I know what you're going to say. "Beauty? Richness? Don't you follow the news?"
To which I would answer, "Sometimes, but not always, and especially not on a weekend like this one."
Like everyone else, I'm aware that people are dying in Ukraine, while also staunchly defending their freedoms, supported by the US and the European community. I'm aware that inflation is at a forty-year high, though I also remember that moment, forty years ago, when Hilary and I bought a house with a fourteen percent reverse-mortgage interest rate. Somehow the world kept spinning and things worked out.
(I'm also aware that on Thursday the markets shrugged off the bad inflation news, and that sounds like good news to me.)
In any case, on Bastille Day, we put such things as real estate and market trends, and even the horrors of war aside. I'd rather read about the mustard shortage in France.
We sit in awe of the photos transmitted from the James Webb telescope, while also noting that they look a lot like scenes from Star Wars films. Yes, I know. These are real, in a manner of speaking, and scientists are going to learn a lot from them about how the universe we live in arose.
I think that's tremendous. But I was also deeply in awe a few nights ago, while camping at Glacial Lake State Park, to see a near-full moon low in the sky at 3 a.m. with Saturn hanging tremendously bright to the south east, just below Pegasus.
I'm waiting for the metaphysicians to tell us what the word "arose" actually means.
Scientists use such terms, while shying away from anything that sounds like a value judgement.
Are we getting better? Are we rising higher and higher? The very thought reminds me of a poem by the French poet Apollinaire, part of which reads:
It's nine o'clock the gaslight is low you leave your bed
You pray all night in the school chapel
Meanwhile an eternal adorable amethyst depth
Christ's flamboyant halo spins forever
Behold the beautiful lily of worship
Behold the red-haired torch inextinguishable
Behold the pale son and scarlet of the dolorous Mother
Behold the tree forever tufted with prayer
Behold the double gallows honor and eternity
Behold the six-pointed star
Behold the God who dies on Friday and rises on Sunday
Behold the Christ who flies higher than aviators
He holds the world's record for altitude
Norton stopped over in the afternoon, just in time to see the turkeys scampering across the yard. One of them stopped to get a drink of water.
We discussed the progress of our various tomato plants, what the high winds did to his dock a week or two ago up north, and how the local dock expert came over to tie up the pontoon boat before it drifted away. "I've known him for thirty years," Norton says.
He also dropped off some cookies baked by a client as a sign of appreciation for the work I'd done on her new book.
This morning I ventured down the parkway, with the plaintive strains of the Polish trumpeter Tomas Stanko and his quartet on the CD player, to the farmers' market behind the basilica. Friday's a good time to go. Parking is free and easy, and there aren't many people there, so you can chat with the vendors. I bought two bunches of Thai basil from a Hmong woman and a huge bag of regular basil from Mr. Dehn, the owner of Dehn's Garden.
Down the way I bought six ears of corn from a young woman from Waverly, an hour west of town. She had a very slight accent, and didn't seem to know who Hubert Humphrey was. Turns out she's actually from Ukraine! I would like to have chatted further but hers was the only corn available, and a line was forming behind me. Next time.
My final stop was at a stall where bottles of kombucha were on display. I'm not a fan of that product, but the man behind the table was amiable. I told him I didn't like the fizz.
"Mine don't have much fizz," he said. "Most manufacturers add soda to get that effect."
He recommended the hemp kombucha, which (so he told me) contained all nine enzymes, or whatever chemicals are involved.
"Will I get high?" I asked.
He sort of reminded me of an old family friend, Peter Herbert, who died a few years ago. And when he told me the brewery was located in Hopkins, I had to mention that my sweet 96-year-old mother-in-law lived there.
"My parents live there, too," he said. "Dad's 92, mom's 86. I take then out to lunch twice a month and two of my brothers live nearby, to help them out."
By this time, I knew I was going to buy some kombucha. I got a ginger and a hemp. Hilary was at her regular Friday stint as a volunteer at Second Harvest. I figured we'd sample them both when she got back.
When I got home, I spread everything out on the kitchen counter. Do you think I overdid it?
We wrapped up our Bastille Day festivities with a few trips to the movies. As luck would have it (but it's likely that luck had nothing to do with it) the film society had arranged to air a series of French films, including one set at the Place de la Bastille, no less. The Opera National de Paris now stands near the location of the old prison, and the film, called Les Indes Gallante, documents a year-long string of rehearsals that took place in preparation for a production of an opera of the same name by Jean-Phillippe Rameau that was first produced in 1735.
In recent decades baroque opera has experienced a revival of sorts but it seems to me that Handel and Gluck dominate the field. In any case, productions of Rameau's lush and languorous works are still far from common. That being the case, director Clément Cogitore could not defend his decision to re-imagine the work on grounds of undue familiarity. Yet as he explains it in one of the film's early scenes, his approach does have a certain emotional and political logic. Rameau's original version consists of four independent episodes, all of them romances, taking place in the four corners of the then-known world, namely Turkey, Persia, Peru, and North America. Cogitore's "remake" takes for its locales the four corners of modern Paris, each of them given over to a particular immigrant group. The music is still Rameau's, and the singing is the same, but the dancing draws on hip-hop, krump, break, and voguing.
I hardly know what these styles are, and having seen the film, I don't think their bizarre, jerky, and often violent moves fit very well with the music or the tone of Rameau's narrative. But it was great fun to watch these extremely talented street dancers dish (archaic term!) with the costumers, the choreographer, and mostly one another, while participating in rehearsals where they're treated with utter respect by the director, chorus master, conductor, and choreographer, but also required to fit their styles into the overarching vision of the professionals who are shaping the work.
The film devotes rather less time to the vocalists, and there are surprisingly few scenes that reveal what the opera looks and sounds like as the pieces begin to fall into place. But it's a joyous work—a party film—cramming greater energy into far less time and space than, say, your typical Frederick Wiseman documentary.
The audience at the premier clearly loved the performance. The critical response was mixed, as one might expect. One critic wrote, "Why pay 200 EU to see some dancing, when if you saw the same thing in the street, you wouldn't throw them a cent." Those of us who saw the film don't really know how well the performance gelled, or what impact it might have had on those who attended. But the film itself is a triumph.
When we got home Hilary and I streamed a more tradition version of the opera on YouTube with eighteenth-century wigs and garb, rigid and highly stylized dancing, and cardboard props. We didn't last long. The music was nice....but the production looked ridiculous.
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