1
00:00:17,640 --> 00:00:23,560
I remember closing my eyes and

2
00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:30,480
gliding over the

3
00:00:30,480 --> 00:00:34,600
water and the mist and the cry of gulls.

4
00:00:48,970 --> 00:00:52,910
Remember the spires and the campanile,
the sensation of floating.

5
00:00:55,530 --> 00:00:59,270
The white of the water, the white of the
sky.

6
00:01:13,210 --> 00:01:18,130
Remember the approach to the city walls,
no golden gateway or bridge.

7
00:01:18,940 --> 00:01:21,240
forming a mouth, swallowing the boat.

8
00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:29,020
Instead, we secreted our way a side
channel, a

9
00:01:29,020 --> 00:01:34,560
sound reflecting off the walls and the
water,

10
00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:41,100
entering through the ears of the city,
not the eyes.

11
00:01:46,580 --> 00:01:47,880
Remember the people.

12
00:01:48,650 --> 00:01:50,550
Just people doing people stuff.

13
00:01:53,110 --> 00:01:58,310
Adding their own layers of life,
paperwork, graffiti, derma to the

14
00:01:58,310 --> 00:02:00,250
centuries of layers already there.

15
00:02:09,590 --> 00:02:12,490
I remember the memories drifting in the
water.

16
00:02:13,250 --> 00:02:15,070
Faces I half recognized.

17
00:02:16,010 --> 00:02:17,250
Form and dust.

18
00:02:35,630 --> 00:02:40,430
the key, the steps and the slow burble
of the engine idling.

19
00:02:43,870 --> 00:02:50,150
I remember standing, assuming that when
I stepped ashore, the city would bob up

20
00:02:50,150 --> 00:02:51,410
and down like a pontoon.

21
00:02:55,110 --> 00:03:01,850
And just as I touched dry land, I didn't
wake

22
00:03:01,850 --> 00:03:02,850
up.

23
00:03:52,880 --> 00:03:57,000
I have friends back in England.

24
00:03:58,560 --> 00:03:59,920
They all have babies.

25
00:04:00,680 --> 00:04:04,040
And at that age, all my friends suddenly
shift up a generation.

26
00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:07,160
I don't know them.

27
00:04:08,180 --> 00:04:12,320
I've actually caught some of my friends.
These are people I grew up with, talking

28
00:04:12,320 --> 00:04:13,580
to me about settling down.

29
00:04:14,540 --> 00:04:17,019
Where? Where are you supposed to do
that?

30
00:04:18,339 --> 00:04:19,920
What happens to these people?

31
00:04:20,660 --> 00:04:21,660
Is there a book?

32
00:04:22,010 --> 00:04:24,230
It's a manual that tells you how to do
this stuff.

33
00:04:25,910 --> 00:04:26,910
Settle down.

34
00:04:28,790 --> 00:04:31,170
You must have to feel that you belong
somewhere.

35
00:04:31,990 --> 00:04:35,830
And suddenly, that's it. You don't want
to be anywhere else.

36
00:04:37,570 --> 00:04:40,230
I've never felt like I belong anywhere
in particular.

37
00:04:45,630 --> 00:04:47,410
Except possibly here.

38
00:04:50,410 --> 00:04:54,030
Every time I come here, I feel like I've
always known this place.

39
00:04:55,170 --> 00:04:57,750
Almost like a dream.

40
00:04:58,170 --> 00:05:00,010
I've dreamed about this place.

41
00:05:01,750 --> 00:05:05,770
I've had a life here already, so it's
intimately familiar.

42
00:05:07,630 --> 00:05:09,530
Except the tourist crap.

43
00:05:10,350 --> 00:05:13,310
The gaudy baubles and the dust
collectors.

44
00:05:13,990 --> 00:05:15,690
They're not part of my dreams.

45
00:05:18,770 --> 00:05:19,770
But then,

46
00:05:20,300 --> 00:05:23,100
They've been around for such a short
time, barely a blink.

