a better song to sing

Apparently, many cities and municipalities in Tuscany have come up with a new tourist tax. Which means that travelling around Lucca, Siena, Pienza or San Gimignano is now more expensive than ever before.

What is the world coming to? Miss Charlotte Bartlett would tear her robes at this appalling outrage! As for me, I understand Tuscans to a point. If I was a resident in any of those gorgeous places, I wouldn't like to see my own small hometown constantly taken over by swarms of intruders armed with selfie sticks. As an attempt to put a limit to this, I guess the new tax is a sensible step -probably into a heartless, much colder world where only money seems to count, but a sensible step if there is one. 

We all know massive tourism is a curse, in spite of which we still go touring, don't we? Well, I hate to say it, but I partially blame the film industry for the inordinate amount of tourists that plague Southern Europe to the point of spoiling all its charm. 

Just an example of what a certain type of British tourists do when they go on holidays in Spain.

As I wrote on A MOVIE THERAPY, motion pictures tell us how to feel -and even what to think. If you are familiar with feel-good stories about Italy made in the 1980s and 1990s, you must have heard calls in your head such as: find out who you really are; follow your heart where it takes you; eat, pray, love and find a better song to sing... for you are ENTITLED to your own special share of happiness in your lifetime -or rather, what's left of it. Come on. YOU deserve it. 

Shirley Valentine always KNEW she could do better...

Now. When you think all these New Age slogans were thrown at you in inseparable association with beautiful Tuscan landscapes and Puccini arias it isn't hard to figure out why, thirty years later, so many Western citizens in the grip of a mid-life crisis still run to the nearest airport for the first plane to Florence, Majorca or Santorini. One should think such general quest for self-discovery would have led to some Universal Spring of Endless Harmony in the world. Instead, it's proved to be the best way to turn many individual dreams into a collective nightmare. To rephrase one of Willy Russell's most memorable lines in "Educating Rita", yes, we did find a better song to sing. But when we all sing it simultaneously, the result is shrill, hollow and tuneless. Sorry for the misquotation, Mr. Russell.

Rita, like Shirley, DESERVES to be happy! You see, YOU DESERVE TO BE HAPPY TOO!

I can almost hear you say, "But E.M.Forster, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and W. Shakespeare can't be all wrong! They must have meant well when they wrote their stories!"

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning's tomb in Florence

Most definitely, I believe they did mean well. Maybe it's us who didn't get the message right. You see, these tales can't be taken literally because they belong in the realm of Myth. Far from being an actual physical place, the Italy they describe is an ideal. And you don't fly Easyjet to your ideals... or do you?

Endearing character Pamela Piggott saw this clearly in Billy Wilder's acclaimed "Avanti!" when she said something like

Italy is not a place, it is a State of the Mind...

Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills in "Avanti!" (1971)

A peaceful, blissful Italy of perfect Truth, Love and Beauty lives at the heart of all human dreams since the beginning of time, long before the real Italy materialized. You can find that special Garden of Saint Mark's within yourself, then make it grow and even share it. Touring, though, won't get you any nearer to it than you are now. 

Like dear old Mr. Emerson in "A Room with a View", you too can take a fork to your heart at the dining table to proclaim: 

I don't need a view! It is in here that the sun shines! It is in here that birds sing!

Unforgettable Denholm Elliot in "A Room with a View" (1985)

Who needs to pay extra for a Tuscan view anymore? Shouldn't all dreams be free? Haven't they always been?