On Episode 560: The Ghosts of Things Seen and Not Seen, a LIVE EPISODE taped in Rome with the listeners who participated in our 2024 Bittersweet Life Rome Trip, we chat about what happens when places that we have lived or traveled to extensively change drastically over the years—particularly if we are not there to witness those changes slowly occurring. When we return, it can feel like the ghosts of those missing people and places are all around us. The city has moved on… but we still miss what has disappeared.
Hear from our Rome guests about these “ghosts” that exist in their towns and favorite places.
You can listen right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 558: Escape to Rome with The Bittersweet Life
Episode 508: Discovering Rome’s Secrets with our Listeners
Episode 507: Seeing (and not Seeing) Rome for the First Time
Episode 506: [LIVE]: Discovery (with our listeners!)
Episode 505: The Roman Adventure Begins!
Five key takeaways from the episode:
- The podcast hosts, Katie and Tiffany, reflect on how places change over time, discussing the “ghosts” of memories that overlay current experiences in Rome and other cities.
- Guests share personal stories about revisiting places from their past and noticing changes, highlighting the bittersweet nature of nostalgia and progress.
- The group discusses the historical layers of Rome, comparing modern investment in art and architecture to the grand works of the past, particularly during the Renaissance.
- Participants reflect on the human connections made during their tour of Rome, emphasizing how shared experiences and walking alongside others create lasting memories.
- The hosts promote their upcoming 2025 Roman adventure tour, encouraging listeners to join their mailing list for early details and reservations.
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
Welcome to Rome. This Is The Bittersweet Life with Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks. Hello. I’m Katy Sewall. Today’s episode is a really special one. Today Tiffany and I are joined by all of the guests that joined us on our tour through Rome this past October. Now, not everyone who came on the tour talks in this show, but everyone was in the room. And for me, this was a very special afternoon. And I think it was for them too. And it was one that made our time together in Italy feel even more special. I hope you enjoy listening in. And if as you listen you start to think, hey, I’m interested in coming to Rome and being with Katy and Tiffany in October of 2025. Make sure you are on our mailing list. If you find yourself intrigued or even really, really wanting to go, take the time to send us your email address. We’ll be announcing the details for the 2025 Roman adventure very soon and we always announce it to our and financial supporters first and then to people who are on our email list. And we’re going to be announcing the dates and details of this tour in time for the holidays. So imagine what a gift it could be to Explore Rome in 2025. So you can email us at bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com. That’s bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com. I promise you we don’t use your emails for any other reason and keep listening. As soon as we’re ready to take reservations for next year’s tour, we will be announcing it here on the show as well. So as you’ll hear by listening in on this group discussion, the group size is very limited, so if you are interested, do let us know right away. Email bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com or become a supporter of the show and get that early notification. You can find ways to Support us at thebittersweetlife.net or at patreon.com/thebittersweetlifepodcast There are links to all of this in our show notes. Enjoy. I love this discussion.
Katy
Hello, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Tiffany and Katy together in Rome and we are celebrating our 2024 Roman adventure with the most amazing guests that you can imagine. And we’re lucky enough to be doing this show with them actually in the room with us. Do you guys want to say like a hello? Hello. Very, very nice. So as you know, we always talk about a topic on this show and what I was Thinking about a lot today. And we’ve kind of touched on this in past shows before, but I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it a lot because it is a very bittersweet topic. And that is the fact that as we go around in life, what is inevitable is that things will change not only in our own lives, but also in the environment that we are walking through, living in. And even if you revisit a city like Rome, for instance, over and over and over again, like I have, some things will remain the same. And of course, this is an ancient city, so you’re like lots things will remain the same, but there will always be things that are different every time you show up. And I have been thinking about them in this trip, that they’re almost like ghosts in a way. They’re like the memory that overlays the thing that’s there. Let me give you an example. An example I gave to some of you this morning is that there’s a particular street corner that every single time I walk by it back in the past, there was always an old man sitting on that street corner playing the accordion. Always, most afternoons. And he was extremely smiley, very friendly, and he was very talented. And the things he would play, he would play with a certain style of verve. Back in those days, there were a lot of accordion players in Rome. We’ve all been noticing that there’s not very many, but they were not created equal in their talent. And he was one of the people who was actually quite good and always saying, hello, hello as he went by. So every time we walk by that corner and he’s no longer there, which he has been gone for the last few years, and I’m assuming that might mean he either moved away or has passed on. I still always picture him sitting there. Like, I can’t walk by that corner without picturing him sitting there. The same goes for. And I know we’ve given this example in the show before. There’s one courtyard. We as a group have not actually walked through it this time yet. But when I lived here, one of the buildings in that courtyard caught on fire and it got extremely burned up one side of it. And now that’s obviously long been repaired. It’s been repainted. It looks like a beautiful piazza with no problems. But every time I walk by, I remember that that whole wall used to be completely burned. So it’s those kind of memories that I kind of want to talk about today. But it could be like, people that you’ve known that you for Whatever reason, still remember. It could be like you revisit your childhood home and the school you went to has been turned into a condo. Those kinds of stories, the things that we remember that other people who are new to that area would not even know. So do you have anything that you want to share about that?
