History
is often seen as the dust on the cover of old books. Who, like me, enjoys the smell
of aged paper and the tactile experience of crawling in the past through the
pages of old books, can appreciate the grey layer on the volumes, looking
behind the apparent immobility on the shelves. A world of memories and lives
opens to the reader willing to walk through the dusty covers.
However,
if you see the dust, often you perceive a simple and plain boredom.
Public
history has the challenging task of interact with the people, I mean the normal
ones that are not populating the corridors of Academia. It has to swipe the
dust. The paper should leave the stage to other actors that can talk to the
public in a more direct, tangible and interesting way, like a piece of
furniture (still boring?!), images depicting the life in the past (oh c’mon
that is better!), some two hundred years old gossip (I knew that you would have
liked this!).
In
this blog I will record my attempt to learn the language of this History.
Being
a Blog by definition is personal, subjective and time-related. I will try to be
loyal to these capital sins of the academic world. If possible, I will use my
past as graphic artist, art history student and pun enthusiast to hide my
hunchback and grey hair of present historian, hoping to move and stir the
argument with some fresh air.
Above
all, I’m learning here, so please be patient and pretend to enjoy it. Ah, I
almost forgot: I am Italian, so please forgive me some grammar stumbles.
