Paris au Moyen Age

You can slap my wrist later because I haven't done anything even remotely related to my project for almost a week.  For now, you can be proud of me because I got out of the apartment before noon today without the excuse of having to meet my landlady or the necessity of going to a church meeting.  This is what got me out and about today:

Yes.  That's right.  Medieval Paris.  I think I'm in love, and also, I should have known that 1920 isn't long enough ago.  I was walking through the Montparnasse Cemetery the other day, disappointed that all those people had died between 1875 and 2011.  "Isn't there anyone who's been dead LONGER?"  I'm going to Montmartre Cemetery one of these days to see if people there have been dead longer.  After I get my bearings in the parts of Paris I can walk to, I'll start venturing out to the parts I have to Metro to and walk back from.  I'm hoping my shoes will be nice and worn in by then.

Anyway, Medieval Paris.  I went to St.-Sulpice the other day and just about died

(of happiness).

It's just about that beautiful in person, except all that open space around it is a lie.  There's a nice big square out in front of it, where some boys were playing football before I went in to attend messe and they were still there when I got out an hour later, so I sat and watched them for a while.  I have to admit, Catholic mass feels different from an Anglican service, which I've been to half a dozen of.  Even in the center of Paris, there are local paroissiens/parissioners--um, I don't know the spelling in either English or French, so you'll have to take a cross between the two--and its much like it must have been a hundred years ago: a community church service.  Only there are less people than there used to be (or so I assume) and several of the people attending are tourists (I'm going to count myself as one of them for the time being).  I do prefer the church when its silent and I get to walk around and sit and worship God in my own way, but I'm glad to have had the experience of mass, regardless.

St. Sulpice opened doors.  I decided to do some research on it because I want to write an architecture piece on it for one of my classes.  I started with wikipedia, which is really a lot more useful than academia gives it credit for.  And I found this.

And this is what I thought: "Holy Hell.  Streets.  That existed then.  That might exist now."

So it started a long and involved internet search for Medieval maps of Paris in which one of the maps I found was the first one I posted above.  I encourage you to click on the picture and see it at full resolution, if it lets you.  It's awesome.  Well, I'd been wanting to go to St. Germain-des-Prés, when what should I find out but that it's the oldest church in Paris, founded in the 6th century by the SON OF CLOVIS (relaying this information makes me want to cry--seriously).  ARE YOU HEARING ME?!  CLOVIS!  (Also, a Medieval side-note: Clovis-->Clouis-->Louis.  The French have been using that name for a long time.  Is your mind blown?)  Anyway, the tower of the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés was finished in 1014.  You're probably one of those people to whom dates mean nothing.  1014 was almost 1000 years ago.

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.

That's a thousand 0's.  For you.  To see how many 0's it would take to make a thousand.  One 0 at the end of every year.  That's a LOT of years.  Okay.  So here I am just looking at this map of this ancient church that used to sit on this one street in--and I realize, it still does.  I can GO.  I can GO.  It's like...a 20 minute walk.  So I decided to make it a Medieval Monday.  I woke up, got ready to go out, and started on my Medieval Monday adventure.  I walked down to Luxembourg Gardens, then down St. Michel, and ancient Roman thoroughfare, past the Abbey Cluny, now the Musée du Moyen Age, left on Blvd. St-Germain, and down, down, down the street until I got to St. Germain-des-Prés.  St. Germaine of the Fields.

I walked in.

Choeur Des Moines De L'abbaye De Saint Benoît Sur Loire – Fantaisie En Do Mineur

I wish you could hear my laugh.  The happy laugh I get when I walk into really old cemeteries.  That kind of laugh.  The "Yes, I really AM here," laugh.  Because the organ was playing.  It reverberated through the entire church.  I don't know if you know what that sounds like.  These old stone churches were made for noise: for singing, for the organ; for soft chattering.

