Djenne, Bamako and Back

I was not even away for a week. But somehow everything which needed to be done was done.

The second day saw me racing up the familiar road north in one of those old Mercedes cars, so beloved by the Malians (albeit lacking in air conditioning ) on my way once more to Djenne- I love this road and I know every twist and turn, I know when the horses start- it is just after Bla, which is also where one buys the best salty peanuts by the side of the road. Just  before that, one must cross the Bani river, all yellow like vanilla from the sand stirred up by the many workers that line the shore extracting sand for building work onto their barges and pirogues.

Djenne too is Horse country- although horses here are used to pull the carts on their way to the weekly markets, and no longer ridden. 

                                                    

But this time I received a message from Babou at the library that we (Driver Cheick and myself) were required to drive up to Mopti before going to Djenne, to make a courtesy call at the Governor's residence.  This was something of an imposition, to say the least, because it meant continuing on our journey north for another hour and a half, having already travelled all day. But one is not at liberty to refuse of course. I  therefore ended up in an over stuffed armchair doing small talk with the Governor  who was very surprised that I had travelled all that way without a military escort- that is apparently what the other few toubabs do that come this way. My enforced Mopti visit also meant that I had to stay the night in the Hotel Flandre, Sevare, because even I recognized that perhaps one should not be travelling around after dark on these roads. Nevermind, I had a refreshing swim in the pool in this hotel, which is owned by a Dogon, once a guide, who has managed to keep his place going and functioning really quite well- quite a feat in these days of Malian hardship.

Once in Djenne the following morning, there was a whole merry go round of authorities to say hello to before we were allowed to begin the work at the library which was the reason for my visit: First the Prefect- a new one, quite handsome and relatively young, certainly an improvement on the last one, then onto the Chief of Police, followed by the Gendarmerie... this is all the fault of the French who complicated everything by installing all these different authorities, which are now well ensconced into the Malian bureaucracy. We did not have to visit the Maire fortunately, neither the Village Chief, the latter the only secular authority that existed before the arrival of the French Colonials. 

Having  shaken every required hand, we were finally allowed to start working at the library below

where I had the sad task of closing the Digitisation Project down, finally, after 16 years. When it started, with the Pilot Project for the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme in 2009, the library contained the collections of some thirty families. After the three major projects with the BL that followed, as well as the last five years with hmml.org, the Benedictine Foundation from Minnesota, the library now contains the collections of 204 families from Djenne and the surrounding villages. This is in fact now one of the more important manuscript libraries in West Africa. It will not entirely be abandoned- it will remain operational on a very modest level, until more ambitious plans and financing can be found-once more through the generosity of my cousin Pelle and his wife Nanni, who have also just sponsored the 11th edition of the Djenne Cataract Operations.  

The film 'Dreams of Djenne', by my cousin Elisabet, was finally shown in both Djenne (below) and in Bamako, for the benefit of the staff at Hotel Djenne Djenno and at the library.

I was able to make my customary  visit to Imam Yelpha and his posse- where the well rehearsed  attempts were once more made to persuade me to become the forth wife of Monsieur Yaro, in turquoise boubou beside me below, all provoking the customary giggles.

Once back in Bamako I spent a lovely afternoon with my 'son' Lassi, Keita's second son, by the pool at the Badala Hotel.
                                                

and on the last night, just before leaving for the airport,  I was lucky to catch half an hour of the Hunters' festival at the Palais de la Culture , Bamako- I love the Hunters, or the Donzo, so emblematic of West Africa with their ancient disregard for both Christianiy and Islam, their bogolan clothes hung with mirrors, animal skins and bone, and their smoky wood note music, songs and legends which remembers  the great forests, where lions once roamed...

That floor..

I have left my lovely but freezing studio in Il Chiesino...

The floor canvas is finally finished! It went from this first stage: measuring it roughly to be able to sketch out its peculiar shape once it was in situ in the studio,

To many happy hours painting away, with only one of two rare visitors...

To this morning's dramatic transport of the rolled-up canvas from the Chiesino by  two Ragazzi simpatici, one of them called Manuel, an Ondaiolo, with all that entails of extra friendliness, winks and discounts... It was somewhat nerve racking, because I made the mistake, first thing this morning, of confessing that I was always very scared when my floor canvases were installed. 

"Ho Paura!"

Now, that is of course not a very good beginning, because one should instead try and inspire confidence and calm in one's workmen... They had never done this before, and Manuel confessed to me, rather touchingly,  that he too avevo paura..

Which made things even worse...

But they were very professional, and faced their challenge heroically whicle I was looking on, biting my nails. The problem is that the canvas cannot really be bent so that it has any hard, sharp creases- it will damage it. And of course the space it went into was smaller that the size of itself, so it is a tricky business...

                                                     

At the end Manuel confessed to me the full extent of the drama:  in fact he had had TANTISSIMO PAURA, but that he now felt huge happiness and satisfaction! And so did I..

                                                     

Better pictures will follow- including the Dante quotation just at the entrance. Paolo, my architect is delighted with it, which makes me feel very happy. He wants his professional photographer to take some shots!

