"Welcome Back to the Campfire" featuring a story by Carlo Pietro Sanfilippo

These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast feature stories finally brought to the stage. The episode you are about to hear was first recorded via Zoom during an online showcase. However, we can now bring you a live, in-person version, along with tweaks and updates to narratives you may have heard before.

This episode features Carlo Pietro Sanfilippo, a past student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class.  These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. 

You can learn more about Carlo on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/welcome-back/

This episode was originally performed in April 2022, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at the High Low in St. Louis, Missouri.

Transcript

Steven Harowitz: 0:12

Hello, internet. It's been a little while. I'm Steven Harowitz. And I will be your host for this episode of the campfire storytelling podcast recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. In this episode, I have something extra special for you because we have stories to share from our return to in person events. Our first event was the Welcome back to the campfire event. And our second was a campfire showcase both events, featured storytellers who told their stories virtually due to COVID. So we invited them back to tell their stories in front of a live audience. Now this episode will highlight one of those storytellers. You can catch all the other storytellers by subscribing to the campfire storytelling podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, let's head to the campfire, to listen to Carlos story from our live and in person. Welcome back to the campfire event.

Carlo Pietro Sanfilippo: 1:18

This is certainly different than sitting on my bed on a zoom call. So Um, So have you ever had someone try to tell you a story? Or try to explain something to you that in the moment, you knew it was important, but you couldn't quite understand what what is what it was? They were trying to tell you? What what was the meaning what was the purpose but you, you could grasp its importance. And so because of that, um because of that, it it you held on to that for years, or maybe maybe it held on to to you and carried along with you as you went through your life. I had that experience with something that my Sicilian grandmother Rosa Lea, tried to tell me once, and it was over three decades, three, three decades later, when I was diving into a series of passions and things I was excited about. um And I began studying the through the life of the Italian Baroque artists, Caravaggio, that I accidentally discovered what Rosa Lea tried to tell me. And so. When I was born, my my grandparents were already had lived in America for 50 years. Uhhh And they moved here when they were 19. And but but after 50 years of being in the US, like like many immigrants, they um, because of their social circle and their family, they hadn't really had to fully master English. And so you know, the Sicilian was still very much part of them in their lives. And when we went over to their house, it was very much as a child, a foreign experience. I mean, everything about so much about that experience was just different and unique. From the moment you walked in the the furniture and the decorations and the sounds and the smells and the taste and the food and certainly certainly certainly the language um was always a struggle to understand. And I remember just listening, and even even from the moment we knocked on her door to go see her as a kid. By that point. She was in her 80s and we'd knock on the door and you'd hear her way before she got there because she had this walker and you just hear the thump, thump. Thump thump. And I remember as a kid feeling sad for her like she was struggling and it was hard. But when she opened the door after what felt like an eternity, she just, this look on her face she just just radiating love and joy and just almost laughing. She was so happy to see us. And uh she she she grabbed me by the face and go Carlo and just kissed me on the face. And she grabbed my brother Mike Oh! and she grabbed my brother and kiss him on the face. And that was one of the mysteries Michael my brother's name was Mark. In all other circumstances, he was Mark. But in that household, among all the other things, I didn't understand why or what was happening or what was being said. He was Michael, and we just accepted it. And one day we were leaving, and it's really even just the leaving was the same as is arriving. She would never have said goodbye and let us walk out she walked us to the door. So this tiny little house it was, you know, a 32nd or less walk but I mean, we went with her and she just thump, thump, thump thump and just she never complained and just would be talkin' the whole way. And we got, One day we got to the door. And she turned and she's looking down at my brother and I and just looking down she was maybe four 4' 11" or something like that. So we were little, but she just was beaming with love. That was one thing that was never never a mystery is her love. She looked down at us. And she said let me tell you why I know his name issa Michael And she dove into some story about the archangel St. Michael, and something about his sword. And a whole lot of things I didn't fully