Sometimes one of your senses takes over, disallowing any other from experiencing a space.  I'm fairly certain I was blind for a few moments after I walked into the church because my ears were taking in the surrounding.  But eventually my ears gave in to my eyes.  Not many people know that the ancient statues outside of the medieval churches like Nôtre-Dame and the old Greek and Roman statues used to be painted.  (At the musée du Moyen Age at the Hôtel Cluny/Abbey Cluny (Hôtel-->Hostel, just another word in French for Mansion, basically) they've got some of the heads of the old statues that used to be part of Nôtre-Dame before they were broken off and destroyed in the revolution, and the ancient statues still have red on the lips and cheeks, and green in the eyes, left over paint from long ago.)  In ancient-style, nearly every inch of Saint-Germain-des-Prés is painted.  The columns, the archways, the walls, the ceiling--everything but the floor.

St-Germain-des-Prés

(Cette image est tirée de simplyparis.org)

I didn't take this picture, and it is a beautiful picture, but it doesn't do the place justice.  The inside of the church is darker than this, so much darker.  And the light is not so soft.  It's creepier, somehow.  And yet still, the color comes through, not like a shine, or a punch, but a resonance, refusing to wear away, though it fades.  I have no idea how often they've restored the paint, and I have no idea if it looks anything like what it looked like when it was painted in antiquity, but the point is certainly gotten across.  No other church I've gone in to is painted this way on the inside, though it gives a good idea of what many of the churches must have been like before they were destroyed during the Revolution.

That's another thing to think about.  Here in Paris, the Revolution happened, but no one in particular started it, carried it out, or even felt the effects of it.  It is almost always spoken of in the passive tense.  "Destroyed during the Revolution," but not destroyed by whom?  Destroyed for what reason?  The Revolution is spoken of like a force of nature that came through Paris, destroying the things people miss most about how Paris used to be: the history, the age, the culture; but blame is attached to no one in general reference to the Revolution.  That's very interesting to me.  I can't tell yet, but will get back to you about whether I deem it shame, reverence, respect, a knowledge of happenstance, a statement of fact, or something else entirely as a reason why they speak of the Revolution this way.  In America we kind of think of the French Revolution as this interesting point in history.  Here...the scar isn't interesting, it's just a reminder of pain.  I'll get back to you on this.

Most of the abbey of St.-Germain-des-Prés was destroyed during the Revolution, but the little church still stands, par la grâce de Dieu, I'm sure.  This reminds me of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  I do believe God saved that place from ruin; why not these churches in Paris?

So I walked in.  Organ playing, making the place creepier than it would have been in silence.  Entire inside of the church painted, making it darker than St. Sulpice.  Smaller than Nôtre Dame, but still with plenty of Chapelle's around the nave and transept.  Candles burning--I lit one in L'Eglise St.Etienne du Mont the other day, so decided not to light one here.  It's less crowded than Nôtre-Dame, or even St. Sulpice; it's easy to misread as a small parish and decide to walk past after seeing the likes of those other churches.  And I know I keep comparing these churches.  Here's why: they told me when we went to London that I'd get sick of going into the Cathedrals and churches, that after a while they'd all start to look the same, or feel the same.  I'm not saying I'm special or anything, I'm no cathedral-whisperer, but that's never happened to me.  They're all so different, they've all got a very particular feel.  Maybe it was knowing that St.-Germain was the oldest, but I think I could really feel it.  It kind of took me by the spirit and clenched its fist around my insides and didn't let go until I left.  I wasn't uncomfortable, but I was sad.  Does anyone else get that way in places with lots of history?

I sat and thought and wrote for about an hour before leaving the church and walking around the area, particularly down Rue du Four, which is a street that existed in Medieval times, despite the names of all the major roads (St. Michel, St. Germain, etc) having changed.  I decided to wander through some of the smaller roads, making my way back to St. Sulpice, and then returning to Abbey Cluny.

Abbey Cluny I have been more or less fascinated by for two weeks, since I first walked by it with Kate on Bd St-Michel.  Old buildings do that to me.  It was an old Roman Bath, I believe, then an Abbey, then it was destroyed, and made into an Abbey again, and destroyed and into an Abbey again, and then destroyed and built onto by some rich woman who bought the land.  (This is all very spotty history, so don't take my word for it.  It's just to give you an idea.)  I kept telling myself I'd go to the Museum, but didn't, and didn't.  Then it became Medieval Monday, and what do you know...there I was.

