Dear You . . .
After the Ball
party?um . . . did i mention the word
'party' in my last message?
Did I mention throwing up
in a corner of the Visconti palace
and wiping my mouth
on a corner of priceless tapestry?
Did I mention flagggggggons of strain-it-though
your teeth unfiltered medieval Italian wine?
Did I mention the White Company's
White Lightnin'?
(Some of kind of distilled
British Norman madness?)
Did I mention waking up
on the pantry floor
and then going on to
party
for an entire 'nother day?
My liver is on strike
My head has hired a drummer
and I'm convalescing back at Louder's place
But, by Hera, it was funnnnnnn!!!!!!
The Scene
Inside the Visconti palaceall weekend
it was basically like a big rave party
dancing over here
jousting in the courtyard
storytelling up there
sad chill-out troubadours down here
and mostly . . .
lots of groups of junior courtiers
just sitting around drinking and laughing
speaking Eng-Fren-Italia-Latin
on balconies and stairwells
Tyrants at Play
Are the Viscontis a tough family?Was it spooky to be their guests?
Let's put it this way ---
Their logo is a snake
(sometimes a dragon)
eating a man!
their bodyguards never smiled once
The Experience
Skip and Iand some of Louder's
nun/monk/artist/courtesan crowd
hung together the whole two days
We made a home base on a cloak
down in the pantry
kept our stuff there
and then just wandered
from venue to venue
and wine-flagon to wine-flagon
Any given venue had a Fun Quotient
that we rated on the following axes:
1) Axis One -- Nobility/Servants
Space in the palace is divided into
two distinct zones
1) "On Stage" with the Nobility
2) "Behind the Scenes" with the Servants
(with notable exceptions
Behind the Scenes was much more fun)
2) Axis Two -- Bernabo/Galeazzo
The Visconti family is headed by
two brothers ---
Cool Galeazzo
and
Bumpkin Bernabo
(Bernabo's and Galeazzo's employees
are everywhere in the party
--- you can identify them by their colors ---
Galeazzo's people are much cooler)
The highest Fun Quotient
was in the
Galeazzo/Servant
gatherings
The Birth of Cool
Bernabo is Old SchoolBernabo is Medieval
-- fart jokes
-- childish superstitious churchgoer
-- life of the party
-- pitiless in the field
-- tearful drunken embraces: "I love you, man!"
-- sports fanatic (hawking, hunting, jousting)
-- standing & shouting to his buddies
from the head table
-- wiping mouth on sleeve
Galeazzo is New School
Galeazzo is Renaissance
-- Latin puns
-- more interested in Zeus than Jesus
-- observing everything with witty detachment
-- a lover, not a fighter (though a good swordsman)
-- intense talks with close friends
-- art, craft, book and clothing collector
-- always calm, moves with quiet power
-- eats with this hip new thing called a "fork"
Let's put it this way ---
Galeazzo is a personal friend of Petrarch
Bernabo doesn't know who Petrarch is
Galeazzo is called "the handsomest man in Italy"
We looked at him
*shrug*
nothin' special
He wears roses in his hair
My View of the Actual Wedding
Bride Violante Visconti, Galeazzo's daughter
and
Groom Lionel, Duke of Clarence, from England
were down below somewhere
but we had lousy seats
The Watershed
Setting aside the fact thathe preserved and edited tons of
Greek and Latin books
we otherwise would have lost
Setting aside the fact that
he personally developed
love poetry as we now know it
. . . Petrarch changed everything!
He is the intellectual superstar of this time
and a few years ago
he was invited to be crowned Poet Laureate
by both the University of Paris
and
the City of Rome!
By choosing Rome and the Classical World
instead of
Paris and its Church-academic nit-picking
he kept the door open
so that the lusty, free-thinking, body-lovin'
skepticism-provokin' Greeks and Romans
(even though he is really pretty uptight himself)
stayed a part of our culture!
We should get down on our knees and thank him
every day!
I got down on my knees and thanked him
yesterday
Parti-colored People
In our whispering wisecrackinglaughing-unto-hiccups
drunken meanderings
. . . we blundered into a linen cloakroom
in which two young noblefolk
had made a straw nest and were
. . . um . . .
getting it on
In the embarrassed instants
of our apology and withdrawal
we learned what happens to people
who wear beautifully-dyed new party clothes
on hot sweaty days ---
--- their skin becomes dyed
with lovely festive blocks of color!
wide eyes, pink cheeks, psychedelic bodies
Spring, Spring, Spring, Spring!
La la la la la la la laaaaaaa!
Autograph Hound
I finally locate Petrarchholed up at a table in a treasury/book room
surrounded by groupie-monks
There's a Greek scroll open on the table
so everyone has carefully put their wine
on the floor
And it's silent
Petrarch is really old
and scrunched up
and has a magnificent little mischievous grin
and sparkler eyes
when he looks up from what he's writing
on his wax tablet
Everyone is writing on a wax tablet
They're playing the anagram game
(also known as "a granma game" or
"Ae!, grammar nag!")
When one of them finishes,
he hands around his tablet
and everyone reads it and cracks up
He was really nice to me
We didn't talk for long
He complimented my shiny Nike t-shirt
I gave him my Roman coin collection
He signed my notebook "Fo. Petrarca"
La la la la la la laaaaaaaa!
*Berto sings happily*
Comedy Crisis
Here's the big "joke" that wasgoing the rounds at the party:
Me: Why did the man kiss the pig?
You: I don't know, why?
Me: Because he comes from Brittany!
You: (five minutes of hysterical laughter)
They are in desparate need of
Comedy First Aid back here
The Banquet Green Room
During the main banquetWe hung out back stage
for about 10 of the 16 courses
and watched them get ready for the
parade
they did each time
They gave away party favors
with each course
The best favors were
the falcons on gold chains
and the seventy-six Milanese war horses
But All That Wealth . . .
. . . was abject povertybecause you weren't here!
(that's a Petrarch-style line)
(and it's the truth)
I thought about you the whole time
. . . imagining you were here
laughing at stuff with me
My headache is getting the better of me
and I'm going to burrow back
into my straw
and think of you some more
missing you is gnawing at me
like a winged snake
