Venice – il vino del Doges

Coming out of Venice railway station is like arriving on a movie set, apart from modern dress, motor boats and mobile phones nothing has changed much. Pasolini’s Il Decameron and other films spring to mind.

I expect the Denis from the past to spring out of a dark alleyway, even Casanova or worse the little red riding hood from Roeg’s Don’t Look Now.

We took Vaporetto n°13 to St Erasmus, home of the wine of the Venetian Doges. Like so many things our “civilisation” has taught us to forget, taste has become standarised, a banal sameness wherever you go. We no longer know how to care for our planet. But here it is different, wine growing techniques dating from before the dark ages, combined with a little modern technology and a lot of passion, produce wine that is very special.

Magick and guardians ever present, the co-incidences almost every hour of the day no longer astonish me, our current project for a TV series on geobiology and the architecture of sacred places of worship suddenly takes on a new, broader angle. What the stone masons and carpenters were doing in the churches, the farmers were doing in the fields: the result, whether it be a church, a house, a vegetable or a fruit, is in harmony with the environment and the universe beyond.