This episode features Carlo San Pietro, a student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. You can learn more about Carlo San Pietro on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/spring-2021-advanced-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it.
This episode was originally performed in April 2021, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live via Zoom.
This episode features Carlo San Pietro, a student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. You can learn more about Carlo San Pietro on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/spring-2021-advanced-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it.
This episode was originally performed in April 2021, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live via Zoom.
Oh, hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I'll be your host for this episode of Campfire at Home. Today, we gather at the Campfire to hear stories about life and how we live it. In this episode, I have something special for you because we have stories to share from the capstone event of our recent Advanced Storytelling class, featuring Carlo, Melinda and Jude. And the Advanced Storytelling class follows Campfire's philosophy on storytelling and public speaking, which states you focus on the message first, story always. It's always structured in a story format, and you include conversation with your audience throughout. So we kicked off this class with writing our bios using the narrative arc, which is a nice way to refresh ourselves on story structures. And then we stepped into some guided free write and reflection, learned about conversational speaking and stage presence, and then finally got peer feedback and rehearsed our story. From that point, we were ready to go, which brings us to this Campfire at Home episode, you are listening to right now. This episode will highlight one of our four student storytellers. You can catch the other storytellers by subscribing to Campfire at Home, wherever you get your podcasts without further ado. Please welcome Carlo to the Campfire.
Carlo Pietro Sanfilippo:Thank you all for being here. Um, come with me, and I will tell you a story about how, when I learned about the life of the Italian Baroque artists Caravaggio, I solved a mystery that I had from my grandmother, Rosalia, my Italian grandmother Rosalia, that was over 30 years old. So when I was born, my grandmother was already over 70 years old and had lived in this country for over 50 years. And, uh, though she had lived here, like many immigrants, between speaking with her family and her friends, she didn't have to master English. So she spoke this version of Sicilian and English. And so when we would go visit her, it was always a literal foreign experience because we didn't always quite understand everything that was being said. And her, her house was decorated differently because it was just the way she was comfortable with. And so everything was a little bit confusing for me as a child. And, but I knew she just had this joy when we'd come to see her, that she'd be so excited. But one, one thing among many that was kind of confusing is that she'd say, you know,"Carlo," which is my name, but then she called my brother, whose name is Mark,"Michael." Michael. And we didn't know why, but we didn't understand a lot of what was being said. So we just kind of accepted it. And we knew she loved us, and we knew she was happy to see us. So in that household, his name was Michael. But one day she tried to explain and she's standing, you know, with her walker, at this point, well into her eighties and you know, maybe she was 4'11 and just, you know, the poster child of an Italian grandmother just so happy. And she looked at us and she said,"Let me tell you how I know as name was a Michael." And she told us this long story, and it had something to do with the Archangel Saint Michael and his sword. And it went on and on. And then she got done and proudly proclaimed,"And that's how I know his name is Michael." But we were just as confused as we had been at the beginning because there was so many gaps in the story. So, you know, we left that day, and it always, it always stuck with me. So years went by and she passed away. And I always had fond memories of being in her house and remembering, but I always remembered this pieces of story and this mystery. Well, not that many years ago, my father passed away, and I just made a decision to dive into understanding this piece of me and my family. Um, this is the Italian side, this immigrant side. So I started studying Italian and I started studying history of Italy and I had a chance to go there and visit with my, I had been working with an Italian teacher via Skype, and I actually got to go visit her in Rome. And so I was in Rome with Valentina, and we're walking around and getting sort of the backstage tour of this, you know, ancient city. And she's looking at this piazza and that piazza and this church and that church. And we turned the corner and she's like,:Ah, this is one of my favorite churches. We have to go into this church." There's so much serendipity with this, this, uh, this journey. And she said, um, okay, so we look at it and she goes, it was the la chiesa, La Chiesa di San Luigi di Francesi, which is the church of St. Louis of the French. Huh? Cool. And she said,"We have to go in there because it's a beautiful church and there's some Caravaggios you should see." Some Caravaggios. So all I knew about Caravaggio at that point is I had taken two classes, two art history classes in college that were some of my favorite classes. And I, they were easy A's and 20-something-year-old Carlo thought they were just easy classes. I didn't recognize that it was something I was passionate about and excited about. So I, but I was, so I loved the class so much. The art history book is one of the few books I kept from college and partially because the cover had this beautiful painting on it that we didn't even get to study