47
00:05:24,020 --> 00:05:30,440
And the older these walls and arches
get, the more they are colored and

48
00:05:30,440 --> 00:05:32,840
etched and infected by time and entropy.

49
00:05:35,100 --> 00:05:36,980
The more beautiful they become.

50
00:05:42,180 --> 00:05:46,420
I don't understand why people want to
remember such a place with some plastic

51
00:05:46,420 --> 00:05:48,460
thing that lasts about 15 minutes.

52
00:05:50,640 --> 00:05:51,920
I think they're missing the point.

53
00:05:57,420 --> 00:05:59,900
This city rewards attention.

54
00:06:02,600 --> 00:06:06,860
The longer you look, the more you see.

55
00:07:23,080 --> 00:07:24,240
There are two cities.

56
00:07:28,360 --> 00:07:29,900
The positive city.

57
00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:33,880
The city is a solid, real piece of cob
stone.

58
00:07:36,180 --> 00:07:40,580
Streets and bridges smoothed by
centuries of soldiers, citizens,

59
00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:46,740
touristers, mask makers and glass
blowers teetering around the edges of

60
00:07:46,740 --> 00:07:47,740
buildings.

61
00:07:49,340 --> 00:07:51,180
And the water is a dream.

62
00:07:53,450 --> 00:08:00,090
winding liquid mist through the streets,
reflecting the life of the city,

63
00:08:00,810 --> 00:08:05,090
melting the stone to ripples and
shadows.

64
00:08:08,970 --> 00:08:13,730
And there's the mirror image, the
negative city,

65
00:08:13,890 --> 00:08:19,610
with the water as it feels as you
approach the island.

66
00:08:21,360 --> 00:08:26,240
an immense, inevitable force, the blood
of the world.

67
00:08:28,560 --> 00:08:33,720
And sitting in my vaporetto, myself, a
speck of life,

68
00:08:33,860 --> 00:08:39,419
a germ carried into the veins of the
city.

69
00:08:41,539 --> 00:08:47,580
And the city as an organ, its histology
etched into the walls and cavities,

70
00:08:47,760 --> 00:08:49,740
decaying.

71
00:08:53,160 --> 00:08:56,460
I don't want to carry this body metaphor
too far, but you get the idea.

72
00:09:00,260 --> 00:09:03,800
A child in a mask shop tries on a mask.

73
00:09:05,080 --> 00:09:07,640
The child imagines herself as an animal.

74
00:09:11,100 --> 00:09:14,180
The mask carries the years of craft of
the mask maker.

75
00:09:16,080 --> 00:09:19,800
The design of the mask has been refined
and simplified over decades.

76
00:09:21,800 --> 00:09:24,480
The mask assumes different meanings over
the centuries.

77
00:09:26,420 --> 00:09:31,680
The mask is that of a man, a Venetian
with a pox.

78
00:09:32,500 --> 00:09:34,460
These were real people.

79
00:09:36,860 --> 00:09:42,780
The moment unfolds like an iris, filmed
in stop motion,

80
00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:49,580
exploding its petals, and then wilting
from energy spent.

81
00:09:54,700 --> 00:09:56,400
Huh? You still with me?

82
00:09:59,600 --> 00:10:01,640
I'm sorry, this means a lot to me.

83
00:10:05,580 --> 00:10:12,420
You see, I'm realizing slowly that the
membrane that separates the positive

84
00:10:12,420 --> 00:10:15,540
and the negative in this place is very
thin.

85
00:10:19,240 --> 00:10:21,920
Stretched and translucent at times and
in places.

86
00:10:34,510 --> 00:10:37,970
Only a vague texture of reason indicates
that he's there at all.

87
00:13:22,990 --> 00:13:25,110
I'll give you an image from my marriage.

88
00:13:26,950 --> 00:13:28,490
I didn't tell you I was married.

