Fashion and Other Things

In this digital age, physical communication still retains a certain punch. So when I walked into Point du Jour today and saw a sign that declared “THM IS NOT HAPPY!”, I was highly intrigued. When I found out about the actual origins of the sign—and others; it was not the only one—I knew that this was a good story.

Here’s how it went down. The studio is divided between freelancers and contract-workers. They work on different shows; they work on different floors. And they work under different rules: in France, it’s extremely annoying to fire workers, to the point that employers will avoid hiring people, or hiring temps, or using unpaid interns, whatever, to avoid taking on permanent weight that may or may not provide its own propulsion. In real-life terms, this means that the freelancers, in exchange for greater flexibility of choosing projects, are far easier to fire. This part all makes logical sense to me—obviously the system is quite strange, but you can understand the incentives.

Now, at this point in the story, you will see the effect of misaligned incentives. The overarching company did not perform up to expectations—while the freelancers were pulling their own weight, the contract workers (apparently) were not really doing much of anything. But—and this is the hilarious part—someone needed to be fired in order to cut costs, and since the only people who could be fired were the freelancers, they were the ones scheduled to be shipped out and replaced by the contract workers, to the point of the boss approaching the receptionist while she was on break and informing her, after an exchange of “Ca va?”s, that she was fired.

This approach might have worked in the United States—everyone expects lay offs; apparently the boss expected the individual workers to be more worried about their own jobs rather than the collective injustice at hand. This was not the case. Threats of collective resignations were offered, and signs of protest were plastered against the window facing the boss’ office. It was all averted; today, the champagne flowed.

****

Fashion is a strange god. At times, it will make a decision for no reason and with no recognition of reality and expect all its adherents to change without delay. Sometimes this is a curse—I am of course referring to the (hopefully by now passé, the four months’ ex-pat says to himself) leggings fad. At other times, like, oh I don’t know, right now, it is a blessing.

For whatever reason, booty shorts that look like shortened slacks have become not just respectable office and street wear, but also somewhat fashionable, to the point that young women emerging from offices are liable to cause whiplash in all but the gay and blind. For young men—like me—this can only be viewed as a positive development.

On the other hand, it’s not arctic but it’s certainly chilly in Paris, so I can’t see this as a particularly comfortable development. So what else is new, ask females? Nothing, is the answer—it is another in a long line of fashion developments that look good but (I presume) are uncomfortable. And judging from the way they are described, I would think that high heels are the crack cocaine of the female half of the human race: they hurt so much, and yet…!

The attitude that women profess, especially about high heels, some strange alchemy of aesthetic appreciation and awful oppression, is completely alien to most guys, who rarely if ever purposefully wear uncomfortable clothing on a daily or near-daily basis. I guess some people find suits and dress shirts uncomfortable, but that is pretty rare.

So I guess we can probably blame the patriarchy or something like that. I mean, it’s the most logical thing: it’s much more important for women to be pretty than it is for men. And even being pretty is a trap because then lots of dudes will merely think about you in terms of being really hot. So it’s a dilemma.

I won’t pretend to have a solution, because it seems like a pretty useless edict to ask men to not think of women sexually. So maybe the solution is to ask men not to let their sexual thinking to overwhelm their other logical thinking, which is reasonable and all, but we (meaning humans) are not ruled by our reason that too will be incomplete. Meanwhile, I have to nurse my whiplash.

****

I’m going to a European soccer game tomorrow. Meanwhile, Stanford plays Those Other Guys—you know, that school that claims, improbably, to represent all of California—tomorrow. This edition of the Big Game is the 119th, give or take a few rugby games.

Many people like to speak of college football as the ultimate fan experience that American sports has to offer. Certainly the experience of joining the pilgrimage off of Berkeley’s BART stop towards Memorial Stadium—aptly named, since it is as odd and antiquated as whatever it memorializes—and marching with that mass of humanity was one of those moments where you feel profoundly a part of everyone around you (which was weird, seeing as the majority of people were Cal fans and therefore insulted us relentlessly) in contrast to the solitude in crowds that is most people’s quotidian existence.

