Watching my neighbors in the southern Italian village where I spend my free time. Fiorenzo, his sister and her husband, three daughters and a son, are gathering olives. They shake the trees one after one to get the earliest and greenest olives to fall. Several days of work plus hours at the olive press: the result is about 50 liters of olio extra virgine. You can’t pay a just price for this olive oil.
Another neighbor - who works in the nearby city of Salerno and commutes 3 hours everyday - told me over a coffee why he chooses to remain in this small village with his family. He mentions security, nature, food, the intimacy (sometimes painful) of a village. And at the same time he likes working in Salerno, with pulse and diversity.
He says suddenly and calmly: “We need to re-create our originality. We can’t return to something but we can re-invent it. Only then will our village have a function in a future world. Everyone will want to live here.”
After visiting a number of resort areas in Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Norway, Sweden and England during the last few years with Black/North SEAS, I understand his point. There seems to be two ways of responding to the challenges of coastal towns. Either romaticizing the past, desperately clinging to heritage. Or throwing it all out and chasing desperately after what people might want.
For a moment my neighbor had a new grip on the challenge: to re-create originality. To maintain the integrity of the community and offer it as a place for recreation, culture and exchange. Re-imagining the idea of civilization. Everyone will want to live there.
Together with Fiorenzo and his family, three other men from Poland and Romania will help with the olives the next few weeks. It is not a profitable business on this scale. But it is a community exercise in originality. Not folklore. Practical and tasteful.
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