Day 28 - Florence is Closed

I thought museums closed mostly on Mondays, but apparently a lot of stuff closes on Sunday around here. I guess the Italians are more devout. :) I spent most of the day wandering the streets of closed stores singing A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. I also hit the market, but we'll save that for the end blurb. In the meantime, since I have no sights to speak of (I mean I saw a cat in a garden and took a picture through the fence, but who cares?), I guess I'll blather a little more about Art.

Art very rarely pays the bills. It generally makes bills, in fact. (Hi Blake!) In fact, I find the story of any artist often revolves around their relation to money. Van Gogh sold one painting his entire life... to his brother. One pity sale for a man who really cared about his creations. He wanted to put his soul up there. Then you've got someone like Michaelangelo, without a doubt a genius, but always having to fight like hell to get his patron (the pope) to let him make his own choices. Well he was gay and trying to work for the catholic church as well. But that's a whole other story. I guess what I'm trying to say is that on a practical level, art isn't. (Hi Yogi!)

So why do I care when people are starving and killing each other? I can't answer that in any way that satisfies me, so I won't even attempt an answer for the public at large. But then I can't justify anything except chucking my life and doing nothing but trying to house and feed the poor when I think about things like that. Meanwhile, back my (insulated) world, I like art.

Someone once said that no matter what we study, we are learning about ourselves. I agree. Art tells me what matters to people. When the church dominated, the art is all sacred. When merchants and money became the rage, portraiture took off. People always liked naked pictures. :) The relationship between man and nature is a constant theme. And when nature didn't always look as scary as what humans felt when things howled in the night, they imagined monsters. I don't know if being in touch with these artifacts of humans from the past will ever have any real value for me, but at some level, it makes me feel like I'm not as different as I sometimes feel, like through this understanding I feel a little more a part of humanity. Considering my normal feelings ("All things being equal, I tend to sympathize with the android."), this is probably a good thing.

That's enough for today. I'm going back to the hospital to commit a sacrelidge and make my own pasta in Italy. Hey. If they were willing to sell it at anything close to a reasonable price and in anything more than tiny portions, I'd buy it. As it is, I feel totally justified. I've paid less for the three dinners and breakfast I bought at the store today than I've spent for any single dinner out here.