Tiffany
Actually, yes. This past April, I was in Boston, which is where I studied. It’s where I did my undergraduate degree. And I graduated from there in 99. And I hadn’t been back to Boston. I never since. Actually, that’s not true. I continued to live there for a while, but when I moved to Rome in 2004, that was the last time I ever set foot in Boston because I didn’t have any many friends left there. I guess. 20 years pass. It was almost 20 years and I’d always wanted to go back because I really love Boston and I loved the city while I was living there. I had great memories there. So this past Easter, we were in Arizona visiting my mom. And on the way back we stopped for three days in Boston. And the weather was terrible. I was just telling Sara. But we managed to go back to my old conservatory, New England Conservatory of Music. I know we talked about this on a past episode, so some of you might have heard this before, but we went to my old dorm and the dorm of that conservatory, a very, very, very small school. The dorm of the conservator conservatory has now been turned into practice rooms and there’s a new dorm. And so my old room is now a practice room. And I got to go into it. I managed to convince a obliging student to give me a tour. And I said, can we go up to the sixth floor? I think this one’s mine. And you know, walking down the hallway, I’m like this. I mean, it was identical. The hallway was identical. And then I got to my door and one of the walls had been knocked down, so it was twice as big. But the little spot where my twin size bed had been, I mean, it was. There was no bed there, but it was identical. It was the same. The furniture was all gone, but their little reading lamp that I had had over above my bed was still there, the one that came with the standard school furniture. And I just, you know, I just sort of pictured myself and I thought I slept here every night for almost a year. Right, right in this spot when I was so young, you know, so just so many lifetimes ago. It feels not. It’s not more than one lifetime, but it feels like it is. And I just thought, how can I be back here? How can this be the same place? So different, but yet so familiar?
Katy
Let me ask you a question. If it had been a dorm room, would that have been better or worse?
Tiffany
I think if somebody else’s stuff had been in there, it might have felt like I was trespassing or like it had been, you know, the fact that it didn’t have my desk and my bed and my. I mean, obviously that stuff would have been replaced 20 years later, I assume. I would hope. But I think it made it almost more special that I had to sort of use my imagination to be like, okay, the bed was here, the chest of drawers was there and the desk and recreate it in my mind.
Katy
I mean, that is one thing I think. Barbara, you said to me this morning, and you can say it or I can say it, but you were mentioning some. One thing about this topic, is that what you don’t want to be as you get older is that person who’s always saying, well, you know, things were so much better, but, you know, back when I was a per. You know, because then you end up feeling like you’re that curmudgeon that comes along and isn’t going with progress. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Barbara
Well, I mean, I live in Austin, and it’s changed a lot in the last 10 years, like, radically. But, you know, I have to remind myself as I walk through this town that I’ve lived in for so long that it’s still a beautiful place to live. And in some ways, it’s not really my town anymore. You know, I’ve kind of turned it over to the younger people in town, and it’s still a beautiful, interesting place to live.
Katy
What do you mean by turned it over to the younger people?
Barbara
Well, I mean, I have to also say, you know, in the 70s, Austin was amazing. It was so much fun. It was cheap. It was, you know, lots of musicians and artists and criminals and hippies and all that kind of stuff, especially in my neighborhood. But what was I going to say about that?
Katy
What do you mean by turning it over to the young people?
Barbara
Oh, because the drivers of the city and the way the city looks and feels and the business of the city is now in the hands of younger people, and they have different priorities and different aesthetic and, you know, the city reflects that, and it’s fine for you.
Katy
Are there places that you sort of long for the way that they were?
Barbara
Oh, well, I mean, I could say the Armadillo World headquarters. But what I’ll Say instead is maybe Shady Grove Restaurant, maybe the. Maybe the way the university used to look. But some of the old icons are still there and very active. The Barton Springs pool, my pool, the Deep Eddie pool, the Capitol, the universities. You know, it’s still. It’s still lovely in so many ways.
Katy
So we do have a group of four friends. So if you heard any. Uh huh. Having. Do you also want to wait?
Karen
Well, yeah, I was speaking about Austin because it is a cool place to live and always has been. But yeah, it has changed a lot. And back in the 70s when we started college there, early 70s, it was just getting famous for the music scene and we just saw some incredible musicians and little small venues like Waterloo, Ice House. And it’s not there anymore. The. The laundromat near Barbie’s apartment is not there anymore. Which, that was a real. I really pissed me off.
Katy
But anyway, was that a music venue? No.
Karen
But when I would go there for medical meetings and stay with Barbie, I would. And if I was leaving on a Sunday or Monday, I’d take her, take the sheets because she didn’t have a washer and a dryer in her. In their condo. So I’d walk down to the Laundromat and throw them in there. You didn’t have to worry about him. I’d march around the neighborhood and come back in 45 minutes and put them in the dryer and you know, whatever. So yeah, that was kind of a. I do miss that. Sorry. You know, I just do. It was. It was a very important part of my life for over a decade.
