Pierrot le fou (c'est moi)

What a lovely film to watch, Pierrot le fou (1965) must mark a high point of commercial cinema as the voice of an artist (Godard), and I certainly could watch Anna Karina read the phone book.

The original underscore tends to be of a broad brush (Antoine Duhamel), typical of the time in French and Italian films. Not written in sync, it is often cut in for its specific, own affect, the diagetic sound being taken out to focus. This technique has come back in a big way for the last two years in a row, Oscar winning scores by Gustavo Santaolalla. This technique of marrying music to picture is often employed by directors of extremely strong mind (Kubrick). It leaves little chance for what the composer might bring to, get from the picture. In this film, Godard is so sure of his musical control that he starts and stops it rather obviously and abruptly as if to remind you he is in control.

The best thing about the film's music, in my opinion, is the very skilled intertwining of the musical theatre type of numbers. One where we meet a character who always hears a song in his head, which because it reminds him of his first love's telling him she did not love him, is making him crazy. We hear the music like he does, but Pierrot/Ferdinand, for the moment firmly in the diegesis, can't, and we hear how the character's slight mumbling and moaning along fits into the jazz lounge piano accompaniment that follows him around. There is also a wonderful song and dance number between Pierrot and Marianne as they walk through a woods in southern France, she singing about her fate line (in her palm) and he singing about her thigh line. The songs are credited in the film (although not at Imdb) to Boris Bassiak, a very curious fellow, indeed!

I just have to like a film where the characters sit and read Céline (another Ferdinand).

The Odds

It has been my general experience, that the set of all the world's humans fall into three categories of friendliness. One in five is truly empathetic and instinctively desirous of helping others. Another one in five is the opposite, sees it a case of them against me, and who will instinctively try to make life harder for others. The other three don't really give a damn one way or the other, but can be swayed depending on sets of conditions.

When one lives at home, one usually has a regular life where the necessity of help from strangers is kept to a minimum. But in a new place, where the language is barely in one's grasp, it requires calling on the goodness of many strangers. I am finding my analysis holding up, and am developing skills at biasing the three unpredictable ones.

I walked this Sunday morning, my route through the "Rome" section of the Place de Clichy quartier. This was the old home of the Paris Conservatoire of music, which has since moved away. Yet the streets are still lined with music stores of all speciality, putting London's Denmark Street or New York's 48th Street to shame. Just before I pass into the Metro at Gare St. Lazare, there is a bar called The Bar Do (as in solfege, Do A Deer).

Passing down into, what is usually on weekdays, a Grand Central Station of people coming and going, I found my way to the very fast 14 line blocked off by tape and some snarling and snapping guards. They had to snarl and snap as Parisians hate being told no, and I am no different. Yet I mustered up the courage to ask in my barely passing French "Q'est qui pass?" (something like that) and one of the snappers, hearing my foreign voice, maybe, calmly explained an alternate route.

On a bus the other day, a bored looking student type, leaped out of his lethargy to pound on the door open button. When I looked the same direction, I saw that he has seen an old couple trying hard to catch the bus, and the students maneuver held the bus up enough for them to catch it. A random act of kindness, that he probably imagined unseen, but my heart beat strongly for his action.

Friday night, stuck at 11pm, in a distant suburb, as a railroad strike had stopped the trains. A cool looking, corn rowed fellow, pointed out a distant bus to the twenty or so fellow sufferers. We all ran. But the bus driver was having none of this. Seeing this group of people racing up the street, he closed the doors and tried to pull away. Françoise (my heroine), being of a directorial persuasion, was having none of that, she ran straight into the front of the bus forcing the driver to stop and open the door, we all poured on, damned if we were going to even bother with tickets for such an ass. Later, as I described her actions, Françoise allowed in her lovely accent "My Tiananmen Square". And it was. We bounced along (they put the old clapped out buses in the poor suburbs), slowly back through Saint Denis. A sense of camaraderie emanating from those of us who had stormed the bus, Françoise our Joan D'Arc.

It's all a mess....

... but it is moving forward, although for some inexplicable reason, no one has shown up to work today. Yesterday I had to wander to the outskirts of town (past Bagnolet), to pick up seventeen sheets of shown tile. The warehouse was on lunch break, so I had to wait forty-five minutes outside the doors. I felt like the bag lady of Bagnolet. I then wrestled the fifty some pounds of the tile, loaded into my granny shopping cart, on and off three different buses, across an hour, home.

