It’s hard to be original. No matter what you think, how you feel, or what you do, someone has thought, felt, or done it before – and probably better than you. Yes, it kind of sucks. Maybe being original isn’t that important; I’m not really sure. I just remember being taught in film school that there are actually only ten stories and all the different myths we live and tell ourselves through books and movies are just variations of one of those ten fundamental plot lines.
More than being original, these days I’m focused on the realization of things – and specifically, uncovering the paths that lead from thought or feeling to manifestation on the planet Earth. I’ve been lucky enough to get myself around the world on non-business related missions for more than half my life – winks, handshakes, lots of faking my way through languages of which I had little more than folk song knowledge. . . and lots of interest accruing on my student loan debt. Every time I return to New York, I feel a little stressed about where my next paycheck will come from, but more, I feel happy that if I died in a freak accident or found out I had a rare fatal disease, at least I would have just gone on vacation.
Speaking of student loan debt, I bought this book about Sardegna when I was in graduate school. I’m not sure what prompted it – probably the photo of the surreally turquoise Mediterranean Sea on the cover. I’m not above being seduced by packaging. The purchase is also dated because it was before I adopted Lonely Planet as my guide of preference. The Eyewitness guides are arguably more bougie, heavier, and kind of weirdly organized but they have nice photos.
I bought the book and did little more with Sardegna but think about it for the last seven or eight years – I hadn’t returned to Italy since I left at the end of my junior year abroad (a cliché with much redeeming value), although Italy had always been my first choice for the location of Bacchanal 2010. The Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of Sicily, were the site of its conception -- somewhere on the shores of Lipari or Salina. Incidentally, Salina is where Pablo Neruda was exiled until he returned to Chile -- if you’re into poetry or rebel artists.
I decided then that one day I would have a villa by the sea and would invite my friends from all over the world to come and eat olives and drink wine and dance and play music and swim and run around naked. Giving myself 13 years to get through school, pay bills and acquire coastal real estate seemed adequate at the time. If you’re reading this, you probably already know all about Bacchanal 2010 and may have even started pricing plane tickets to various potential locations – given the exchange rates and the cultivation of my Latina persona in recent years (salsa dancing, Spanish language schools, gold hoops, extensive time spent in Mexico and South+Central Americas), Argentina, Mexico and Colombia are all in the running, as well. It will also probably be a rental villa. Stay tuned.
But I digress. . .
One of my yoga homies – hilarious, fun, talented, Italian, and full of wanderlust – mentioned that she’d be in Sardegna for the month of August and invited me to visit. I figured this was the time to realize my dream. I considered the politically incorrect decadence of a three-day trip to the white sands and crystalline waters of the Costa Smeralda on the island of Sardegna and decided to do it anyway. After spending the night in my headphones, reading Hamlet and eating dark chocolate in a coffee shop in a London airport, I arrived to a beautiful, colorful morning in Santa Teresa de Gallura -- the proverbial Bloody Mary to my travel hangover. By the time lunch in the outdoor courtyard of my hosts and fellow Pisceans was over, I felt my Italian persona reawakening, started remembering verbs and the operatic inflections of Italian speech that found their way into my ears and my heart so long ago.
I followed on my newly-acquired motorino as Cristina and Claudio led the way on sun-kissed mountain roads to Capo Testa, the point furthest north in all of Sardegna – the crown chakra. Claudio read a book while Cristina tossed me a snorkeling mask and ushered me into the luminous waters to explore the world below the surface. We emerged later – first for a nap, then for a yoga photo shoot on wind-sculpted granite rocks that reach up out of the sea like the calloused hands of Neptune.
With Cristina and Claudio and their friends, we ate frutta di mare and risotto, drank vermentino, swam naked in the dark of early morning, then rode home along a winding moonlit highway that wrapped around the sea below like a lover’s arms.
Getting back to the topic of originality, I heard a funny comment the other day while sitting in a lobby in Manhattan. A man and his wife were sitting next to each other and the man was reading the newspaper.
“The Daily News is all worked up about firemen being asked to wash elephants,” he told her. I considered this.
“Why shouldn’t a fireman wash an elephant?” I thought. Fighting fires and washing elephants both involve a command of large hoses. (Engage the metaphor if it pleases you.) I could see the logic. Of course, logic isn’t exactly the handmaiden of emotion – much to the collective chagrin of humanity. And thus we suffer. . .which leads me to my final point.
I watched “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” the other night. If you haven’t seen it, you should. One of many best lines, spoken from friend to recently dumped friend who had developed a crush on a concierge in a resort where he was staying, “I bet you think strippers like you, too,” sort of sums up the illogic of the heart. We believe what we want to believe about things, live some variation of one of those ten plot lines, getting caught up in the details that make our stories unique. Should want of originality stop us from doing things like junior year in Florence or sitting in cafes in Paris or falling in love or being seduced by the Mediterranean lifestyle? I don’t think so. We still want to experience these things, even if they're not unique. Maybe it just means that we have to make more visits to the crown chakra, literal or metaphorical. Maybe this is where we can at least achieve a clearer perspective on things. . . as long as I can get there on a motorcycle.
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