One of the last things that I painted, by the way, was  a little vignette our  walking group Camminando Quercegrossa, on our way into the Tuscan countryside:

  

                                       

Tuscan Winter

Back in Siena I have been thrown  straight back into all the lovely activities I had almost begun to miss during my three weks away...Today rambling through the Tuscan landscape which has donned the sober but beautiful colours of winter, as our walking group trekked through the country surrounding Monteriggioni- the fields are plowed and ready to sow,  the vines are resting, so the land is not fallow, but the farmers that used to till this land have moved into the nearby towns and almost all  of the ravishing old farm buildings are abandoned, apart from some that have been changed into 'Eco Tourism'

hotels. 

That was today- but the re-immersion in my Tuscan life started as  I arrived back from Florence at 5pm Friday.  By 7.30 I had made soup for the theatre group who arrived for the weekly  reahearsal.   They have become even funnier in my absence, and I think they are ready to perform, but they seem to think I need to be inserted too, in a non-speaking part..

 

 

The Piazza was lit by the last rays of a wintry sun last night, as a had a Campari Spritz  at Il Palio, and watched the happy Saturday flaneurs, having spent the day in 'my'  studio above the Chiesina, painting away. I can continue the floor canvas for another two weeks if necessary, Massimo, our Onda Priore  told me as I ran into him at the Onda Saturday morning cafe, that is good news! 

And some news from further north: my God daughter Ida is marrying her lovely Senai, born in Eritrea but raised in Sweden, this summer. About time! Very happy for them...

 

Going West

Time to catch up... have been travelling almost since last time I wrote, and my travels took me to two very different places in the United States- from the frozen Mississippi River in St. Paul to the cactus strewn desert landscape of Arizona- a discovery for me.

 But as always, America behaves exactly as expected, and the landscape is so familiar through so many films we have seen all our lives, in the same way that  New York; L.A and New Orleans seemed like old familiar places when I first went.

We flew in to Phoenix, and then we travelled overland- to Winslow where the historic Route 66 runs for a while  along  the great railway track which  carries mainly freight from East to West- Washington to Chicago through Salt Lake City and onto San Fransisco. Winslow has one of the last  great, famous railway Inns: La Posada Hotel, frequented from  the 1930's with stars crossing America whose portraits are now proudly adorning the walls: Shirley Temple, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Groucho Marx...

The great romance of America is somehow tied to the roads or railway tracks- all those blues songs which involves railway stations- the Blues myth of the Crossroads, 

The railroads... Here is the back of the Posada Hotel with a train the must have been three miles long going West...

And Bob Dylans' song to Woody Guthrie: 

Here's to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
And to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind

I'm a-leavin' tomorrow, but I could leave today
Somewhere down the road someday
The very last thing that I'd want to do
Is to say, "I've been hittin' some hard travelin' too"

 So, we travelled and along the the way we (Patty Les and I) tasted the great Mexican food of Arizona, drank plenty of Margaritas and revelled in the American travel romance...

Christmas and New Year: Where to even begin...?

Well, why not start at the beginning: this  Christmas started with Jeremiah and David and our brief but lovely  visit to Ravenna- and the revelation which was Bellini's Norma conducted by Riccardo Muti- although I had been looking forward to  Nabucco... 

This was a discovery for me, who, in my ignorance , had always  thought 'bel canto' was something fairly insipid... But no, this was opera just the way  I like it- i.e. featuring an unhinged soprano with a voice to wake the dead and shatter fine crystal, always aiming for some sort of murderous revenge.  Norma was of course exactly that, and Norma is a role  which Maria Callas famously made her own.  A young Cuban American soprano rose magnificently to the challenge of following in Callas' foot steps, and this is what David wrote for the Arts Desk: (https://www.theartsdesk.com/opera/theartsdesk-ravenna-riccardo-muti-passes-lifetimes-operatic-wisdom)

                                                                             

 And what a breathtaking introduction we had to the new generation of Italian opera stars in the best sense. Leading them all had to be 27-year-old Cuban American soprano Monica Conesa (pictured above by Zani-Casado) – because either you can handle every aspect of Bellini's high priestess with a guilty secret, and the role is of pre-Wagnerian dimensions (no wonder the German loved this of all Italian operas), or you fail utterly. Conesa triumphed on every count.

My very first Christmas at Casato di Sopra was memorable and eventful, full of joyful meetings and discoveries, laughter, mad conversations and flights of fancy,  greatly inspired by the week long presence of  the lovely and charmingly eccentric Stephane from Paris - right above- and also of  a Korean young couple who shared in our Christmas fun- which included all English trimmings, such as Turkey, Christmas crackers, plum pudding, charades and as a final twist the Christmas speech of King Charles the Third on You Tube.. 

But the whole time I was also working on the floorcloth- which is taking shape in the 'Chiesina'...

The Dante quotation which I saw in Ravenna by his grave will somehow find its way onto the floor- the above mentioned Stephane kindly sent me the picture and some type faces I might use. 

