Lago di Pietra di Pertusillo
In 2010 a remarkable film was released in Italy. It was called Basilicata, Coast to Coast. Obviously, the title makes ironic reference to the archetypal road trip across the United States. Basilicata, the forgotten region of the Italian South, does not have two oceans, but it does have two seas. The protagonists of the film are a musical group who live in Maratea on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast. They travel eastwards across the region to Policoro on the Ionian Sea coast, where they have been invited to play at one of those summer festivals that small towns in the South always have. True to form, they make the trip in a donkey cart, loaded with their instruments and a couple of tents. But this is the 21st century, so it is a solar-powered donkey cart with navigation by laptop.
The motto of the film is "La Basilicata esiste, รจ un po' come il concetto di Dio, ci credi o non ci credi." - "Basilicata exists: it's a bit like God: either you believe in it or you don't." At intervals they are stopped by patrols of Carabinieri police, who cannot get their heads around the fact that anyone in this day and age would be mad enough to do a trip of this kind. The journey (160 km - they opt for the long way around), takes several days, and occupies so much time that eventually they arrive at the music festival in the middle of the night about an hour after everyone has packed up and gone home. The band and their donkey are confronted with the stage, bare, windswept and abandoned.
The whole film is a sort of tough guy's version of John Lennon's Fool on the Hill. It is as lyrical as it is barmy. But at a certain point things go wrong. After 85 km, the intrepid band and their donkey arrive at the Lago di Pietra di Pertusillo, which translates literally as "the lake of the stone with the hole in it." This is a delightful spot greatly loved by the ancient Romans who, with much effort, patience and tenacity, conquered and subdued Basilicata. In their ignorance, our modern travellers take the southern route around this picturesque body of water. Indeed, they camp on the south side, totally missing what there is on the north shore.
Now I know Basilicata, something that few outsiders can boast. It took 15 years of hard work, tenacity, resilience, patience and persistence. This, of course, was nothing in comparison with the hard work, tenacity, resilience, patience and persistence of the people who actually live there (I tried to do that too, but the 1980 earthquake drove me out). It is a remarkable region. In the modern age it pretends to be very European, but in reality it is nothing of the sort, and neither is it Asian or African. Perhaps Basilicata is a figment of the Oscan imagination. The Oscans were a pre-Roman people. The Romans were not particularly welcome, and neither were the Saracens, Normans, Swabians, Anjouins and all the other invaders, up to and including tourists.
I know this: on the northern side of the lake there is a lush thicket of trees in which there is an abandoned building. It is modern, not ancient, and a faded sign proclaims it as 'Ristorante La Romantica'. Now La Romantica is a common enough name for a restaurant, but this one was quite different. Due to an incredible error, it was built back to front. The kitchen window had a magnificent view of the lake with its wooded shores and rippling sheet of water. In contrast, the dining room had a massive plate-glass picture window that looked upon the back yard where the restaurant staff stacked up crates of empty bottles before recycling them.
One summer there was a drought and the lake level slowly subsided. A curious spectacle emerged beneath the kitchen window. It was a heap of small bones. Alerted by a local resident, the NAS, police hygiene inspectors, raided La Romantica and promptly shut it down for six months. The staff so hated the customers (and animals) that they had been cooking and serving up cats and dogs. When the restaurant reopened, it did a lively trade made up of people who were curious about the whole story. I was one of them; but, of course, the popularity didn't last and closure came quickly. Paradoxically, the spot is more romantic as an abandoned building being slowly reclaimed by nature than it was as a back-to-front restaurant. And the people who made the film knew nothing of any of this.
The moral of this story hardly needs explaining. Look around you. We all think we know the answer. But perhaps what we fail to see is a back-to-front edifice that confounds our whole story. Cast your net wider, draw more inferences, look behind the screens of this life. You will be surprised at what lurks there.
The motto of the film is "La Basilicata esiste, รจ un po' come il concetto di Dio, ci credi o non ci credi." - "Basilicata exists: it's a bit like God: either you believe in it or you don't." At intervals they are stopped by patrols of Carabinieri police, who cannot get their heads around the fact that anyone in this day and age would be mad enough to do a trip of this kind. The journey (160 km - they opt for the long way around), takes several days, and occupies so much time that eventually they arrive at the music festival in the middle of the night about an hour after everyone has packed up and gone home. The band and their donkey are confronted with the stage, bare, windswept and abandoned.
The whole film is a sort of tough guy's version of John Lennon's Fool on the Hill. It is as lyrical as it is barmy. But at a certain point things go wrong. After 85 km, the intrepid band and their donkey arrive at the Lago di Pietra di Pertusillo, which translates literally as "the lake of the stone with the hole in it." This is a delightful spot greatly loved by the ancient Romans who, with much effort, patience and tenacity, conquered and subdued Basilicata. In their ignorance, our modern travellers take the southern route around this picturesque body of water. Indeed, they camp on the south side, totally missing what there is on the north shore.
Now I know Basilicata, something that few outsiders can boast. It took 15 years of hard work, tenacity, resilience, patience and persistence. This, of course, was nothing in comparison with the hard work, tenacity, resilience, patience and persistence of the people who actually live there (I tried to do that too, but the 1980 earthquake drove me out). It is a remarkable region. In the modern age it pretends to be very European, but in reality it is nothing of the sort, and neither is it Asian or African. Perhaps Basilicata is a figment of the Oscan imagination. The Oscans were a pre-Roman people. The Romans were not particularly welcome, and neither were the Saracens, Normans, Swabians, Anjouins and all the other invaders, up to and including tourists.
I know this: on the northern side of the lake there is a lush thicket of trees in which there is an abandoned building. It is modern, not ancient, and a faded sign proclaims it as 'Ristorante La Romantica'. Now La Romantica is a common enough name for a restaurant, but this one was quite different. Due to an incredible error, it was built back to front. The kitchen window had a magnificent view of the lake with its wooded shores and rippling sheet of water. In contrast, the dining room had a massive plate-glass picture window that looked upon the back yard where the restaurant staff stacked up crates of empty bottles before recycling them.
One summer there was a drought and the lake level slowly subsided. A curious spectacle emerged beneath the kitchen window. It was a heap of small bones. Alerted by a local resident, the NAS, police hygiene inspectors, raided La Romantica and promptly shut it down for six months. The staff so hated the customers (and animals) that they had been cooking and serving up cats and dogs. When the restaurant reopened, it did a lively trade made up of people who were curious about the whole story. I was one of them; but, of course, the popularity didn't last and closure came quickly. Paradoxically, the spot is more romantic as an abandoned building being slowly reclaimed by nature than it was as a back-to-front restaurant. And the people who made the film knew nothing of any of this.
The moral of this story hardly needs explaining. Look around you. We all think we know the answer. But perhaps what we fail to see is a back-to-front edifice that confounds our whole story. Cast your net wider, draw more inferences, look behind the screens of this life. You will be surprised at what lurks there.
