3 October 2008

the whirlwind tour

Well, today’s Adventure at the Louvre was my least favorite so far. I just barely managed a few drawings, but I had to escape the crowds to do so – and that was no easy task. I suppose I deserve it for trying to go on a Friday afternoon… Poor Géricault and Delacroix were just overrun by the Japanese, and any room with a “famous” painting (as in, all of them) had at least one Troubling of Tourists, its leader waving a flag or bottle or map aloft, weakly flailing her arm like a drowning woman in a sea of digital cameras.

I may need to re-think my Study Plan. There are so many other museums I need to visit, and so much happening in this city. The Art Fairs are soon, and just this Saturday night is La Nuit Blanche, an all-night happening of art-related events throughout the city.

I have been keeping up my exploring, even making it up to the first in a series of lectures by a new friend, Manuel Cirauqui, called Adieux à la dialectique, a multi-valent montage of discourse guided in part by the compositions of John Zorn. Unfortunately, my French still wasn’t quite able to keep up with the whirlwind of ideas presented, even with the sound and video and the occasional English text. What I did get (supported by a later discussion with Manuel himself) was the focus on collage and montage within the form of the lecture as well as the content. Even the snippets I got were fascinating… I must say, I am loving the French for their continued adoration of the Intellectual.

In fact, so many things seem just as one wants them to be here… There are indeed berets, beards, insults, people smoking, hot chicks on scooters and an inordinate love of Woody Allen. I may be trying to live small (and mostly on on pain au chocolat and coffee) but there’s just so much to this city, and I am wowed by it every day…