MONTSALVAT

It was an age where the history of Western civilisation and its culture was being derided as either immoral and a lie, or irrelevant and outdated in the cruel and unforgiving eyes of the contemporary enforcers of progressive conformity.

There was no place for contextualising things anymore. It either needed to be destroyed or re-framed through the lens of this new absolute morality informed by the high priests of the new millennium.

Even those who were initially happy to watch history dismantled or reconfigured would eventually have doubts about the relentless, tyrannical march to destroy everything that had proceeded it in its woke wake.

Others, however, were well aware of the threat and felt something needed to be done in order to mount a defence of all that was being cancelled or destroyed.

But it would be done away from the internet, which had come to resemble the all seeing eye of Sauron in its ability to scour the earth and exact vengeance on people, countries and their culture.

Italian architect and designer Soleri had form when it came to working on strange and mysterious projects.

But perhaps the strangest of them all was the task set to him of re-designing and re-structuring numerous dilapidated monasteries in seven locations across the world and turning them into sustainable and protective shelters for those who would now inhabit them and the precious culture they would preserve inside.

The anonymous patron and commissioner for this secret project had first called him not long after the death of Soleri’s close friend and collaborator, Oracle, a hip-hop artist who had transcended that singular classification to become a polymath/renaissance man for the modern age.

Soleri had been in a state of acute melancholy since the death of his most beloved creative collaborator which resulted in him taking time off to visit Ravello, Italy on the Amalfi Coast where he was enjoying the famous and historic gardens of the Villa Rufal in a bid to summon inspiration for his troubled soul.

After a late afternoon swim in the shimmering sapphire sea out beyond the shores of Castiglione, Soleri returned to his hotel room refreshed when his phone rang for a call he had been expecting.

“Hello?”

“Finally. You’re a hard man to reach,”  the solemn voice on the other end of the line observed.

“I’m happy you think so, Mr …?”

“I rather hoped your agent explained the need for me to keep my identity secret.”

“Yes, but I thought they were joking.”

“No. It’s not a joke.”

Soleri still found it hard to take the caller seriously. He had been in some pretty far out situations throughout his dazzling career so bizarre requests such as this were not unusual to him.

“Do you believe in legacy, Mr Soleri?”

“Right now, I don’t believe in anything. Except maybe death.”

“That sounds a little fatalistic. Perhaps you need something to restore your faith in life.”

“Why do you assume I need to restore my faith in life?”

“Because you stopped working, I noticed. The first time in twenty five years.

Soleri found the stranger’s attention to detail unnerving.

“Even God can take a break from time to time.”

“So you believe in God?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No. You implied it though.”

“Look. Why don’t you get to the point. I was told by my agent that I should take this call. As of yet, I still have no idea why.”

A moment’s silence passed before the stranger explained himself to Soleri.

“I want to commission you for a project of considerable magnitude.”

“Considerable magnitude. What are we talking about here? A Guggenheim or Taj Mahal?”

“More like a modern day ark.”

“Ark?”

“Seven of them.”

“Where?”

“Let me see. Mount Pirchiriano, Turin, Italy;  the Golden Mountains of Altai, Siberia; The Golden Valley, Herefordshire England; Mount Koya Japan; Khajuraho India;  Heinävesi, Finland; São Tomé and Principe, Africa.”

“Some of those sound like they could be on a UNESCO bucket list.”

“Some are. But we found ways round it. You would work within certain restrictions or requirements at times, less so at others.”

“New build or pre-existing?”

“Both.”

Soleri didn’t need to say anything to the stranger to confirm his interest in the project.

His ensuing silence was significant enough to indicate that he was committed and fully on board.

After the formalities of initial meetings and work schedules with the stranger were established toward the end of the call, Soleri finally put down his phone and wandered out onto his balcony overlooking the ocean which was beginning to surge back into life mirroring his own spirit after the strange conversation he'd just experienced.

He felt something for the first time since the death of his friend and he was thankful for that.

For the next 12 months, Soleri found himself fully dissolved into his work, he was thankful to find meaning in something once again even though he still didn’t entirely understand the nature of the brief he had undertaken.

Everything he had worked on so far had been shrouded in secrecy and every time he had asked a question of his mysterious patron he had been met with ambiguous generalities from him, the kind of riddled wisdom you might hear from Yoda in Star Wars or Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings.

But in terms of fulfilling his own sense of aesthetic destiny with the seven allocated sites, he was aiming for something closer to his greatest inspiration, Andrei Tarkovsky and knew that his late friend Oracle would greatly approve of his homage in spirit to their shared hero.

The one thing he kept in his mind at all times to help focus his approach to the task at the hand was something the stranger had said to him after their second or third conversation about the project.

“Culture is being destroyed by enemies of the past. A new type of cultural revolution is taking place across the West, and it is our idea to build modern day shelters/arks to preserve the jewels of Western Civilisation from this ruination before they’re lost in the fire. These indestructible temples will be guarded by Shepherds of the culture in light of the fierce onslaught we face in eviscerating all the beauty we have created over time.”

Relatively agnostic about Western civilisation for much of his life, Soleri treated the project in much the same way as he would a series of time capsules sent to outer space.

It wasn’t that he was blasé, but having spent his entire life travelling the globe, he had come to learn that beauty is where you find it. Perhaps he had less a sense of a threat to Western culture  because he had never been in any one place for too long. He was very much what was known as an “anywhere” person.