Katy
Yeah. Well, I don’t. I didn’t mean to imply that it’s not okay to miss it because I feel like I miss things all the time. Like I think it’s okay to miss it. I don’t know. Do you think that the people who will never get to see it that way, are they missing out?
Karen
I think they’re missing out. Yeah. I mean there’s a lot of fun stuff, but there’s also a lot of stuff that I really don’t like in Austin these days, like Tesla moving in and you know, Elon Musk is a weirdo, so he really is. He’s kind of a freak. But. But yeah, so a lot. So you’ve got a lot of people moving in. They are. You know, it’s just the whole industry there. There’s obviously large industry moving in there and that obviously is going to change the dynamics of any city.
Katy
Anybody else have an idea that they want to add to that? That Particular question, Sara. Sara’s in an interesting position because she’s been in Montana for a while now. So you have, but you’ve also moved around in Montana. So you’ve lived in small town Montana and Bozeman, Montana, which is not huge, but not small. You’ve seen those places change over time quite dramatically. And every now and then you go back and visit your old, small hometown. Give us your perspective on that.
Sara
Yeah, I mean, there’s parts of me that move to Montana for more space. So when more people move in as it’s growing, it can get a little like, bummer. I moved here because it was smaller, and now it’s not really anymore. Now traffic is an actual issue and. But at the same time, you can’t really blame people for moving in either because it’s gorgeous and they’re bringing new ideas and new energy and some good things with them, too. So I get both nostalgic and also welcoming of some of the change. And Montana has been the same for so long that sometimes an influx of new ideas is kind of nice because it’s not like Seattle, where I grew up.
Katy
So what about that tiny town? So she grew. She was living for a while in a town called Ennis, which had what, 800 people or something when you moved in? That town is one of. It looks like a kind of faux old western town. And it is a place where I feel like it’s almost frozen. Like they don’t really let it change for the most part.
Sara
Yeah, that’s true. I mean, there is a drive to preserve what they can about the old way of life, you know, and to keep it the same. There’s a lot more cultural wanting to keep people out in the smaller towns, I think in Montana than, say, Bozeman would have. They’re a little bit more welcoming, and it’s because they like to keep it pure and because of everything you guys are talking about, which is. It’s so lovely. They want it to be that way for their children, and they have generations and generations who have lived there, and they just want it to be the same for their children. And so you can’t really fault them for that. But it is. You know, there’s a sadness to it, I think, for them, for sure, when there’s growth that primarily prices them out of their place that’s been in their family forever. I think there’s a lot of heartache about the prices of real estate in particular and how high they’ve climbed. And your average local can’t afford to live there really anymore. If they had an inherited property, they couldn’t afford to buy property based on the wages they make. So there’s definitely some legitimate heartache and challenges that come with people finding it. And all of it happened during COVID So it was when people got more mobile and could work from anywhere. As a real estate agent, I was like, oh, no, I’m not going to make any money during COVID Turns out the opposite was true and everybody moved to Montana. So they have some crisis they’re having to deal with right now, for sure.
Tiffany
If you don’t mind me popping back in.
Katy
Yes, please, pop back in. You’re always welcome to pop back in.
Tiffany
You are the great hear. Hearing your various thoughts on the cities that you have spent lots and lots of time in or grown up in and how they’ve changed. I can’t help but think about living in Rome. You get this kind of long view. It’s just automatic when you live in such an old city that your view on things becomes very, very. It reaches far back. And I’ve only lived here for 20 years. I didn’t grow up here. But I think about how the city was in ancient times, and I think about how the city was in the Middle Ages. And how many times did you hear me today or yesterday say this was a beautiful medieval church, but they’ve ruined it, basically. And I think about, you know, there’s nobody who’s. Who’s been around since ancient Rome or since the Middle Ages, but I imagine someone that was. And, you know, I can. I’m trying to, like, think about imagining someone walking through Santa Cecilia in Trastevere and thinking, in my day, you know, the columns were standing. In my day, there were cosmati floors. And I love looking at old etchings or drawings of Rome. Rome, how it used to be. Roma Sparita, as they call it. And I love sort of being like, okay, what did Rome look like before they built that? You know, like the Victor Emanuel building. We were up on the Capitoline Hill today, and I actually didn’t even get as far to mention this, but when they built the Victor Emanuel building, that huge white. What some people think is a monstrosity.
Katy
They call it the wedding cake, too.
Tiffany
The wedding cake, the typewriter. It has the best view in Rome because you can’t see it from there. Yeah, the Romans don’t really like it. But the interesting thing about it is, like, you know, so much had to be destroyed to build that. You know, so many things. And a couple of things. One Church was actually moved, a small church was. They literally took it apart and rebuilt it. And the church that we went into, that we ended in Santa Maria Naracelli, was almost destroyed. The plan was to sacrifice it to the project, and it was saved. And I now. But now you look at the map, you know, the view of Rome, and if the Vittoriano wasn’t there, it would seem odd. And I think every single domed church in Rome at one time looked modern and freakish, you know, and people were probably thinking, oh, you know, I miss those medieval towers. You know, I miss those Romanesque bell towers. So, I mean, that’s one of the things that makes Rome so beautiful, is that it’s this mishmash of ancient medieval Renaissance, baroque, neoclassical all the way up. And it’s what makes it so unique and so special. But on the other hand, I do mourn the buildings that were lost.
