Fellini’s Rome
It’s not a very hard stretch of the imagination to picture a young Fellini coming to Rome for the first time. In his own mind, he was always an adolescent, so memory might be more than generous and place him here as an 18 year old boy, in 1938, when there were so many masterpieces in him waiting to be made into reality.
The notion of taking the raw stuff of dreams and memories and turning them into stories for a big screen sounds a little bit like a magical act, something akin to alchemy. As his ability to make films grow, so did his interest in the vast world around him develop. Like Jung, he felt that he found all the worlds that he needed right where he was. And like Jung, the process of turning life into art was, indeed, an alchemical act. Both considered the Great Work to be the process of becoming the self, the act of learning how to walk in one’s own multiple identities.
For Fellini, when he saw Rome , and started to hear its eternal music, he discovered his all. There was never any need to consider living anywhere else.
This is a great moment in the life of an artist, when the inspiration finds its endless source, and it’s very close to discovering the fountain of youth. A visit to this city may not actually lead to the mysteries that made the director of 8 1/2 an eternal adolescent, but it might work some very specific magic, and a kind that can’t be discovered until the moment of arrival. Walking on the Rome sidewalk, and sleeping in the Rome hotel , and eating in the Rome cafe, there are sparks of another world that open up. It’s a reminder that this city is just a beginning of a great adventure, and the most romantic journeys take place under the strict and chaotic supervision of the eye of the heart.