"Nice Dream" and "Rome"

I have been thinking about how to describe my feelings for Rome after 3 (or is it 4?) days. While contemplating, I can't help but dwell on two songs I am very fond of - "Nice Dream" by Radiohead and "Rome" by Phoenix.

"Nice Dream"

I've been telling everyone "I feel like I'm in a dream". I don't mean this in some cliche way as if I'm "living the dream", I mean that a dream-like state is the closest comparison I have to my experiences so far in Rome.

I've always loved the Radiohead song because its the best real depiction of a dream-like state. The verses of the song are a collection of whimsical thoughts of comfort. These build up to the chorus in which singer Thom Yorke repeats fervently the words "Nice Dream". This may be just me, but when I listen to this song, it feels very foreign. It's as if there's some strange world out there that could be a comforting home, but its unreachable.

The one sense every person gleans from a dream is that the dream is the only possible reality. Yesterday morning, I dreamt that I had missed my plane to Rome. When I woke, it took me a while to realize that I actually was in Rome. It would have been impossible for me to imagine or realize that while I was stuck in my dream.

So this is what I have to say from all this. Rome feels like a dream. It is foreign, but comforting and home-like, and sometimes it feels like there is no other reality. It feels like I've always lived in the eternal city and I had no other life before it.

"Rome"

In a really cheesy way, this song has been my anthem for the past couple months. Everytime I've listened to it, I've felt like I was focusing all my current goals to this one moment where I could "focus looking forward the colliseum" as the lyrics say. Now while I admit that much of the song is indecipherable and tough to relate to, there is one line that I absolutely love.

When the song breaks down into the quiet, intimate feeling bridge, singer Thomas Mars sings "1,000 years remain in a trashcan/ burn the cigarette somewhere".

I always felt like this was really radical imagery to use to describe the eternal city. But now that I am here, I realize how true it is. Rome is dirty - it really is. The streets are lined with cigarette butts, dog poop (although I think its more sanitary that Italians don't pick up their dogs' poop and less disgusting) and dirt.

But the city has real charm. It really feels like even the trash is old - as if the great civilizations before have conquered years of naturally human failure with even greater successes. All over the city, people put out cigarettes on ancient cobblestone streets framed in the great triumphs of civilization. And in a very unique way, it's a very beautiful thing.

Ciao!
Matt