Katy
Or like, this area that we’re in right now in Trastevere is. I don’t know exactly where the line is, but this building is built newer, Right. It’s like late 1800s, probably. This building and everything outside of it, and over that way away from the Tiber river, would have been all like, farmland and villages and such, like little tiny huts and whatnot. Right?
Tiffany
Yeah. And not villages, just farmland. And maybe a few churches. Yeah. And huts of maybe someone who was working in the farmland. Yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, I think when my. My father in law, when we’re sort of driving out sort of in the outskirts of town where we live, which has now been very developed, and he says, when I was boy, all of this was green, all of this was field. Even my husband says things like that. And I think, well, you could say that about Trastevere too, if you lived long enough.
Katy
Yeah, yeah, I like that. I mean, I also think about that with the people what you’re talking about, you know, when you deal with a building like the Pantheon, for instance, it’s a great example, because if you were at the Vatican yesterday, maybe you heard about Michelangelo paying homage to. Or maybe you talked about it paying homage to the creators of the Pantheon by making his dome narrower than their concrete dome to say, look at what these ancient people did. But then you also think about that even further. That means like. And of course, he did at many times, probably he stood in the square in front of the very same building that you guys see when you go there. These people, we tell them a story. The legend of Raphael says that this and this and this. And yet you can still see the building that he would have gone into all the time. So I see. I kind of think of them like the same way I think of the man playing the accordion. There are these people, ghosts that are overlaid. And that in some way, I’m actually one of those people. Also. I won’t be remembered in Rome, most likely. Definitely. But I also stood in the same square as those people and looked at the same building as those people.
Sara
I was just going to say we’ve been talking a lot of my husband Kris, who’s here. He might have something added.
Katy
Say hi.
Kris
Hi.
Sara
We’ve been traveling in the general area for a couple weeks, but one of the things we keep saying is where we live in Montana, one of the sad things is everything is made out of wood. And so even though the United States history doesn’t go back nearly as. I mean it does. But documented in buildings, not. Definitely not in Montana. I mean, everything. The ghost town is the closest we come, and they’re barely visible buildings half the time. So I love Europe’s use of stone. I mean, it’s just nice that you can see things from that far back, which is a shame where we love.
Katy
All right, anyway. Okay, come in. You’ll have to introduce yourself since I haven’t been on this side of the room yet.
Bill
Hi, Bill Derrick. I was just going to riff on the theme of, you know, Roman. What we saw in our trip was a lot of things that have been repurposed. Right? So columns. I forget the term you use, Tiffany. It’s not repurposed, it’s despoiling. So some 2,000, maybe 3,000 years ago, someone built a column. And I found myself today touching those columns to say some human 2000 plus years ago actually spent the time to turn this into a column. And their artifact survived till today. And it may have been repurposed a thousand years ago or 2,000 years ago. It may have originally been something else. But, you know, boy, if I. If I were. Subjunctive mood, if I were he, I would remember that. I would be proud that, hey, my work still stands. It may have been turned sideways in some cases. It may still had a different base or something. But it’s, you know, I think it would be, you know, be proud of the fact that your work is. Continues to be in use.
Katy
Kris?
Kris
This is Kris, Katy’s brother in law. And there was a column on its side that people were just sitting on to rest at the taxi. And that whole dichotomy of the old and the young, the like to your point, you know, that was something of value and power then to hold up a building, and now it’s still something of value and power to hold up those who are tired and waiting for the taxi. And yet they’re sitting there not really paying attention to the fact that they were sitting on something that was amazing. Because we just don’t have that in Montana, as Sara said. You know, we have. It’s everything past the Mississippi, as it gets older and older, is wood, and it’s gone. And for me, I’m like, wait, Benjamin Franklin was here? And then you go across the pond, and you’re like, wait, Michelangelo was here? And my question was, is a little maybe opposite of what Tiffany says, because the graffiti is something I love. And I was like, what would Michelangelo or Raphael do if they were in this artistic world? I mean, there’s some artists here in the room, and what would they do? And what influences would that person who used spray paint to make these eyes that just appeared out of nowhere in a wall, what would they do to build their sculpture today? And that kind of thing? So I keep thinking that as we’re walking through, and I did appreciate the Vatican at the end, sort of moving through the hundreds of years and then decades of newer and newer artwork at the very end, right before the Sistine Chapel. And that was pretty amazing.
Katy
Okay, I’m coming over. Who are you?
Dan
Dan Barnett. So we had, I think, a really unique experience. So when I was in college, way back when, there was a band called Pink Floyd, and I was a big Pink Floyd fan.
