In the Company of Strangers

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In my last blog, I wrote about actual, historic communities and their customs and laws and then the kinds of issues raised by creating community standards for digital communities. Today, as I pack up after a month at the incomparable Bogliasco Foundation's Liguria Study Center, I have some thoughts about the kind of community that can be created among strangers, now friends.

A residency like this is a crap shoot. You arrive at a place you have never been. You unpack in a strange place. You attend your first dinner. (The word "attend" is chosen carefully; typically, at a residency, the one requirement is attendance at a meal, dinner or, at a non-residential fellowship center, lunch). You meet two dozen or so people, the other residents as well as the gracious people who will make your life comfortable (or not) for the next month. You have trepidation. All you know is you are spending a month together in one specific location. The rest is some combination of luck, chemistry, will, and effort.

As I pack to leave the Bogliasco Foundation, I am sure that I am the luckiest human being in the world.

We came together with very different interests. A generous photographer of surprising architecture and secret gardens, a painter of light dancing on water, a passionately sensitive painter of music and poetry, a deep poet of light and voice, a composer with the heart of a philosopher, a scholar of the lyrical feisty South, a Stendahl scholar of distinction and wit extraordinaire, a courageous artist of collage and ocean, a publisher with the soul of a musician, a woman of justice and earthy humor, and moi. French, German, American, Swiss, Austrian, Iranian, Italian--different places, different languages, different interests. But we shared one goal, a mission as we say in "game world": to experience a month of harmonious and deep work and the full, deep embrace of an amazing opportunity. Had any of us ever lived so elegantly and effortlessly, with views from each window of the incomparable Italian Riviera? Had any of us had the mental space to go so deeply inward? Had any of us had the opportunity, for thirty-two days, of elegant sociality, exploration, and imagination?

So many opportunities, so much support, so much kindness and yet effort, all that we might go inward for one month and come out again with something renewed.

Breathtaking. In the company of strangers. Now friends.

On line, if this were not life but new media, we might all be playing World of Warcraft. Or making a virtual environment together. In fact, it was a little like that. If not Second Life, maybe Third Life. (Tre cucchiaini, tre cioccolati: our inside jokes--necessary to accomplish one's mission).

In the Third Life of a residency like Bogliasco, there are also (as I wrote about yesterday) customs, rules, and exceptions. Some of our unwritten rules: No kvetching! A group can easily fall into that pattern of complaint, hard to believe when one is looking out at the Italian Riviera but it can happen. Another unwritten rule: Laughter. Multi-lingual laughter. At least part of the fun was making jokes in rudimentary nether-languages, LinguaItaliano that could be understood across the groups (even by us shamefully monolingual Americans). Yet another one: Don't dwell on the quantity of work accomplished. I'm not sure how that rule evolved but it was noticeable, very different than at other residencies where a formal presentation is required. People would talk about a great day or a sobering one. But it was rare to come down and boast, "Forty pages written today! Six fabulous paintings!" Quantity wasn't the issue. Quality and that quality was experience, not just production.

"One fellow said: 'I finished nothing but began so much it will last me a lifetime.'"

It would not be possible, none of this, without Anna Maria Quaiat, Ivana Folle, Alessandra Natale, Gianni and Rita Migone, and everyone else--Roberto, Luigi, Paolo, Sara, Daniela, Danilo, Raffaella, Franco. Oh, yes: and of course the "canine staff members," as they are called in our official "rule book" for Third Life: Alegro III di Fivizzano and Zerlina di Fivizzano."

First Life will be ever richer for this sojourn into a virtual environment beyond compare. Mille Gracie, Bogliasco Foundation!