There is so so so much to tell and I know that there's no way to fit it all in here, so I will give a couple of quick updates and then elaborate a bit...
So:
1. I still go to classes. Still like my classes. Still not understanding everything, but learning lots anyway.
I just started a class two weeks ago about clowning that I LOVE. Last week we had a slow motion slap-battle and then
did some mask work. I'm also learning how to animate.
I might be in heaven...
2. My wonderful classes are in a bit of danger of being barracaded by students, since there is some social unrest a-brewing.
Sarkozy (the jerk-face of an über-right-wing president) has just tried to pass a law which will give more atonomy to the universities, meaning that students are going to have to start paying a lot more for school and things will start becoming much more like the american system, meaning that there are a lot of people here who won't be able to afford school at all. I'm on holiday right now, so things are pretty quiet, but after break is over, there's a real chance that something might go down. (No mom and dad, it won't be dangerous) honestly, I'm kind of excited to see what happens, I just would like to see it happen without having classes boycotted.
3. Two weeks ago I went to Germany with my friend Line (who is german) because her university hosts a performing arts festival every year, completely student-run and pretty freaking amazing.
www.diskursfestival.de
Not gonna lie, people in Germany are A LOT friendlier on a whole than people in France. I was there for four and half days and enjoyed every second of it. I saw some really good shows (saw some really bad ones too) and I met some incredible people. It is so great to be able to talk with people who, in theory, are doing the same thing as me, and then see how hugely different it is. Art in europe is nothing like what it is in america. There, everyone wants to be the next success story, the next speilberg, the next woody allen, the next mamet or worhal or ....
Here, art is like breathing- necessary -something that MUST be done. There is a kind of passion - a passion that I have noticed in almost everyone I've met, artist ou non, a sort of joy of life and intensity that somehow we americans have lost in the day to day hustle and bustle - Art here is like life, it doesn't need to be beautiful, people don't need to like it, people don't need to understand it, but respect it, yes, as something that someone has thought about, toiled over, created, because they needed to.
Amazing
Line also took me to Frankfurt for a day and we went to the Film History Museum there, I think it''s geared towards kids, but, well, I'm me, so I loved it!
In Frankfurt, I also had my first experience with transportation strikes...
4. One week ago, I was in Paris.
This is the long story. Are you ready?
Paris was Unreal.
You lucky viewers are going to get a transcription, basically, of the journalling that I did while I was there:
........
Encore une, je me trouve à Paris, la ville d'amour, this time with only a backpack and my bag and already, I like it better. I'm not scared to speak nor overwhelmed, nor jetlagged - in my opinion a much better way to see the city. It's been almost two months since I arrived here - two months, in relation to everything is an incredibly short time, but it feels like I've been here much longer. Two months and I've already lived in two different cities, already walked on two different beaches, already journeyed to a different country. Two months and I already have friends that I can't imagine being without. I can't imagine life without enourmous trees, cobblestone streets or thursday nights.
The world of Bozeman and productions and stress seems ten million years away, and while at times I truly miss MAKING things, for now, I am basking in the freedom of Thought. Thought - with a capital T, because here in europe, the process of thinking is just as important, if not more, than that of doing. If something isn't well thought-out, if it's devoid of meaning, or lacking refelction, it isn't worth doing at all. Art here is ART. It is life and science and passion and curiosity all rolled into one or another of all forms of expression. It is so much easier to think here, to create, because here there is no pressure to be commercial, to be a success. Here, one can simply BE.
The feeling of freedom is impossible to put into words.
........
Funny story -
So here I am in Paris, wandering aimlessly along the Seine, thinking, "holy crap! I'm wandering aimlessly along THE Seine!!" and humming "Dusseldorf" by Regina Spektor (in Paris I saw big fish, swimming slow, in the Seine. It made me hopeful that someday our water would be breathable again...) basically just being awestruck and thinking "hmmm, Notre Dame is close-by,I should go" when a tiny old man wearing a cap and mittens calls out "Bonjour!" and I reply, "Bonjour...?"
"Are you going to Notre Dame?" he asks.
"Oui, je crois..."
Et tu marches! Très bien!"
He offers to come with, taking my hand and giving me a tour as we go. He suddenly darts into traffic, dragging me along behind him, "We need to drink something before we get there!" So he buys us both espressos at a tiny little cafe and lights up a marlboro, even though he has a hand-rolled cigarette tucked behind his ear. "Tu fumes?"
"Not really"
"Is it ok if I do?"
"Yes, of course!"
So we finish our coffees and off we go, Mustafo (that was his name) pointing out note-worthy buildings along the way.
"Au jourd'hui, je suis ton guide"-today, I am your guide-
He leaves me at the cathedrale and I do some exploring, completely drop-jawed impressed, scenes from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame running through my head.
I guess the man was a professor at L'Ecole des Beaux Arts, I'd also guess that he was a bit lonely, possibly crazy, maybe both.
Either way, a nice surprise.
.......
The next pleasant surprise came much later, after I had spent hours wandering back and forth and back again, zigging and zagging my way across the city. If I saw and interesting building in the distance, I'd walk in that direction, stopping at the maps outside of metro stations along the way to keep track of where I was. My goal for the day was Sacre Cœur, once I was there, I had made the decision to stop moving and wait for Madison to finish class.
