Have you ever been somewhere which has not lived up to your expectations? Perhaps you had learned of it as a kid and in your imagination, it had grown into something very special and spectacular, but then, when you finally got the chance to see it in person it was rather a let-down. Of course it was! How could it possibly live up to the billing you gave it? I felt that way when I visited the Alamo. I had seen the 1960 film with John Wayne as Davy Crocket and Richard Widmark valiantly defending the fortress from the Mexican army, rushing from rampart to rampart to repel all boarders and in my mind, I envisioned the Alamo was akin to the Tower of London. In reality when I visited San Antonio and went looking for it, I walked past it without realising. Surely that can’t be it? Tucked away, it didn’t look much more than a large house, and I confess I was underwhelmed. But that was not the Alamo’s fault, it was mine for making it something it never was.
The Alamo
Sometimes it is a photo which has drawn me, “wow looks brilliant, I need to go there!” On arrival however I find the place doesn’t do the picture justice, it isn’t nearly as bright and glossy as depicted and can’t live up to its photoshopped image. Or perhaps that “wonderful” picture was taken on one of the five fine days of the year and when I arrive it is on the other 360 days where wind driven rain is sheeting down and the sights are obscured by a hanging gloom. “You should have been here yesterday,” a local tells me.
Generally speaking, I find natural attractions stand a better chance of living up to their promotion than man made ones. The Grand Canyon for instance is a place where any image you have ever seen cannot possibly do it justice. There is not the remotest chance of a photo or video being able to convey the enormity of the place, neither the texture nor the constantly changing colours of the rocks. You have to see it in person.
So, it was with some trepidation that I disembarked from the plane at Venice airport. It had long been a place I wanted to visit, but would it live up to my expectations or would my hopes for it be unfounded? Could it live up to my expectations? It matters what we build our hope on; Is it framed by reality or is it is floating in some disassociated abstraction which in the end will leave us disappointed.
Our tour guide told us Venice was built on a swamp. Immediately my mind jumped to Monty Python and the Holy Grail;
“Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show ’em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one… stayed up! And that’s what you’re gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.[i]”
I quickly turned my attention back to the guide who was telling us how the islands were first settled by people escaping from the Barbarian invasion of the 5th Century A.D. Harboured in the safety of a large lagoon the islands provided not only a safe haven from the main land but easy access to the Adriatic sea and from there the Mediterranean. Marine trade began to increase, and Venice became a hub of commercial activity. But what to do about the fact Venice was established on these marshy islands and without being attached to a foundation wouldn’t be sustainable. The Venetians came up with an ingenious plan. “Imagine if you flipped Venice upside down,” said our guide, “it would turn into a forest!” The Venetians imported huge quantities of tree trunks, approximately ten million, which were then driven through the mud and silt into the layer of stable clay beneath. The clay provided the foundation needed to support the weight of the construction above, and because the tree trunks are driven so deep under the water where there is no oxygen, they are preserved from decay; petrified. Thus, although the city looks as if it is floating on the glinting waters in some mystical way, it is actually firmly attached to a foundation hidden beneath.[ii] That is why Venice has stood all these years despite the constant washing and sometimes battering of the elements, although some of the tallest bell towers such as the tower of Burano and the Santo Stefano tower have quite a lean!
I was not disappointed with what I found in Venice, it is just how I imagined it to be, more so in fact, and I was absolutely taken by the wonderful architecture, narrow alleys and aqua marine water filling the labyrinth of canals. I had read the complaints about how in summer the city is so full of tourists it is hard to move and see anything, but this was late January and relatively quiet.
The trade in Venice grew rapidly over the centuries making Venice extremely wealthy which was displayed through the incredible architecture. But in the fifteenth Century a shift in the trade routes away from the Mediterranean to India and the “New World” left Venice at the edge, if not out of the picture entirely. Sometimes we attach our lives to things we think will go on for ever, but then a reframing takes place and we find our footing sinking beneath us.
Venice’s economic importance may have declined, but its fame as an outstanding cultural landmark grew, and so did the number of visitors coming to see if it lived up its reputation. So many wonderful buildings to see; St Mark’s Basilica and the Doge Palace (no that has nothing to do with Elon Musk and cost cutting) being the most famous. One of these visitors gave the name to the bridge spanning the canal between the Doge and the prison next door as those being escorted across got their last glimpse of the city before confinement.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage [I stood in Venice]
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O’er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the wingéd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was–her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers:
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.
In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone–but Beauty still is here;
States fall, arts fade–but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
George Gordon Byron 1788 – 1824
This poem is in the public domain.