I had a somewhat successful conversation in French with the man who I bought my ticket from.  He treated me like I wasn't an idiot, which was preferable.  I asked for a student ticket, he asked if I "had less than 26 years."  I said yes.  He asked to see my ID and I said, I'm American.  He smiled and said, "Tarif Reduit" (Reduced Cost).  I said, "Parfait."  He told me there was an audio guide in the next room, and that I could get it in English.  I said, "Merci."  And then I went on my way.  My conversation with the audio guide woman was less perfect because she started speaking to me in English as soon as I asked for an audioguide "en anglais."  I was going to ask for it in French but decided I was really too curious about the middle ages in France to lose half of the information I could get by listening to it in French.  I'm working on it.

My camera died which wasn't even on the radar for me.  So here are some pictures (the ones I could salvage) from my phone, which hasn't died since I got into Paris, as it's got no SIM card and is on flight mode.  Glorious.  But the pictures aren't so glorious.  I'll go back to the Museum and get pictures of the outside, the pleasure gardens (if you want the explanation of that, you can ask for it, and I'll give it), and the Hotel du Cluny.

Roman foundation and brickwork:

The reason Roman buildings NEVER go away.  These bricks are slabs, so walls are more than a foot thick.  The Romans feared being forgotten and made sure they wouldn't be.

Roman ceiling.  Fascinating to me, but maybe not to you.

Hotel du Cluny, the Abbot had his personal chapel.  Here is the staircase leading up to it.

Here are my feet, standing on the floor of the chapelle.  I love floors and ceilings of old buildings best.

Two other things I loved about the museum.

Arms room.  Old weapons/shields/armor are awesome.

This sculpture carved of wood.  My favorite in the museum.

A common theme of thought for the day was that only the history of the rich is ever really kept.  I, of course, was very interested in all of the things I saw, listened to and read about today, but it was very apparent to me that I was reading and listening to the history of the rich, or of the church--which was rich.  There is so little written or recorded about the lives of the common people who lived in Medieval Paris, and that's something I'd like to spend some time looking into.

The man who did a lot of the excavation for Cluny III, the ruins of the third abbey of Cluny, was an American--Kenneth J. Conant.  He dedicated his life to Medieval Architecture, particularly that of Cluny.  I love that he made such a difference somewhere so far from home.  That he gave this place something they hadn't given to themselves.  I think sometimes it takes someone from the outside to remind the people on the inside of how interesting their history and their ruins are.  It takes someone from the outside to ask the questions that no one else thinks important to ask.  Can you imagine what else is under these Parisian roads and buildings?

The last time I wrote a post this long about the things I learned someone made a comment about it being too academic for them.  This should not have hurt my feelings, but it did.  I get that I've been in school for my entire life, but honestly academic??  This stuff is interesting.  So keep your mouth shut and don't relay this kind of information to me in the future.  If you're interested in me reporting on something else other than what I did while in Paris or something other than the fascinating stuff I'm seeing WHILE IN PARIS, then let me know and I'll be happy to oblige if you find a nice way to say it.  I'm the only me you've got, so take me or leave me.  (I'm guessing most of you will opt for the leaving me part...eh, oh well.)

I proceeded to come home and listen to Chants Gregorien late into the night while eating crepes and nutella, which I'm sure they did in the medieval ages, also.

Any suggestions about what Tuesday's theme should be?

When you're talking to yourself, who are you talking to?

I want to talk about my father.  Not for any particular reason, I suppose, just who he is.

My father was born in Washington State, of New England stock, the fourth--and last--child of Richard and Marjorie Plaisted, who are individually their own stories.  From his mother, my father inherited abounding generosity, or at least I imagine it was from his mother because that is mostly what I remember about her.  From her he inherited a love of mystery, a love of movies, a love of reading, a love of cooking.  From his father I imagine he inherited a stoic and admirable work ethic which dictates that his family always comes first.  I remember little of my grandfather, but this I imagine to be true above all else.