I have never, in my life, received such a lessen in my powerlessness then this apartment renovation in Paris project is giving me.

I am often surprised how much of the hardware, here in France, is still manufactured in France. Many things that one can buy in the USA, only from China.

Tonight, it is to a northern suburb, to hear host, and friend, Leon's piece for three flutes electronics and tight-rope walker. The tight-rope artist controls music via rope tension, laser beams and other sensors.

Dem Blesser Spaces

My apartment in a state of solid activity, I have to remove myself for the best part of the day, and return towards the end to review and approve. In the time I have been seeking out some space experience.

In my very young youth, I was involved in radio at MIT's station (as I wrote about here). One of the stars of the station, even a legend, was one Barry Blesser who went on to all sorts of fame in the audio world (why he even created the "R2D2" EMT250, which if you're an old guy in recording comme moi, means sumptin'!). Doc Blesser has written a new book, which I hope to find on my mail pile when I get home. It is about the depth of abilities those two things on the sides of our head, have, and about listening to the space we are in. As an early "sampler", I learned to listen closely, but like most, go through long periods of relative normal listening practice (maybe not helped by my hearing loss and 24/7 tinnitus).

Whilst walking to BHV (France's... uh... Target Store?), I noticed that the line in front of Saint-Chappelle was almost non-existent. BAM! I was in. Of course, in spite of prominent signs saying SILENCE!, everybody feels that they are special and that SILENCE! really only means quiet. Never the mind, that place, in the photo above, is someplace special. And what an acoustic signature.

Today, as it was raining (even hailing it seemed), I visited Le Grande Galerie d l'Evolution, which is right across the street from my place. It is like a Bradbury Building (LA reference, actually built about five years before the Galerie, nyah-nyah, and they say LA has no culta') on steroids. The re fashioned interior, circa 1994, I find a bit messy and confusing, but the building itself provides another grand(e) space.

I also went and (between rain bursts) sat in the hospital garden at Pitié-Salpêtrière, around the corner from me, which resonates from the final scenes of Cléo de 5 a 7 (A. Varda 1961). Maybe one of the best "chick" flics ever (in my non-chick opinion). I wrote about it before, here.

I hate everything....

..., well, it is the postman's holiday syndrome (you know). Having lived my life in music (not out of talent but sheer insistence), I have a huge internal critic that is so focused on music that I can't even make love in a room with music on. When I hear a piece of music for the first time, I am so successful at accurately extrapolating the whole from the first so many seconds, that I might as well not listen (yes, there are rare exceptions, but they are so rare as to be insignificant).

The way I get around this is i starve myself of music. This is not as barren as it sounds, as my internal jukebox is non-stoppable. But whenever I do hear some music, I am as if starved. The other day, stopping in my corner brasserie for a mid-afternoon citron pressé, the cook was listening to classical music as she does whenever cleaning up from the lunch service, and Mahler was on. WOW!!!! I am not sure which it was (never my strength) maybe Das Lied von der Erde (which was played at my father's memorial decades ago), but I licked that music spotless.

My friend Tony, who is one of the best, if not the best, amateur chefs I have known, whipped together a chicken cacciatori last night (cacciatori=hunter as he explained, and I never knew). Not only did I lick that plate clean, but TSF playing through his state of the art 1970s McIntosh stereo was sending me skyward.

Then we watched Massacre In Rome (1973). Not very good, but watching Italian made films with Tony is a hoot, as he worked in them and knew everybody. The score, by this years pet, Morricone, was a wonderful example of the influence of Penderecki and Ligeti making it into commercial realms (Kubrick's 2001 being another). The score is very effective, and by far the most interesting thing in the poorly written and horribly overacted piece.

Metro Musings

As the apartment is in full construction, the air loaded with plaster dust, I am moved out, computer and all in a heavy knapsack, floating about Paris 5 except towards the evening when I move to my temp quarters (courtesy Mssr. et Madame Milo, merci boucoup) almost diagonally opposite in the 17th. Yesterday, as I thought I would stop at a newcomer's AA meeting at Étoille, I took the line 6 metro from Place d'Italie. Much of this line is elevated, and here in the photo it shoots across the Seine by the Eiffel Tower towards the 16th. Film aficionados will recognize the locale from Last Tango In Paris. There are, in retrospect, true one of a kind moments, and the score for that film, by Gato Barbieri Argentinian, tenor, was one. He was a well respected, thick toned, ESP, avant garde saxman (check him out on the JCOA recordings!!), when the fame of this score pushed him into a period of growing self-parody.