But reflecting on his sabbatical from work prior to receiving the original mysterious call, he thought about how much he, like many others needed to return to a sense of place, a sense of home, somewhere where he truly belonged that he could find himself again.

Ravello had been the ideal location for him to rejuvenate his soul and remind himself of his past.  His senses had been stimulated by the vivid atmospheres which he recalled from his childhood, the way vines would grow up the stone wall of an old farmhouse, the citrus aroma of lemon trees, the scent of fresh sea water lifted by gentle breezes high above the cliffs overlooking the vast ocean.

As he divided his time between each of the seven locations, he found himself connecting them all through a sense of pure atmosphere related to a feeling of belonging.

For some reason, to lighten his heart and create space in his mind, Soleri would often play Strauss’s The Blue Danube on repeat though his air pods to help him meditate on the eclectic group of monasteries he was now responsible for re-imagining and re-building. As he listened to the lilting phrases of the famous piece, he recalled his first experience of watching Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey as a child and remembering how it was the sound of this most friendly waltz that made outer space feel less overwhelming, more relatable.

He remembered something Oracle had said to him the last and final time they were together in the North Arizona desert at 'The Crater of Light'.

"Music has the unique ability to soften the transition from what we perceive to be concrete reality to something less absolute, more malleable, more ethereal. Y'know, like magic."

And just like that Soleri knew he would always have his friend kept safe in his heart and in his mind.

Culture was crucial to the entire human story. As self evident as this statement was to his mind, it was becoming increasingly apparent to him that there were forces which would prefer to start all over again: a global reset, a year zero from which a new history could be born and while Soleri wasn’t someone who feared the future, quite the opposite in fact, he knew better than to scorn the past.

Somehow he was beginning to understand more now what his assignment was really about.

Being human.

As someone who knew first hand what it was to be cancelled and shunned by society, Antoine had thought his days of belonging anywhere were well and truly over. As a refugee of the road, he had travelled great distances in search of finding something he’d lost.

Home.

Living in exile in Russia had forced Antoine to re-invent himself in a new country. He had learned to assimilate with the culture as seamlessly as he could, applying his natural linguistic gifts to quickly improve his Russian.

He thought back to that winter with Hannah when he threw himself into the Russian literary canon in a bid to distract himself from the reality they faced together in exile. Looking back, he could see how ill suited she was to that situation and how he really had asked too much of her, somehow expecting her to follow his path out of the city into complete obscurity.

Was he naive? Perhaps.

But love will paper over many cracks until the cracks appear in the heart.

He hoped she was okay and had found her place back in her old life, before the madness she found herself embroiled in with him.

After getting some work as a private tutor in St Petersburg, he had managed to consolidate some money again after spending of his reserve funds on the road desperately trying to survive.

Every afternoon he would visit the Literaturnoye Kafe which Doestoyevsky, Puskin and their friends had frequented so often in the 19th century. It gave him a sense of comfort to be in this place where his heroes had conversed and contemplated.

“I love that one too. And relevant for our current times.”

Antoine looked up at the man sat at the table opposite who was admiring his well thumbed copy of The Demons by Doestoyevsky.

“Yes. Great work is always relevant.”

“I wonder when we look back at this time of ours, what works will be seen as truly immortal? I pray it’s not some TikTok video that I’ve mistakenly overlooked.”

Antoine laughed.

“I’m sure it will be.”

“Do you mind if I join you?”

“By all means.”

The tall, mysterious stranger brought his bottle of wine across to Antoine’s table.

“Will you have a glass?”

“Thank you, yes.”

The stranger gestured to a waiter to bring another wine glass as the two men got straight down to the business of discussing Russian literature.

Antoine couldn’t remember the last time he had had such a profound and nourishing conversation since he was forced to leave Toronto.

It felt good.

It felt like home.

Three hours had passed and several more bottles of wine consumed when the stranger finally asked Antoine his most direct question yet.

“Do you believe in legacy, Antoine?”

Antoine considered the open ended question.

“Legacy for me personally? In the sense of how I want to be remembered?”

“Both. How we as individuals and culture as a whole want to be remembered.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I may just have a role for you in a new project of mine.”

Antoine was strangely sober hearing this, even though he had consumed more wine through the afternoon than he had done in a year.

“What does the role entail?”

“Guarding the light.”

Antoine sensed he knew what the stranger meant but didn’t want to commit to his intuitive confidence about that just yet.

“Guarding the light?”

“The light that prevents us from being consumed by the void. The future will not be lost just so long as we still have the ability to protect the past from total annihilation.”

And with that, the stranger got up from the table and presented his hand to Antoine.

“Human connection. Human stories. It’s what keeps us from becoming robots.”

Antoine shook the stranger’s hand and felt as if he had finally found a replacement father figure in this foreign land.

“I’ll meet you here tomorrow same time and we’ll discuss when we’re both properly sober.”

Antoine felt concerned the stranger might not be true to his word.

“Promise?”

“I promise, kiddo.”

And with that, the stranger left the young man to reflect on their profound conversation.

Outside on the wintry streets of St Petersburg, a heavy snow was starting to settle.

As John Kurtz buttoned up his overcoat, he breathed in the sub zero air into his lungs.

He finally felt like he was back where he belonged.

Winning.

The seven Montsalvat monasteries would surely be his defining legacy.