Katy
I was a big Pink Floyd fan. Pink Floyd fan. Not an easy thing to say, actually.
Dan
I mean, totally unplanned. But it turns out that one of their members was throwing a concert at Circus Maximus around the corner from the hotel we were staying at. And it’s totally sold out. But by pure luck, I got a ticket, so I go to it. And when they started singing songs like Wish You Were Here, it just took me back 50 years. And I felt everything that I felt here in Rome that I felt way back then. You know, like when you say you see somebody sitting in a corner, and then that person’s not there anymore, but it takes you back to then. I found that in Rome, I was taken back 50 years because pink Floyd was right there singing that incredible song. Just a weird, unusual experience we had, which was great.
Katy
That’s amazing. So cool. I was going to say that one of the things Tiffany was also talking about was how things that were works of art, like, you Know that column, which may have been more practical in the way that that person made that, but were melted down, like a lot of them were melted down to create other works of art. And I was thinking about that in a modern day context. I have an artist friend in Seattle who makes both stone sculptures and big bronze sculptures. His name is Tony angel, if any of you have ever heard of him before. He’s amazing. And he had a giant statue of a raven that was along a trail up in Shoreline, which is in the city to the north of Seattle. And just recently that statue got broken off of its pedestal and stolen along with multiple other statues by other artists at the same time in this one week. And the police think that they were melted down to sell for the bronze that they were made from for more, you know, not great purposes. You know, it’s not like these people are melting it down to like create the high altar at St. Peter’s you know, they’re doing it to make money and in a difficult economic climate and who knows what else. But I also was thinking about that when you were talking about that, because I do think that sometimes artists, lots of us, try to create something that we think will last beyond when we are actually here. And it is true that, like, you really don’t have any control over what happens after, you know. And so I sometimes think about that also when I’m here is a lot of their works of art still exist and so many of them don’t anymore. And that’s not up to them. Tiffany, you’re looking at me with meaning, so I feel like I’m just thinking about it.
Tiffany
I’m just thinking about it. Sadly, I was thinking. Just when you said that, I was just thinking about all of the bronze sculptures in Rome that are no more. And I mean, if you’ve been to the Capitoline museums and seen some of the bronze works there, and there’s some in the Vatican as well. It just makes. I mean, for me, it just makes me think it’s the same way I think about what. I think about Mozart or Raphael and I think, what Caravaggio, what could they have done if they’d had more time? We can’t know. And all of these ancient bronze sculptures, we can’t even imagine what they were like. And it’s.
Katy
But is it less sad if you can’t even imagine what they were like? Is it less sad if you don’t know what you’re missing?
Tiffany
I don’t know.
Katy
That’s another interesting question about you going back to Pink Floyd, you guys saying if you had only known Austin in the 70s and these kids, they’ll never. These kids, these younger people, kids today, they won’t know. And that’s the other thing. And then one day they’re going to be nostalgic for the way Austen was.
Tiffany
Yeah. And we’ll never know. What I mean, we can look at those before and after books, you know, Rome then and now, or get the virtual reality glasses. But we can never experience walking through the Roman forum as it once was.
Katy
As opulent as it would have been.
Tiffany
Yeah. And even think, I think about people then, people. If, you know, if people lived that long, if it were possible in some science fiction world that you could say you have no idea. You don’t know what you’re missing. You walk now through and it’s rubble. Imagine what it was. So I do think that just because you don’t know what you’re missing does not mean you’re not suffering for it somehow.
Katy
I would agree with that in the sense that I’m sure who here hasn’t wished to see the world before the Industrial revolution? I think about that all the time. When it was greener, granted that I don’t want to be starry eyed about it. It was also harder in some ways. But I sometimes do wish I could see things before we changed the landscape quite as much as we did.
Tiffany
Well, even I was thinking about you, Katy, when you were. We were recording an episode just I guess yesterday and you said, when I was a young person, I had no desire to travel. I had no. I thought everything’s great here. I love America, I love my friends. I have no desire. And one could say, well, you don’t know what you’re missing. But we know now. And people in your own time know now because it’s still there, it’s still around. You know, Europe, Southeast Asia, wherever. You know, Africa, you could want to go. Just because you feel like you aren’t missing out on something doesn’t mean you aren’t.
Katy
Whoa. Yeah. Katy, do you have any thoughts you want to add? There’s two Katy’s on this trip. There were two Katy’s on last year’s trip also.
Tiffany
Katy, Kathy.
Katy
That’s true. We also have a Kathy, this year’s Katy. No offense to other Katie, who I know you’re listening right now. This year’s Katy spelled her name correctly. K A T Y.
Other Katy
That just made me think of how I regret when I guess parents don’t. Encourage their children to travel. And of course some people can’t afford to. And I couldn’t afford to when I was a child, you know, or a young adult. But as soon as I could afford to, I took advantage of it. But I, you know, there are people. At least I know where I live in North Texas, that they are kind of insular.And then that keeps you from having a broader mindset and understanding diversity, you know, and all the issues of the world and differences and not everybody’s just like you, but we are still more alike than we are different, you know. And if you stay at home all the time, you don’t get that. So I just think that’s an important thing.