I think I am more like my father than I am my mother, which it took a long time for me to figure out.  I think perhaps I have more of him in me.  Not necessarily his good qualities, though if I can live up to those some day, I most certainly will, but a lot of his interests, a lot of his tendencies, a lot of his ideas.  My father got me hooked on hauntings, on mysteries that can never be solved--I always imagine his favorite is Stonehenge.  Because of my father I sit through the credits of every movie.  I love cities.  I love art and museums.  I don't like camping.  I write.  And I don't think these are things I necessarily chose.  In some ways I think they were born into me.  Because I never thought, "I want to be like him, so I will do A. B. and C."  I never thought that at all.  I'm just becoming who I am, and that happens to be a whole lot like him.

My mother would probably disagree with me, but I can't recall either of my parents ever telling me I was beautiful.  My father doesn't say things like this.  My mother said once, "How did I get three such beautiful girls?" I nearly cried for thinking that maybe she really did think I was beautiful.  But on two occasions my father has said to me in public and in private that he thinks I look like his mother.  I have never heard him say that he thinks his mother was beautiful, but it's in his voice that he thinks she was one of the best women that ever existed.  I think he knows I think that too.  So when someone said to my father in public, "Your daughters all look like your wife," which was most certainly meant as a compliment because my mother is beautiful, he said, "Well, I think Jennifer looks more like my mother."  And though I do think my mother and I looked quite similar at certain points in our lives, this comment wasn't just observational, but meant something more, it meant he thought I was beautiful.  Funnily enough, I think if he'd said, "Yes, I think my daughters do look like Paula," I would have interpreted it the same way--that he thought we were beautiful.  It was the comment he made on my looks at all that made me think--maybe he really does think this about me.

I want to tell you something else about my father.  He learned French when he was in grade school, which he attended in New England.  He also, I believe, took French classes in High School.  He never spoke french, except for every once and a while we'd ask him to recite some french literature he'd memorized as a kid, which he did gladly.  When I decided I'd be taking French, he started saying things to me like 'Allons-y' when he wanted us to leave the church building after church.  Or 'Je ne sais pas' (said: J'une say pah) when he didn't have an answer to things.  When I'd try to say things in a french accent, he'd correct me.  He'd say words over and over and over again until I heard the difference between the way I was saying it and the way it was mean to be pronounced.  The word 'beouf' (beef) comes to mind.  When I came back from my first few semester of taking french, my father started buying French films.  Oh, dozens of them!  When he'd never owned a french film before.  He spoke to me in french when I came back for breaks, and he watched french films with me in the evenings when everyone else was out of the house.  He'd done this before, when I started listening to Frank Sinatra, he suddenly bought a hundred Sinatra albums he didn't own before, which he still buys and listens to, and gives to me when I come home so I can load them onto my computer.  No one else in my family has ever done that for me and I don't ask it of them, but he did it on his own, and that's something that still impresses me.

Now, why is beauty so important?  Why is sharing collective interests so important?  Or why is what we say and how we say it so important?  I feel something I've been fighting against in this class is this idea that other cultures are so different from ours.  And I keep screaming from the rooftops, "Ours isn't so easy to figure out either!" and I just need someone to say, "Yes, you're right."  I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not sure if I believe in hegemony.  Because I think about my family and how many different types of people I've had to learn how to communicate with--people who consider themselves American through-and-through, who have put me through the wringer!  I mean, how often have you tried conversing with a New Englander?  It's freaking hard!  But I grew up around that, and there are ways my father communicates that remind me of Hemingway's iceberg (so I call it--where he discusses in his writing that only the bare essentials need to be said to get across a larger meaning) and I find more comfort in one word from my father than I do in twenty sentences from a friend across the hall.  Because I understand what he means, and who he is, and what he's saying.

My mother's communication is not so easy for me to navigate, and yet I've been living with her for just as long, and have been communicating with her effectively for longer.  But as I change, and as my culture changes, she and I have a harder time understanding one another.  Well what does that mean?  For me, it means culture changes.  It means that we can't go in to another culture thinking that "These people are French so they will act this way, this way and that way."  No.  Because if someone said, "Oh, Jennifer is American, which means she think this, this and that," chances are they'd be dead wrong about me.  Because they're communicating with someone who has created their own culture, who comes from two cultures that are worlds apart even if both American.

