The first Orlando Wandering, happened at it was a blast! It has been an Urbex Experience with Nicola Bertellotti! To know more about it, click here: Orlando Wanderings – Urbex Experience

Dear reader, let me suggest you an experiment.

You already know how much music is dear to Orlando, as demonstrated by the special playlist created for matching the articles. Now, though, I have decided to go even further… Images and music will be entering into a “conversation” and they are the only creators of the words and the actions that you will be reading. Just let yourselves be carried away and follow me: observe the magnificent photographs that look like pictures and listen to the melodies…. (if you don’t listen to the music, the text will lose its intensity. Just give it a try!)

NICOLA BERTELLOTTI

Bertellotti was born in Italy’s little Athens, Pietrasanta, an international centre of marble working, where it is said even Michelangelo went to get his supplies. Bertellotti is the ultimate romantic, a follower of Ruskin and Burke, he regrets the paradises lost, he loves ruins, which for him represent not only a fascinating architectural element, but a survival from oblivion. A self-taught photographer, he uses natural light, has exhibited in various galleries in Italy and abroad, has received countless awards, including the most recent Premio Arte 2022 award, and has been reviewed by major publications such as Arte e Dossier, Esquire, Lampoon, Elle decor, and the Daily Mail.

Bertellotti’s photos are pervaded by melancholy and a search for the most poignant beauty. Like Proust’s madeleines, he wants to give us a taste of the past and invites us to abandon ourselves to it, at least for a moment.

Milestones by Miles Davis

“Have you heard from the orchestra conductor about that piece on the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Joan, where are we with that editorial on Pandora?”

“I still haven’t done the final part. I’ll get it to your desk as soon as possible, sir.”

“Francis, the vintage Jaguar garage?”

“I am waiting for the last images, sir, and then the article will be paged immediately.”

I rush around the desks, breathing in the frenzy of the newsroom, of the news flying about me and of the people who are caught up in a sort of continuous quest for stories and for fragments of humanity that they can share with everyone. The atmosphere is getting a little hot under the collar. There is a mild perception of people’s backs becoming tenser, ‘phones starting to produce steam and the keyboards of typewriters that are beginning to crackle. I love my work and I love sharing the direction of my ship with other members of the team. Forever heading towards the unknown in search of Beauty. Maybe one day we will all realise that we have always been inside our own little glass bottle inside which our ship sets sail upon the lines of parchment which inscrutably recite our and everybody’s destinies.

 

The Carny Nick Cave

The lapis lazuli blue of the floor looks like a sea full of silvery reflections. The dust obfuscates the age-old splendour, yet it does not eliminate it. The mirrors are just waiting to reflect the spectacle before them. It is the talk of the whole village. The baker has spoken to the butcher who has mentioned it to the grocer. Each one of them has spoken to their wives and sisters and children and these, too, have spread the word. Madame Tshilaba’s circus (her name, in Romany, means seeker of knowledge) is expected to come into the village with (and most important of all) the show of the drapes.

Don’t you know what it is? You’ll be speechless.

Madame Tshilaba travels the world with her convoys of caravans and her numerous family. Each and every member of her family is specialised in one of the spectacular arts of the circus. From intrepid shows of juggling to the most intricate of bodily contortions right up to and including the pièce de résistance, their airborne acrobatics. The family is often defined by the name of, “Le Libellule” (The Dragonflies), on account of their grace as they fly about the skies.  The evening approaches. The dusk is all limpid and melancholic and is just about to give way to the dark night. The lights in the circus, and the athletes, start to warm up. Madame Tshilaba stubs out her umpteenth cigarette and goes off to check on each member of her family before the grand beginning. It’s showtime!

 

Healing by Dario Marianelli

A shy little child lived at home with his father and servants.

He had lost his mother at the most tender of ages. His house-hold had stopped at that very moment, and it only displayed the shadows and the dust of what once had been. The child had no friends, other than one of the maids in the house. She cuddled him and made him feel safe and sound. Often, they would play at “explorers” and at night they would go in search of treasure in the grand old house.

One night, the little child went and knocked on the door of his friend the maid but there was no answer. He decided, in any case, to go off exploring on his own even though a smidgeon of fear arose within him. The house creaked so much as he crept forth, step by step. Each floorboard groaned as he had never noticed before when he was in the company of his friend. Outside, the wind whistled loudly, and the branches of the trees knocked violently against the windows. With a candle in his hand, the child ventured through rooms and long corridors until he suddenly stopped in his tracks, quite bewildered.

He had never been in that area of the house and looked around himself. A long corridor appeared before him with paintings covering the walls. Paintings which featured ancient cities by the sea and people hunting. The lights were coloured, and they hung down from the ceiling on long ropes. A light came on at the end of the corridor, but the child had no intention of escaping. An incredible sense of attraction took possession of him, and his feet proceeded in that very direction without quite realising what was happening to him.

A deer came out of the room and stood in front of the curtain that was concealing the room behind it. The deer stepped forward and gestured to the boy to follow him and he took him into the other room. The room was full of books and tall – as well as very small – cabinets. The room had large bird cages and in the centre there was a cabinet that was completely different from the other ones. It was lit up and the deer nudged the child to go and look more closely at it. Inside, there was a journal bound in red leather. The child lifted the little cabinet and picked it up. It contained the diary of his mother, and it told the stories of her adventures in the house and of a magic deer who had been her faithful companion throughout her life. The child then embraced the deer, and the deer would never abandon him from that moment onwards.

 

Reverie by Debussy

He had been a great pianist.

He had always listened to music ever since he was a little child.

