Moon Petal

This is the island where Jason married Media, and the people who live here are the divine offspring of an encounter between Poseidon and Kerkyra, the daughter of the sea-god Asopus. Myths and legends are everywhere here, and they get into all the cracks and corners, and make for a very enchanted place. This is a crossroads between old and new worlds, then, where there might be a blend of the atmosphere of the fresh sea, as well as the old stories washing up on shore, and working their way into a nap tucked inside a hotel in Corfu . Greece is often called the cradle, and it’s a lovely place to sleep and dream.

Waking moments are every bit as exquisite, because island life is hard to turn away from, and it invites a kind of mutual beckoning, between the human and the mythic, the present and the eternal. It only seems right that a singer like Vicky Leandros would have roots here. For any muse, a root needs to be in a place where the line between legend and quotidian becomes blurred, in order to sing as a proper muse should, and she’s had a career that logically moves in many worlds, many directions, all at once.

It moves now, more forcefully than ever, after a comeback in the last decade that re-established her place in the world’s court of divine muses. Until the 70s, she was one-named, Vicky , and the Leandros gave her the weight of a rather distinguished past. As is proper for one born into a land where the citizens are related to gods, her relationships with her forebears are complex and had to exist on multiple continents.

Her music has to live in several languages, Greek, German, English and French among these, and her projects continue to take new turns, surprising audiences with their scope and direction, and she often finds her way back home. Everyone does.

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Nearly everyone who spends any time on Corsica has had moments of an uncanny feeling that this gorgeous and exotic terrain has been visited before in the dreams of the travelers. Even those who come to Corsica to get away from it all and enjoy a few days lost in recreational bliss get the sense that this has all been explored before. Of course, it’s all true, the place has been inhabited for a very long time. The contemporary Corsican culture is at once hospitable and baffling, with a nearly-impenetrable language, and customs that speak to another world at another time.

But Corsica is not simply an idyllic land that has remain unchanged over time. It has gone through an amazing number of evolutions, and is always on its way to becoming something else. Today, the fine cuisine, derived from local customs and supplemented by fantastic twists from the French, Italian, and Spanish, is some of the richest and most delicious food that a traveler could ask for. And its generous hospitality is certainly on display in the gorgeous local hotels , offering a stay that is somewhere this side of paradise.

The landscape is certainly haunting, there’s no question of that. For such a small island, there are infinite variations in terrain, with beaches that are both accessible and impossible, and mountains that seem so dense that they might serve as the perfect training grounds for the French Foreign Legion. Any notion that there have been multiple civilizations making their lives here is not unmistaken. Ptolemy wrote extensively on Corsica, although the writings still seem to give maddeningly scant information about who actually lived here.

Even more mysterious are traces of what some of the places may have held as a function for these earlier civilizations. The megaliths do speak of a sacred function from another time, and they certainly refer to a religious cosmology that is probably lost forever. Or perhaps it can be found somewhere in the music, the polyphonous choruses that hint at a world view that includes endless plays of mystery between the hidden and the revealed.

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Visiting New South Wales is contending with history and the future while enjoying a particularly splendid moment in a present that we all share. It’s a particularly lively part of a particularly lively continent, where multiple cultures collide and collaborate, and this makes for some rather exciting conversations. Having time booked at one of the lovely hotels here means that there is a chance to join in on these conversations in a very direct way.

There are plenty of ways to enjoy time spent here, and it’s all very well spent. For those who might be looking for a bit of a rest from the hectic pace of the city, there are places of unearthly beauty. Ironically, this is some of the most iconic geography on the planet, and has struck the imaginations of human beings here for thousands and thousands of years. For those looking for some urban distractions, there’s also plenty, and it all comes together in the art. It’s been said before that the visual art of a culture can be a key to its history, as well as its future, and in New South Wales, there are keys to be found in Aboriginal Art .

There are many places where the works of the local Australian indigenous peoples are displayed, but one of the most accessible to wide audiences is surely the Campbelltown Arts Centre . For the greater Sydney region, this is one of the more remarkable spots to see all kinds of visual art, along with music, performance, and other art forms that tell stories of the area, as well as stories that reflect the history and future of the planet at large. There is a focus on Aboriginal Art, too, which helps to locate some of the more unique qualities of the place. There are artists working here in a variety of mediums, and all contribute to a very large and complex puzzle, which at times begins to look as looming as the land itself.

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