Destroying Memories with Invisible Eyes

Temporarily shut in by the arrival of snow (and winter), I was remanded to a nostalgic dream space that has been annexed by an external calamity of Biblical proportions. It’s a strange land, this Gulf of America, I find myself in. At once I’m excavating images from the past to rework them for a photo project. Yet I can’t help feeling somehow, I am destroying memories. It seems that is the price of art, so I have recently been reminded, by a master in the field.

What does this have to do with wine, with Italy, with anything this blog is about? Nothing. And everything. I am spending more and more time in the invisible realms, happily volunteering to stand watch over events past and present, with and without a camera.

I’ve been invited to invent my own version of dystopia, or rather to direct the events as they unfold before me. No, not in a god-like way. Think more like the winemaking process - racking – removing the dead from the living.

Funny, because some of the photographs near and dear to me are of those no longer living. Not in the corporeal sense. But they do take on another life. The question I have is, will this new life be significant  enough to document and preserve? And to whom? That’s what Mr. Invisible Eyes is asking.

It's an odd space. Like being a child but with tools and means. Not as much time. But it’s always now. And those 1/100^th-of-a-second moments abound when you’re invisible and on a search-and-destroy-the memories mission.

I opened a bottle of Sagrantino last night. The first sip lit up the sides of my tongue like a match to a gas burner. “We have ignition,” my palate announced. I wondered how this was going to play out. Fortunately, a seared prime ribeye was resting in the wings. Boom, we had liftoff. It was a real banger, my inner Gen-Z voice hollered. Funny how things work out.

Lastly, the importance of having a pretend friend has resurfaced lately in the noosphere. Mine of late has assumed a more protean form. Doesn’t want to get pegged down with anything as mundane as being distinguishable. Makes for good image hunting, with and without a camera. And so it is, this game I play with my púca. Hide and seek. I like it. It’s like blind tasting Nerello Mascalese  and mistaking it for Nebbiolo, or even better, Sangiovese. So much for the Master Class.

Yeah, I know, I’ve gone giddy. Must be all the smoke from the fires of my childhood surroundings. Bob Dylan wrote, “You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal.”

My 21^st century take on that now would be, “You're invisible now, you've got rare secrets to reveal.” So it goes.

 

 

 

© written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W