Americaaaaaaaaa!
Baricco, Tornatore, Novecento, The Pianist on the Ocean. Skyscrapers in Manhattan that are reflected in the left eye of the emigrant Italian.
It 's all that came to my mind when I left by boat for the trip from the shore in the evening. Perhaps the lights of those skyscrapers were reflected in my left eye, I thought. And the voice of the guide seemed shrill and tamed As we approached Staten Island, and showed us the island where the migrants were kept in quarantine just landed: Ellis Island, and told us of Statue of Liberty. As I seem to make disciples of all the theories that they want this country as the most free and democratic world.
Just to ask questions about events known to the world: this is not the country that has not hesitated to massacre the Indians to take their territory? Is not the country that held blacks in slavery for centuries? It is not the country that brought in millions of migrant poor, hungry, in rags with their cardboard suitcases, only because she needed the poor, those hungry to continue to assert its role as a slave?
This Country Did you ever wondered what anxiety, what discomforts, frustrations which migrants lived? And the nostalgia? And the melancholy?
Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, unloaded bombs on Laos, Iraq, Guantanamo ...
Americaaaaaaaaa!
I made my first trip to America in 1966 and three more in a few months. I remained some time New York, Washington and San Francisco. I went to work.
met three very different reality. I was struck by the diversity but I could not, then, to pursue these.
I was Alice in Wonderland. Everything great, everything extraordinary, astonishing. From the tomato to the taxi, the record store to the elevator. I had in mind images of films with Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Greer Garson. Corresponded to what I saw. I lived in Astoria and Woldorf Park Hotel: turquoise carpeting and bathrooms with double sinks. Breakfast brought to the room with the cart by a black waiter.
A delight for one who had never moved so much from Italy, who had no equals. saving for an education, for which he had no idea of \u200b\u200bopulence and, more importantly, had no culture to interpret.
They took me to Harlem in a car carefully closed, with tinted windows because it was a risk that visit. And in San Francisco witnessed, instead, at a reception of blacks in evening dress.
Negroes, then, were called Negroes.
I'm back, only in New York, year: 2005.
I have not seen great as then, nothing really surprised me more than the exhibition of greatness. I realized that I had changed the way I look at this country.
And 'course, after forty years', I said. But I felt that I came the same emotions that if I returned to London or Paris, Amsterdam or Madrid. After forty years' I noticed changes in the economic development, customs, traffic, but I heard Van Gogh and Rembrandt, Velasquez and Goya, Manet and Turner still around. Those were the places of their life and of inspiration.
And I would be in Europe.
But here I felt a sort of stillness, even in the apparent changes.
Negroes, in fact, call themselves African-Americans and show impersonating incorruptible judiciary and police. Today, you meet them on the streets of the center: a few on Fifth Avenue or the Park, many in Broadwai where shops are popular and affordable prices. Harlem, which turns into white residential neighborhood , tourists strolling convinced to imagine what a ghetto was for so many people. Where to end up blacks, indeed, African-Americans who lived for years, if you ask anyone.
Little Italy is pathetic with the shops of salami and cheeses that must match in an Italian stereotype: the smell of rancid squalor they had in Italy fifty, sixty years ago. At the border Cinatow presses that now occupies, with its junk, the closet that were the Italians.
No, at a glance, this city has not changed.
The outsiders continue to be increasingly marginalized. And the power, the arrogance, the arrogance of the master is always the same, ever more declarations, performed.
primates, this is American history. The guides delight in saying "the biggest, the most important, the highest in the world." And they all think they play a leading role this "more".
I said to myself: what would America without primates?
New York and ostentation, New York and cruelty ', New York is the cynicism of' America. How King Kong: a great, big, scary, m that (and I strongly hope), it will not prevent its annihilation.
No, New York, I was most impressed.
in its museums, with collections "more" of many of the world, are masterpieces that European and Chinese and Egyptians. Everything comes from "A ltrove. Their paintings, with good will, beginning with the nineteenth century. And one of the twentieth century was the need to denounce loneliness, poverty 'human, the frustration of those who live this reality: Hopper, Worhol, Pollock ...
The big American orchestras have only one root: Famous European Directors, employed by the magnates in the late nineteenth century trying to publish, or in the 30s fleeing from Nazism and Fascism . How Mahler, Furtvangler, Toscanini.
What you learn in this country to survive if not overwhelming the other? The law of most strong, the largest, the highest.
Egypt, Greece
How many Americans know this story? The intellectuals, those who travel. But those traveling in a country so immense?
I think there is, in 'American medium, the belief that nothing resembles what he lives. Does not need to be compared. belongs to the "more".
Where are those beautiful boys tall, blond, healthy hair with a brush so that we have seen in war movies of the '60s?
Today, perhaps all belong to the "more" fat. E 'impressive number of obese people you meet. Young and old, men and women and boys.
I say more you go down the social ladder, and most are fat because fed by Mac Donald and many processed foods that you buy at low cost in many huge and supermarkets.
But a country where there is "most" because not about a social problem so widespread?
course, mine are superficial considerations, to "blow hot."
course a country like this you are sure to have picked up atmospheres important after a few weeks of having to investigate, after months and having to study in depth, after many years.
My son lives and works in Oregon, in Portland. A city democratic, pacifist, environmentalist.
spent time at his home located in a neighborhood of perfection awkward, almost painful.
wooden single-family homes, Tudor style, with gardens, flowers, manicured lawns. American flags and banners, however, that welcome to passersby.
trees, raccoons that inhabit the gardens, scottaioli crossing the street and climbed up the trees munching on something, doors without alarms, car parked in front of houses. And the deserted streets during the day, you can walk for hours without seeing a soul, in complete silence. And if someone greets you meet him, wishes you good day. Maybe he walk the dog and carefully collect the poo, How is in possession of bags distributed by the City.
I wondered: who's inside these homes? Young people, happy, healthy, which is the perfection of the Truman Show? O there will a director who directs this perfection?
do not know. It 'hard to imagine the elderly, sick or people who are full of hatred and frustration.
What I appreciate what I know America?
the "civilization of the process." Wherever you perfect toilet. Even with the hand cream and Tampax offered in a nice basket. If I was not in menopause for years, it gladly take advantage.
And then the super-organization.
If a Saturday evening, at 20.30 you should wish to order a black elastic pants, you can call the house that distributes it, ask to speak in the language you prefer, order giving the number of your credit card on Monday and receive it on time at home with the catalog you presents the complete collection of underwear.
Everything is done to sell, to buy. In every store clerks will be meeting to ask if you need information, you greet a nice day, good afternoon, good evening. The sentences are programmed, you feel that there 's preparation. But you are always welcomed and treated with great respect. You can buy and sacred because they are there to encourage you to do so. Studied for this.
In New York I could change three times a shirt going from store to store. And I could buy in golf pants and super balance. There is always a sales department, not a season for sales. And people buy when it is appropriate to buy. Summer 's winter and vice versa.
In September, all ready for Christmas and next year. Agendas and ribbons and cards.
E 'enough to accept and live a country?
I think of Baricco's Novecento and Tornatore. I think back to our culture and our imbalances. Our difficulties and our broken dreams. And I am convinced that I, as the twentieth century, I would not have abandoned the ship to go to endless roads.
Mezzadri Maria Grazia Hood
Portland, September 29, 2005
0 comments:
Post a Comment