Katy
Yeah, that’s a really good point. Yeah. I sometimes think, and I should think to ask and Chris, you’re here. You know my father, if I forget to ask, you can ask. I used to wonder if he invited me on my first international trip. He called me in college and asked if I wanted to go to Japan with him. Because he was seeing that of all of his three daughters, perhaps I was the most provincial of his children. And he was like, okay, this girl’s not going to move 10 blocks away from where she’s currently living in Seattle, so maybe we need to take her to some other part of the world. Do you have any comments you want to make while I’m standing over here, Chris? Well, I was just thinking from this trip, what I’ve noticed is the deep investment in the past that people made to art, you know, in their buildings and their statues and, you know, opulence really. And my question that comes to mind is what investment are we making in art for the future generations when they, when people are traveling back? You know, it just doesn’t seem like it. The emphasis isn’t so great. Although maybe, I just don’t know. Do you have an opinion, Susan?
Tiffany
We do you have an artist here.
Katy
Yeah, we do have an artist here. Do you want to say anything? Look for her beautiful artwork. Susanderrickart.com Is that what it is? Yes, it is. Do you have any? I mean, you don’t have to talk about the grand overarching. How are we supporting art? If you don’t want to. But do you have any?
Susan
I do think about just the way art, you know, walking through our cities and the architecture and coming here and seeing the difference. It’s just things here were built to last and we’re, you know, they’re very opulent and there’s art everywhere. I mean, the decoration is incredible, but not so much in our modern day architecture. And I wish there was more of that.
Katy
Yeah, I mean, particularly I think, in the United States, because we were talking about how a lot of the people here in Rome built this stuff for self aggrandizement. It was built to last so that we could praise them later on. Whereas the United States is often built for profit. They’re not really expecting the buildings to last for a really long time. It’s more like, this will be here for a while and then we’ll rip it down, we’ll build something else.
Tiffany
And I think that also says something about the expectation and the awareness of impending death in the past was much greater than it is today. I think people lived with a constant reminder that death was around the corner. Mostly because people died, young people, you know, you could get a disease and you could be gone the next day. The plague, what have you, childbirth, accidents. And I think that. So murder, murder if you’re Caravaggio, you know, so if you’re, if you are a powerful person, you know, you’re not going to be around forever. It’s much more. They lived, I think, in. With a much more constant awareness of their own death. In fact, people used momento mori, you know, they’d carry around a skull to remind them. So if you were powerful and you were a little bit, you know, of a egomaniac or megalomaniac, as so many popes were, you want to build that building because, you know, you know you’re not going to be around. It’s probably not even going to be done by the time, you know, you’re. You’re. You know, it’ll be done long after you’re dead. But it, it matters to you that it’s there after you’re dead. Whereas I feel like today we live sort of for the moment we live for today. We live for our lifetimes. We don’t think as much, except maybe when it comes to our kids, preparing for our kids and all of that. But we don’t think as much about, like, oh, I want my name to go on in perpetuity. So I’m going to, you know, I’m going to have this building built here.
Dan
So I think about the. This is Dan again. I think about the investment that they made in these phenomenal buildings and the Coliseum. And you go on and on and on, one thing after another. So there was an unbelievably wealthy group of people, and where did they get the wealth? So where did this come from? You know, and so you have to be thinking, well, they got the wealth, they conquer A country, take all of their money, build a coliseum, and then they would conquer another country, take all of them, build a coliseum. But ultimately, they figured out that they have to figure out how to grow the economy or it’s not sustainable over the long term. And they sustained this for a lot of, you know, a lot of centuries. And so they actually. They started that way, but then they had to figure out how to make it sustainable. So they figured out how they could build a strong economy where people are farming and paying taxes, and they could afford to pay taxes, and then they could keep building these kinds of things. But it really. It took such an investment to do that.
Katy
Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, too, like, for the people who couldn’t build a building, not to take away from your point, but people who couldn’t build a building. We’ve seen so many side chapels now. So if you’re, like, rich enough or your family can put a side chapel together for their son, maybe they can afford to build a building also. But, you know, they can also create these side chapels where what, people are meant to pray for them in perpetuity. Right. So I can. I’m putting in stone like, once a week. You need to pray for me here for the rest of time, which I can’t think of an equivalent of that in the United States, where we could have somebody do something for us for the rest of time. Anybody else have any thoughts that they want to share? I haven’t thought on that. Okay, well, Susan had all the schools.
Susan
For artisans that followed, like Raphael, his whole school, and how they employed so many people to be artists, to do the decorations, really, for the buildings and the churches. And I wish that there was more.