He conducted his toys by hand as if they were an orchestra and each time that he heard a note he became emotional. Studying the piano, as with the study of any musical instrument, is about love, dedication and discipline. The hours spent practising those same key changes and passages that didn’t flow as well as they should have, the frustration, the desire to leave everything and then the connection to Euterpe, the muse of Music, won over all else at the end of the day. Sometimes, in the silence of his room, where he was merely accompanied by the crackle of the fireplace or by the pages of a book, he still recalled the clamour and the commotion of the applause when he stepped out onto the stage. He still smiled, his chest was thrust out and his imagination went over those steps that led him to the piano. He arranged the tails of his evening dress, and he visibly loosened his hands so that everybody could see them. The relationship that he enjoyed with his audience was like a drug for him, and it acted as a means with which he could feel alive and appreciated, an accomplishment that in life he was unable to achieve. The audience was in a half-light in which he would barely be able to make out the smiles, the eyes and the tears of commotion that he would arouse in the spectators. This was the climax, the very peak, of his life – seeing that people could dissolve into tears on account of his succeeding in taking them so far emotionally. It was not only Tchaikovsky or Beethoven or Berlioz, but it was his hands, his interpretation and his soul that did it.

This was the moment in which his soul communicated with the soul of the spectators. An instant of extreme harmony.

 

Winter, Four Seasons by Vivaldi

She roamed around the rooms in search of him. She held with one hand the mask that was covering her face and with her other hand she was holding the bottom of her large dress.

Her nerves were tense, her head held high, with pride. She did not want to reveal her emotions. She was sure that he would arrive. Whenever she saw someone new come into the room she felt her heart miss a beat. He still hadn’t arrived. She leant against a wall that was covered in a magnificent green satin. She checked the clock that hung over the entrance to the room, and she commenced walking up and down the room again. She felt the tightness of her corset, and she walked out of the room and looked over the stairs to breathe in the fresh air and to take off her long gloves. A concentric flight of stairs connected all of the floors in the building and the walls around them were also covered in the same green fabric.

A sudden draft of air and she felt her waist embraced from behind. A furtive kiss on her neck brought a shine to her eyes behind the mask and a smile puckered her lips. “I am here.” Two words and time had once more started to move forward.

“Are you ready?” Two more words that set off her heartbeat at an even steadier rate than before. “There’s only one guard in the room,” she said.

“As we expected.” “Let’s go and have a glass of champagne. You go into the room and do what we have agreed upon. Is that fine with you?” She nodded beneath her mask. “Let’s meet at the Parc Monceau, at the Corinthian Pillars. One last kiss before leaving.” They entered once more into the room. She tried to contain the shaking of her hands. They took two glasses of champagne and drank a toast. Their eyes twitched. He went in the direction of some noblemen, and he began chatting to them.

She went towards a group of noblewomen. Suddenly, a scream ripped through the room. Everyone turned around and saw a woman, who had been struck by another woman, fall to the ground. A ruckus of gowns, of masks and top hats ran to the scene to try to untangle and better understand the situation.

He managed to take the painting and started to escape. But, before leaving the room he threw an explosive device into it. In the ensuing turmoil, She managed to get out of the clutches of the women and the men who wanted to restrain her. Scratched all over, without her mask anymore, she hurtled towards the stairs, and she ran down them until she was out of the building – her dress in tatters, she ran wildly towards the park. The screams and shouts of the people at the party echoed over her shoulders as she fled the scene. Some of the men came out of the building and began calling the guards. No one yet had noticed that the picture had been stolen.

Silence. Only her gasping for breath could be heard in the park.

The columns appeared before her, and she noticed the breath that he was exhaling in the cold night.

“We’ve made it.” He threw a cloak over her, and they exchanged once more a kiss, beneath the impenetrable eyes of the full moon.

 

Rapsody in Blue by Gershwin

Mad, crazy, off his head.

These were the nicknames that were usually attributed to him.

Lupo was a young man of eighteen years of age. He had lived his whole life with his mother and his sisters, and he saw the world quite differently from other people. He did and he said exactly what came into his mind. He had no fear of the consequences, other people’s judgements, or animosities. Lupo heard music inside his head, music which accompanied him everywhere he went. This music resonated inside him for days on end, even months, until it turned into something unbearable to the point that he would quite simply have loved someone to open up his head and take the music out!

Only the village luthier was fond of him and, from time to time, he gave him little jobs to do inside his workshop. Lupo loved working with wood and he possessed a certain dexterity when he handled it. He made musical instruments, a zither, a violin. Despite everything he wasn’t able not to love music since it represented something that was entirely certain for him, it was a constant life-long companion.

One day, Lupo was roaming about the forest, and he went so deep in amongst the trees (in the hope that it would be possible to remove the thousandth melody from his head) that he arrived in a place that he couldn’t recall ever having seen before. He went further on and noticed an abandoned building that was falling down. He knew that it wouldn’t have been prudent of him to venture inside but despite this fact he entered the building.

What appeared before his eyes was a fallen-down theatre. “What a magnificent theatre it must’ve been!” He shouted out inside the theatre and his voice resounded through the trembling ruins. He climbed up into the boxes and went into them one by one. Then, he slipped down onto the stage. He closed his eyes, turned towards the inexistent audience, and made a loud announcement: “Ladies and Gentlemen, here for you now is the most distressed of symphonies. We will perform it with my imaginary orchestra. Make yourselves comfortable and happy listening!” Lupo began singing the melody that had been tormenting him with all the voice that his body could muster, miming each and every instrument. Sharing this musical frenzy with the abandoned theatre and an imaginary audience made him feel like the greatest of artists.