understand. I I just couldn't understand what she was saying because of her accent and the way she said it. And my father was never really good at explaining those things. So she got done with that story, and was beaming down and very proudly said, and that's how I know his name issa Michael. But it was still a mystery. And it stayed a mystery to me for years later. And eventually she passed. And I never I never knew. But for some reason, I always remember that why did she think his name was Mike and I had told myself story that maybe this dimension, or maybe it was this or maybe was that but it was always a mystery. And then, years later, about seven years ago, my father passed away. And something sparked in me because of a lot, a lot of other things I had gone through in my life at that point, where I'm like, I'm just gonna dive into this part of myself. And I grew up and went into this little household that likes felt like stepping into another country. I don't know anything about Sicilian or Italy or Italian. And I just dove in. I I found a teacher online uh via a website and she lives in Rome and Valentina. I start talking every single week, just diving into everything and learning and speaking and suddenly, the language of my grandparents was becoming something I could understand. And then I began diving into, uh I always loved art and history in in college and high school. And I had a chance to start diving into uh to try to understand Italy diving into the lives of these Italian artists that I found so fascinating. So I started devouring biographies about Michelangelo and Leonardo and Raphael and Botticelli and all these people just so so exciting to me, it just finally just feel like I'm getting this connection to this part of me. And uh eventually, I made my way to Italy, and I was in Rome and I got to meet Valentina and Valentina was kind enough to give me this, what felt like this backstage tour, where we're going through Rome, and these little side streets, and a little piazzas, and little nooks and crannies that you might not see if you were there for your first time. And we turn the corner at one point, she's like, ah, we have to go into this church. And, you know, I'm on this journey and I'm, you know, the, these these mysteries of my childhood and the sounds and the smells and tastes are all around me, triggering all these memories and all this just connections back to back to Rosalia, and we go to the church, and I noticed that the name of the church is so la Chiesa is church in Italian. La Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi, which is the church of St. Louis of the French, I'm like eh that's kind of fun. So, so it was like this little fun little synchronicities. I get all excited and she's like, I we have to go in here because there's some Caravaggio paintings. Now, at that point, I know nothing about Caravaggio, except he had painted a picture that was on the cover of the only book I kept from my years of college, like, the old like, all the finance books, everything, I'm gonna I don't need those anymore. But this painting was so beautiful. We didn't even get to study him or his work, or that time periods in that class. But the painting was so gorgeous and amazing. It just, I just stared at it for many, many years, I always kept the book because of the cover, you know, I just loved it. So she's like, well, we have to go into because of the Caravaggio. So we go to the front of the church with the alter is. And we make a left and we go over to the, to this little chapel that's off this nook of the church. And um the chapel had three walls, and each wall had this giant painting from the life of St. Matthew. And they were all done by this artist when he was like 22 years old or something silly. And there was the painting from my book. And we can go ahead and pull that up if you can, that uh big, bigger, I mean, wider than my arms. And uh you know, is way but I mean, I thought it was this big. I had no idea I didn't study it, but like, Well, why how big is it? I don't know this big. But it's huge. And I'm not I'm not a I don't have like a celebrity crushes or sports heroes or anything like that. But staring at that. I felt like one might if they had a celebrity crush, and they turn the corner and there they were. I was just, I was just in awe of this thing. And and an it's, you know, it's, it tells the story when um, when Jesus on the far. You're right. It's standing in the corner and runs into St. Matthews, the tax collector and says, Come with me. And it's this whole story. I could I could do a half hour thing about that. But this whole story of all these things that are happening, it's the first time a biblical story was painted in clothing of that time period had never been done before. And it's just this all this wonderful things happening in real life who is there and all this emotion I'm I'm just struck by it. I stayed there as long as I could without feeling like I was being rude to Valentina. And eventually I left and made my way back home and I'm like, You know what, I need to study this guy because I'm fascinated by anyone that could anyone who's you know, 400 year old artwork that could stur me like that. So I did I start getting all the books and audiobooks and podcasts and everything I could about this fellow. And one day I'm driving along and listen to one of the audiobooks and this author said