Wednesday, June 27
We were up at five this morning to get moved out, and we were all at the Gloucester Road Station by 5:30. Even Kaitlyn Lamb, who had a broken wheel on her giant neon pink suitcase. She thumped down the road and didn’t seem to mind it. I was expecting everyone to be groggy, since most of them got less than two hours of sleep. But they were surprisingly alert and in good spirits. Which is good. I needed that.
There’s nothing really remarkable about the next two hours;
getting to the Hotel Ajiel in Paris is always a little bit tricky, and it’s
tough with little sleep and all of our baggage. But I’m proud of this group for
keeping their heads together and making baby steps until, finally, we made it. We
all split up to eat, and then I gave a mandatory nap time. Which everyone needed
and seemed to appreciate.
It’s been a few years since I’ve been inside the D’Orsay. They had an exhibition called “Degas et le Nu,” (Degas and the nude) but I couldn’t get in without paying extra money and paying to see naked people just seemed dodgy. So I had a nice sandwich in the cafĂ© and read my book. Then I headed upstairs to see some Van Gogh.
I’ve seen the Van Goghs before, but they’ve taken on new
meaning for me since I started working on Vincent at Brixton. I feel like I
kind of know the guy a little, now. The paintings that really grabbed me were
We all met up for crepes on the steps of the Musee at five
pm, and decided we wanted to go get a proper look at the Eiffel Tower. The trip
to the Trocodero was uneventful, except that I danced in the metro station for
an old lady on the opposite train. She encouraged me with a big smile and a
thumbs up, so I danced a little more. It was all in the hips, with a little
roof raising. Pretty soon that
entire train car was watching me dance, which was fine because eventually the
train pulled away and I won’t see any of them again (in theory.)
I love watching students see the Eiffel Tower for the first time. It’s pretty spectacular. I’m always amazed at the size of it. Every time. We walked down underneath it and met Antonia, an irrepressible English girl, who was going to be our guide on the Fat Tire Bike Tour.
As we waited in line for ice cream (caramel and pear) I saw Harriet Walter sitting at a restaurant table about ten feet away from me. Of course I spotted her immediately and no one seemed to care that it was her, but I was excited. I love me some Harriet Walter. That cut-glass English accent.
Antonia took us to the Louvre and made us ride around the fountain three times and make a wish. I made one, and it better come true because I was very earnest about it. Then I took off on my own for a bit and had a free ride around the I.M. Pei pyramid. I did this last year on my birthday, and I still submit that the Louvre courtyard in the evening is one of the most peaceful, beautiful things you’ll ever see.
Then we hit the boat. I’m not sure how much to tell you
about the boat. Or how to tell it. But suffice to say that I got embroiled in a
love scandal with the chubby loud American ladies behind me. They were a little
drunk and a lot in love with me. I’m not the sort of person who assumes
everyone is in love with him; this was legit. Ask Kaitlyn and Emily. These gals took
a million pictures with me and kept making excuses to sit by me. I gave them a
fake name: Monty. And then it was Monty this and Monty that, and then I was
very mysterious and quietly made my way to the other end of the boat. Those
ladies drove me crazy. But it sure entertained my students!
I will only say briefly that, as we passed under a bridge, someone up there threw some urine on us. I told everyone it was beer, but I lied. It was totally pee. Ah, Paris! Nothing a good shower can't fix.
After the bike ride we made a quick dash to the Tower for
the midnight twinkling. We watched it from the Champ de Mars, which I’ve never
done. Surprise! It looks the same as it does from the front. But it’s still
spectacular. I always stand underneath it and wonder if I’m really here. Paris
is a little surreal.
Thursday, June 28
I like breakfasts at the Hotel Ajiel, even though they are carb-oriffic. ("Bread. It's what's for breakfast.") It's a nice way to start the morning, and with cheese and Nutella I always feel like it gives me a little ready-set-go for the day. When I'm in Paris I work double time; I never feel like there's enough hours in the day and I'm always going and going and seeing whatever I can. So who's to blame me for a little bread and hazelnut spread?