in class. But I later learned, like 15 years after the class, that it was a Caravaggio, and that's all I knew about this guy. He was Italian, and he made the painting on my book. That's it. So she goes,"There's a Caravaggio, some Caravaggios in here." Okay, great. So we go into the front of the church and turn to the left and there's this chapel. And on the chapel, there was a three walls and each wall had this ginormous painting all by this artist, all from the store, all from the book of Saint Matthew from the Bible. And on the one on the left was the painting from my book. And, you know, 20 something years after this class, I was just still enamored by this painting. It's, it's a story from the Bible where Jesus is pointing to St. Matthew, and he says,"Come with me." And St. Matthew was a tax collector. And he's pointing. And he's shocked as anyone in the room because tax collectors in the Roman times were not like the IRS, which some people still don't like, but these were private contractors that the Roman government said,"This is how much money you have to extract from the citizens, and anything extra you can keep, that's no business of ours." So these were, these were not nice people generally. And they would squeeze people and get as much money as they could from them. So he's sitting there with this pile of money, just shocked that this person's coming to talk to him. So, and it was all done, you know, for the first time ever. You know, it was a biblical piece done in period clothing of the day. So there's a lot of things about it that were in its time were shocking and amazing and interesting. And in looking at it, I felt like, you know, when someone sees their favorite musician or artist or movie star or sports star or whatever it was. I just was in awe and speechless. It's so beautiful. It is way bigger than I imagined. 10, 10 feet wide and 10 feet tall. And I had this little book, and I thought it was just, you know, this big. Huge, beautiful. And I was just speechless, and it struck, it impacted me so much. I left that place and I went home and I decided to start studying this guy's life or start reading everything I could about Carvaggio. And I, uh, one day I was driving along and listened to an audio book and I almost drove off the road because the author started telling about just facts about the author. And one of the things you said was Carvaggio was not the artist's real name. It was his nickname because he was born in the town of Carvaggi. His real name was Michelangelo Merisi, and there were so many Giovannis and Francescos and Giuseppes that people often had nicknames where they were from or something to do with their, their physicality. Botticelli means like round barrel. And that's what was the one artist's name? And DaVinci was where Leonardo was born, but Caravaggio was Michelangelo was born. So why was he called Michelangelo? Uh, in, uh, an Italian families, a lot of times, they'll, there's a, there's a tradition of naming the first born son after the father's father and the first born daughter after the mother's mother. And then after that, you start picking from aunts and uncles. Uh, but Michelangelo was not a Merisi family name. So where did that come from? I learned that he was born on September 29th, which is the festival of the arch angel Saint Michael, which during the Counter-Reformation Saint Michael was super, super important. And he was just, this is a big deal. And this was also the time when the plague was still happening. You know, Caravaggio's father and grandfather died from the plague and lots of people that died in Milan from the plague at this time. So anything auspicious was, was present when a child was born, you didn't, you know, ignore that. And so he had to be called, he had to be named after this saint because of the date he was born. Well, I was, I was blown away because that's September 29th is my brother's birthday. That's the story Rosalia was trying to tell me. I felt, I felt like she was sitting in the car with me, smiling. I felt the joy and love that she was trying to express to us every time we saw her. And, um, I felt like she was there and smiling at me. And in there in my head, I could hear,"That's how I know his name is Michael." That's, that's what she was trying to say. And I discovered all this stuff, you know, in a, in a sad time when my father had died and I was trying to understand some pieces of myself, and I said yes, to a curiosity about language. And I said yes, to like some things in me that I'd been interested in going back into studying this art and art history that had been a piece of me for so many years that I kind of buried. And by saying yes, to all those things, I discovered this mystery from my grandmother from decades ago. So if there's things in your life that are calling you or something that you're curious about, just follow that thread and say yes, and you have no idea. You have no idea where that will lead you to and what adventures you'll have. Thank you.
Steven Harowitz:That is a wrap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our Advanced Storytelling graduates by subscribing to Campfire at Home, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked what you heard, classic podcasting, please leave a review. It really does help other folks find the podcast. And it feels nice because it supports the students. We would love to have you at an event or tell your story, take a class. You can visit cmpfr.com. That's C M P F R.com for all of the details. And while our home base is here in St. Louis, you can attend an event or take a class from pretty much anywhere. So again, visit our website cmpfre.com, C M P F R.com. As always, I can't get out of here without first giving a huge thank you to the Campfire team, our podcast producer Jeff Allen, and everyone who attends these live events. Now, tonight stories were recorded live on Zoom from all over. Thanks for listening to Campfire at Home. I have been your host, Steven Harowitz. Until next time.