89
00:13:31,750 --> 00:13:33,930
It's well down the list of things that
are mine.

90
00:13:38,090 --> 00:13:40,390
The image from my marriage is a book.

91
00:13:41,730 --> 00:13:46,690
I was on page 165 of my life.

92
00:13:48,250 --> 00:13:50,490
Page 165-ish.

93
00:13:52,690 --> 00:13:55,330
That's far enough through to get
involved in the plot.

94
00:13:56,310 --> 00:13:59,750
It's even far enough through to assume
I'm going to finish the story.

95
00:14:05,130 --> 00:14:08,010
But then the spine of the book began to
crack.

96
00:14:10,690 --> 00:14:12,830
The binding let in the elements.

97
00:14:14,510 --> 00:14:16,230
Gaps appeared between the signatures.

98
00:14:20,520 --> 00:14:24,500
I could see the pages I'd read, a merge
of familiar words.

99
00:14:26,360 --> 00:14:32,240
And more alarmingly, I could see the
pages I had yet to read, rising to the

100
00:14:32,240 --> 00:14:36,520
surface before my eyes, the same merge
of words,

101
00:14:36,760 --> 00:14:40,160
the same noise.

102
00:14:42,200 --> 00:14:47,720
And I felt very frightened and alone.

103
00:14:53,580 --> 00:14:55,520
When I closed the book, I left it
behind.

104
00:15:00,580 --> 00:15:02,580
And I think that's all I want to say
about it.

105
00:17:19,440 --> 00:17:23,220
Today I met an old friend I never knew I
had.

106
00:17:24,640 --> 00:17:27,500
I bumped into him at the Galleria
dell'Accademia.

107
00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:35,240
In a fraction of a second, during a
particular minute of an evening hour, on

108
00:17:35,240 --> 00:17:41,920
an overcast day in the year 1478,
Giorgio da Castelfranco watched

109
00:17:41,920 --> 00:17:45,780
my life enacted underneath his brush.

110
00:17:47,280 --> 00:17:50,000
on a modest, squarish canvas panel.

111
00:17:52,600 --> 00:17:53,980
La Tempesta.

112
00:17:58,920 --> 00:18:05,780
A man, a compagno of the confraternity
of the suck, specializing in amateur

113
00:18:05,780 --> 00:18:07,300
dramatics, that's me.

114
00:18:09,180 --> 00:18:15,500
A woman, a naked allegory, suckling a
child Apollo or Corita.

115
00:18:16,060 --> 00:18:17,760
or some other convenient deity.

116
00:18:20,160 --> 00:18:26,640
Satis even imagined a bizarre reading as
Adam and Eve, Adam ingeniously acquiring

117
00:18:26,640 --> 00:18:32,700
a wardrobe, the serpent, a matter of
camouflage, appearing to be a root.

118
00:18:34,380 --> 00:18:37,180
But none of the traditional readings
worked.

119
00:18:38,560 --> 00:18:43,060
How could they know that Giorgione
wasn't painting Dionysius or Ferragato?

120
00:18:45,900 --> 00:18:46,940
He was painting me.

121
00:18:48,140 --> 00:18:49,140
And you.

122
00:18:50,500 --> 00:18:56,320
X-radiography reveals you, a painted
female figure below the man,

123
00:18:56,520 --> 00:19:00,160
only visible with invisible light.

124
00:19:02,780 --> 00:19:03,940
There you are.

125
00:19:09,060 --> 00:19:14,360
The man and the woman appear on the
surface, separated by water.

126
00:19:18,670 --> 00:19:24,730
The artifice of the city in the
background, a painted set, illuminated

127
00:19:24,730 --> 00:19:27,110
by the real star of the show,

128
00:19:28,210 --> 00:19:34,830
the agent provocateur, freezing the
moment in flat,

129
00:19:35,110 --> 00:19:36,690
colorless light.

130
00:19:38,350 --> 00:19:39,530
Crack of lightning.