The street
market was going full-force on the street outside our hotel this
morning. It's always fun to poke around there and smell the fish. I like
looking at everything without the nagging need to buy anything. Nothing
I could buy will keep long enough to get back home. So I can browse
without temptation.
I accompanied the ladies as far as
the Louvre, and then bid them farewell. They were planning on seeing the
Mona Lisa and Notre Dame, which are both amazing and wonderful, but
I've seen them both and I've learned that repetition sucks the life out
of my experience. I'll repeat when I have to, but when I don't, I won't.
I instead headed to Bercy to the Cinemathetique Francais, which you and
I might call The French Film Museum. I tried to go to this museum a few
years ago with Dan Whiting and Joe Spear, but it was closed for repairs. This time
it was open, but I was a half hour early and so they made me wait in a
nearby park. Which was nice, since it had a cool fountain:
And then I laid down on a park bench and had a nap. And I know I had a nap, because I woke myself up three or four times with my own snoring.
The
museum was hosting a very special exhibit on Tim Burton which I was
excited to see. I don't actually love Tim Burton as much as people think
I might (just as people always assume I love Moulin Rouge, a
movie I can't stand) because I feel like he's a great auteur with a
genuine vision who has been completely engulfed and trapped in the
vacuum of the Hollywood system. Dark Shadows? Did any of you see
that? But in the beginning, Tim Burton was quirky and dark and really a
lot of fun to follow. (Incidentally, I remember my mom writing me a
letter while I was on my mission. She had seen Batman Returns, and wasn't sure if she liked it. She described it as being "dark, weird, and very creative. It reminded me of you.")
But
once I was inside the exhibit I remembered many of the things that make
Tim Burton special. I'm not particularly goth, and I though I love
ghost stories I don't really love the macabre. But Burton has this
wonderful childlike quality in his work. He's a kid, and he's letting us
play in his sandbox. And just as I marveled at standing just feet away
from the Van Goghs at the Musee D'Orsay yesterday, I got the same thrill
standing in front of the four Batman cowls that Micheal Keaton wore, or
one of Johnny Depp's scissor gloves from Edward Scissorshands. I remember watching Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
over and over as a teen, and loving the Large Marge sequence; we would
rewind it and watch it again in slow motion, trying to understand the
stop motion work. Here I was, just inches from a series of Large
Marge's eyeballs used in the claymation. Somehow, that gave me as much,
if not more, of a thrill than The Chambre. And then I got to see the
severed heads of Sarah Jessica Parker and Pierce Brosnan from Mars Attacks! as well as Johnny Depp's razors from Sweeney Todd.
It was kind of exciting. And I realized that Tim Burton has had a
bigger effect on me than I originally thought. After this I briefly
walked through the regular film museum itself. There's a bunch of
cinematic memorabilia in there and they were showing an early print of Nosferatu,
a film I made into a play at UVU a few years ago. It's still strange
for me to watch that and not see Jason Sullivan, Heather Murdock and Tom Fernlund in every
shot.
After a quick lunch at a sandwich joint I headed
up to Le Centquatre, an art center near Ricquet, to see Leandro Erlich's
incredible art instillation, Batiment. Erlich specializes in optical illusions, and Batiment
is pretty fantastic. He has constructed the facade of a building on the
floor, and people can lay on it. It's reflected onto a giant mirror,
which creates the illusion that people are hanging from three and four
story balconies and window sills. When I was there it was packed with
children, and it was so funny to see groups of children hanging and
rolling up and down the walls. I could have watched that for hours. It
gave me so many staging ideas; I'm always looking for something to
steal!
Next I headed to the Luxembourg Gardens because I wanted to sit down and enjoy the sun. Which I did, reclining in a garden chair just outside of the fountain. I baked myself brown like a bear, but it was too beautiful to sit in the shade. I also dipped my feet in the fountain for a bit, which felt pretty awesome after walking so much. I explored the gardens for a bit, and then headed out. I stopped at a little store and got some water and three nectarines. Nectarines, incidentally, are my favorite fruit.
