The Realms of the Unreal

The very geography of the Academy cements a feeling of divine isolation because we enter by climbing up a steep hill (450 steps from the first stair in Trastevere to the last one near the Fontana Paola via the sharpest but most direct route) and then proceed through a series of gates and doors to get past the porter, the fountain, into the cortile, then on to the salone, the bar, or our room, which requires yet another flight.  

Inside our enclosed world, I am reminded that the word “paradise” derives from the Persian word for an enclosed garden and though it is sometimes too cold or too hot, and at this time of year the rain can drive down, just outside the windows hang fat Roman clouds against which smoky tendrils of starlings undulate and the dreamy cityscape is from a painting.  

Since we arrived I have been staying up much too late but on one of our earliest nights we were determined to go to sleep early, only to realize it was a holiday.  Live music thumped louder and louder into our room until we pulled ourselves out of bed and headed to the Fontana Paola to find it alive with people and noise.  In America, we have Hallmark holidays, but anyone wandering from the Campo Dei Fiori across the Ponte Sisto towards Trastevere late in the night (or early in the morning depending on your definition) might think that Italy has Red Bull ones.  

After that night of throngs dancing at the Fontana, I gave up on the idea of early sleep.  These pictures are from a cocktail party in September.  One night this week, a well-known multi-media artist and DJ gave a lecture/performance about his work.  The following night, an archaeologist discussed a large collection of antiquities she studies.

  

These two presentations were both, in essence, discussing sampling. The statues from the 19th century collection had been cobbled together from a mix of antiquities and modern elements, so much so that a statue said to be of the goddess Diana was actually comprised of 150 different pieces shaped together to create an idea of Diana. And where else but the Academy might dialogue be patched together between DJs and classicists?