You know how it is: sometimes you wake up on a Sunday morning, the day when you can laze that wee bit more in bed, and stretch, and through still-half-shut eyes you look at the wall and you go: “Hmm, maybe we really ought to paint that wall white, it would make the room brighter and everyone would be chirpier.”
Well, I do, and I’m not the only one. I’ve had girl friends waking up thinking: “Hmm, maybe we ought to have a giant mural on that wall over there, like the one there is in Sliema”; or “I want to paint the kitchen the colour of burgundy wine; I’m sure it will turn me into a Nigella Lawson”; or “I want to rip the roof open, cover it with glass and turn the bedroom into a bed-garden”; or “I want to get 10 green olive trees for the terrace so they’ll be the last standing on the wall when all green patches have been turned to towers”.
These Sunday morning muses, I suspect, tend to come mostly to women. Men, I believe, just wake up with a rested, project-free, tabula rasa. For example, the Significant Other wakes up thinking: “Ah, as I slowly open my eyes I can see the room. I love everything just as it is and I hope no one is thinking about changing anything in this already-perfect (very, very dark) room.”
Men, according to a friend of mine, are not really fond of home interior changes. “I just want to go home and find the armchair in the exact same spot day in, day out. For us, it’s a source of comfort. When there are changes it takes a lot of getting used before we grudgingly admit that things look better.”
Unless they are US President-elect Donald Trump, that is. He wakes up thinking: “Now, let me see, what else can I cover in gold?”
I have spent the entire week fascinated by the Trump Towers interiors. I am very much a believer that you are what your house looks like, which means the new US President will be a walking role model of glitz, gaudiness and grim tastes.
His home is a gold apartment at the top of his very own 68-storey tower. His lift is a cage of gold. His front door is encrusted in gold and diamond pieces. Step inside and it’s like a version-gone-awry of the Palace of Versailles: ceiling-to-floor marble pillars and floors, massive Phantom-of-the-Opera style chandeliers, mirrored ceilings, ceilings decorated with fat cherubs, huge fountains in the sitting rooms, crested gold beds and lots of curled and contorted chairs, obviously coated in gold. Journalists who have been inside his apartment over the past three decades all describe it as “a sea of gold”.
The new US President will be a walking role model of glitz, gaudiness and grim tastes
“There’s gold even on the lolly bowls, toys and glasses,” wrote one Australian journalist.
From what I can gather, between the bits of gold displays, there are vases with plastic roses, chocolate coins in the shape of a T, and loadfuls of cushions all bearing the Trump coat of arms.
Is this what it means to be very, very rich? To wake up and go: “I want my bedsheets in gold foil. I want to drink breakfast from a golden chalice. I want to sit (and fart) on a cushion that has my name.”
Who on earth would aspire for a house like that? Who watched the CBS interview of the President-elect with his family sitting on those golden chairs and went: “Wow, I might just coat the dining table and chairs in gold”?
I think this election has officially crowned vulgarity and bad taste. That usually does not limit itself to interiors – we simply have to wait a mere while for manners and etiquette to go berserk, not to mention international political decisions.
All we can do at this point is fervently hope that won’t wake up in the morning wanting to repaint the white walls of the White house in Trump gold.
■ What is happening to St James Cavalier? It used to be an artistic haven, a place where whatever time you’d go, the chances were you’d bump into someone from the arts circle, and you’d end up chatting about fun, crazy ideas or projects. It used to be buzzing with… life.
Yes, there are still exhibitions being held, and yes there are still events going on, but on the whole building smells of a stale canteen. If you go in with an inspiration for an artistic project, the shabby state of the building stamps on it and kills it in the bud.
I understand that it has gone through a whole rebranding exercise. We are now not to call it SJcav anymore; we must call it Spazju Kreattiv. Now, I’m all for bilingualism, but not when that’s the only innovation, and not when the vibe to the majestic building is the opposite of a creative space.
St James Cavalier was the nation’s gift to itself at the turn of the millennium. Let’s not forgo it. We are at a time when we desperately need to breathe in true and proper culture.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti