Media Matters

pencil on

Northampton Street

SketchbookMobileX

DoodleBuddy

Depending on what you have in your hand, drawing takes on a particular character, and more to the point, so do you as the maker. I had my HB pencil and a straight edge poised when I sat down on Northampton Street. I figured they would provide me my best hope of capturing subtle shifts of contiguous surfaces, planes starting in one direction, morphing into another, confounding all perspectival rules of thumb. But as you can see, I got seized up, anal if you will, and after an hour plus, my patience was exhausted.

The iphone is another matter entirely. Driven by the selection of app, it is either quite intuitive and clumsy (DoodleBuddy) or cumbersome but deft (SketchbookMobileX). Its appeal as a drawing tool I’ve alluded to before, mighty convenient and internally smart (becomes one of your photos instantly). Sketchbook Mobile is versatile with great variety of line weights, but time consuming choosing and dialing up of thickness, ultimately distracting from the formal issues at hand.

DoodleBuddy, my preferred iphone drawing tool, is far more forgiving, but extremely limited in options. Slide your finger along a diameter spectrum for line width, tap for color selection, and you’re off.

Touch is not an issue – you can tap, strike, or caress; the iphone considers them equals. Leaning into a line, or feathering an edge, impossible. It’s either on or off, there or not, pink or canary. Nuance manifests in the guise of DoodleBuddy’s smudge tool. I’m sure there is a technical description of what is really going on inside its chip, but here, with the smudge tool, is as close as you get to making mud pies.

Tamburini

Mountains of Mortadella greet you at the entrance of the famous Tamburini, a packed popular deli, lunch, store in the heart of Bologna.

Rosalba and I tried their lasagna yesterday and despite their rich bechemal sauce, handmade layers of pasta, it paled in comparison to Nino's lasagna which we were able to test head to head. It was the featured dish last night for Michele's name saint day celebration.

My favorite part of Tamburini are the dangling green meat hooks that

decorate the eating space.

more scenes from Bologna surrounds

Rituals

I cry almost every night before falling asleep, not from longing or love (okay maybe sometimes), but because I have made a ritual of reading a chapter each evening from The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Burbery. Taken by the economy and craft of her prose, I dole them out, these chapters, like rationed chocolate.

It reminds me of my grandmother's Upper Room, a devotional she read nightly in bed.

Renee's ravenous consumption of all that she has - art, and Paloma's method of notating profound thoughts and "movements not toward, but within."

Not much of a reader by nature, this is a parallel journey I want to prolong.

And like Paloma, I have an emergent structure for the veil of discipline with which I stitch my days together: front writing and back writing; and always, drawing.

More Calderino

A dog chased me back from continuing my climb into the hills

above Nino and Rosalba's house this afternoon.

But only flies and flying unknowns found me at this little ledge

where I perched for a couple of hours.

nothing to infinity

The point of a one point perspective.

San Luca, Bologna

Piazza Maggiore

From the Asinelli Tower and grounded, sitting under Neptune.

The church itself is under total scaffolding, but unlike a much earlier trip with Annmarie and Cathy (where we were certain scaffolds were tagged to our destinations and grew to take it personally), these are now scanned full scale photographs forming the exterior surface.

Interesting but not quite the same.

While I was sketching from the tower a large group of children descended.

I was reminded of being in Egypt where I used to draw crowds of them, mostly they just wanted to touch me. These kids wanted to see the image come to life.

Bella, they repeated.

I'm pretty sure they meant the drawing.

Esselunga

Not known for efficiency, grocery shopping Italian style is precisely that.

First the shopping cart, for one euro (which you get back if you return your cart - shades of Aldi, and they stay neat and present). Then you swipe your card for a personal scanner which fits conveniently onto your shopping cart. As you select produce (handy gloves provided to maintain cleanliness), you weigh it after punching in its picture code (for those who can't read?). When it prints out the correct price, you simply scan and load.

Checking out is a breeze - you present the total and they charge your credit card.

I've still got my plastic glove in my back pocket, also just in case.

Sacred and the Profane

Perched high on a hill above Bologna, San Luca is reached by a continuous portici. However, Rosalba and I opted out of the pilgrimage and drove instead.

Panoramas are offered up among other things.

We listened to a bit of mass while I made a quick sketch on the iphone.

Next stop Esselunga, supermarket of supermarkets.

I am fascinated by grocery stores in general; a real measure of culture. Rosalba thought I was crazy to want to tag along for her shopping, but it's the little things that I love.

cioccolato con arancio e nocciola

Asinelli's Tower and view from the top

Plaster yourself to the corners when another curious soul ventures to pass.

It is single file only on this climb to the top.

97.2 meters tall with a lean of 2.23, one only senses the shift

at intervals where the outside carves its way in.

The warped stairs that lead to its peak are another story.

My hands ached from gripping during the long ascent.

Started in 1109 and completed ten years later.

The tower I mean.

Bologna

Fidelity

Convenience trumps resolution.

It's hard to resist walking out unfettered by sketchbooks, instruments.

The wafer of technology that rides in my pocket, packs a multitude of colors, thicknesses, and looks to your lines. You got your charcoal and smudge tool, eraser, possibilities to save in stages.

Finger painting without the satisfaction of a slimy ooze, what is the medium of an iphone?

Pixels I suppose, but even those seem far beneath its glimmering surface.

Luckily my back is still strong and my trusty Marimekko bag renders choice obsolete.

I prefer it all.

the local co-op

fast food

Calderino outside Bologna

From the dining room of Nino and Rosalba's house the

Calanchi (small mountains of soft grey clay) frame fields that fold ochre and green

into paintings. Giorgio Morandi hardly left this area his entire life. And though he kept mostly to his own studio, this landscape is undoubtedly the birthplace of his palette.