But, something I find great interest in is the ideas of values.  I think you can make more general blanket statements about cultural values.  As an American, I am bound to value certain things.  It doesn't mean that other cultures don't value those same things, but that there are some I can pick out for certain.  If the French value eloquence, and grandeur, and family then I can safely say that as an American I value independence, individuality and simple pragmatism.  The interesting thing about values is that one need not embody the values they hold dear.  Not every American is pragmatic, just like not ever Frenchman is eloquent, however we sometimes value things we do not embody ourselves.  And this is an extremely interesting idea to me.

My father is not a particularly mysterious man.  But he values the unexplained and the uncertainties of life and of other people.  Furthermore if we talk about politics in the house, he's rarely in favor of propositions that will make him pay more in taxes--he believes in independence, he believes in sustainability--and I think he believes others should be able to support themselves.  And yet I know no one more generous than my father.  Without me perhaps my father would have never bought those french films, and we'd be 24 french films poorer in the Playstead household, but my father seems to value shared experiences.  And though my father values the time he spends on his own, no one else in the family thinks of as many things as he does for things we can do together.  Watching movies, going to plays, driving up the coast for the weekend, seeing museum exhibits.  The rest of us would sit in separate rooms of the house if he didn't pull us together to sortir.  Where do these values come from?  They could be American, they could be values of the Pacific Coast, or of Los Angeles, or of New England.  But more likely--as any good American would believe--they're the values of an individual, who is all of those things, and is also himself.

That's culture.

un bonheur ordinaire, est-il possible?

Je sais que je ne comprendrai tous les chose.  Mais je peux essayer.

Elle me dit, qu'elle aimerait changer d'air

C'est vrai que par ici, les vies prennent la poussière

Elle me dit, qu'elle voudrait voir la mer

D'autres pays, un bonheur ordinaire

Elle me dit, qu'on pourrait se défaire

De ces utopies, qui rendent nos nuits amères

Elle me dit, ses doutes et ses colères

Comme aujourd'hui, lassée de toucher Terre

Même si notre histoire peine à s'écrire, j'ai le scénario

Même si l'on s'égare dans l'intro

J'ai, tu as tout ce qui me faut, j'ai tout ce qu'il te faut

Elle me dit, le pire et le meilleur

Le bleu et le gris, mes poches vide à toute heure

Elle me dit, que l'issue lui fait peur

Que je m'appuie sur trop d'apesenteur

"Elle Me Dit" - Ben L'oncle

God made this man for me.  A black, french, blues/soul chanteur.  Il n'y a rien de mieux.

I've been studying this song for a while now.  Je l'aime parce qu'elle lui disais "ses doutes et ses colères" mais il ne demande rien d'elle.  Within the first two lines he validates her doubts, her need for a change of scenery, "It's true, that here life gathers dust."  And with the rest of the song, he need not validate her, because you know he's listening, he respects her views, and is free to go along with them, because he believes she's right.  And why not?  For she has some beautiful ideas.  "She tells me, we could get rid of these utopias that make our nights bitter."  Une belle idée, n'est-ce pas?  Se défaire de ces utopies--les utopies qui n'existent pas--qui rendent les nuits amères.  Parce que c'est alors seulement qu'ils écrire leur propre scénario, et trouver "un bonheure ordinaire."

And I love her worries, her "doubts."  Tired of touching the ground.  Relying too much on weightlessness.  And he's going along with it.  Je l'aime parce qu'elle sait qui sait qu'elle peut lui dire ces choses, sans de jugement.  She's not holding anything back, you know?  And he, he's just telling us.

I think we fear that quite often--that when we tell others what we want out of something--life, maybe--that we will be judged for it.  I can't remember the last time I told anyone what I really wanted out of life, or why.  But the more no one asks, the less I care what my answer is.  The more I do what I can, what I want, without worrying that I'm pleasing anyone but myself, and God maybe.  I think that's an important part of this learning process.  That maybe it's not so much about the project I want to do but just being.  Finding that raison d'être as we would say the french would say.  Or maybe finding les raisons d'être pour les autres.

Isn't that what I really want? C'est la musique, non?  Pour tout le monde.  It's a big part of everything, I think.  And I take a long time to realize what its for.  Healing, maybe?  I'm just thinking now.  But what I mean to say, is that what I really want is to come back to the things that keep me sane.  Music.  Writing.  Curiosity.  Fairness.  Learning.  Exploration.  People.  And so maybe what I need to do is leave this "project" alone for a little while, and focus on what I want to get out of this experience, sans le projet.