something that no the other authors had said before, which was, Caravaggio was not the artist's real name. That was his nickname. He was born in this little town of Caravaggio was up, up near Milan know, in the northern northern part of Italy. And there's a lot of Italian names that are very, they use the same names over and over again. So Michelangelo, Leonardo,Vincenzo, Santos, Salvatore, all these names, so people get nicknames, especially back then of like, where they were from to kind of dis. Oh, this is the Michelangelo that's from Caravaggio. Okay, so the other thing you need to know so his name was Michelangelo Morrissey. The Italians still do this, they often will name their children in a certain pattern where the firstborn sons name named after the father's father, firstborn daughter was named after the mother's mother. And then after that, they start picking and choosing from aunts and uncles that they like. So the each family has sort of this limited pool of names that are that families names. Well, Michelangelo was not a Morrissey family name. So why did they pick that and Arthur was going into the specifics of this. He's like, Well, he was born on September 29, which is the festival of St. Michael. And yet, especially back then the plague was still a thing. You know, the infant mortality rates were really high. So anything remotely auspicious, that happened on your child's birth, you did not dare ignore that. So he had to be Michelangelo was born on September 29, September 29, which was also my brother's birthday. And I'm, I'm driving along, and I kind of blanked out for a second because I'm like, Ah, that's, that's what grandma was saying. That's the story. She was trying to tell me. This is something about St. Michael. And that's it. So he had to be he had to be Michael. There's no other choice. He was Michael. And so she told me this, and I just got such great joy. I felt I felt like she was sitting there with me smiling at me, you know, just looking at me like, and that's how I know is that it was a Michael, I knew it now. I just, I could feel her love. I can feel this connection for 30 years of time period with her, and through hundreds of years with this artists who had nothing to do with her. But when you know, all these, you know, when my dad died, and my mom had died recently, I I, I said, I just got to the point where I started saying yes to certain things in my life. I said, Yes, I want to study Italian, I want to figure out this part of my life. And I wanted to dive into these things that were fun electives in college that I just have a real passion for. And, and as I each each, yes, I said, it's time I said, yes, there's something it pulled me like a current towards other things that I had no way of seeing, you know, I would go in that direction. So it's like one door would open and I'd find 12 more doors I didn't know existed, I go to the next door and there'll be 12 more doors. And I really think that if we can if we can make space in our lives for those things, you know, there's, you know, there's so many people I've met as I've always wanted to play an instrument, I've always wanted to go to Machu Picchu, I've always wanted to read this book, when we say yes to those things that our heart is calling us so strongly to it, you don't know what that's going to lead you to, to some, some new passion, a new career or some new life calling, the love of your life, you know, you don't know what what mysteries in your life it may solve in terms of your purpose, or your past or your family, or just yourself and what joy is that that that might come from listening to those things that keep gnawing at us have, I always wanted to do this. I always wanted to go there. I always wanted to try that. So that's what I learned just diving in. And I dive in, I dove into myself and dove in and connected with this deeper aspect of me. Then all of a sudden, all these parts of my life that had been strange and foreign and and un. I couldn't understand them suddenly made sense to me. And suddenly, even the words from my grandma from 30 years ago, were clear. And so I just hope I just hope I want that for everybody to say just say yes to something that's that's calling to you, and follow your dreams and enjoy your journey. Thank you so much

Steven Harowitz: 14:46

That is a wrap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our return to in person events by subscribing to the campfire storytelling podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked whatchu heard, please leave a review. It helps others find our podcast, support our students, and to prove to the internet that we are legit, and not a Rando podcast out in the interwebs. We'd love to have you come out for an event or even take a class, you can visit Campfire dot com. That's cmpfr.com for all the details. Whether you live in St. Louis or nowhere nearby, there are ways to attend our events virtually. You can also find out more about that at Campfire dot com. That is cmpfr.com. As always, a big thank you to the campfire team, our Podcast Producer Jeff Allen, and everyone who attends these live events. Tonights stories were recorded live at the high low one of the wonderful venues that the Kranzberg Arts Foundation runs here in St. Louis, Missouri. Thank you for listening to the campfire storytelling podcast. I've been your host Steven Harowitz. Until next time!