This summer feels vaguely volcanic. There's a hint of disaster in the air; rather, a potential for disaster. There's no need to state any particular fear because they could all happen without warning: social, political, environmental, spiritual or cosmic. Smoke on the horizon. Not enough to panic, but enough to keep checking the sky.
But summer is also renewal, or at least the possibility of it. There's always a certain mood of hopefulness that inevitably comes with the season. Dormant expectations for a good time.
Taken together, these two feelings are the two sides of the same coin. A looming threat of disaster, but also sunshine. What some (me) would call a Pompeii Summer. Like the famed city trapped in ash, we are on the eve of the eruption, but until it happens, life goes on. Back in 79 AD, Pompeians went to the lupanar to get their freak on, went to work, prayed to their gods. A day later, they were turned to stone by Vesuvius. Is that in the cards for us? It certainly can't be ruled out.
MMXXVI summer feels, ontologically, very much like LXXIX summer. I can't help but wonder, how am I gonna be an optimist about this?
Well, Tom Hiddleston might have the answer. When he was 17, Hiddleston traveled to Pompeii. This was a pivotal moment in his life; it led to him studying Classics and, subsequently, becoming an actor. Many years ago, I went to Pompeii. We walked the same streets and saw the same victims frozen in ash. The difference between us is that the only thing the city inspired me to do was a selfie in very poor taste with dick graffiti behind me. Two very different Pompeii Summers.
I know all of this information about Hiddleston because, last week, he released a documentary series, Pompeii: Out of Time, in which he follows three Roman survivors on the day of the eruption. Through a mix of fact and imagination, he reconstructs their lives, their personalities, their stories.
It's a tough watch, but not because of the palpable humanity of the victims. It's mainly because Hiddleston goes around talking to historians, archeologists, vulcanologists and there's not a single scene where he doesn't seem desperate to show he's an actor. He broods, he cries single tears, he makes his compassion manifest. When the show isn't dramatic, it's quirky. Hiddleston does this thing where he's looking kind of dumb with his finger and his thumb in the shape of an "L". He holds the pose, looks at the camera, and says something like "We can change the past". Then we get a rewind sound effect and jump to the past. He does this constantly. A big part of Pompeii Summer is second-hand embarrassment.
For all its cringe and shortcomings, this show enlightened one of the key aspects of Pompeii Summer: not knowing what the fuck is coming, but being completely certain that we'll still be here in the morning. That's a fact of life in every season, but there's something unique about the way this uncertainty feels in the summer. It's an ambivalent uncertainty. Could be good, could be bad, but it certainly won't be lava, right? (It most definitely was lava). It's a feel-good inertia. Pompeians lived their lives with complete reassurance that there would be a next week. They lived normal lives under the volcano and they were confident that, even if things went terribly wrong, the gods wouldn't erase them from the face of the earth.
For some, Pompeii Summer is all about living as if tomorrow is guaranteed.
For others, it's the exact opposite. Back in 1977, Werner Herzog shot La Soufrière, a documentary about an upcoming volcanic eruption and the people who stayed behind instead of evacuating. Herzog and his crew walk around the desolate streets commenting on how eerie it feels to see the entire town evacuated in such a hurry. The effect is quite striking and similar to that of walking through Pompeii, give or take two thousand years.
We see traffic lights still working while Herzog tells us about the thousands of snakes who washed up on shore escaping the tremors and the vapour from the volcano. Can you get any more apocalyptic than that? We see the town in its final hours before the eruption. As Herzog tells us, there's something hypnotic about this cataclysmic aesthetic, something inviting. It makes you want to stay and walk around the empty city to see the lives they left behind.
The jewel of this little film is a scene where Herzog finds one of the men who stayed. He's made peace with himself and he doesn't mind the volcano at all. He's peacefully sleeping next to a cat the first time we see him. Being there, the only thing he can do is wait. And he shows the camera how he'll wait for death. He lies down, stiff as a board, and tells Herzog, This is how I'll die. He even has a pose he's worked on. Look at that form. Pompeii casts, eat your hearts out.
Very Pomepii Summer of him: Vesuvius, wash over me.
Absurdity and dignity in the face of certain death, what a king. There's something about keeping up with the routine even when you know it's all going to end soon. Another kind of inertia, one that is decidedly fatalist. The men who stayed weren't taken by surprise. They knew what was coming and they just didn't find a reason to leave. We see this man estoically waiting for the pyroclastic flow to end him, and we can't help but want the eruption to come. Not because of him, personally, he seems like a pretty chill dude. But all the buildup, the drama, the ritual. We want a catastrophic outcome.
That man's attitude feels strangely topical and infectious. I have some that in me, at least during this summer.
In the end, nothing happens. The volcano doesn't erupt and, we can only imagine, people go back to their homes. They find the three men who stayed behind, and they carry on with their lives the way they did before. Anticlimactic and cyclical, just like summer.
That cyclical nature could explain why we keep going back to Pompeii as myth. Summer is the definitive time of the year when we think everything is going to change, and the idea of the city itself twists that around. Everything did change for them, irrevocably, but then it froze in time. A stop-and-go kind of feeling.
It's the aesthetic of catastrophe and resurgence. Case in point: Pink Floyd playing live at Pompeii, 1972. Live is a bit of a stretch, as the whole place is dead and deserted. They're playing for ghosts, almost literally. Clash of aesthetics. On the one hand, a not entirely avant-garde, but a very forward-thinking band. The way the future was supposed to sound like. On the other hand, the city trapped in stone for two thousand years. It somehow comes together to turn destruction and decay into a powerful aesthetic.
Summer has to end at some point. They're growing longer because of climate change, yes, but I mean ontologically. Survivors from Pompeii kept on keeping on: they migrated, had families, the whole thing. La Soufrière didn't erupt and Herzog simply got back on a plane and left. The guy waiting for lava to take him wasn't taken. The aesthetics of catastrophe go back in the drawer and wait for the next sunny and desperate season. Pompeii Summer always ends and it always comes back.
Every generation inherits a catastrophe, does what it can to contain it, and then passes it on to the next generation. We all think we're living under Vesuvius, some of us keep going, some of us wait to die, some of us get lost in the aesthetics of it all. Pompeii Summer is all about gaining a new perspective on the catastrophe.
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