I met
back up with the group at six in the lobby of the Hotel Ajiel, and
everyone was ready for new adventures but needed massively to eat. So
that was item number one. Feeding. We went to Crepes a Gogo, which is
still my favorite restaurant in Paris. It takes a little hill climbing,
but it's so worth it when you get there. The crepes are amazing and the
service is always wonderful (sometimes a little too wonderful) and I
always feel good there.
Then we headed to Montmartre. Which you should always do in the evening. The lights come on and the bars and bistros open up and the entire hill comes to life. There's music everywhere and artists working and people dancing and it feels like a Disney movie. I warned everyone a billion times about the stair climbing and the hill walking so nobody complained; they knew what they were in for. And they are troopers, this group. We gathered on the steps of the Sacre Couer as the city started to come alive for the night. We took pictures, and watched other people take pictures, including this man, who hated having his picture taken despite his wife taking about 400 of him.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that
Montmartre smelled like lilacs. If it weren't for the graffiti I would
swear it was a film set. The graffiti is there to remind you that you are
still in dirty old Paris, where people smoke like chimneys and pour
urine on you. Because you forget it up there. The streets are covered
with hanging lights and the gelato is perfect. And you forget that your
feet ever hurt, or that you sweated profusely on the overground train,
because it's evening and you're happy and you're with wonderful people
that you've come to love.
Friday, June 29
We made our trek south on the train this morning to visit Versailles, home of the richest idiots in history. I love going to Versailles as long as I don't think about the mess these people made of their country, and how they filled the long palace hallways with dirt, trees, and game so they could hunt indoors, or how much gold and how many mirrors were being put up all over the ever-expanding palace while the poor people were literally eating each other. If you can forget all that, you will love Versailles! Also, if you like moving at turtle speed from room to room with forty thousand people who need to take pictures of everything. Will they seriously look at all of those pictures at some point? Do people really sit around and look at pictures like that?
Speaking of taking random pictures, I was delighted to see that a completely pointless art installation was happening all over the palace. Giant stuffed animals had been arbitrarily placed all over, and it was exciting to try and figure out what they were. Some were easy! Like, for example, this crab:
Some were a little harder to decipher. Like, for example, this suspended camel:
And then there were giant high heeled shoes made out of pots and pans:
And a feathery helicopter!
None of these made any sense. They were whimsical, sure, but also really random. Was there a connection with these stuffed objects and the Sun King? If so, I missed it. But I sure had some good laughs!
Finally we made it out of there alive and found ourselves on the steps of the gardens, which is where I want to be, anyway. The gardens of Versailles are spectacular, and you feel like you can breathe. You walk down several grand flights of steps and the Grand Canal stretches out before you and the sky always feels wide and full of clouds. I've never been to Versailles on a rainy day and it's hard for me to imagine that they exist. It's always sunny out there. Sunny with a 90% chance of school groups. If you're lucky, you can score a water bottle and some ice cream. If you are unlucky, you can try to get lunch at a cafe out by the Grand Trianon but run into this:
Eventually some sandwiches turned up and we had a nice meal in the shade. It was fun to chat and get off of our feet for a bit. Dan bought a Laduree book on making macaroons, and we couldn't help but giggle at the toddler nearby who was freaking out in his stroller. He wanted out. His dad was incredibly patient, possibly medicated, and probably deaf. That kid would not stop. It was funny, and Bonnie and I extoled the blessings of parenting without any babies.
We wandered over to the Queen's Hamlet, which is still my favorite feature of Versailles. I've seen it plenty of times, so I sat under a big tree and listened to music while everyone else explored. It was so calm and peaceful there that it was easy to forget the huddled masses, yearning to take more photos of more chairs up at the palace. The Queen's Hamlet is ridiculous; Marie Antoinette built it to look like a French village, and she liked to pretend to gather eggs and sweep porches. But there's no denying the charm of it. And the quiet of it. And the fat, wriggling carp in the main pond, fighting over little crusts of baguette.
We made a plan to hop a train back to Paris at four, but Versailles is deceptively huge. You think it will take you fifteen minutes to get back to the main entrance, but it takes more like an hour. And it's not helped when you stop to explore the grotto, eat some peach ice cream, and get lost over the by the canal. But golly. It's beautiful. And there's nothing else really like it anywhere in the world.
