And not a creature was stirring, except for these louts

The tv was warming above the chimney all bare

In hopes that St. Nicolas would have a good scare

The children were drunk and sunburnt instead

While visions of white-skirted baguettes danced round their heads…

One can never be sure with French politics whether the evening will end with broken bottles, funny hats, massive screaming, or just several bald men stepping out of line. Our elections night, where, among the voters present Bayrou won hands down, was tarnished by these two baldies, both of which were virulent Sarko supporters. The screaming and tantrum pulling was enough to make me throw two books at their heads (Oh Beckett and Strindberg! You deserve better!). If they represent the right, there’s no hope for intelligent life in this country. The next time I’m going to put an immigration policy on my door: no village idiots allowed.

Candidat du Grand Rassemblement.

Si je suis élu, je promets immediatement une nouvelle election presidentielle! Et si je suis reélu, je promets immediatement une nouvelle election presidentielle!

_______________________________

(Candidate for Bringing People Together - If I am elected, I promise to immediately hold a new presidential election! And if I am re-elected, I promise to immediately hold another new presidential election!)

There was a lot of chanting coming from the window, almost drowning out the voice of Julius Caesar himself. Drawn by suspicions of local uprising, I pulled back the windows and pressed my ear to crack in the window. Punctuated by horns and whistles was some kind of mantra… It sounded like they were saying something about pink. So we decided to creep down and find out where all the bonfires were lit.

B lives near the UMP headquarters so he’s used to the cops. But I’m not. Tonight they’re in a straight line before us, facing something I can’t quite make out behind the plastic shields. Are those people or tentacles? Impossible to breach those stony face automatons so we wander around slip behind the arch. Now we’re on the side of the tentacles, strings of people wandering and huddling, some with wine bottles. Closer in the throng grows thicker. Finally piercing from behind four bespectacles large-scarf wearers, the image becomes clear. It’s a regular sit down.

Bodies are strewn up and down the street, all prone and misshapen. Sometimes heads turn but the sea of people lying down in the street remains quite static. Floating above is a banner, something about flowers, sequins and Sarkozy. Thoughtful and thoughtless, young and middle-aged, all those armed with cameras old and digital are flashing away. I’m almost run over by a floppy fringed blond teenager armed with some old plastic dinky point and shoot. He must be in artschool. Then, everyone stands up and starts chanting again.

I guess it’s kind of a nice protest but it reminds me of some dippy multi-scarved freaks I kept seeing creeping off the plane in Kathmandu, their doe-eyed henna glance hiding a frightening yearning for conformity. The election and its accompanying protests bore me to tears. Makes me yearn for the days of bottle throwing and banlieue bastards.

Grand Magasin is a great performance art troupe helmed by François Hiffler and Pascale Murtin. They combine lyrical absurdist reflections on daily life mixed with dance and gestures and manipulations of objects. Last night, at the Menagerie de Verre, they presented their latest piece, Ma Vie. With just a table and two chairs, a small sound console, three yellow balls of varying size and slideshow, they choreographed random statements from their life to make a kind of visual poem about memory and racontage. The text was something like this:

In 1967 I lost my keys in the sand. In 1973 I closed the door. In 1997 I opened an oyster. In 2000 I looked at a magazine in a dentist’s office. In 2004 I was stuck in a small elevator…

Each took turns announcing these statements, sometimes working with the objects as props, sometimes contradicting each other or mimicking each other. The accumulation of daily facts, mundane observations, and the distortion and contradiciton of these facts and observations made a remarkable piece that spoke about the random daily process of memory and the constant process of editing and rewriting what we choose to remember. Life, when it’s written down as an accumulation of events that we don’t necessarily control, becomes a lyrical absurdist poem.

Then, after I went with my Texan buddy to the Hard Rock Cafe to do Thanksgiving, which we did by headbanging to Metallica and drooling over John Frusciante, though I have to say the HRC makes the WORST Margarita in modern history.

Lesson 1 of the French Cultural Education Series

François de Roubaix is probably one of my favourite composers and a first rate musical genius of the 20th century. Famous for his soundtrack compositions to such films as Le Vieux Fusil or La Scoumone, his music often incorporates diverse instrumentation with completely addictive melodies. He was one of the first to use early electronic sounds and the variation on themes owes much to de Roubaix’s early love of jazz. A self-taught musician, de Roubaix’s curiosity led his drawing from a wide range of musical styles. He’s known not only for his melodic prowess, but also for fusing mind-boggling genres in a three pop minute song, such as the theme to Dernier Domicile Connu which features Las Incas, a pan pipe Peruvian duo.

Unfortunately he died quite early from a diving accident in the Canary Islands, and was awarded a posthumous Cesar that year for his work. De Roubaix continues to influence a new young generation of french musicians, and his influence can be felt in Sebastien Tellier (the most interesting French musician at work right now) and Air’s work.

Here he sets the music to kid’s show Chapi Chapo, another endearing French institution. I not only love the Chapi Chapo characters and their adventures, I think de Roubaix’s music does an excellent job complementing the feel of the animation. I highly recommend watching L’homme Orchestre just for the rehearsal scene which surely is one the most sinfully pleasurable pairings of music and dance in film.