But, for all the grousing that cultural critics level against American’s sports obsession, Europeans take sports far, far more seriously. For example, in England, the percentage of pages devoted to sports was much greater than the number in the United States. More people wore soccer jerseys and more people sported scarves. Similarly, when France was winning in the Rugby World Cup (a minor star in the European galaxy of sports), each game was like a Big Game (admittedly a minor star in the galaxy of rivalry games).

And yet, Europeans don’t seem to be a continent of slack-jawed yokels; similarly, whatever flaws Americans have in citizenship, I don’t think they stem from outsized devotion to sports. (I could argue about why, but this is another subject altogether, so I will merely say that the critics who complain about sports are more often than not trying to reorient scrutiny from themselves, where, as a group, it belongs).

It’s perfectly natural that people should love sports so much. It showcases beautiful aesthetics and, often shows a morality play on our own frailties and triumphs. With all that, with Michael Jordan battling to hit the perfect last shot, how can you resist? Sports explain itself.

There are those who complain about the relative esteem given to sports in our society relative to books, the arts, and other high-minded endeavors. The answer to that complaint is that those works often do not explain themselves; they are mysterious where sports are direct. Sports deliver emotional punches; too often I read a bad book brimming with turgid banalities and overdone situations and wander where the novelty is. It’s not that I don’t love all these things; I do. It’s just that people are often unfair and I want to make an effort to explain where I can, which is everyone’s duty to one another.

Cocoon

I am a bit sick; I’ve caught a slight bug. It isn’t great enough to stop me from doing anything, but it is just enough to make my life more unpleasant than otherwise. If I were just a bit sicker, I’d be just incapacitated enough to not do anything while still not feeling totally awful, which in my opinion would be great. I’m not so I hope I’ll get over it quickly, especially since the quarter is winding down and there are a legion of assorted small tasks arrayed against me.

****

I tried to go to the Louvre today for another lecture. Given my slight sickness, I was actually slightly dreading it—concentrating while sick is always like walking against the wind—so it was actually slightly pleasing that the lecture ended up canceled. But I needed something to substitute for not going to the lecture; I wasn’t going to schlep up to the Louvre (admittedly not that far) just to turn back and convalesce curled up in bed. I decided to relax in Starbucks, a first for me in France.

If I ignored the tourists and the French chatting up a buzz, I would’ve sworn that I had fallen into some rift of the world and landed back in America. The décor is, like any McDonald’s, exactly the same the world around (although of course Starbuck’s décor is actually pleasant; something you might use for your own home). The music, though, is what did it for me. It’s no secret that the French love American music (or, rather, their own twisted taste in American music; just as Woody Allen and Jerry Lewis are exponentially more popular in France than in America, some weird, weird American music that I can’t identify gets a lot of airplay), but this music was one of the few times that was exactly pitch perfect what would’ve been played in America: they were all Christmas tunes, and the specific selections within that genre, Ella Fitzgerald and that Charlie Brown Christmas song, is exactly what the bourgeois upper-middle-class demographic of Starbucks listens to come Christmastime (my parents always break that out with the eggnog, at least).

I suspect, however, that this isn’t cultural blending as much as cultural dictation. I bet at Starbucks World Headquarters, someone is paid to make the decisions for the playlist for everyone, with one Venti-size fitting all (in France, at least, the sizes are reasonably named: Moyen [Medium], Grande [Large] and something large than Grande [something bigger than big]). Not to say the French on hand really disliked either choice—they love Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone here—but it just felt really American, like I’d slipped into a cocoon, in a location as French as the Louvre.