We made it back to the hotel for a little siesta, well earned, and then decided to head out to the Arc de Triumphe for our final night in Paris. While on the metro a saxophonist got on and started playing "I Will Survive." Having warned my students that they will not acknowledge these metro performers on any account, lest they make you pay them, everyone became stone faced and stared straight ahead. Once off the train, though, we all exploded into "I Will Survive," singing and dancing all across the Pasteur Metro Station. It was hard to hold in, but I was proud of their stoicism in the face of unexpected Gloria Gaynor.
The sun was going down just as we made it to the top of the arc, and the city was golden and coming alive again. The clouds were actually pink in some spots! Somebody told me that this was a phenomenon of Paris: pink clouds. But I'd never heard that or seen them. Until tonight.
And we waited for the Eiffel Tower to twinkle at 10, but it didn't. At least not at 10. And some of the students stayed to wait for it to twinkle at 11. I hope they weren't disappointed.
As for me, I paid a short visit to my friend Alex, who lives across the street from the Hotel de Ville. Literally, he looks at this out of his windows:
But he also has a Parisian flat the size of a Ford Focus. It's a little nook full of books and a kitchen and somewhere there's a shower but I never saw it. He claims there are no mice, but I'm not so sure. We had a great catch-up and he showed me some of his photography. He's moving to Denmark to open a studio; I'm excited for him. But the hour grew late, and I had an 8:00 taxi to the airport. So we said goodbye, and maybe I'll be in Copenhagen next year! I rode the metros home to the Hotel Ajiel, paid for the rooms, climbed into bed, listened to Paris outside my window, and closed the books on another great month abroad.
My 2012 music playlist:
Plan B, The Recluse
Hey Champ, Anything at All
Ingrid Michealson, Breakable
Guster, Center of Attention
Santigold, Creator
St. Vincent, Cruel
Cristina Martinez, Dog Hit
Calvin Harris, Feel so Close
The Vaccines, If You Wanna
The Like, In the End
Ellie Goulding, Lights
Robert Francis, Little Girl
Little Boots, Meddle
Right Away, Great Captain!, Oh No, I Tried
Jukebox the Ghost, The Popular Thing
The Cribs, Pure O
Wilco, Rising Red Lung
Walk Off the Earth, Somebody That I Used to Know
Rufus Wainwright, Sometimes You Need
Benjamin Britten, Songs from "Friday Afternoon"
Janove Ottesen, This City Kills
Grouplove, Tongue Tied
Fun., We Are Young
Camille, Ta Douleur
Rachid Taha, Tekitoi
My 2012 reading list:
Will Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous
William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade
Roger Ebert, Life Itself
Thursday, June 28
I like breakfasts at the Hotel Ajiel, even though they are carb-oriffic. ("Bread. It's what's for breakfast.") It's a nice way to start the morning, and with cheese and Nutella I always feel like it gives me a little ready-set-go for the day. When I'm in Paris I work double time; I never feel like there's enough hours in the day and I'm always going and going and seeing whatever I can. So who's to blame me for a little bread and hazelnut spread?
And then I laid down on a park bench and had a nap. And I know I had a nap, because I woke myself up three or four times with my own snoring.
Next I headed to the Luxembourg Gardens because I wanted to sit down and enjoy the sun. Which I did, reclining in a garden chair just outside of the fountain. I baked myself brown like a bear, but it was too beautiful to sit in the shade. I also dipped my feet in the fountain for a bit, which felt pretty awesome after walking so much. I explored the gardens for a bit, and then headed out. I stopped at a little store and got some water and three nectarines. Nectarines, incidentally, are my favorite fruit.
Then we headed to Montmartre. Which you should always do in the evening. The lights come on and the bars and bistros open up and the entire hill comes to life. There's music everywhere and artists working and people dancing and it feels like a Disney movie. I warned everyone a billion times about the stair climbing and the hill walking so nobody complained; they knew what they were in for. And they are troopers, this group. We gathered on the steps of the Sacre Couer as the city started to come alive for the night. We took pictures, and watched other people take pictures, including this man, who hated having his picture taken despite his wife taking about 400 of him.