Katy
Of that today and that kind of apprenticeship. I do think what we have that. We do have apprentices still today. I mean, I was an intern for two years, which is sort of a version of that. But, yeah, maybe Tiffany, you have some insight in this. Like, I’ve always wondered, were the apprentice programs so good that Raphael was ready to make the most amazing thing in the world by the time he was, like, 18 years old? Or the Pieta being carved at what, 22? Something like that? You know, why were they so ready to make something like that? It couldn’t have been just talent, you know, so there had to be, like, some way of teaching people. I’m not saying they’re not remarkably talented, but there was a lot of remarkably talented people to create all this stuff. They must have had some sort of amazing way of passing it along. I mean, you don’t have to know.
Tiffany
I’m just, I don’t know, but I can, I do think that something, there was something in the water, right? I mean, it was, for lack of a better expression, there was something going on during the Renaissance, especially in Italy, that is kind of, you can’t really explain it. It doesn’t make any sense that there were that many incredible artists in such a small part of the world in such a short period of time that just kind of blew up. I mean, I don’t know that even an art historian can kind of really explain how so much talent came about. I do think that as far as the age, I think people matured much earlier than we do now because there were, you know, life was shorter. So you had to make the most of time that you had on earth. And so you, you know, you just, if you had talent and your family saw that you had talent, they would apprentice you right away. And it was a career that was sustainable if you were talented, if you weren’t the most talented, but you were good, you at least could work in someone else’s atelier. You know, you could work for Raphael’s school and maybe you’d make a medium sized name for yourself. And the reason, but the reason isn’t just, oh, wow, they loved art so much back in those days. They were so cultured. It’s not just that. It’s, you know, that was the way that the church was able to propagate its message, that, you know, like I mentioned earlier when we were talking about Caravaggio, people were not, you know, sitting and reading their Bible much. They were not, not many people could read. And there was no other way besides sermons to, you know, get these ideas across. Art was the way that you did it. Art was the most effective way. And when you saw the Pieta, I mean, who hasn’t stood in front of the Pieta, even people from all different religions and not been moved by it. It’s so much more powerful than anything you will ever hear in a sermon. And people also would have been more probably aware of the Bible stories back in those days. So they would have known the intricacies of the art that they were seeing and they would have been able, they would have been more prepared to interpret it and therefore it would make more of an impression, I think, and would.
Katy
Have a stronger meaning and hence very well funded. And we haven’t really talked about it much, but after the Renaissance and when Rome, what, 15, 20, when did they get totally sacked again? Yeah, 1527. They do go into, like, an intellectual dark age after that period. So it is like this bright spot. And of course, we’re always subject to bright spots and dark spots, for sure. This is.
Sara
Sara, this is totally kind of related, but not really related. The other thing I find myself thinking about a lot this week in Rome, because there’s so many layers of history in Rome, and we’re learning so much about the history and upheavals and changes in power and wars and all of this stuff. And of course, back home, our election is a couple weeks away, and I know it’ll be over by the time this airs, by the time this comes. So we’ll all maybe feel more or less unsettled. But right now, I’m a little bit unsettled. I think everybody is, no matter which side you’re on, just wondering what’s going to happen to our own country. And I’m finding some solace in hearing the history of, you know, people walk these streets who are in similar things, and yet the city survived and the people survived and things moved on and sometimes improved and sometimes didn’t, but then eventually did. And so I’m finding myself slightly less apprehensive about the election, even though I’m still uneasy about it, because there’s something about the depth of the history in Rome that is making me think about it.
Kris
I have a tattoo that is the same that you were saying. The memento mori. Right. The living in the present. And some of you know, most of you don’t. That I’ve lived my life as a paramedic, as a flight paramedic. And this. Today I just went down to the store. All I was going to do was buy two beers, and there was a couple standing next to a homeless guy. But he wasn’t. He might have been homeless, but he was actually seizing and bleeding from his head. And when you were talking about the accordion, I was thinking that I. First of all, the EMS system or the ambulance service here, it took over an hour. And I didn’t speak Italian, so the hotel spoke English and Italian. So he came down and he spent about 30 minutes with me. I gotta get back to the front desk. So I’m like, all right. So I hung out with this gentleman who I do think he may have had a seizure. He was a little postictal, a little confused. And as he came to over the time. But my wife and I always joke because she says, I don’t know what you actually do. Because she’s like, so did you do any Heroic measures. And what was interesting was that I. No is always the answer to my life. And if I do tell her about the heroic cool things of, like, hanging off a helicopter, she’s, like, boring. So it doesn’t matter. Right. And. But then. But yet what we did. What I did is put a blanket under his head because he was bleeding and hit his head and held his hand. His hand was very dirty. And you had that one bench.
Katy
Oh, yeah.
Kris
Where it was with the. It was. It’s a statue and it’s a bench. And. Yeah, please.
Katy
There. There is a bench in Trastevere. We’ve walked past it a couple of times, but we haven’t pointed it out. It’s a modern art piece. Modern. Ish. It is of a person laying on a bench and he’s covered with a sheet like he’s sleeping, but his feet have holes in them like he’s Christ sleeping outside of this church. And we actually have that exact same statue on the streets in downtown Seattle. So when I first noticed it here, I. I noticed it here after I saw the one in downtown Seattle. But anyway, I pointed it out to you.
