art? music? Fontainebleau

It has been an interesting week.

Tuesday was full of class and such.

Wednesday, we were at the Louvre for Estelle’s class, looking at Gericault and Delacroix, which was a nice change of pace from the inundation of Ingres we’ve been having recently. Afterwards, I met up with Emilie, my host sister from the family I stayed with in the summer of 2004! We hadn’t seen each other or corresponded in years, but I found her on Facebook and we arranged to meet for coffee. It was wonderful to see her and hear about what she’s been doing since I saw her last. When I stayed with her family, she was always so helpful with my French and went out of her way to tutor me and improve both my speaking and writing. We’re going to meet up again next week and hopefully go to some photography exhibitions.

Thursday was the day of Practicum presentations. It was really interesting to see all of the various and creative things people have been working on. (The projects could take pretty much any form, and are supposed to reflect, comment on, interact with, etc. some aspect of your experience in Paris.) I made a “Self-sidewalk,” which consisted of papers I’ve been accumulating in my room that represent parts of my life here—an article Eleanor sent me from the Boston Globe, a document from my French bank account, a handout from Le Mariage de Figaro, an article about Obama from a French paper, and an article my host family saved for my about Bruges and Ghent. Each paper was a paving stone, and on top were Paris sidewalk mainstays: dog poop (sculpted from clay), a cigarette butt, and a discarded metro ticket. I was feeling pretty good about this project, but Mark pretty much ripped it apart in front of the whole class. Not my proudest moment. We talked about my stupid sidewalk for about half and hour, and he asked questions about my reasoning behind every little detail, i.e. why did I place the poop where I did? Why did I choose five papers and not more or less? Why did I leave one paper ragged and not the other? I’m hoping I got the grilling because I was the first to present visual art, but maybe I’m really just a horrible artist with no capability for creativity or artistic thought. It’s kind of what I felt like. Constructive criticism is always good, I just felt the analysis of my project was harsher than that of the others.

Some of the other projects were really great. A few highlights: JW made a giant cigarette butt out of a baguette with acrylic paint and a lighter, Natalia made a moving film about people passing by graffiti that reads “White Power” in Montparnasse Bienvenue without even noticing, and Scott and David sang an epic duet with their guitars about missing the metro.

Ashely, Jen and I had a long and decadent lunch with Mark in the Latin quarter, remplis de bonne conversation, and then made our way over to the Marais. Mark had graciously arranged for our class a private tour of IRCAM, a part of the Centre Pompidou that specializes in sound. There are three branches: pedagogical, where people come in to learn software and technology; creative, where composers come in to use the resources of IRCAM to create music; and research, where engineers are working out the latest audio technology. We got to go into the anechoic chamber (room absolutely free from echo). Supposedly you can hear one high frequency and one low frequency when you’re in there, which are your nervous system and circulatory system, respectively (!). Unfortunately, I didn’t hear it when I went in, but Jen said she heard the high frequency.

The tour was followed by a concert of modern music played by a string quartet. It was interesting at first, since it used play-back technology so we heard both what the musicians were playing real time, and a selection of what they had just played, and the two streams worked off of each other. The second piece was unpalatable, to say the least. The notes played were just continually dissonant and there was no relief from its harshness. The instruments were played well out of their “normal” ranges and the screeching that resulted was not my cup of tea. I don’t know enough about contemporary music to have any authority on this sort of thing, but I can say with confidence that the music played was not something I would want to listen to.

Friday (today), Jen, Ashley, Mackenzie and I went to Fontainebleau to see the chateau and visit the town. After floundering around Gare de Lyon for about 20 minutes, we finally got the group together to go buy tickets for the train out to Zone 6. We made it onto the train and in 40 minutes we were in the quaint Fontainebleau-Avon area. We walked into town where we came upon a farmer’s market that Mackenzie remembered from his youth (he lived in Fontainebleau for two years when his father worked at the nearby university). We browsed a bit, and bought two delicious boxes of fresh raspberries. The town was charming, as one would expect a town in the French countryside to be. Lunch was eaten outside at a café, and we enjoyed the relatively warm temperature.


Next stop was the castle, which housed the kings and emperors of France for 700 years. It was remarkable. First of all, there were peacocks in the garden. We got some pics. Second, the chateau was gigantic and beautiful. Third, there was no one there and it was much more pleasant the hordes of people who flock to Versailles. Fourth, the history of the castle is incredibly rich because so many kings have lived there. It was a really pleasant visit (and we got the audio-guides). On the way back to the train station we stopped at Mackenzie’s favorite patisserie and bought amazing pastries. Amazing. I had a meringue that was huge and delicious for only one euro, Mackenzie and Jen had something called La Religieuse, which is this delectable chocolate/mousse/cream/biscuit concoction, and Ashley had a scrumptious raspberry tart. All in all, a successful outing.




Now it’s off to sing some karaoke!?