Getting Some Culture

Originally posted March 23, 2004

I have always wondered what it would be like to be one of those people who gets season tickets to the Kennedy Center and knows where the best “post-show” bistro is, who goes to sleek intellectual bars and discusses the latest art exhibits with knowing refinement and depth over a glass of chilled rosé, who wears artsy and elegant clothes, who can tell you how to get from Dupont Circle to the 9:30 club without looking at a map and who knows where all the one- way streets are.

I have spent the last week going to WAY more cultural events than I had ever imagined for myself in so little time. Between last Tuesday and this coming Friday night, I will have attended three concerts (one string quartet, one jazz, one Irish traditional) one ballet, one opera, one play, and one invitation-only special night opening of the Louvre for a sneak preview of the newest exhibit. I feel like I’m getting sucked into that world of all black, Prada eyeglasses, and arguments about existentialism. The first concert was Tuesday night at St. Chapelle. I heard “Les Archets de Paris” which is a string quartet who has been together for a number of years doing these concerts. As I was walking to the concert after work it was warm enough to take off my jacket, the sun was setting on the Seine, and I was filled with contentment. I met my friend Marie at the entrance to the Palais de Justice, and just within whose walls lies St. Chapelle. The windows were all aglow with the golden waning light, and then the music started, Pachelbel’s Canon in D… utter bliss. The main violinist gave me the impression he was rushing. I think its for one of two reasons: 1) because these concerts are for tourists and they perform two per night, two or three times a week so its routine for them, or 2) he just wants to show off how fast he can make his fingers fly on the neck of his instrument. It’s probably a little of both. He was pretty showy. I still enjoyed myself. The last song they played was “Summertime” by Gershwin and that was the crowning achievement of the concert for me because they finally took their time and gave it that lilting, jazzy syncopation that makes you feel like you’re reclining lazily in the cool grass on a balmy August night lit by stars. Sigh…

Wednesday was just another day at work. We went out to celebrate St. Patty’s Day that night along with every other American, Brit, and Irish person in Paris. It was a little out of control and not really fun. And the Guinness just wasn’t as good. I was really waiting for Thursday, which brought the arrival of the AIFS kids from Grenoble on their semesterly trip to Paris. I got a call from Christi (of Christi and Karla’s November Italian Adventure fame) telling me they had arrived, I finished my work for the day early and finagled an early departure, then went home, changed, and out again to meet them. It was fantastic to see the girls and their familiar, smiling faces. They ended up having an extra ticket for the ballet at Opéra Bastille that night so they were kind enough to give it to me for free. I probably couldn’t have even considered going to this show had this opportunity not arrived. All I knew was that it was choreographed by some super popular Frenchman and had very innovative scenery. I was expecting new-wave (i.e. bizarre and unbeautiful) movements and themes that are supposed to be deep but are so deep (or so shallow) that no one gets them. I was pleasantly surprised.

The ballet’s music consisted of an hour and a half of trance music mixed with Spanish guitar and metronome ticking, accordion and African percussion. The scenery was definitely innovative, to say the least. At one point, the giant orange and yellow two-dimensional pyramids on stage started moving back and forth across the stage and then they attached black half moons that started rocking back and forth in synch with the metronome ticking. That was a little too weird for me and I almost gave up on the spectacle at that point. The ballet seemed to progress either in the form of the changing seasons and/or the human life cycle plus some of the afterlife. There was a representation of hell, there was one sort of Egyptian scene, there was one that seemed like Spring, one like fall, then the last scene (the coolest one) was all in black and white and all the dancers came out in long checkered coats that lightly swept the floor so you couldn’t see their feet and they looked like they were floating across the stage. They did this thing where they all wove in and out of each other in snakelike lines and it looked like they were not moving their legs, just gliding from one place to another on little discs without touching the floor. The ballet was an aesthetic smorgasbord, but I didn’t really get it. I just kind of sat there watching the colors and the sometimes smooth and elegant, sometimes epileptic and crazed movements, and of course the moving pyramids.

That was Thursday night. We all went out to dinner to an Indian place after the ballet which was pretty good. Bastille is always so animated. It’s definitely my favorite place to hang out at night. Friday night I was tired, the Grenoble kids had something else scheduled, and after running some errands I just kind of chilled out at the apartment with my books and started making preparations for Lauren’s arrival in two weeks. Saturday night I met some girls from BU at the center to plan some trips and then I went over to our director’s house to help his wife and a few other girls from the program cook the Russian dinner that was organized for that night. We made Borscht and these dumplings, all from scratch, and they were fantastic. (Russian Night is admittedly not the most obvious theme to pick for a soirée but the director’s wife and two of the girls in the program who organized the event are Russian, so there you go.) It was a good cultural experience and the director (same stuffy man who holds his lapel when he talks) went off about the Crimean war which I don’t really remember anything about, so I learned some interesting things.

