Roaming In Rome, Connecting In Retrospect

What a difference a bit of sunshine makes to our locked-down spirits!

I sat a while in our town centre gardens, drinking a coffee while watching people come and go. It was almost, almost, like the world before, when nothing impinged on our intentions and freedom other than schedules and finance.

The new warmth took me back even further, to around 2006, when I was in Rome. I would get up early and after showering go for a walk along the Tiber. Along the way I’d call for a bottle of water from a small shop that I knew of, tucked away down a small backstreet, that was championed by the locals as it didn’t charge the inflated prices that the others inflicted upon we tourists.

I would loop a route back round to take in Peter and Paul in St.Peter’s Square, up there high on their pedestals, before the crowds arrived with their clicking cameras and eager eyes. As the day wore on, with the sun well on its way to reach its zenith, there were no shortage of churches that I could choose from to seek respite in their cool stone shade.

It was on one of those days, easy and long, that I was sat having a beer next to the Colosseum when my wife messaged to inform me that the girl we fostered had shaved off her eyebrows!

Talk about being hooked right back into the ‘real’ world back home.

It’s funny how different places bring different memories, small connections that lead into each other over time. Hopefully soon there will be new places offering new memories and connections to be made down the line.

Anyway, that particular memory found a home in my second poetry collection In Brigantia, born of a conversation with one girl that made a connection with the recollection of another.

When In Rome

From my Poetry blog.

Coronets For Ghosts

When In Rome

I was talking to a Swiss girl,
she told of a former classmate 
who plucked out all of her eyelashes,
inflicting a vulnerability on her soul.

I bartered with the tale of a girl
who shaved off all of her eyebrows.
I’d received the news when drinking beer
by the Colosseum, 
that place where gladiators
had impaled by trident and sword point.
She had scalped herself with a Bic.

(She met me at the airport, masked by a silk bandanna. 
I knew what she concealed. She knew that I knew.)

Sometimes she would descend the stairs 
wrapped in a yellow sari dress:

“Look at me, I’m a Punjabi girl!”

Dancing around the room like some
insubstantial sylph



©AndrewJamesMurray

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Jesus in the Electric Chair

A timely reblog for an early post.

City Jackdaw

Being Easter weekend, my news feed on Facebook has been clogged up with images and artwork portraying the crucifixion of Christ. Some respectful, some irreverent. But by far the image that most caught the eye, and the imagination, was the image of the sculpture by British artist Paul Fryer.

Made of wax, wood, and human hair, the work was entitled ‘Pietà.’

Pietà means pity. A pietà is a painting or sculpture of Mary holding and grieving over the dead body of  Christ. There have been many of these paintings and sculptures done. The most famous is the sculpture by Michelangelo in St.Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This is the only work that the sculptor ever signed. The story has it that the artist was proudly watching a throng of people looking at his creation, when he overheard some admirers attribute it to other artists. Overcome by anger, he signed the statue, later regretting…

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Jesus in the Electric Chair

Being Easter weekend, my news feed on Facebook has been clogged up with images and artwork portraying the crucifixion of Christ. Some respectful, some irreverent. But by far the image that most caught the eye, and the imagination, was the image of the sculpture by British artist Paul Fryer.

Made of wax, wood, and human hair, the work was entitled ‘Pietà.’

Pietà means pity. A pietà is a painting or sculpture of Mary holding and grieving over the dead body of  Christ. There have been many of these paintings and sculptures done. The most famous is the sculpture by Michelangelo in St.Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This is the only work that the sculptor ever signed. The story has it that the artist was proudly watching a throng of people looking at his creation, when he overheard some admirers attribute it to other artists. Overcome by anger, he signed the statue, later regretting it and vowing never to sign any of his work again.

I guess even geniuses can be a little vain. And temperamental.

In 1972 a mentally disturbed young man attacked and damaged it with a hammer, shouting “I am Jesus Christ.” It had to be painstakingly restored. When I viewed this magnificent piece of art, when I was in Rome in 2009, it was through the bullet proof glass that now protects it. I suppose the logic is that if Jesus Christ can smuggle in a hammer, he can smuggle in a handgun.

But back to Paul Fryer’s work of Jesus in an electric chair and the controversy it caused when revealed in 2009. It should be remembered that it was shown not in a museum but in a Cathedral in France – with the blessing of the local bishop. Monsignor Jean-Michel di Falco explained that he wanted “to make us aware once more that someone being nailed to a cross is a scandal. Usually, we no longer feel any real emotions in the face of something truly scandalous, the crucifixion.”

What do we think of this sculpture? In the 21st Century where executions still take place. Have we become blasè when confronted with images of the crucifixion? Does this work of Jesus, cradled in the arms of a wooden electric chair instead of those of his  mother, shake us from our indifference?

Respectful or irreverent?

Over to you, dear reader.