Kris
Yeah. And so this gentleman, you know, so Sara’s asking. Heroic message. I’m like, I don’t know. I put a pillow under his head. I held his hand. His hand was very dirty. And he smelled of alcohol. And it was. And yet that is no different than my career for the last 30 years. And walking along people, wherever they are in their journey and others walking alongside of me and my journey and all of us today in the snapshot of time for the last five days, walking along in our journey. And so I’ve really enjoyed the human side. And I think that, Tiffany, you’ve done a good job. When we’re talking about this, you’re like, yeah. But then they would say, this is what was important. We think it’s important. But they would have told that they were the tour guide of this. They’re like, kind of missed the point. This is what was important or that was important. But they’re just humans trying to walk alongside life with each other. And then we walk through the Jewish ghetto, and they’re just people wanting to walk alongside of each other. And then today we’re just walking alongside of each other with each of our own stories. And that, to me, is the ghost. The ghost that I will never forget. You know, as you’re walking along, there’s an area that I connected humanly with a person today that I won’t forget ever. About Rome Versus some of the dates and the column, and those I will not remember, but I will remember that.
Katy
That’s great. Well, so good to have a paramedic in the group, too, by the way.
Sara
Of course, it happened when I wasn’t with him. Like, he always is telling me he practices medicine, but I’ve never actually seen it happen. So I don’t actually know. I’m like, I don’t know. Maybe he was just down there drinking some beer at the bar and came home and told me a fantastical story, actually.
Kris
She said, how do you know he’s not having an affair with Raphael’s girl? And I was like, whoa. That’s like. That’s multiple.
Katy
Yeah, that’s multiple levels of historic humor.
Tiffany
That’s what happens when you spend time with us in Rome. You start riffing. We had a guy on our last year’s tour who was riffing about Bernini and Borromini.
Katy
And Katy said, yeah, his name was Vince. And I said, I bet you didn’t think you would be joking about two ancient architects after the end of this week. I mean, he was cracking good jokes about those two. He hadn’t even heard of them before the week started. Okay, Susan.
Susan
Well, something happened to me during this trip so far. That has never happened to me before. When looking at a work of art, I’m an artist, so one of my favorite things to do is to go to museums and galleries. I could just spend hours, day in, day out. So we were on the tour, I think it was yesterday, the day before. And we walked into our church, Jesse Caravaggio, and Tiffany was telling the story, and I just started bawling like, I have never cried in front of a painting before. I’ve heard of it happening to other people, but I thought, oh, it’s already happened to me. I was so moved by the way that you told that story. And looking at that painting, I was like. I had to, like, control myself, you know?
Katy
You didn’t have to.
Susan
Well, yeah, I was. The tears were just rolling down my face, and I was so moved. And so. Yeah, that was a first.
Katy
That’s lovely coming back to you.
Karen
Again, a little bit back to what Katy and Kris said. I mean, we’re all very fortunate to be sitting in your apartment. Rented apartment, whatever. But, you know, every person. I mean, it’s just human nature. Everybody wants a sense of community, identity and purpose. It’s real simple. We don’t have to complicate things. Everybody has different talents, different abilities, different social skills. Different education, but we are much more alike than we are different. And it does help to travel. I think maybe people will realize that more. But not everybody has the opportunity. But yeah. Which this is just fabulous. So I hope everybody can help pass that along and stop othering everybody because that gets done way too much. Way too much.
Katy
Good closing thought. All right, Tiffany, come join me for a second. So we’ll leave it there. Thank you all for coming on this week. It means a lot to us that you’re here and I hope you’re having a wonderful time. And I can’t wait for the next couple days. We still have few more days together and thank you for participating in the show. And until next time, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Join us again. Bye.
Group
That was really fun.
Come to Rome with us!
And let’s end today’s show with a few testimonials from this wonderful group recorded at the end of our week together about what it was like to go on The Bittersweet Life Roman adventure. “Hi, this is Robin. My first time to Rome, and I feel so lucky that I got introduced to Rome through Tiffany and Katy because they love this place so much and it shows through in everything that we’ve done this weekend. I feel I know Rome in a way that most tourists never will. This has been the highlight of my year so far.”
“Katy and Tiffany have a very special relationship, and I think that the depth of their relationship and the intensity of it seeped into this group and kind of created a wonderful feeling in the group. And for a person traveling by themselves, which can be challenging. I think it just made it easier for me to be a part of the group just because of that whole easy feeling.”
“I’m Catherine. I came on this trip not knowing what to expect at all. It’s exceeded my expectations by a million miles. It was emotional. It was. It just exceeded my expectations. But really it took me by surprise about how emotional and how fun it was. And I highly, highly recommend doing this trip.”
So what do you think? Are you interested? Make sure we have your email address. Details for the 2025 trip are coming out soon. We’ll talk to you next week. Bye. Send us a note at bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com That’s bittersweetlifepodcast@gmail.com or visit the Contact Us page at thebittersweetlife.net.
