Bologna

We were schoolboys in the ‘70s, true to type. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was a set text, meant to warn against savagery but it also inspired a gruesome teenage chant: kill the pig.

Before the decade ended, we swapped Lord of the Flies for something unsanctioned: a New Wave band called Devo. We took up their call and response with gusto: ‘Are we not men? We are Devo!’

I liked that one. As a young gay kid, I felt reassured by Devo’s queer anthem and I liked the way my peers embraced deviance with enthusiasm.

Only it wasn’t. A queer anthem, that is.

Turns out, Devo’s music was a ‘70s art-school comment on technology and social decline. Devo was shorthand for devolution. Oops.

I hadn’t given another thought to Devo until now. In Bologna. Where there’s a window display featuring Devo’s 1978 album, produced by Brian Eno, alongside The Sex Pistol’s Never Mind the Bollocks.

Sheesh. Bologna is like that. It makes space for cultural histories old and new. It makes space for its citizens, too, young and old, queer and straight, bilingual, polyphonous, Italian and not.

The city’s colonnades embody this attitude, providing almost 40kms of vaulted shelter for walkers and shoppers and sightseers and churchgoers and multi-flavored gelato-eaters.

‘Halfway between inside and outside, the colonnades have always been conducive to social interaction and commercial activities, but they also have a practical function since they act as protection from the weather and the sun, allowing the Bolognese locals and tourists alike to walk comfortably through the city (almost) always with a roof over their heads.’

That previous par is straight from emiliaromagnaturismo.it. No sense in re-inventing the wheel.

But before we move on, before we make a series of dog-leg turns under the cover of the colonnades from Via del Pratello to Via Santa Caterina to get to a restaurant called All’ Osteria Bottega, I should finish the conversation triggered by a Bolognese window display.

Devo got me thinking about Lord of the Flies, which got me thinking about Mayflies, Andrew Hagan’s coming-of-age story set in Thatcher’s England. It involves a bunch of former schoolmates caught up in the music of the early ‘80s: The Smiths, New Order et al.

They have a short lifespan, mayflies, the shortest of all the world’s animals. So there’s a lot of living to cram into their alloted 24 hours, just as the boys-turned-men in Mayflies crammed as much as they could into the weekend they saw The Smiths in Manchester.

Thatcher’s England was cruel and homophobic. But at least we had a shared sense of resistance, even for those of us (like me) who had the luxury of dipping in and out of the UK on work permits. Plus, there was The Fridge, a nightclub in Brixton where Eurythmics and The Pet Shop Boys played before they got famous, where I first collided with Leigh Bowery twirling on the dance floor with a glowing light bulb in his mouth, his face painted ghostly white, channeling Uncle Fester. He was a Melbournian, same as Barry Humphries, although sitting in the third row of an Edna Everage show was not half as scary as finding Leigh Bowery in The Fridge.

These cascading memories are not random. They’re connected much the same that Via Santa Caterina is connected to Via del Pratello, where we’re staying. Just take the first left, then left again, then the first right, and left again. Look for number 51. The roasted Guinea fowl with sour plums is sensational.

A fly on the wall might have seen us passing by, in a bit of a hurry, if truth be told. Impatient. Unfinished business snapping at my heels. And if I was walking this walk four decades earlier, I might have had my Walkman on, playing This Charming Man, or if not that, How Soon Is Now.

Instead, we have phones. Mine tells me it’s just a few minutes to go to the best pasta in town. Which puts me in mind of The Ritchie Family and their very catchy tune, Best Disco In Town, which we danced to as underage Bogart-wearing patrons of a North Sydney disco called, of all things, Benito’s.

Vale, Andy Rourke. The bassist for The Smiths died on 19 May 2023, aged 59.