"Feeling Bad for No Reason"

I know nothing about music apart from what I like.  I don't even think I could tell you what (and if there is anything) I don't like.  But lately I've been wondering maybe how I can be a little more specific in my work here, studying African-American expatriates in Paris and I've been giving some thought to what got me interested in African-American culture in the first place.

As a kid who grew up in Los Angeles I spent a good amount of my childhood in a car--in traffic.  You know, I'm sure my parents would report different, but I don't really remember minding, and as a child who grew up in a car--in traffic--my favorite pastime of traveling is still listening to music.  I would lie in the back of the van with my ear next to the car speaker while we were in bumper to bumper traffic listening to my dad's mix tapes and the oldies station.  I never got to choose what to listen to, and I don't think I ever expressed preference--except when I complained that the Classical music made my stomach hurt, which by the way is still the case, and my parents would change the radio station.  But there was one song in particular that was played often on KEARTH 101.1 which I have loved and never tired of.  "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye.  I cried if my father tried to change it.  Alas, when I had no knowledge of skin color, no understanding of race, no preference for one or the other, Marvin Gaye was my first love.

It was years later, probably High School when I found a Marvin Gaye album on my father's shelf and found this song again, and never let it go after that.  My family can vouch for how often Gaye's "What's Going On" album was played in our house that year.  I followed Marvin Gaye straight into the history of Motown, into the legacy that was black music.  It didn't take long to find Big Band from there, and Swing, and Jazz, and for a little while I lost myself in Frank Sinatra, and Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw.  This, by the way, is a nice place to loose oneself.  But I soon returned to what really got me going.  Duke Ellington and Count Basie emerged.  Then, I continued to pry into the music of African-American culture.  And I was in love again with these voices.  Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, oh, Louis Armstrong, and then I found Fats Waller, Bessie Smith--and I just kept going. Robert Johnson, Josephine Baker.

My sister caught on to the whole thing.  She started listening to some Soul, to some Gospel, and so my family were plunged into the world of African-American music.  I started studying French, and found through a professor here at BYU Ben L'Oncle, a French-Blues singer who I fell in love with.  I came home and stopped listening to anything else, other than this soulful, bluesy stuff that was melancholy and imperfect.  And I was thinking, why is this something I can't let go of?  Why is this something that is so much a part of me that I can't say "I'm going to study African American expatriates" without saying, "You know?  Josephine Baker... Ada "Bricktop" Smith.  And what I want to want is to study the writers, and the intellectuals, but I think I'm going to have to admit to myself sometime that its the collision of France which has always appreciated the melancholic with old African American blues and jazz which has rarely had reason to be anything other than melancholic, that really gets me.

Maybe that gives me a place to start.  I've been wondering--why France?  What's the point in going there?  Who will I talk to?  What will I study?  I don't know anything about music, but could I?  Could I do something right by Marvin Gaye?  Pay  him back for this gift he's given me.  And keeps giving me.

In defense of Annotated Source for 1 February

I know that this isn't a scholarly article, a documentary or a book, but I am not an anthropologist.  In fact I am an American Studies major, and part of my project is going about studying the experience of African-American expatriates in Paris with the methodology of the American Studies field.  A very big part of that is 'Textual Interpretation' in which you read the books, listen to the music, view the art, etc. of the men and women who lived in Paris, conversed in Paris, created in Paris, etc.  Josephine Baker's Complete 1926-27 recordings is one of a list of books, music, or art, that I will be citing.  Art pieces will not be cited, though records of 'gallery' shows will be.  Part of the American Studies methodology is putting the art in the context of the history, the institutions and the social implications they would have come into contact with, making this album extremely relevant.

Baker, Josephine. Complete Record Works. 1926-27. A piece for textual interpretation, to be taken into account as the first of her recorded works while she was in Paris.  She stayed in Paris and/or France basically for the remainder of her life, returning to New York for a short while, only to realize that she didn't want to deal with the racism there and returning to Paris.  To fully understand these people and what they expereinced as Americans in Paris, one must read their writing, listen to their music, view their artwork, and roam their city.