“The Nightengale” (Bramasole; Cortona, Italy; for my fine neighbors, Ed & Frances Mayes)

I just finished this…a painting (it’s SMALL, as everything I do is, these days) of Bramasole…Ed and Frances’s home in Cortona, Italy. I’d read Frances’s wildly popular books before I ever met her and Ed (which I finally did, in the grimly pretentious “bakery” section of Durham’s Whole Foods, about a year ago).  And, lo & behold, Herve and I moved to Hillsborough, and the Mayes (the reigning king and queen of Italophiles) turn out to live just down the road, when they’re not in Cortona….and we’ve become friends, as neighbors do from time to time.

It’s very odd to talk in person to Mr & Mrs. “Under the Tuscan Sun” (the title of the memoir and the wildly successful movie based on Frances’s memoir of finding and restoring Bramasole….and the danged movie doesn’t even MENTION that Ed actually exists until the last scene…he’s a very nice & patient man to put up with this, I think).  They’re both just as pleasant and normal as pie.  I would have freaked out six ways from Sunday if I’d been subjected to such public scrutiny and publicity….but they handle it all with remarkable grace.

The title is taken from the remarkably lovely song writeen and sung by Jennifer Warnes: go to :

Yesterday I thought that I walked alone
And that love was just a memory
But a nightingale
Followed me back home
Where my love was
Waiting there for me

I had lost my faith, as lovers often do
When the storm clouds gather overhead
But a nightingale sang a note so true
That I knew I’d lost my fear instead

And to think that I said
Love was for fools
And that time would never heal
These old wounds
But the nightingale saved a prayer for me

In the twilight, he played a faithful tune

I have heard the lark over the vale
And I’ve heard the lonesome whippoorwill
But the sweetest song is the nightingale’s
And I know I’ll never get my fill

And to think that I said love’s for fools

and that time would never heal these old wounds
But the nightingale saved a prayer for me
In the twilight, he played a faithful tune