The Baroque
I’m spending a few days exploring Palermo. As I always do in Italy, I spend a lot of my time in churches, jaw dragging the floor at the swirls and scrolls of the Italian baroque. Sicily even has its own form of baroque - Sicilian Baroque, no less. Would you believe, this meanderingly beautiful fork of mainstream baroque says, ‘You know, I think we’re really underdoing it with all the glittering gold, fat-faced putti, and scrolls and swooning saints.’
You can imagine the commissioning wealthy landowners and aristocrats walking into just-finished exquisitely fiddly baroque splendour and saying, ‘Hmm. Yes. But it’s a bit… plain. Can you jazz it up a bit?’
The numinous
‘Trading place and meeting centre for merchants and pilgrims.’
‘Socio cultural synchretism between western, byzantine, and Islamic cultures’
So say the guides.
Having several religious experiences (of other people’s religions) today. Amazing Hindu festival of guys walking on blades, lips pierced, flower crowns, on the Main Street. Incense, perfumes, the women singing, incredible and intense. Fathers, some moved to tears. watching their sons take part for the first time. Their sons did very well - occasional triumphant shouts from mums, dads, and sons alike.
A melting pot culture here, far more so than any Italian city I’ve ever been to - even Milan, for all its multiculturalism, is segregated, where this place is Arabic, Indian, Greek, Roman, italian, and a lot of Roma, all in one. And of course a lot of American (hence the rather role-poly kids, I suspect). And then the incredible Catholic churches.
I’m a regretful and disappointed aetheist. I spent several years studying religion, almost with my nose pressed against the glass, steaming it up and often scaring the people inside. And I find some serious hot and sexy numinous action going on here. Hopefully they don’t hear my heavy breathing.
At the Hindu ceremony, with the flower crowns, the barely controlled chaos, the whiff of masochism, I’m tempted to shout ‘Oss oss!’ and expect ‘Wee Oss’ to come back at me. Fortunately I think better of it.
I’m struck by how important smells, sounds, sights, and physical touch are - we’ve lost a lot of that in western religions. Especially in dried up Protestantism, designed to remove as much of the sensual as possible.
The sacred and the profane
A coda. Sitting having a negroni at twilight in front of the Teatro Massimo. A large group of nuns walks to the centre of the square, and starts to sing beautiful choral music. Then a strum of a harp, they reach to the sky, and start disco dancing in formation to a grinding studio 54 style NYC 1977 beat. Under their habits, gold sequins sway.
The crowd goes nuts. I swear to god.
If you wanted a vision of the sacred and profane, you couldn’t really couldn’t do much better than the visitor toilets in Palermo cathedral being behind an altar in one of the chapels. Beautiful fresh flowers laid on the altar.
A queue of people going in one side and out the other.
It has a definite Pythonesque quality. But most of all, I could well imagine it as a small passage in the back of one of of Bruegel’spaintings, maybe somewhere between Carnival and lent….
While most people filed in, and out, through a surprisingly capacious convenience (with a nice young gentleman making an ahem, entirely voluntary collection of cash at the centre of the leading corridor), without batting an eyelid, an older Italian woman was equally tickled, and we shared a ‘what the fuck’ glance and a giggle. Then off she went, crossing herself as she walked in front of the altar.
Understated.
Oss Oss!
Wee Oss!
In and out