Tilting at windmills

Isometimes get to a point when I find that life becomes literally soul-destroying. Since the Piano project was announced, the various reactions to it have been voiced and written in the media. The general consensus appears to be that, while people are resigned, albeit reluctantly, to the erection of Parliament in ex-Freedom Square, the entrance itself and, even more, the Opera House site have elicited great concern.

Careful study of the reactions will indicate that an open-air venue is not an ideal solution however, should this site be used for drama, then problems like where to stage the annual MADC Shakespeare will be solved. That is a very short-sighted solution. In as far as anything orchestral is concerned the site is relatively useless as even the most famous open-air concert spaces have very limited use and cost an arm and a leg to maintain.

Be that as is may, after being repeatedly put down by the governmental apologists, some of whom have made me out to be some sort of imbecile and repeatedly told that the project is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I feel that banging my head repeatedly against a brick wall can be reserved for those rather curiously masochistic versions of Japanese Games without Frontiers, not I.

My opinions, which hold no hidden agenda, are there for all to peruse and ruminate upon. They have been aired because my long involvement in culture and the arts indicate that the Piano project solutions are not ideal and that some fine tuning is required.

A concert hall for our homeless Philharmonic Orchestra is still a pie in the sky while 200 years of art remain hidden in governmental reserve collections.

I would have thought that, logically, these two projects would have been ideal subjects for Renzo Piano to work his magic upon, but no, a Parliament is what we want and a Parliament is what will be. What can I say?

As one of the 400,000 less 65 who will observe the new Parliament from the outside I can do little more than put my observations and ideas where the monkey puts his nuts. My admiration for Mr Piano as an artist and visionary remains as constant as the Northern Star.

So as the government and its apologists steamroll over people like George Debono and Astrid Vella because they have managed to stymie what promised to be an abomination, namely the underground bunker for the St John's Co-Cathedral tapestries, a crime for which their name, and mine too, has been inscribed in some little black book entitled Subversives somewhere in Castile, the "projects" that have little or nothing to do with culture increase and multiply.

Auberge de Castille is going to be restored. A very worthy enterprise, however, it is, at the end of the day, the Prime Minister's office and, again, I as one of the 400,000 less 65 am destined to view this building from the outside for the rest of my life.

Do not get me wrong. I am all in favour of restoration, which is vastly overdue, but is it not high time that something was done for culture and the arts instead? A project that would, like the curved colonnades of St Peter's Basilica, embrace the 400,000 including the 65? A place where our National Philharmonic Orchestra, which people have striven so hard to build up, can play for our collective delectation? A place where all the works of art that have been stacked in store rooms for decades can be appreciated and enjoyed?

I heard through the grapevine that the Mediterranean Conference Centre is to be gutted once again and transformed into a concert/opera hall. This, however, is just rumour so far. Would the long hall be transformed into a Museum of Modern Art? Nobody has bothered to reassure those members of the Maltese public to whom art and culture is a way of life, and there are far more of us than you think, that this will happen and, if it does, whether the acoustic experts have been consulted to ensure that more money is not wasted yet again on a concert hall that is not a concert hall! So, while the 2018 designation as Europe's cultural capital hangs over us like the Sword of Damocles, Malta's anointed ones choose to ignore the issue.

As I have been told many times in blogs and to my face, my opinion is of no consequence at all and I do not in any way represent "the people". I am a voice crying in the wilderness as ephemeral and useless as those ghosts that did squeak and gibber about the streets of Rome to warn Caesar of his impending assassination. What I have opined was in all honesty and sincerity what I thought was in Malta's best interest, however what remains to me now is to give up the fight and take a leaf out of Lou Bondì's book and, if I can afford it, catch a plane to some cultural oasis whenever I feel choked and stifled by this self-induced cultural wilderness that we have created for ourselves. Selfish you might say? Yes, of course, it is selfish, however I cannot fight a lone battle against windmills. I am not Don Quixote and nor are you Sancho Panza!

kzt@onvol.net