If someone asked me to describe one picture that more than any other sound would say "Italia" to me, it would be the backs of the heads of a long line of people, very often people who'd somehow gotten ahead of you while your attention wavered, while you turned to looked around in the vain hope that you'll see another door or a sign or some kind of indication that the line you're standing in is not the line you have to wait in to get where you're going, because you can't believe it, it's inhuman, they surely can't expect you to wait in that line snaking around the front of the building and around so far back and forth that you can't even tell where it really ends, and you're right, because they don't expect any human being to wait in that line...Any normal human being would shake their fist and walk away, or stride right up to the door and demand to be let in, and wave their hand back at the line dramatically and then sidle back politely to let the guard fiddle with the rope barring the entrance while he talks to some annoying tourist who's face is red in the heat and exertion and covered in sweat and on the point of heat stroke and asking very politely if the wait is much longer because they'd rather pass out inside the museum but the guard doesn't know and the normal human being would look thoughtfully back at his watch at this point and look down the line as if searching for a familiar face and looks officiously around the entrance as if he's not quite happy with the security and when the guard opens the rope to let a dozen more relieved tourists into the front door and the line surges forward another few feet the normal human being, not in the line but definitely part of the group moving into the door now even though he walks through the door behind the guard's line of sight but so calmly that he's definitely with the group moving in or maybe he works for the museum don't you think?
Surely any normal human being would sneak in as thoughtfully, without causing a fuss, but there's always a few bastards who have to make a scene, and shout at the guards who are only doing their job, and demand to see someone, anyone, who they can reason with and who will see quite naturally that they can't be expected to wait in this horrible line of miserable suffering tourists, or there's the impatient aesthetes who turn away with disgust, sniffing their nose, and walk away from the mob without deigning to even glance at a sign - of course they can't fully experience the art among that crowd. Completely understandable, very reasonable.
But the thought that any thinking, feeling human with any sort of spirit or even a semi-functioning nervous system would actually just stand in the line - just stand in the line! - awaiting their turn like a stone, stolidly, remorselessly letting their feet go numb and their skin burn and their children - little innocents shortly to be dragged down endless hallways and browbeaten into a lifetime of pavlovian nausea and revulsion whenever they hear the word "art" - wilt away like fragile orchids in dry desert sand...why, it's unbelievable, "increible!" as they'd say in Paris, it's the very last thing they'd expect. What? they ask, you actually waited in the line, in your place? You saw no opportunity to advance? Surely the guard's eye left you for a few minutes at least? Your neighbor's never wearied, and searched the curb for a place to sit? You surely noticed the mother with the child who stepped on your notebook after colliding with you as you...you were sitting at the time? Why, she was in the same line as you, and took less than 30 minutes to reach the door. It is not a line, Signor, it is a river - un fiume, and you must swim! Or sink to the bottom, like a stone.
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