Apparently just last October his house has been opened to public view.

But first, a little tortellini.

RyanAir

Heard the war stories but all smooth and no extra fees for a heavy bag.

Only long lines and steady sales once on board.

All safe and sound in Bologna.

The adventure continues.

Little Gransden Again

One long blast of the whistle and two short.

That is how to get Blue to return immediately.

But he never left my side when I took him for a long walk this afternoon

in the stunning landscape of Little Gransden.

Through endless fields of soft greys and pale yellows,

Blue romped free, stopped to sniff, eat a bit of manure here and there,

and otherwise enjoy a needed break from his working life.

When we got back, he stretched his long body upside down

by the heater, content for now.

Walls

Much has been written about the architectural conundrum of inside and outside (Rudolf Arnheim, Gasteon Bachelard, Steen Rasmussen, etc.) where distinction is created by a single line that connects and separates simultaneously. It’s one of those things you can never quite get your head around. And here lately, a similar theme persists for me in various guises.

At night sometimes when I wake up, I put my hand on the wall that separates Diana’s flat from the young couple who have just had a baby. We encountered her in the street the other day, setting out with her stroller and little fellow with “wind.” She is like a bird, this new mother, eyes darting about, landing expectantly on Diana’s when a semblance of advice, prediction slips out. Oh, yes, round three months they begin to smile, and at six… All too unfamiliar, she craves the comfort of knowing.

Much like the plane ride sandwiched between strangers, one senses the paradox of extreme narcissism and insignificance colliding. We only have our own outlooks in a literal sense; we can never see through anyone else’s eyes and yet we are a large mass, mashed together side by side. In this case perhaps even touching. When I touch that wall with its soft weathered wallpaper, it is as though I am feeling life in general. The solidity of the construction (tapping it reveals no sign of hollowness) nurtures the sensation of connectedness. What I touch is what they touch. They – our mass of humanity.

We were laughing, Diana and I, about how miraculous it is that despite density and packed schedules, people rarely run into one another on bustling streets. I remember watching ants for what seemed like hours, fascinated by similar thoughts. How do they know where the others are going?

Mathematical Bridge

in a very non-mathematical iphone style

lines misbehaving

not notching into place

as the wood members

they attempt to represent

Daily Bread

From start to finish everyday

Something by hand that makes you say

What magic has transpired

With the touch of Diana's way?

Walking to Grantchester

Green canvas chairs tucked among falling apples

Elderberry soda

Cheese scone

Red Pols

Looking like Ferdinand's cousin, Red Pols lazing along the Cam were unfazed as we passed them walking to Grantchester this morning. From Cambridge it is about a five to six mile round trip. And for all those friends who laughed when I packed my down jacket, I had to use it today. It was a mere 43 degrees when we set out. Diana even had on gloves. It warmed as we hiked and by the time we got to the orchard, we sat out among the apple and pear trees drinking tea and eating scones. It is the place that inspired Rupert Brooke's poem, The Old Vicarage, Grantchester with the final lines:

Stands the church clock at ten-to-three

And is there honey still for tea?

Abbey House

Flashback more than three decades this afternoon, following a long walk along the river in the alternately misty, then driving rain. I found the flat where we lived for a summer when Mom and Hal spent a year in Cambridge in 1977. I glanced inside but could not conjure images of its interior. Nor could I remember the elderly woman’s name who lived next door. She used to give me chills when I caught site of her sneaking a cigarette in her garden. Not sure why that frightened me, but she seemed altered while smoking; the activity had a clandestine feeling.

I wandered up Priory Road, just following my nose, and rounded the corner onto Abbey St where of course the Abbey House sits. Here, memories came flooding back. For an instant I even thought I saw Lavenia’s hand waving from the window. In my mind I saw the dark weathered furniture, the haphazard array of things, worn floors, the luscious back gardens, and Wren polishing silver for spending money. And then there was the stealing (borrowing without permission) of the Dankworth car during a party, which went unmentioned for years.

I stood at its gate scanning the compound, reveling in mental images. When I realized the hairdressers across the street were pressed up against their storefront glass, staring at me, I moved along.

Settling into a Rhythm

Yesterday was some kind of marker; a day where things seem to shake out – my own inner turmoil calming, questions appearing irresolvable seem okay, and my mind feels open, clear and receptive to the here and now. Maybe it was driving out in the countryside; maybe it was talking to Diana, maybe it was laughing about the “goblin” who rudely chewed us out for knocking to see the Hall House; maybe it was the dramatic sun lighting up the Lavenham Church as we approached through the Henry Moore like topiary, winding our way between sculpted balls as children might; maybe it was the quick fat pencil sketches of organic buildings tilting into one another as if an earthquake had upended them. This collection of maybes leaves me with a smile, a sense of peace and deep appreciation.

Weathered

Diana says some of the most poignant things out of the blue. "Sometimes when I look at older people I can see them as young and I think how beautiful they are." What a gift – to see backwards, or to have that inclination of spirit to look at a weathered surface and see beauty. Reminds me of that movie I love called 84 Charing Cross (starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins) that documents a forty-year correspondence by mail between a London bookseller and a New York writer. I know it is hopelessly nostalgic, but I practically cry when I see each of them typing their letters, smiling, crying, and waiting for the next to arrive.

When I saw Joan, founder of the newcomers group, (a spry ninety year old) whip out her “diary” as they call it, and then her friend doing the same, I just had to snap a shot.

Guinea Fowl and Topiary

thirty second Lavenham