just wrote about falling off the national museum of greece in 1964 for a greek publication. pretty funny. dare i post it on fb? oh, wtf, here the best part: MORE REFECTIONS ON THE MARINE VENUS Lowell Darling Rhodes Greece, 1964 ..... I often visited his Marine Venus at The National Museum of Greece in the Old City, just around the corner from Alexii’s taverna. When I visited her I broke the rules and touched her with my fingertips, as one touches a tentative lover. Whenever I visit the island I return to visit the Venus. My fingertips feel a bit of guilt when they touch the marble flesh, so finely carved and aged. She is alive, standing in her lonely corner. I wanted to elope with her, but while I have many flaws I am not a thief. Even so, the last time I visited her on this first stay on the island, in April of 1964, I was drunk and madly in love with the night. There was no denying the magical romantic side of Rhodes back then, before the tourist invasion, so suffice it to say that I wanted to take the Venus swimming that night. I would hold her as we sank to the bottom of the sea where she had been found, where she dwelled before the museum, before Durrell, before before. Before I fell off the museum. There was nothing nefarious about my infamous fall. I loved the Marine Venus, but I am not a thief, only an artist. And I had only been climbing around the museum roof to find a perfect place to draw the moon. It was so full and bright that night, I couldn’t resist trying to draw it. But somehow while drawing the moon I slipped and fell. The cop who found me was a drinking buddy at Alexi’s. Like many others, he called me Bekros Thaskalaki (Little Drunk Teacher.) My foot was broken and I couldn’t walk, so the good-natured cop took me the Old City police station across the street to sleep it off. I woke up on a narrow pallet in a stone cell with tiny barred windows two feet deep. My head felt as broken as my foot and just as swollen. At sunrise a withered old woman’s hand offered me a crust of bread and a tiny Turkish coffee through the bars of the tiny window in the door. This was where the Knights of Saint John locked away their prisoners; the concept was not lost on me. The local newspaper printed the story and it created a minor scandal, as you can imagine, what with me being a teacher for the VOA, attached to the Courier. Oh my! The story was picked up by a few European newspapers, most of them misspelling my name, thank God. (On an art historical note: this accident occurred ten years before I began to use the news, mass media, as my primary art form, becoming somewhat famous for my absurd solutions to world problems. So I’ve always considered my fall off the roof of the National Museum of Greece on Rhodes as an art performance, even though it was accidental. And why not? Abstract Expressionists used their accidents all the time.) But back to the harsh reality of 1964: the Captain of the Courier did not appreciate my Body Art. The timing was especially bad because my fall occurred on the night before King Paul’s funeral, the last King of Greece (though we didn’t know this historical detail at the time.) In any case, my moonlit drawing session sealed my exile from paradise, fourteen months after I had landed on the island. I have returned to Rhodes several times (but never enough.) The first time after my fall was to celebrate the publication of my friend Vangelis Pavlidi’s book “Rhodes: A History”, the best book about the Old City ever published. At the reception, held above the square near my old friend Alexi’s taverna, someone said (I think it was the Mayor) not to let me near roof.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 23:17:45 +0000
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