Venice; 1.07.08.

Venice always evokes in me strange passions. The sheer undiluted extent of its beauty astounds me. One can visit Florence and see the sights but know that even there, round the corner, there will be disappointment, even slums. But here in Venice the beauty, intensity and passion of spaces that excite and delight goes on street after piazza after canal.

I try to analyse its success. So many scholars and academics – generals of the artistic world - have tried and studied this great city; I am merely a foot soldier trying to understand his terrain. The narrowness of the arterial bending, twisting streets, overlaid and interlaced with contrasting sinews of water of endlessly varying breadths is the main theme my mind distinguishes. But then there is the endless flickering of reflected rippling dappled light dancing seductively on the underside of the hundreds of bridges and up and along the sheer flanking walls. There are the never-ending steel-tipped gondolas drifting lazily through these veins, slapping a staccato through the constant percussion of shoes along the fissured alleyways. The properties of a tightly controlled language of finishes, windows and doorways; the fading glory of exotically painted walls; the glimpses around and through openings into hidden courtyards awash with flowers – mostly geraniums and vines; the punctuating solidity of medieval and classical churches, civic buildings and theatres with their dark, heavy interiors packed full of artisan craftsmanship; the sudden explosive entry into sun-scorched courtyards and piazzas whose generous proportions contrast so strongly with the cool, shadowy, crack-like chasms that lead to them.

I love that I never know if the next alley will lead to a dead-end set of steps to a canal landing, or into square, or round a tight, hidden bend and beyond. I love the lack of an Oxford Street or Bluewater mall. Shops spring into view in the most idiosyncratic places. This is true shopping; trying to find the shops is the biggest part of the adventure!

As one climbs the steps of the miniscule bridges, under which the gondoliers duck at the last moment with that mixture of staggeringly grandiose arrogance and skill, the resulting subtle shift of viewpoint down and along the canals is one of the most exquisite charms of the Venetian experience. What is around that last corner, I wonder? Many Venetians have opened up an arch from the canals into the very heart of their home, where often an ancient chocolate-coloured armchair sits shrouded with silks and embroidered tapestries, telling of the wealth – true or imagined – of the owner.

Windows packed with carnival masks, grinning and gawping at me. Sheer perfection in colour and finish, fresh with the smell of turpentine, which pervades the deepest of alleyways. I pause and breathe in deeply and I am back in the apprentice studios of Da Vinci or Michelangelo. Lines upon banks of sightless, silent faces, all holding a lost language of intrigue and occult behaviours, refusing to tell their stories. Huge feathers sprout from every nook and corner, like ferns in a spume-soaked waterfall grotto. Headdresses fit for princes and princesses, nobles and baronesses abound, each one placed with care and precision.

People move slowly and aimlessly, silenced by the sheer volume and never-ending feast of history and pageant. I feel I am part of a tender deep dance of slumber. Even the most brash tourists seem strangely muffled by the lapping water and embracing walls, by a silence that crushes the intrusive clamours of a modern, hurtling world. Here we slowly and intuitively sense with a growing internal hollowness just what has been lost along the way. How that progress is really a master of deceit. How easily we have fallen for our own lies! How much has been lost amongst the gains. I overhear one of two garish American women remarking that in Las Vegas she visited a life-sized copy of Venice’s Grand Canal, but …. and she gasps for air and for words, eyes rolling, as she acknowledges the sheer outrage of the comparison.

How did we lose this? What created it and made it possible in the first place? I can guess at the answers but clarity eludes me. Something about immense trading wealth, coupled with the centrality of art and creativity, the high calling of being a commissioning patron, and above it all a belief of the essence of God in all things, sacred and secular – in fact the indivisibility of life. There is no secular in Venice; God is everywhere. He breathes through the stones.