Writing from Crete I have just a bit more to say about Santorini and sophistication. As I said earlier I couldn’t quite find it and even the concept sort of eluded me. Beauty, Santorini had in spades but I have to voice the blasphemous thought that one can get view fatigue. Another whitewashed windmill, another sunset over the blue blue Mediterranean with little white villages hanging on to the cliffs. “What more do you need” as we sang in “Wonderful Town.” Well something. And I found it.
The evening before we left we went back to the Industrial Tomato Museum for the opening of the Arts Festival. All the great stone buildings were full of artworks of different sorts, (indeed some pictures of the blue blue Mediterranean with little white villages hanging on to the cliffs), but towering over the whole place was an installation that was very moving. Someone had fired up the old factory furnace so that smoke drifted from its chimney for the first time in decades. An unseen coloured floodlight illuminated the great stack. Blood red for tomatoes maybe, then vivid sea blue, then an almost ghostly white for the past. A purple for the earthquakes and eruptions that had racked the place maybe. I was moved and happy and thought, yes, this is sophistication in the best way. Wordlessly taking what is and has been and acknowledging it with joy. The living smoke made it so much more than a pretty backdrop to the fairly abrasive band playing on a stage below. I was happy on a scale of ten out of ten and will remember the sight when times get bad.
The evening before we left we went back to the Industrial Tomato Museum for the opening of the Arts Festival. All the great stone buildings were full of artworks of different sorts, (indeed some pictures of the blue blue Mediterranean with little white villages hanging on to the cliffs), but towering over the whole place was an installation that was very moving. Someone had fired up the old factory furnace so that smoke drifted from its chimney for the first time in decades. An unseen coloured floodlight illuminated the great stack. Blood red for tomatoes maybe, then vivid sea blue, then an almost ghostly white for the past. A purple for the earthquakes and eruptions that had racked the place maybe. I was moved and happy and thought, yes, this is sophistication in the best way. Wordlessly taking what is and has been and acknowledging it with joy. The living smoke made it so much more than a pretty backdrop to the fairly abrasive band playing on a stage below. I was happy on a scale of ten out of ten and will remember the sight when times get bad.
 |
| Bonilla factory steaming again |
No comments:
Post a Comment