I am back in Florence. Went to the palazzo vechio today. This huge palace of the medician court from the fourteen hundreds. After a while of seeing all these huge palaces all it makes me think of is building my own empire and getting my own palace. I lose interest in seeing other people’s stuff. I want my own fucking palace. And my own court of eager worshippers.

Thinking a lot about languages. Italian gives a big payoff. Its difficult but speaking it is a pleasure so its worth it. its so musical, speaking it is like a roller coaster of tone, up and down. And the other thing about Italian is it’s the first language I have learned where they do not use “s” to make words plural. It doesn’t exist, this way of doing that. so it’s a totally different way of thinking about the plural. I think French is the same way. Difficult to learn, a real pain, but when you start to flow with it it’s a lot of fun to speak. Of course Portuguese is a lot of fun to speak and feels great in your mouth because you soften a lot of the sounds so its just a lot of fun to say a lot of their words. English is so easy to learn because you don't really conjugate verbs that much. I learn you learn he/she learns (boy that's a big jump) they learn, we learn, you learn, etc. and that's about it. if you want to make it in the past tense you add an “ed.” I learned. How easy is that? Its not fair. What takes years to learn in the romance languages takes about a minute to learn in English. In Italian for the same word “learn” you have 12 different words or phrases to match those same two you need in English as above. And in total, I have counted just the simple tenses, you have about 60 different words for the word “learn” that you have to learn to speak the language, not including the compound tenses, which means you are only speaking half the language. Same with Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Its maddening if you are a native English speaker. We aren't used to it. it feels like a circus in your head when you are trying to form sentences. But the great thing about these other languages unlike the bastard of English is that they’re spelling makes sense, as in most languages. English is the only language where the spelling is just fuck all crazy and anyone can just do what they want to. just make up words that have no sense with the spelling. We've all heard the examples before, through, tough, dough, mow, toe, etc. its ridiculous. it just makes no sense. When you're a kid and they are trying to teach you spelling in English they always tell you to sound it out phonetically. Remember that? it was such bullshit because there is no phonetic logic in English, compared to most other languages. There are too many languages in english. You just have to learn each and every damn word. Cause they are all different. No logic in them because the language has its roots in so many different languages. In the romance languages, once you get it, you got it. there are rules and its very easy to spell within weeks, days even. The other thing about English that is really messed up is that we don't have a word for ‘you’ plural. Its totally crazy, and it causes no end of trouble once you begin to notice it. All the other languages have an actual word for you plural. We don't. we are stuck either saying ‘you all’ or ‘you guys’ both of which make you sound like you just time-warped back to the second grade. But that's English. As everything in this life, the ironies are unbounded.

Last screening: prendimi l’anima. The story of Sabina Spielrein. This is a wonderful movie. This is a must see film. Watching the DVDs is a great way to learn the language.