131
00:19:44,850 --> 00:19:45,850
Realization.

132
00:19:48,620 --> 00:19:51,780
The pin sharp flash gun reality of the
situation.

133
00:19:55,320 --> 00:19:59,780
And the dull migraine rumble of
consequence in the distance.

134
00:20:05,620 --> 00:20:06,640
Dominoes fall.

135
00:20:10,760 --> 00:20:12,020
Empires crumble.

136
00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:15,680
Marriages collapse.

137
00:20:17,380 --> 00:20:19,280
History buckles under the pressure.

138
00:21:50,090 --> 00:21:52,410
I think this thing is taking its toll.

139
00:21:57,110 --> 00:21:59,290
I think I'm becoming a climber.

140
00:22:02,630 --> 00:22:03,630
Slowly.

141
00:22:06,970 --> 00:22:11,550
The place I'm forced to live in between
the time I share with you is

142
00:22:11,550 --> 00:22:12,850
increasingly uncomfortable.

143
00:22:28,840 --> 00:22:30,900
The air is thick and sticky.

144
00:22:33,340 --> 00:22:35,180
It clings to me.

145
00:22:38,740 --> 00:22:41,640
Like I'm walking through water.

146
00:23:00,270 --> 00:23:01,290
sleepwalk one night.

147
00:23:05,590 --> 00:23:07,590
Down the steps into the canal.

148
00:23:10,710 --> 00:23:14,810
And I just hadn't realized that I'm
walking on the streets of the reflection

149
00:23:14,810 --> 00:23:15,810
of the city.

150
00:23:17,810 --> 00:23:22,150
Walking around on a gently undulating
image of the city.

151
00:23:29,610 --> 00:23:31,390
The weight I feel on my skin.

152
00:23:33,850 --> 00:23:35,490
Just surface tension.

153
00:23:39,530 --> 00:23:42,270
I'm making very little sense at the
moment.

154
00:23:51,130 --> 00:23:57,550
I've been having a recurring dream since
I came here all those years or minutes

155
00:23:57,550 --> 00:23:58,550
ago.

156
00:24:01,130 --> 00:24:04,630
No, I don't think it was a dream because
it actually happened.

157
00:24:05,970 --> 00:24:07,010
No, it couldn't be.

158
00:24:12,690 --> 00:24:14,370
I can't see why I'm turning.

159
00:24:16,210 --> 00:24:18,290
I'm standing at the end of a cul-de-sac.

160
00:24:20,090 --> 00:24:22,430
I turn and there's nobody really there.

161
00:24:26,350 --> 00:24:29,250
But that's... I thought that was the
important bit.

162
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:36,040
But I realize sometime in the next few
days that that's not the case.

163
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:41,680
The important bit is that it happens
again.

164
00:24:57,770 --> 00:25:00,830
You see, we all live in little pieces of
our past.

165
00:25:02,950 --> 00:25:09,370
We replay them endlessly, tell our
friends about them, write novels about

166
00:25:09,370 --> 00:25:10,370
them.

167
00:25:14,450 --> 00:25:16,150
They are very important.

168
00:25:22,090 --> 00:25:26,350
And I decided that the reason I haven't
felt that I belong anywhere

169
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:30,320
Because I'm looking in the wrong places.

170
00:25:41,420 --> 00:25:43,760
I don't think my place is spatial.

171
00:25:46,380 --> 00:25:48,960
Although this city is as close as it's
going to get.

172
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:56,360
I think my place is temporal.

173
00:26:03,690 --> 00:26:04,970
I think we could be happy.

174
00:26:06,910 --> 00:26:08,490
In a second of time.

175
00:26:12,410 --> 00:26:13,870
It's not a big second.

176
00:26:14,170 --> 00:26:16,050
It's all we really need.

177
00:26:20,370 --> 00:26:21,470
To be happy.

178
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:34,700
heals most wounds.