Friday, June 29
Speaking of taking random pictures, I was delighted to see that a completely pointless art installation was happening all over the palace. Giant stuffed animals had been arbitrarily placed all over, and it was exciting to try and figure out what they were. Some were easy! Like, for example, this crab:
Some were a little harder to decipher. Like, for example, this suspended camel:
And then there were giant high heeled shoes made out of pots and pans:
And a feathery helicopter!
None of these made any sense. They were whimsical, sure, but also really random. Was there a connection with these stuffed objects and the Sun King? If so, I missed it. But I sure had some good laughs!
Finally we made it out of there alive and found ourselves on the steps of the gardens, which is where I want to be, anyway. The gardens of Versailles are spectacular, and you feel like you can breathe. You walk down several grand flights of steps and the Grand Canal stretches out before you and the sky always feels wide and full of clouds. I've never been to Versailles on a rainy day and it's hard for me to imagine that they exist. It's always sunny out there. Sunny with a 90% chance of school groups. If you're lucky, you can score a water bottle and some ice cream. If you are unlucky, you can try to get lunch at a cafe out by the Grand Trianon but run into this:
Eventually some sandwiches turned up and we had a nice meal in the shade. It was fun to chat and get off of our feet for a bit. Dan bought a Laduree book on making macaroons, and we couldn't help but giggle at the toddler nearby who was freaking out in his stroller. He wanted out. His dad was incredibly patient, possibly medicated, and probably deaf. That kid would not stop. It was funny, and Bonnie and I extoled the blessings of parenting without any babies.
We wandered over to the Queen's Hamlet, which is still my favorite feature of Versailles. I've seen it plenty of times, so I sat under a big tree and listened to music while everyone else explored. It was so calm and peaceful there that it was easy to forget the huddled masses, yearning to take more photos of more chairs up at the palace. The Queen's Hamlet is ridiculous; Marie Antoinette built it to look like a French village, and she liked to pretend to gather eggs and sweep porches. But there's no denying the charm of it. And the quiet of it. And the fat, wriggling carp in the main pond, fighting over little crusts of baguette.
And we waited for the Eiffel Tower to twinkle at 10, but it didn't. At least not at 10. And some of the students stayed to wait for it to twinkle at 11. I hope they weren't disappointed.
As for me, I paid a short visit to my friend Alex, who lives across the street from the Hotel de Ville. Literally, he looks at this out of his windows:
But he also has a Parisian flat the size of a Ford Focus. It's a little nook full of books and a kitchen and somewhere there's a shower but I never saw it. He claims there are no mice, but I'm not so sure. We had a great catch-up and he showed me some of his photography. He's moving to Denmark to open a studio; I'm excited for him. But the hour grew late, and I had an 8:00 taxi to the airport. So we said goodbye, and maybe I'll be in Copenhagen next year! I rode the metros home to the Hotel Ajiel, paid for the rooms, climbed into bed, listened to Paris outside my window, and closed the books on another great month abroad.
My 2012 music playlist:
Plan B, The Recluse
Hey Champ, Anything at All
Ingrid Michealson, Breakable
Guster, Center of Attention
Santigold, Creator
St. Vincent, Cruel
Cristina Martinez, Dog Hit
Calvin Harris, Feel so Close
The Vaccines, If You Wanna
The Like, In the End
Ellie Goulding, Lights
Robert Francis, Little Girl
Little Boots, Meddle
Right Away, Great Captain!, Oh No, I Tried
Jukebox the Ghost, The Popular Thing
The Cribs, Pure O
Wilco, Rising Red Lung
Walk Off the Earth, Somebody That I Used to Know
Rufus Wainwright, Sometimes You Need
Benjamin Britten, Songs from "Friday Afternoon"
Janove Ottesen, This City Kills
Grouplove, Tongue Tied
Fun., We Are Young
Camille, Ta Douleur
Rachid Taha, Tekitoi
My 2012 reading list:
Will Bagley, So Rugged and Mountainous
William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade
Roger Ebert, Life Itself
