September 24 2023 — Existential Autotrip

September 24, 2023
# 1621

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COVER:
Michelangelo’s David stands as a marble masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture depicting the biblical hero who fearlessly stepped forward to confront Goliath, the giant and champion of the Philistines. David’s perfect proportions, commanding posture, and lifelike qualities, and his intense facial expression, a visage of focused eyes, furrowed brows, and resolute jawline, exude determination, inner strength, and a foreboding intensity, the embodiment of the Renaissance idea of terribilita.

Its superb sense of strength, power, and beauty, make it one of the greatest works of art ever created.

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Commentary
The re-entry from our trip to Tuscany was a bit shaky for me. Thanks to my poor planning I spent from 1.00am to 6.00am in an uncomfortable airport seat. Finally the Delta lounge opened and I got some relief there, including a 15-minute nap. While the flight home was very comfortable in my business class seat, I did not get any sleep, not even a nap. I arrived in Boston at 1.00pm local time, and my lovely cousin picked me up, which was sweet.
I slogged through the remainder of the day and made it to 10.00pm. I got several hours sleep, not nearly enough. I spent the first day back in slow-motion. One more night’s sleep and I finally regained my energy.
Three nights of sleep deprivation was a first for me. Plan better than I did.

**Florence’s Best Michelin Restaurant**

*One of the guarantees of traveling with my father is that you will eat well — and a lot.*

Kat’s Gen Z Corner
I wanted to highlight the various extravagant dishes that we sampled from the incredible Florence Michelin restaurants, but I quickly realized all my favorites in each food category were from the same restaurant: Il Palagio at the Four Seasons.

This feels crazy because each time we visited a restaurant we were convinced it would never live up to the previous, and each time it did. We had no duds, remarkably. But no restaurant had the “wow, I will remember this dish forever” factor quite as often as Il Palagio.

Everyone that came to our table — the sommelier, the waiter, the runner — was inspiringly passionate about their craft, and their joy really rubbed off on the diner’s experience. They were professional, of course, but not pretentious.

(Not pictured below: the sparkling tea that I will forever be searching for. Another life-changer for me.)

***Best Appetizer: The red tomato, in all forms except it’s original: frozen, liquified, foamed, deconstructed. Expanded my understanding of culinary possibilities.***

Best Pasta/Entree:
Some kind of nut-based pasta that was just perfect and amazingly filling. Again, a work of art.

Best Dessert: A deconstructed peach that might be the highlight of the entire trip. It looks like a work of art, and it tastes like a work of art. Made me want to eat slowly and savor every bite, which is usually quite unusual for me.

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Do You Believe in Magic? Anthology of Stories from the North End
Edited by Dom Capossela
Between the years 1950-54 despite its diminutive size, the North End gave the world its biggest robbery since the beginning of mankind, Brinks, and produced a world champion boxer, Tony DeMarco, and a public Fourth of July human grenade launcher, Anco, (no last name given.)

Available on Amazon where it is the number 1 best seller in the Emigrants and Immigrants category

Question posed to Francesca by E Speranza and J Bolander

**Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?**
Carol is one of my favorite films (based off the Price of Salt––a favorite novel). I wouldn’t say that the plot of the film influenced my debut novel, Trouble the Living, but I do feel like that film taught me what a good ending is. The final moments––of Therese rushing through New York to get to Carol, flashes of which we saw at the beginning of the movie––culminate in a long look between the two of them, and Carol’s slightest smile. The look is so incredibly meaningful and powerful both because of Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara’s brilliant acting and because the story has already done all the work to get us there. It’s a scene that made me realize that an ending can and should be small and subtle, because if the film or book has succeeded, that subtlety is all you need. By the time we get Therese and Carol’s glance, we know them so intimately––their pain and their love––and that look is enough to tell us all we need to know.

One of the greatest young writers in America, 2023
Buy her book, Trouble the Living, on Amazon.
We will publish a full review in two weeks. Look for it.

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Tucker’s Corner
I grew up Catholic and I went all in during that time of my life. I was an altar boy. I was a Boy Scout (they were affiliated with our local church). So much of my early years were surrounded by Catholic dogma. Mostly that meant going to church, feeling guilty about a lot of stuff I didn’t know how to process, and working as hard as I could to be a “good” person. I noticed quickly during mass that there were parts of Catholicism that weren’t normally talked about. Those being the more magical aspects. The idea of angels and demons. The fear associated with the idea of ever encountering either side of the eternal struggle in your daily life. It was never something the church spoke of. In fact, the only time the idea of a chance meeting with the supernatural elements of my religion ever came up, it was typically associated with someone in our life passing away and either becoming or being escorted by angels to their great reward. I quickly learned that despite the fanciful nature of so much of the “legends” of Catholicism there were a lot of people in my life, of all ages, that fundamentally believed in these things. All this to say I think that it’s this belief that fuels an enormous wing of the film industry. The department that puts out stories of Catholic-based horror. This is The Nun II.

The Exorcist is one of the most successful horror films ever produced. Much of that success is due to the fact that it’s absolutely terrifying even five decades later. The film actually turns fifty this year. But much of that horror is rooted in Catholic trappings that so many Americas grew up with. We’ve seen priests in their black suits, white collars and ornate vestments during mass. We’ve heard about things like demonic possession. We’ve seen movies and heard stories about demons and the devil visiting humans as far back as history has been recorded. As if there is a hidden world of winged beings just around every corner. All this to say that a film like The Nun II, a film dumped into the back end of summer to movie theaters that are resting after an explosive summer full of blockbusters, has a strange transcendence with audiences because it bases itself so heavily in some of our deepest darkest fears. Fears we’ve been learning about since we could understand them.

