The following essay is written by Diego Cotte. Diego has had work featured in the Fall 2023 edition of UH's undergraduate literary journal, Glass Mountain Magazine. If you'd like to connect with him on socials, you can follow him on Instagram @dmcotty.
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There is a quote that has been going around the internet that goes so hard and is so raw and reaps so true that many are surprised to hear that it came from a tweet about the way a plastic water bottle looks when the light hits it from a certain angle. “There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see.” This quote, while not necessarily having been on my mind until yesterday, seems to encapsulate thoughts that I've had lately about art as well as life and the world as I see it.
I am freshly returned from a trip to Rome, Italy where I spent a week surrounded by art and culture, spanning from the ancient to the contemporary. As I wandered throughout the city, I felt so at peace, even when my knees hurt and my socks got wet from the rain. There was so much beauty all around me. It is Rome, after all. But even besides the obvious museums and the ancient ruins and the churches, I found myself in awe of the people and contemporary world of Rome.
A Roman friend I made off of Hinge told me he doesn’t like living in Rome because it is dirty and crowded. And that is fair! Especially when you grew up in a place and live and work there. It is completely different than visiting on a vacation. And yet, I kind of loved the somewhat dirtiness of the city? This “dirtiness” that may turn some people off is a big part of the charm and life that runs throughout the city. A city that is dirty is a city that is lived in, and consequently a city that feels real, at least to me. The reasoning here is that the parts of the city that make it feel grimy (cigarette butts on the ground, spray paint on rotting buildings, ect.) shape the character of a city.
Rome’s character is passionate, expressive, and stubborn. It is not just the physical environment that gives this impression; it is the Romans. They care so much about food, and their eating rituals. It is about eating a Supplì before your pizza, and going on a passegiata afterwards. Romans will tell you when you are eating something wrong or correct you on how to drink your coffee. But it comes out of their passion for their culture, and you can feel it when a barista says you must try a pastry, and it is the best thing you’ve ever had.
Despite the social norms and rules, there is a sense of freedom that feels distinctly Roman. People openly ask strangers their politics. They drink and smoke on every street corner, and there are couples falling in love on the bus and kissing on a park bench. This energy is refreshing and intoxicating to an American like myself. This is one of those cathedrals I found on my trip to Rome, amongst the grime of the city and in some of the least likely places.
And then there is the reason why millions of people travel to Rome every year: the art. Expectedly this is kind of the primary reason for my travel. In many ways, my expectations were exceeded. I saw many pieces of art that I had wanted to see for a long time and I saw some that have become new favorites of mine. And while I was in love with everything I saw, I found myself almost bothered by many of the tourists around me. I saw people skipping past masterpieces of Salvador Dali and Pedro Cano in order to go straight to the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican Museum. Yes, the Sistine Chapel is the Sistine Chapel. But I could not help but think: why are you, as a tourist, so quick to skip past things? Why do you not slow down and take everything in? And, why are you not curious? Maybe this is unfair for me to say. But it pains me to see people eating at an obvious tourist trap of a restaurant and to be on their phone at the prettiest church I have ever seen or to only care about taking a photo so as to post on your instagram rather than sitting with what is in front of you and living. As a tourist myself, I was obviously guilty of some of this, but still.
After all, what do we know about the world and how do we learn about it? Adam Guettel’s musical The Light in the Piazza follows a young girl, who suffered from a brain injury and thus has lived a very sheltered life, as she explores Florence with her mother. I recently saw a production of this show and have not stopped thinking about it since.
Everything that Clara, the young girl, knows until the events of the musical, she learned from her mother, Margaret. However, Florence is a turning point for the mother and daughter as Clara begins to desire her own agency and yearns to know what love is. The opening number, which takes place in a museum, contains the lines:
The painting of the world we know…
It started then and there and here we are
It’s a new old world to me…
You can feel it
Guettel’s lyricism, along with the book by Craig Lewis, presents layers of ideas of how people learn about the world. There are your parents, there is art, and there is the actual experience. The musical depicts Clara navigating what it means to learn through each one. In the lines above, the two protagonists start to understand what it is like to actually experience the world you’ve never known.
Guettel and Lewis actually seem to push the narrative that the best way to learn is through experience, perhaps above art. You cannot properly know about the world by hearing or viewing it through someone else’s voice or eyes. The musical ends with Clara marrying the Italian man she had recently met but is passionately in love with. It is an inspiring story about giving into one’s emotions and not settling for what is expected of oneself, but it is also a brilliant example of the best that travel can offer a person. I think the hope is that one returns from vacation a more cultured and experienced person. That cannot happen without taking risks or actually trying to explore for yourself.
That being said, I cannot dismiss the pure power of art in my life. On the plane to Rome, I watched Mia Hansen-Løve's film One Fine Morning, which illustrates the life of Sandra who navigates her academic career, raising her daughter, caring for her ill father, and the start of an affair with her friend. One of the many tasks she must do in regards to her father involves cleaning out his apartment as he must move to a nursing home. Her father, who was also an academic, collected many books, and while going through them Sandra mentions that she never felt closer to her father than when she read his favorite books. To her, her father’s favorite books were his life and in reading and re-reading them, she could somewhat see the world through his eyes. A person’s favorite things are such an important representation of their being.
This has struck me so deeply because it is something I have thought about in terms of my own relationship to art and film and literature. I would love to think that when someone watches a favorite film of mine or reads one of my favorite books, they are able to gain a better understanding of who I am. But this is also just because I love art so much. To me, art is why I live, why I get up in the morning. It is such a driving force in my life and I feel that to understand me you must at least understand that.
This is all to say that I love art, I love Italy, and I love to find beauty in everyday life.
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Thank y'all for reading, and many thanks to Diego for agreeing to guest author! The next guest article will be sent about a month from now, and I'll announce the writer in a few essays. Hope you enjoyed, and remember to follow Diego on Instagram (@dmcotty) to keep in touch with him.
And once again, a quick reminder that starting from my last article, every third essay will only be sent to premium ($5/month) subscribers. The essay after next will be the first of these premium tier essays.