Sunday I went to church at the American Anglican/Episcopalian Cathedral in Paris and had a lovely morning singing from the 1982 hymnal which is what I grew up with so it was a little piece of home. After church I met Christi and Brooke (of Brooke and Karla’s September Swiss Adventure fame) for lunch. I took them to this place called “Le Pain Quotidien”* which does a French Brunch on Sundays. They start you off with a gigantic basket of croissants, pain au chocolat, fresh baked rolls and thick slices of home made bread on which you slather any combination of the wide array of spreads they provide. You can pick from pear preserves, acacia honey from the mountains which is super thick, opaque and sooo delicious, praline, vanilla-caramel or chocolate-hazelnut spread (all three are kind of like Nutella but better), or apricot or fresh strawberry-raspberry jam. That’s just the beginning though. You get the bread, plain French yoghurt with granola (to which you also some of the jam to make it 10 times more delectable), a fresh salad, a scrambled egg, dessert, and 2 hot drinks. They could have stopped with the bread basket and I would have been ecstatic. We had trouble finding room on the table for the dishes that kept coming out and all the jars of yumminess we kept dipping into.

After we had eaten well, we took a walk and wanted to go to the Jardins de Luxembourg, but it started to pour rain (after being perfectly sunny 5 minutes before) and so we had to book it to the closest café to get out of the wet. Then it cleared up again about 15 minutes later so we decided not to risk any more downpours and just make our way back to their hotel. I said goodbye to them there and I was sad because that will probably be the last time I see a lot of them in my life. That is just kind of how things go, I guess. I’ve met so many great people on my travels that I will probably never see again but will not soon forget. I went back to my apartment to recover, read a little, then headed out to a play at Comédie Francaise which is one of the oldest and most preeminent theatres in France, founded by Moliere in 1680. I saw a theatrical interpretation of the fables written by La Fontaine. If you’ve ever read Aesop’s Fables, they are along the same lines. It was weird and at points even a little scary, but overall I was laughing and enjoying the different voices and characters. I think the fox was my favorite because it’s so cunning and even though sometimes it loses in the fable, I feel like it still wins in some respects. It was always my favorite in the books too.

So that brings us to Monday morning. I metro in to work around 9:30, and my boss greets me with an invitation to the Louvre that night for a sneak peek at the new exhibition on Paris as the center of culture under the reign of Charles the VI in the 15th century. She offered it to me because she couldn’t go so naturally I accepted. Right when I walked out of work that evening, I saw an older man with long, unkempt hair and probably no place to live, who seemed to be waiting get up, slick back his hair with his hands, and as I neared the narrow sidewalk, he approached me and shot me the classic Old-French-man-hits- on-obviously-foreign-and-therefore-clueless-girl line. He says in an overly debonair, assumed voice “Avez-vous l’heure, mademoiselle?” I was walking as fast as I could go in heels (which I will never ever get used to wearing. Period.) and told him it was 6pm and picked up the pace a notch. I could hear him behind me for a few steps, then I think he gave up. This was only just the beginning of the parade of bizarre characters for the evening.

The invitation said 7:30 so I showed up around 8 because you never get to anything on time in France, it’s a rule. “ Votre invitation, s’il vous plaît mademoiselle?” “Bien sur monsieur… voila.” I said feeling more than a little smug about getting to go into the Louvre after hours while people from the day were in the process of getting kicked out. I walked into room after room of 15th century artifacts from Charles VI's reign. The exhibit features the artistic productions and architectural innovations that were emanating from Paris at that time. It was the center of creativity. It consisted mainly of architectural samples showing how the Gothic style developed and branched out with new styles (flamboyant and international to name two), showed the intricacy of the artisan book binding and manuscript production, and detailed how the art and producing beautiful things influenced Parisians and the royal court. I suppose to have completed the evening, I would have met a charming and handsome young student while peering at the same illuminated manuscript, both transfixed by the intricate enamel, old detail and color, and then we would have commented on it in French, and then after the exhibit would have gone to a café to continue our comments and then we would have parted with promises of later rendez-vous, but with no real intentions of doing so.

Instead, I exited into the lovely square of the heart of the Louvre by myself, and was confronted by a woman who wanted money. After escaping, I made my way to the metro, where I encountered a drunk Spaniard, bottle of cheap wine in hand, who commenced singing his national anthem at the top of his lungs and continued until he got off and tripped over himself doing so. Then exiting my metro station within view of my house, thinking I was home free, no more wierdos for the night, a guy came up and started speaking rapidly and rather unintelligibly in French about a book he read called “Conversation with God” and he told me that God himself had told him to read it. Not once but TWICE he had heard the voice of God when he saw the book and put his hand on it. I was supposed to go with him to a café down the street and talk about the book, also because God had told him so. I responded, using a line from a story my mom once told me, that “Sorry sir, but He didn’t tell me. Good night.” America’s streets never seemed this weird to me. Is it just this city? Is it because I was alone? I have never run cross so many in one night before. I felt weary and a little on edge as I walked up the many flights of stairs to the apartment.

So this was my week of cultural inundation. I got the full spectrum I think. All in all, another successful week passed in Paris, but it still feels like the minutes are ticking by slower than before, and days don’t fly by as fast. I still have so much to look forward to though. Hopefully once it turns warm for good, I will not notice the minute hand on the clock any more and the hours will begin to fly once again. I’m already only 2 months from my definitive departure from France (at least for this year) and I feel like I arrived three weeks ago, especially with Grenoble revisited this weekend. Anyone got a good cure for homesickness?


*Now these are ALL OVER the US. Well done, France.