A main cause for the success of this antique city (Paris), must be the comprehensive metro. My morning rush hour trip back from the Northwest quadrant, is almost a Tokyo level packed experience (does not yet require people hired to push people onto the cars though). On average, I would say one in five metro rush hour riders have ear pods in. The constant and different chk-chk-chk or shhh-shhh-shhh from my, almost too close, neighbors makes me ponder this human need for stronger and stronger clocks. Every commercial on radio and TV, has clocks meant to excite (unless selling a relaxing product). I imagine that in the next twenty years, the true intertwining of human nervous systems, the natural need to entrain to the dominant pulse and the social implications, will be revealed by research.

As of the end of this month, I will have spent the majority of the last year away from home (Santa Monica, in case I didn't know), I have slept under more then thirty roofs (this is not a romantic reflection), and now I AM TIRED. Deep in my soul, I need to stay in one place for a while. I am setting up for a summer at home, starting in June.

"Go away, little kid"

via Madame L: Some toothy fellow (real identity always an interesting thought) has managed to succinctly state what I have been meaning to for some time. It is so good, I will publish the whole thing here.

Hermann Goering:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or communist dictatorship ...

... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Until you stop living a comfortable little life and ignoring all of the problems in this country and the world, and start do whatever you can to help make the above well known quote invalid, I say to each and every one of you:

FUCK OFF
and
DON'T BE HERE WHEN I WAKE UP.

Thank you Joey (and ML)

Wah-Watusi...

... pansies and poppies, it must be spring. A sunny Saturday morning 09:00. I am cutting across the Jardin to breakie at BIA (see sidebar), the song by The Orlons has dug into my head WAAAAHHHHHH-WAH-WATUSI!!! I am almost twisting pass the grande serres. I have left my friend's, swank upmarket digs, and am back scrambling.But today, a day of research and writing in my home in progress. Sans water and toilet, I have to, either , use the facilities in the mosque around the corner, or the balky, strange, automatic Paris, street WC machine, across from my door. Both involve a dash down four flights, across the courtyard and out into the busy street.

WAAAAAAAAA (watusi)

Ahhhh Yup.

I was rummaging around a southern suburb, looking to buy a window (as one do), when I stumbled on the Avenue du Président Salvador Allende. Made me a happy man for a moment, well rummaging always makes me happy. In the same little corner I found the home of ol' Raspail (what a name) whose boulevard I am staying just off.
The 6th has some particularly good public sculpture, including Rodin whose Balzac sits at the top of my street. I kind of like the wild Centaur at rue de Sevres.

Coincidence?

Just the other day, I read a review of Music Drama at the Paris Odéon, 1824–1828, by Mark Everist, in the Journal of the American Musicological Society (it just caught my eye, Paris content and all, I was looking for something else). The next day I looked up, and I was walking down its portico. And now, I see that Eric, at Paris Daily Photo, was just there too?

What CAN this mean (muse, muse)? Oh yeah, a coincidence.

Luxembourgeois

As the workers appeared on Wednesday, and knocked down both my bathroom and kitchen, I have had to find temporary shelter. I spent my first night dans a cheap hotel (Ibis) in the workaday corner of Porte Dorée, but do to the largess of a good friend, I have moved on to a most upscale quartier on the Jardin du Luxembourg. Why just the other day, killing time before a nearby meeting, I had sat on a bench there, in the intermittent sun, reading Kafka (of all things). I enjoyed watching the rich young women of the area, bringing their children of rich men to gambol and play. A very fast Carousel and pony rides are part of the amusements. It is truly a lovely quartier, with lots of pretty things to buy. My own (now in pieces) apartment) is just the other side of the hill, a Sherman Oaks to this Beverly Hills.

Talk about scaling the mountains of fortune, when I have to decamp this place in a week, I am moving to an even cheaper hotel (Etap) that sits right beside the municipal incinerator of Paris. Surrounded by raised highways and dark industrial remains, it looks like something out of Delicatessen.

And now, true to form, the workers have disappeared, not returning on Thursday.