This article is based on this dutch article of Martijn Benders
Currently, Italy is experiencing one of the worst heatwaves in history. I’m typing this in Venice, after the second sweltering night where it didn’t cool down below 25 degrees. Still, I have no regrets about coming here—I’m doing it, of course, for my daughter Mavi, who had always wished to see Italy. I would have preferred going to Tuscany, but it became Venice, a city I last visited 48 years ago.
Of course, we wanted to visit the Biennale. And we did that yesterday, despite the heat.
The Biennale was fantastic! Veronique was initially worried that it would all be too “woke” in a problematic way, but if you were to call this woke, it’s exactly the right kind: excelling art from different cultures, no longer dominated by that overbearing Western narrative, which is precisely what the problematic kind of woke at the Van Abbe Museum represents. Showing the best from other cultures too…what a trippy art experience this was, truly a beautiful experience.
However, with Italians, there’s something about formality. It was so hot that my t-shirt was soaked, so I took it off because walking around in a wet shirt is unhealthy. No one at the Biennale had a problem with it, but as soon as I set foot in a smaller gallery outside, I encountered “il frustrino,” who didn’t speak a word of English but had a huge issue with a shirtless barbarian. The same happened on the ferry. “Il Frustino” kept shouting at me until I pulled my shirt out of my bag and put it back on.
‘Are they that religious here?’ Mavi asked me. I don’t know if this has anything to do with religion or if it’s an Italian thing.
Meanwhile, I received another email from the Dutch Foundation for Literature. For the fourth time in a row, they want to place someone from the “executive tier” in the role of literary expert. I calculated with Wolfram how likely it is to pick four executive members out of a group of 700 writers and 300 executives in a row: that chance is roughly 0.7 percent. This suggests that it’s highly unlikely to be a natural phenomenon: when the probability dips below 1, you can safely call it a negligible chance. In other words, this is manipulation, similar to how repeatedly delivering a NATO top man is considered negligible compared to natural phenomena, according to Wolfram.
Today, I’m taking it easy. There’s an effigy of St. Sebastian I want to visit.
Recently, I joined the Libertarian Party. As a libertine, this somewhat goes against my principles, but I think it’s important to support something that fights for our freedoms and opposes war. That’s why, in these troubling times, I give them my support, along with the more communist-leaning Left Laser. Neither fits me completely, but I don’t consider that very important. What’s important is to counterbalance the Secretive Committee & The Order of the Black Hand.
Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian involved in the Nord Stream explosion.
If you are prepared to blow up the pipeline of your most important ally to escalate a war (and irreparably damage their economy) – how long will the Germans tolerate these manipulations? This information should immediately lead to peace negotiations in any conceivable scenario. The kind of person I hate the most is those who pretend to be ecologically conscious while also catering to the planet-destroying arms industry. It’s completely idiotic, I’m sorry, and it’s also cringeworthily stupid, just like the pipeline explosion or ignoring the probability calculations of either.
‘Can we find a place with a working air conditioner next time we head into a heatwave?’ my daughter asked jokingly. But that barely working air conditioning, that’s Italian, much like the baker’s sleight-of-hand as he swiped the price tag for the tiramisu in a single smooth magician’s move.
The people with upper-middle-class salaries who apparently so eagerly want to sit in judgment over the fairness of how writers are treated—people who come from a completely different class than the writers they judge—even against all odds: if that isn’t a hallmark of a class society, I don’t know what is. I successfully recused Asscher, but had the process continued, I would have asked him a very simple question:
Have you ever had to apply for a literary grant, Mr. Asscher?
A rhetorical question, unfortunately. But more on that later.
Martijn, Venice, 14-08-2024