I had made it to Montmartre and was STARVING, so I ducked into a tiny creperie and ordered a ratatouille gallette. The restaurant was completly empty and I felt a little strange eating by myself in the heart of tourist-world. A little bit later, a really adorable old couple came and sat at a table across from me. They started speaking good, old-fashioned american english, so I, being in a right-jolly mood, asked them where they were from (California) and we had a short conversation and then went back to our seperate going-ons. The owner of the resaurant turned to me and asked in french "You are american?!" "Oui"
"Enchantée. Enchantée" she said, placing here hand over her heart and nodding her head.
This shocked me a little...a lot.
I didn't know what to say, I think I said "ah, bonne..."
I still don't know what that meant, but it was nice. Just a whole day full of nice.
As the couple left, the woman wished me luck with the rest of the year and the man said "I envy you very much. Very much."
I guess I should stop every now and again to remind myself exactly how special this experience really is, how truly lucky I am to be here.
.........
It was so wonderful. I am on the TGV headed back home, but it was all so incredible that I am still in a bit of a daze.
First of all, it was good to see Madison and to get to know him a bit better. It was also incredibly comforting to have someone with whom I have a shared history, familiar names and faces and anecdotes which require no backstory. He was like a window through which I could see home. Montana home.
Second of all, it was wonderful to see Rima (my french prof from last year. she was in paris presenting at a conference - it's part of the reason that I was there) who I always find amusing. To be reminded of that oh-so scholarly world that I've been sliding away from in my entertainment and my travels.
Most of all, it was just unbelievable.
Paris like they show in the movies - a couple getting married across from the eiffel tower, lights strung from trees, orange-tiled metro stations and living statues.
The first night we met at the metro stop below Sacre Cœure and wandered the streets of Montmartre, stumbling across the Moulin Rouge and another enourmously ornate parisian cemetary before taking the metro back to Madison's flat.
Public transport strike #2
The Metro!
Holy crap!
It was the first day after nation-wide strikes and the metro was only running every half-hour instead of the usual two minutes. This combined with the rugby match meant that there were about three thousand and fifteen people crammed into every single car. It was hard to breathe, impossible to even move an arm to wipe the sweat from my forhead. At one point I had one foot touching the floor and was leaning at about a 30º angle and still not even supporting my own weight.
Truly bizarre.
Saturday we spent playing tourists, starting at the eiffel tower, moving almost accientally to L'Hotel des Invalides, with it's golden-domed eglise and polished gardens, and then we came near to Les Champs Elysées, but Saturday night is where the trip moved from good to amazing.
Saturday night we went to the cabaret Aux Trois Mailletes. We met up with some other americans from Madison's school - I didn't like them; indifferents, avec une grande importance de sois - very scene, very self-absorbed...but me not liking them isn't important, because once we got to the show, we never had to speak.
The show was Unbelievable.
One person singing after another, dancers, an old emcee with white hair and red-framed glasses, all tucked into the stone sous-sol of a piano bar. It looked like it had been dug out of the earth hundreds of years ago, an incredibly tight space with low, arched ceilings and a long unfinished wooden table in the middle, which as the show continued, served as an extension of the stage as well as a dining area.
Traditional spanish love songs followed by Slavic dance tunes followed by true parisian cabaret, by the most incredible man dancing a sort of sophisticated hip-hop/body isolation thing, by opera, by a gypsy who played the accordian with one hand while screaming down the microphone and jumping around the stage before diving - literally diving - down the table, followed by James Brown covers, follwed by a traditional african dance, then a flamenco dance and a cover of "Amsterdam" by Jaques Brel sung in both french and an african dialect and then a belly dance...
!!!
It never ended. Literally. As soon as one thing finished, something completely new, completely different took to the stage and it NEVER became boring.
Madison and I stayed until closing - 6 am. and then Pascal, a man who looks like a young (black) Micheal Jackson, and with a voice like Whitney Houston, invited us to come to breakfast with the other performers.
It felt so strange to step out of the club, bleary-eyed, into the narrow cobblestone street, the back of a gothic church looming from the other side. Even more bizarre was leaving breakfast, turning a corner and, while trying to orient myself in the deserted twilight, realizing "oh! There's Notre Dame" That familiar silhouette seeming so out of context in the dark, with no crowds outside of the door.
Together, we wheeled down the empty side streets, our breath hanging in the cool air, the smell of the first batch of bread drifting from some unsees bakery, and I thought "This is Paris." This is real. La premiere Goute de Biere had an excerpt exactly like this and now here I am, walking that same path, made only more surreal by the fact that I haven't yet slept.
Paris is a waking dream.
That is the only explanation.
5. I am back to my life as usual, which, in and of itself, quite lovely.
Thursday I watched a movie at Line's house and spent the night because I'd missed the night bus and we were both too tired to wait for the next one.
Last night we met to try and get tickets to a big concert that was part of the electronica festival that's been going on for the last two weeks. It was full and so, walking back, we dicided to duck into a bar where we could see a group of musicians playing in the window.
It was a traditional bretagne bar, with old singer sewing-machines as tables and intricately carved wooden furniture, hosting the weekly celtic jam-session. Amazing. Line and I played a breton game and then chess, I won the first, she the second. Just as I thought the bar was about to close, two of the musicians struck up a conversation with us, talking about the music, the group, breton etc, being incredibly friendly, and in the middle of all of this, a group of students had filtered in from the streets. I recognized a couple of them from my classes and while Line and I were talking with the musicians, these students began singing traditional breton songs with the owner. Breton is a language unlike anything I've ever heard, celtic-based and incomprehensible, but there was nothing better than seeing this group of somewhat scruffy, pretty drunk kids singing merrily, with pride for their region.
Very cool.
Well, I'm exhausted now.
Ciao
