Impulse

Speaking of cameras, my second thought in Venice was, °WTF was I thinking not bringing any of my cameras???” Actually, I know exactly what I was thinking: I’ll bring my little video camera, thus challenge myself into documenting my voyage in video instead of still photography terms. Well, that and I didn’t want to worry about $8000 of camera gear. Then I saw a guy with the exact getup I left back home. Oh well, luckily my little video camera takes cute little stills (0.3 megapixel, baby!) like these.

Walking around here, it’s easy to imagine this place as the seat of a great marine empire. The entrances to the Grand Canale have monumental buildings and all the architecture along the canal is impressive, borrowing all the fanciest bits from western and eastern cultures. Boats zip all around constantly. From the water, the city looks like it was literally built out of the sea. I can almost see the PR firm back in the 1500s: “The Venetian Navy: We take living at sea seriously.”

Once you get off the boat, everything becomes a maze of twisty passages, all alike. This was kind of cool for a bit. Just a bit. I normally have an excellent sense of direction, but an excellent sense of direction doesn’t help a damn bit when the roads often dead-end into canals. I also don’t feel like I have a sense of the city. Since the broadest of streets is about 6 feet wide, and most buildings are 4 floors high, I can’t really see the city. I’m a little rat in a maze that occasionally pops out into a big open place and can see the sun.

The Peggy Gugenheim collection was cool. Like most modern art museuems, about half of it went straight over my head. The other half was pretty cool. It really gave me an understanding of how an art collector can make a personal artistic statement, just as an artist does, by the works they choose. Collecting (like editing) is itself an art.

And because I took it, here’s another picture. Yeah, I know it’s very, very “postcard”. Deal.