FIRST KISS AND THE FORCE OF DESTINY

Author's note – Written in the prose style of Eleanor Lavish, to be read with the voice of Cecil Vyse after E.M. Forster's novel A Room With A View.

His first awareness of a romantic kiss was impressed upon him by that iconic scene in Merchant & Ivory's classic 1986 film 'A Room With A View' where George Emerson and Lucy Honeychurch embrace briefly yet passionately in an Italian poppy field.

For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her.

Not only was the visual framing of the scene picture perfect but it was further enhanced by the sound of the sublime 'Ch'il bel sogno di Doretta' (Magda's aria) from Puccini's opera 'La Rondine' which he'd never heard before (at least not in his present lifetime). With this sensory perfection of composition both musically and pictorially, it was almost as if the young boy had been struck by the same thunderbolt that Michael Corleone experienced upon first gazing at the rustic beauty Apollonia in the Sicilian hills.

And so it was, at the age of twelve-years-old, he was unwittingly seduced into becoming an Italian patriot and 'A Room With A View' was only partially to blame for this caprice of destiny. For there was also the small matter of the 1990 Italia World Cup which created a similar sublime collage of music and image to which his heart surrended to completely.

The blue azzurri flag, Puccini’s 'Nessun Dorma', and the sheer melodrama of both the Italian football players’ celebrations in victory and their inconsolate lamentations in defeat were simply irresistible to him.

It did seem however perverse to his family that he would be more inclined to support Italy over the native country of England at every World Cup, stranger still that he would adopt religious gestures including the sign of the cross and desperate hand clenched prayers as if he were posing for some renaissance painting all throughout every international game they played in.

He had never demonstrated any religiosity in his life before, so why now?

On the brink of adolescence, it may have been that the boy found an outlet for rebellion in embracing opera over the popular music of the day that would inform the soundtrack for most of his generation. Stubbornly resisting the pop culture of his peers, as long as he was tuned into the music of the Italian Gods, he felt unique and secure, like having a musical shield that protected his young brave soul.

Walking to school on cold, crisp winter mornings listening to Puccini's 'La Boheme', with Rodolfo and his fellow Bohemians keeping him company via the headphones of his Walkman, elevated each tread of his shoes above the mundane. There was no sharing of this private passion like he saw with his school friends who typically swapped and traded the latest “cool” gangster rap albums (N.W.A, Ice T and Ice Cube), typically imported from America. Intuitively he knew better. Puccini, Verdi and Donizetti was a bridge too far for them and, besides, he mostly preferred to keep his Italian love affair to himself.

As his Italianate nature continued to grow through his teenage years, so too did his overt cultural snobbish superiority over his classmates. For the boy, it was like staring down at mere mortals through the cloud mists of Mount Olympus. And school fared little better in his estimation. With Prince Calaf ringing in his ears defying the tyrannical rule of Princess Turandot in her kingdom, how could he be expected to take seriously geography work sheets and maths equations he could not understand whilst attending class?

Both his head and his heart were only at home in beauty and everything else just seemed boring and colourless.

He remembered with fondness those hot summer nights watching Italy play in the 1994 World cup, guzzling cold lemonados with his friend "Gorodish" whilst listening to Puccini 'Tosca'. The Italians defended in every game as if their lives depended on it, their blue shirts rippling like the deep waters of Lake Garda as the blazing Floridian sun beat down on them. He had a unique love for the 1994 World Cup, especially as England had failed to qualify for that year’s competition, which enabled him to fully indulge his appropriated Italian patriotism with no conflict of interest whatsoever.

A bizarre, unconscious ritual developed around this same time where he would play Cavaradossi’s Act One aria from Puccini’s 'Tosca' at the opening whistle of every Italian international game. He truly believed the fate of the game would be decided by this carefully selected three minutes of Puccini. 'Recondita Armonia' would blast from stereo speakers as the volume on the television would be turned down to zero and the boy would conduct the field of play as if the team was an orchestra and he was Toscanini.

As his love of Italy became increasingly compounded in his psyche, he became ever more fervently devoted to the culture. It was almost as if the young boy had been an Italian in a past life and had been mistakenly reincarnated as English in present form.

Ultimately, the boy felt that Italy as a sensibility, or more specifically Italian opera dwarfed the day-to-day events of the world around him. Everything it expressed seemed ten times the magnitude of what he saw on the TV and in the movies, and in this way it could encompass and contain the vastness of any adolescent maelstroms of emotions he was personally experiencing.

With his constructed perception of Italian culture built upon just a few select cultural reference points : E.M Forster, Italian Opera, Serie A and 'The Godfather' movies he felt he had come to understand completely this foreign culture which he had now sublimated deep into his heart.

When, finally, he arrived on Italian soil many years later as a young adult, he felt at home, knowing that he had already adopted the culture long before even arriving there. This became a common trope for him in the select few other cultural destinations he'd later visit around the world. First he would develop a love affair with the places he’d studied from afar, utilising his cultural references from films, music and books and would then cement it all by aligning his love for the place with the reality in front of his eyes and see how well it matched.

Sometimes the places he constructed in his mind were better than the reality, but that was often the case with many things in life.

His first proper kiss at the age of 13 was a partial attempt to recreate the famous scene between Lucy Honeychurch and George Emerson in that field of Florence. Reality in this instance was no match for the dream in his mind, with braces clanging against teeth on a sloping hillside with a nippy breeze instead of Florentine sunshine, but nevertheless, his Italianate nature was happy to find any imitation of the beauty he enjoyed in Italian culture and he continued to search it out wherever he could, no matter how affected or contrived it may be seen by others.

His quest for beauty and for Italy in everyday life, was an unquenchable desire that kept the eternal flame forever burning bright within his soul.

To paraphrase George Emerson, it was fate and he was happy to call it Italy.