Carmelo taps my shoulder and sits down in the office chair next to mine. We’re up on the second level of the hangar where the scientists have spent the entire week laboring intensely on their experiments. Everyone is wandering around in a fog; they haven’t slept in days, trying to finalize their projects.
I want to ask you more questions about your art, he says. Who are you making this video for, do you have a client?
I say, No, the client is myself, I guess. Nobody is asking me to do this.
But what do you do with your art? he asks.
I show it in cinemas, museums, galleries, I say. Like a painter.
But people buy paintings, he says.
I know, I know, I reply, smiling. I also make drawings, and occasionally people buy those and very occasionally they buy the films. But I have my job too.
I’d already been at the Esrange Space Center for three days, wandering around with camera and tripod and microphone and audio recorder. The scientists had been attaching their experiments to the large steel cube, that, as of this writing, still hasn’t been able to launch to the stratosphere on a gigantic balloon.
We’ve gathered in the hangar two nights in a row to see if the launch can happen. Two nights ago at 3am, last night at 1am. High winds prevented it both times. Tonight we meet at 1am to try again.
Over the last week everyone was busy and there hadn’t been much conversation until now. Some friendly smiles, but mostly we worked in parallel, the scientists with their machines and me trying to remain as invisible as possible, filming their work while waiting impatiently for what I thought I’d come for, the balloon.
No client, I repeat.
But I have to try to explain better what I couldn’t explain yesterday when Carmelo asked me what my project was about.
It’s…about the stratosphere and stratospheric balloons, I said.
But what about them?
Well, the stratosphere is kind of a metaphor…I trail off.
Carmelo looks confused. And I realize I don’t actually know what I mean. As a result I spend most of that evening trying to figure out what I actually do mean when I talk about the stratosphere and these balloons and what I am doing here so I can explain better to Carmelo when we’re back at the hangar the next day.
Carmelo is sitting next to me and I tell him that I like how the stratosphere can’t be controlled or fully understood. That this was something I also liked about doing my various projects about the underground.
I also like the stratosphere because it’s not outer space, it’s an overlooked part of the atmosphere. But it moves along doing things anyway, and is essential but not glamorous. I love that the balloon goes up and we don’t really know what is happening to it, that all these experiments inside their little boxes are calculating tiny effects happening in a space we cannot know or experience. To me that seems poetic.
A quizzical glance again from Carmelo. I stop there because I am starting to talk in the same unclear way I had the day before.
I tell Carmelo I’ve been reading a lot of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, how I’m trying to connect a longing for understanding and control over the physical world with the mysterious, unpredictable and irruptive truth of how things actually work. And I want to bring that idea to today but I’m not yet sure how.
Carmelo gets very animated at the mention of Melville. He loves Melville but because not a lot has been translated into Italian, he’s only read Moby Dick. But he wants to know if I’ve read a book-length poem by Melville that he very much wants to read but it’s not in Italian.
Do you know that poem?
I haven’t read a lot of Melville’s poems, I admit. Only some of Battle Pieces, is that the one?
No, no.
But neither of us can remember the poem’s name. Carmelo gestures wide to show me how big the book of this single poem is.
Carmelo tells me I am a very creative person and he is not creative at all.
I love materials, and I am rational, not artistic, he says.
I reply, But you and all the other scientists here see things in the world that I cannot see at all and cannot even imagine. And to me that is creativity. What is one thing you see in this room that you find beautiful or interesting?
Without hesitation, Carmelo answers: I see that beam in front of us. It is a huge structural beam extending from floor to ceiling, painted the same off-white as all the walls of the hangar. I had only noticed it to the extent that it got in the way of some of my shots. I think that is beautiful. I ask him why.
The words pour out mixing childlike enthusiasm with expertise: When I see that beam I see first of all that is well-painted. Then I think about what it is made of, it’s made of steel, of iron, probably comes from the local mine nearby, over there in Kiruna, and it’s not completely pure. It has something else, a little carbon mixed in. Iron is not a shiny or a fancy metal, it is reliable, strong, solid. That’s what I see.
But that’s pure poetry! I exclaim.
Carmelo shakes his head no and blushes. I tell him that I don’t even see the beam, I have no knowledge about the beam, that his experience of the world is entirely different from mine, and that’s, well, that to me is art.
Carmelo tells me that people always are drawn to shiny things and don’t appreciate what is solid or common. They want elements like gold or silver.
When I was going to get married, I had a ring made of iron for my future wife. I wanted to show her that was the kind of person I am, that iron is my favorite element, and I wanted to share that with her. She didn’t really love it, he tells me, laughing.
Then I ask him about Melville. How did he come to read Moby Dick? He tells me his mom gave him all the right books to read at all the right ages, Melville, Poe, Emerson (he didn’t love Emerson). That Cesare Pavese did the translation of Moby Dick. We agree that Pavese is a fantastic writer.
We still can’t remember the title of that book-length poem by Melville. He looks up a list of Melville titles. Pierre, he says. And I say, Oh my God Pierre is the weirdest book I have ever read and even if you asked me to explain it I couldn’t.
***
Carmelo and his family live in an apartment outside Palermo in a town near the sea. He says he wanted to live there because that was the town where he spent his happiest moments as a very young child. He goes to work at the Institute every day. His wife is a psychologist. He has two daughters, about the same ages as my kids, their names are Gaia and Gloria. Gaia likes helping people, like her mom does, and Gloria’s favorite element is titanium.
Carmelo is happy to have a job at the institute now because in the past he worked in private businesses as an engineer and it was terrible, the pay was awful, the companies kept running out of money, and he didn’t get paid regularly. He also didn’t want to die, so he got a job with the Institute. What do you mean, die? I ask.
He tells me about a construction project he was on in Sardinia and how he had to break up a knife fight between the two guys running the project. The guys were brandishing the knives shouting: You only spent 3 years in prison, I had to do 5! And Carmelo got in between them and broke up the fight. Pure mafia, he says. And after that he vowed never to work for private companies again.
The next day we pass each other walking between the hotel and the hangar where the scientists gather day after day.
Clarel, he says.
What? I reply.
It wasn’t Pierre, he says. The name of the Melville poem is Clarel.
Today I spent the morning reading about the elements, wondering which one was the right one for me. And we’re all still waiting for the balloon to launch.
Thanks for reading.