The Nun II is a sequel to a spinoff of a sequel. I for one am surprised we even got a second Nun film. The first entry didn’t do well at all in America though thanks to its old-world European setting it did well overseas. It was set in a majestic Romanian monastery beset by evil in the early 1950’s. It felt like a classically gothic horror tale that could easily have been adapted from a classic novel like Dracula. You didn’t need to be a faithful Catholic to enjoy its haunted house aesthetic nor its ecclesiological spin on a buddy-cop movie, sending a veteran priest (Demian Bichir) and a novice nun named Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) to investigate the troubled holy place.

One piece of the Nun II’s success is the idea that unlike other stories in this web of horror spinoffs and sequels who bring in new fodder with each entry, they keep Sister Irene around to be the central hero this time around. Because the evil they fought in the original wasn’t vanquished she is now under the Vatican’s spotlight, and they send her to hunt down the titular evil force which has left the Romanian setting of the first film and is making its way to France by possessing a young man named Maurice who helped defeat the film’s villain the first time around (or so we thought).

All the films in this franchise (dubbed The Conjuring universe after its original and best entries) play like recruitment films for Catholicism. Nearly every film weaponizes faith and true belief as a surefire method to defeat evil. But rather than feeling like your Sunday school had a Halloween party these films are downright terrifying and the filmmaking craft on display is atypical for this kind of genre work. There’s real talent on display and the result are some truly memorable set pieces. There’s also the matter of the scripts which often wrap themselves in a great mystery and puzzle for the main characters to solve while the audience stays hooked on every new clue and revelation. The Nun II fits that bill as well and plays like a bloody, scary version of The Da Vinci Code by juggling supernatural mayhem with scenes of our heroes exploring the beautifully scenic European locales and consulting with church historians to uncover clues. But the hidden success of The Nun II is how often it runs its fingers up our inner Catholic youth’s spine and gives us the genuine willies. Many of the films’ best sequences take place in bug-infested basements and attics of old religious buildings. Places I saw as a young altar boy. Places I feared but couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I didn’t grow up around nuns but through stories from my parents and others I learned to quietly fear them for the authority figures they were. So of course, a film that takes the image of a nun and perverts it into a monster is going to succeed with an audience that has that apprehension clanging around their subconscious.

Of course, not everyone that sees and enjoys these films has a religious upbringing nor do they need to. Stripped of the religious dread these films still carry some excellent bump in the night sequences. Much like the structure of any given Pixies song, these films are quiet then LOUD then quiet again, using stretches of suspenseful calm to give real weight to the bursts of gory violence. Director Michael Chaves uses real restraint throughout The Nun II to really make even some of the film’s quietest moments its scariest including an all-timer where a magazine rack uses the many pages of colors and faces to form the demon chasing our hero that will stay with you when you close your eyes at night.

The Nun II may not go down in history as a classic, but I can understand why it is successful. It’s very scary. It’s beautifully shot and staged. It’s well acted and most importantly it grazes an audience’s superstitions and beliefs. The film’s true belief that faith can empower you to overpower true evil is heartening and, in a world, where every day seems to require more cynicism to get through unscathed, The Nun II embodies an earnestness most films won’t go near. Sure it’s all silly but its aim is true.

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Restaurants and Pasta in America
What does America have against pasta?
Why is it so difficult to get a decent plate of pasta? Why do you have to order pasta to be cooked ‘al dente’?
Why do you have to spend more than $12.00 for a simple plate of Pasta Cacio e Pepe or Pasta with Tomato and Basil?
Pasta must always be a bit firm. Why do we need to remind the staff, ‘a bit firm?’ And we know food costs. The ingredients for a simple plate of pasta cost $1 or $2. The time to make? A few minutes. Why charge $15.00 to $20.00?
Any restaurant in Tuscany makes a decent plate of perfectly cooked pasta for $10 to $12.00. Almost no restaurant in Boston can say the same thing. Scratch that. No restaurant in Boston can say the same thing.

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Writing
Since my return from Tuscany I am working on catching up with my work for existentialautotrip, the weekly ezine I publish. And I’m also working on reading “Trouble the Living”, by my granddaughter, Francesca McDonnell Capossela, for which I plan to write a book review for publication here, in about two weeks. (The book is extraordinary, by the way.)
I’m also writing speeches for the official launch of “Do You Believe in Magic,” and an appearance at the North End’s terrific bookstore, “I Am Books”. My great work, Conflicted, is calling to me for attention. What fun.

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Art

Sam Anderson wrote perhaps the most comprehensive and beautiful piece on Michaelangelo’s statue in the New York Times Magazine a few years back called “David’s Ankles: How Imperfections Could Bring Down the World’s Most Perfect Statue.” Will and I listened to it on the car ride from Arezzo to Rome. You can find the audio version here, which I highly recommend.

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Food

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Chuckles and Thoughts
"When you're in a jam, self-preservation is the key. You do whatever it takes to get out of that jam alive. Unless you're in strawberry jam. Then you take your chances."
George Carlin
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Six Word Stories
"Last embrace, tears dried, moving forward."

The most costly dinner of the trip was well worth it.
The money is gone but the memories will endure.
My daughter Kat and I.

At Enoteca Pinchiorri every course is a work of art.

Enoteca Pinchiorri is beautiful.
Only beautiful people can do it justice.

Kat’s picture
No matter how busy the Uffizi gets, you are still able to get a full viewing of any work you want.
Just expect to wait one or two minutes for the crowd to move on.

Cameras are great. They make us look carefully for the best angle. Take the shot. And then, linger a moment and enjoy the piece with your naked eyes.

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Sep 20 September 24 2023