Bridge of Sighs
A later visitor to the city than Byron was Peggy Guggenheim who established an art gallery in 1948 and lived on the banks of the Grand Canal. The gallery now resides in her home. Guggenheim was particularly interested in abstract art and over her lifetime she collected hundreds of pictures and often the artists as well! I confess I am far from being an expert on art, I appreciate it and enjoy most of it, but some of it I struggle with, especially the more abstract form. I read the descriptions and study the picture but fail to see whatever it is I am supposed to see. Sometimes I wonder if it is even there. I notice many times the interpretations are written, not by the artists themselves, but by someone else deciphering it for us. It makes me question whether they have really got the artist’s intentions right. I looked at the paintings of some of the more famous artists such as the surrealism of Dali and cubism of Picasso. But there were hundreds more painting by artists I have never heard of (which is hardly surprising) but one artist, Jackson Pollock, and in particular one of his pictures caught my attention. It reminded me of my mind; flashes of conscious thought emerging from the dark depths of unconscious churn, vying for my attention before slipping back to the recesses. At least that was my interpretation, although the description did not mention it. The name of the painting is “Alchemy,” but the title wasn’t actually given to it by Pollock. To make “Alchemy” Pollock discarded the easel, palette and brush and used a paint can and stick with the canvas spread on the floor. As far as I understand it, one of the main goals of abstract art is to get out of the box and free the artist from the confines of having to convey an image or indeed use the traditional tools of creation; art for art’s sake. One of those white streaks of thought flashed across my mind; can you have something for its own sake? Can you have writing for words’ sake and sprinkle them out on to a page without using them to try and convey something? How about music for music’s sake? Sprinkling the notes willy-nilly over the staff paper without trying to get across some kind of a tune. Can you in fact have anything for its own sake? Can we live abstract lives? What happens when we try to frame life outside of it trying to convey any kind of meaning? Living life for its own sake and nothing more? I think we don’t have to go to Venice to see the results of it today.
Alchemy
In 1624 “Devotions upon emergent occasions, “was published, written by John Donne who in a sense was in his own prison, not in Venice but London. The year before Donne had become seriously ill, it was a time of plague, and thinking he was going to die he listened to the church bells toll daily for the dead expecting them to ring for him immanently. But Donne did not have the plague and eventually recovered. During the time he was confined to bed he wrote a series of reflections. There is nothing like the pressing in of our mortality to help us reframe our lives. An extract from Donne’s seventeenth meditation has become particularly well know.
No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
or of thine own were:
any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;
it tolls for thee.[iii]
John Donne
In Donne’s view none of us are an abstraction, we are all very much attached both horizontally with those we occupy this planet with at the present time, and those who came before us and indeed those who will come after us. But Donne believed an even greater attachment was necessary, especially when the bell does toll for us.
Heaven and the Kingdom of God can seem a bit of an abstraction, it’s hard to imagine exactly what it will be like. Many artists have tried to convey their ideas of it without having actually seen it, but Jesus who has, painted and reframed the picture of it for His audience without the use of any abstractions but in images we can see and clearly understand. We don’t need anyone to interpret them for us. In fact God Himself is often painted as an abstraction, disconnected from the world, unreliable to us but Jesus came to show God is very much involved and attached, so much so He became incarnate; The word became flesh.
In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus gave what we call the “Sermon on the Mount.” Here He painted a picture about what life should look like in the Kingdom of God. He was speaking to a group of people who were used to doing religion for religion’s sake as they had abstracted the rules and regulations from the point; knowing and being with God. Jesus concludes His sermon by telling an easily understood story about two house builders. One builder decided he was going to take the time to attach his house to the rock beneath. The other builder however built his residence on the sand, it was if you like a house for a house’s sake. Then a storm rolled in and the rain came down, the wind howled, and the water levels rose reaching flood stage sweeping everything away before them. The house on the sand stood no chance and was quickly engulfed by the brown churning waters. Away it went. The one attached to the rock however incredibly withstood the storm and was left standing as the chaos receded. Jesus didn’t just leave His story hanging open to interpretation, He tells us what He means. The person not just hearing His words but doing them is like the wise person who built their house on the rock, but the one who abstracts His words from any action is like the foolish person who builds their house on the sand. It all comes down to whether we believe Jesus enough to act on His words.
Another painting in the Guggenheim Museum which particularly caught my attention is called “Sea=Dancer.” It was painted by Gino Severini in 1914 as he was convalescing in the Italian coastal town of Anzio. It is a picture of a woman dancing by the sea, but the sea and the dancer converge in a blaze of colour, shapes, and vibrancy of movement, where it is hard to tell one from another. The painting is so full of life, not even the frame can contain it and the paint spills out onto the frame in several places.
Sea=Dancer
I am sure none of the pictures of heaven I have seen come close to doing it justice, but funnily enough Severini’s “Sea=Dancer” might be the closest one I have seen although I don’t think that was his interpretation.
When we stop taking Jesus’ words as abstractions and attach ourselves to them in faith, then He reframes our lives for us. Jesus gives us a new picture of vivid colours and images which merge into our very being as God’s kingdom grows within us, until one day we burst past the frame of this life into His glorious presence. Heaven after all is simply the place where God is and will blow all our expectations to smithereens.
[i] Monty Python and the Holy Grail Scene 13
{$NOTE_LABEL} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3INp81NimE&t=65s
{$NOTE_LABEL} https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23772/23772-h/23772-h.htm#Page_107
