorous and bizarre movie starring iconic and beautiful actresses, among them also Rosanna Schiaffino, now buried in Portofino, who starred as seductive Venus in Pottier's film from the '60s Romulus and the Sabines.
The latter told the story of the abduction of the Sabine Women, a legendary episode in which the first generation of Roman men acquired wives for themselves from the neighboring Sabine families.
In Florence there is a detailed sculpture by Giambologna portraying the Rape of the Sabine Women and my protagonist goes back with her mind to a trip with her art class when she sat under the Loggia dei Lanzi and tried to draw the sculpture. Yet the more she tried focusing on what she had in front of her, the more she thought about other similiar statues inspired by stories with an even darker twist, like Bernini's The Rape of Proserpina.
The myth of Proserpina's abduction, among the most famous in the Sicilian pagan tradition, suddenly takes my protagonist somewhere else, to Catania where there is a fountain dedicated to the legend.
In this new vision, she leans over the fountain, but sees no reflection in the water; she leans over further hoping to see herself in there or wishing that, exactly like yesterday, the water will turn into a screen and show her further images or take her somewhere else. Nothing happens at least until she realises that there are some black beads floating in the water and starts counting them.
The beads instantly start multiplying and changing colour, though, so she puts her hand in the water to pick one, but every time she pulls her hand back the bead is not there. She rolls up the sleeves of her blouse and lets her hands go deeper getting a shock from the cold water.
Will she manage to pick the mysterious beads floating in the water? Where will they take her? Follow the story on tomorrow's post to discover it.
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This is awesome site. It is appreciable job
Posted by: yogi | March 29, 2012 at 08:25 AM