May

‘There is nothing to look at anymore; everything has been seen to death.’
(D H Lawrence)

To travel is also to return. Inherent in each setting out is the journey back; the homecoming. For everywhere we go, we take ourselves: we have nothing else to take. Our new horizons are destined, in the end, to become the familiar landscapes of memory.

As I get older, and certainly these days in my more cautious, post-pandemic iteration, I wrap my past discoveries around me like a travelling cloak and every new experience is held up for comparison with the old. It is rare that I see things once more with completely fresh eyes. It is rare that something is able to make a new and startling point because I have become wary of the unguarded innocence which would allow this. And yet. And yet. Sometimes, to travel is indeed to cut oneself off; to slip one’s moorings and just float away unbounded and undecided into uncharted seas: tabula rasa.

On a recent trip to Florence, it was the beguiling warmth which undid me. The warmth and, after the initial awe, the almost casual beauty of the old stones. Coming from the fag-end of winter in grey and chilly London, it was all too much, somehow. The Duomo and the surrounding buildings had such a larger-than-life presence, such scale, that they were almost Disney-ish. They filled their screen. A film set; massed with extras, pressing on all sides. It was impressive.

But sometimes the overbearing impertinence of the human audience, all intent on ‘looking’, took on an oppressive air. Throughout the riches of the Uffizi gallery swarms of bored children trailed around the rooms, understanding little and longing to be released to scroll through their phones, eyes cast obsessively downward towards a smaller picture. For them it was plain boring. And yet. And yet. How else can we show our children? Look, this is us. This was us. At least a part of us. This is what you are made of. This is potentially what you might be.

Continually returning to the same stories, although reassuring, runs the risk of reducing them to comfort food. Ticking sights off a bucket-list can render them mundane. Maybe we do need to discover them anew. After all, these are the marks we’ve made: one of the records of our humanity; both our terrible mistakes and our most enlightened moments. All art, writing and music comes out of a shared perception and a shared longing to enunciate that perception.

As an audience, we have to continue to exist for it. Our role is to take it in wherever we find it; to be the receiver of that attempt to display humanity’s capacity for creation. Critically or enthusiastically, in the immediate moment or over time, we are its witness. But we should try to be open to the new as well as affirming the old: we must not forget that Botticelli’s serene and graceful Venus (the face that launched a thousand gift-shops) was once arrestingly and ostentatiously new.

And what of the world-weary cynicism of D H Lawrence in the quote above? We should remember that he was a writer and a poet. The quote comes from a poem. Poets, although capable of searing honesty, can also be intentionally economical with the truth. The truth is that we must keep on looking. For we need to marvel.