It is the last words from  the Purgatorio: and it conveniently mentions ONDA.. : 

Io ritornai dalla santissima Onda

 Rifatto si come piante nouvelle 

rinnovellate di novella fronda

Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle.

For New Year celebrations Jeremiah and David arrived, we were joined by my Onda neigbours Allessandra and Loris, as well as Andrea, Silvana and Giuseppe from our little Friday theatre group, and Hettie of course. The lovely Jeremiah, Heldentenor par excellence,  treated us to some of his wonderful singing from Tchaikovsky's  Eugene Onegin at Allessandra's insistence. How lovely!  My flat has been well used and is becoming what I wished it would become- a place of intriguing  encounters and happy surprises.

And that continued this morning even, with the young honey moon couple from Taiwan, Mibi and Vincent, who only stayed one night but even so managed to make themselves unforgettable by helping me to take the Christmas decorations down;  during which they  played me the latest Taiwanese pop music. On my tree they discovered some paper birds made by my Japanese  friend Satomi two Christmases ago when I lived at Via Roma... This inspired Mibi to produce a drawing on my wall  of this Eastern bird phenomenon,  called a HO in Chinese.  One is apparently supposed to make a hundred of them, then put them in a tin and any wish will undoubtedly  come true...

And in the studio there are some horses arriving, galloping around the Piazza. This painting is becoming something fairly light hearted and features a large amount of Siena sights- it has even got the Facciatone with a group of tourists enjoying the view... 

 Massimo Spessot, the Priore of Onda, has kindly given me leave to let it stay on the floor until I come back from my travels, to finish it off in the first days of February. I am leaving for London on Tuesday and then Minnesota and Arizona and my friends Patty and Les  on the 11th...!

On the Eve of Ravenna

 ,,,,and this is what the Upside Down Floorcloth looks like at this point, after a couple of days of blocking in the colours only. 

And tomorrow I am off to the ravishing Ravenna again, for Nabucco at the Opera Festival, once more meeting up with David, but also Jeremiah- we will be staying in the venerable Diana Hotel. Then I must ruch back to arrange a Christmas Aperitivo for neighbours, friends from ONDA, Paolo and his studio, Hettie and many more..,

The Entrance Floor Cloth

Those who have known me for a long time will recall that in my chequered career a certain object has made sporadic appearances in my life- a forgotten item of the interior called Floor Cloth or Oil Cloth. I have in fact made many of these, and they are all visible on my website www.sophiesarin.com  under the heading 'Floors'.

There has been this little voice in the back of my mind, nagging away at me, that I ought to make one for this flat, and for the entrance- it is most probably going to be my last home and hopefully for some time to come...so the idea is  finally beginning to take some shape. 

Since I became an Ondaiola in June, I have been quite a useful addition to the contrada- or at least I have been trying to make myself useful- here, for instance we have me in the Saturday morning coffee bar at the Via Giovanni Dupre, making capuccinos with Roberto, the other volunteer that Saturday.

                                                    

This sort of visible engagement helped me to take courage and ask Massimo, the Priore and one of the big bosses of Onda, if there might be some space, at present  not being used,  somewhere in the Onda territory, where I might be able to paint the Floorcloth for my entrance. To my great surprise and joy, he said I could use the floor above the Chiesina, the old church of the Contrada on Via Giovanni Dupre. Now, this space had definitely not been used, or indeed swept,  for a couple of centuries. 

However, after a dusty couple of days, it was time for the protective MDF sheets to go down and be taped together, with two purposes- one to protect the ancient floor, and the other to provide a surface for me to nail down and stretch out the canvas.

                                                 

Since the entrance to my flat is a very odd shape, it was necessary to lay down the canvas in situ there first and draw the shape on it, with the help of another Roberto, this time from the little theatre group who meet every Friday at my place...

And then the canvas was stretched and nailed down on the MDF in the Chiesina. 

                                       

                                                

The first layer of primer (ordinary vinyl emulsion paint mixed with PDF glue for elasticity and to prevent cracking) is important, because it is the one that stretches the canvas taut when it shrinks.

Since then five more layers of primer has been painted, and between each some sanding, and every time redrawing of the outline of the entrance hall perimetre, which shows through faintly  on each new layer and needs to be redrawn each time. 

So what will be the motif of this entrance Floorcloth? This has caused me some distress, as I have felt inadequate and uninspired... there is also some pressure on me, because the ONDA people are of course curious and want to know what I am doing... it will have to be good! And although I have done many traditional floorcloths in the past which have had patterns only, this one is not going to be one of those- it will be a lighthearted synthesis of what Siena is to me: it will use some details from my year of drawings from the streets of Siena- its crazy, lovely shapes and its caressing  movements. It will have some well-known silhouettes; 

It will have the colours of Siena and there will be Porta Tufi at the entrance, I think..

And then there will some details like Simone Martini's 'Blessed Augustino Novello' who Andrew and I called 'the SuperMonk' executing one of his miracles, catching the boy falling from the balcony...etc etc..

 And I expect there will be a horse of two...

I called Kathy, my dear artist friend whom I admire and love. 'I am scared' I said.  She said: 'We are all scared when we begin something new' she said...