With the globalization era upon us, these little American cocoons are being shipped everywhere. The Louvre isn’t the only quintessential ancient governmental seat to witness the planting of one; the Forbidden City had a Starbucks for a while too. I’m no cultural purist; if people like Starbucks, they like it, you know? But it feels weird to walk into a store that is in many ways so unbowed to local tradition (actually the menu includes what seem to be bows to French tradition—are there crème brulee lattes in America? And if not, please tell me—I feel I need to sample that exquisiteness). It feels like a cultural conquest.

Certainly the French feel that way often enough. The government hands out cultural subsidies like a college hands out condoms. They limit the amount of American music to a certain percentage. Similarly, French movies are the beneficiary (apparently according to statistics) of plenty of protectionism, although that doesn’t seem to prevent the Hollywood onslaught from continuing. Americans feel similarly—there’s a 1984 painting called “The Triumph of the New York School” which shows a mechanized, modern American army (an allegorical representation of post-war American artists) open and smirking, arrayed against a disorganized, antiquated group of Europeans mounted on horses and suchlike. The clear subtext is: we’ve beaten you, so suck on that!

Which to me is a pretty infantile attitude. Culture is about making life good; that’s not a zero-sum game. It is a plant that benefits from cross-pollination, and it does well to be mixed with other types of crops. Slavish devotion to one type or another weakens the overall evolution. For me, some of the most fascinating cultural products of the past few years have been the result of cosmopolitanism, not cultural protectionism.

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Speaking of cultural appropriations, yesterday, many of the rioters shouted “Fuck des polices!” (Fuck the police!). What is interesting about this, to me, is that it shows that, the immigrants of the Parisian banlieue feel a kinship not merely with each other but also Americans, probably specifically African-Americans. That they do means that the US is many things to many people; George Bush hasn’t ruined that, thankfully, although if he got a few more years, I’m sure he’d make an honest effort towards that goal.

****

Sarkozy has announced his policy, a major crackdown. Francois Fillon, the relatively less popular prime minister, reaffirmed the plan to create a “Marshall Plan” for the banlieue. This strikes me as a mistake. By relegating the positive side of the plan to the less popular underling, it definitively shows a lesser emphasis.

There are two possible reasons for this. The first is that Sarkozy does not actually think the “Law and Order” portion of his program is more important; he feels he must emphasize that portion to retain the allegiance of the far-right supporters of Le Pen who propelled him to the Presidency. The second is that he really does believe that crushing resistance in the suburbs is the most important priority in the situation.

Far be from me to decide which one is true, but they both suggest bad news for the suburbs. Incidentally, if I had to guess, it’d be the latter—he did promise in the Presidential campaign to clear out the “scum” in the banlieue. Either way, the underlying problem of the banlieue will not be addressed: the economic problems and the problem of inclusion into France’s nation. If the former reason is true, then the majority of Sarkozy’s energy will be devoted to appeasing the far right supporters whose conception of the problems of the banlieue are skewed, meaning that comparatively less will be devoted to actually solving those problems. That Sarkozy feels it necessary to append a “and National Identity” to the “Ministry of Immigration” provides a good example of how Sarkozy’s relative focus can result in marginalization of the immigrants. That’s nothing but an insult towards the banlieue. And if the latter reason is true, it shows that Sarkozy has not learned the lessons of insurrections: military or police success means little; political success means everything. Keeping order with force is necessary but not sufficient; if the political problems are not addressed correctly, then there will forever be a fresh supply of rioters.

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Incidentally, when I was writing of the sizes in the Starbucks in France, I accidentally and unconsciously inserted an ‘et’ in the middle, which is ‘and’, without realizing it until five minutes later. Now it happens, of course, just when I’m about to leave.

City of Lights

Paris has put its lights up. The Champs-Elysees glows blue and the Arc de Triomphe is brilliant white for Christmas. Other neighborhoods have followed suit. The Rue Mouffetard, a former student’s quarter (but now, like the rest of Paris, is gentrifying), winds up a slight grade with the same light tranquil blue glow as the Champs. It will be Christmas soon.

****

The banlieues, too, are all lit up. Needless to say, it is not a festive spirit that illuminates them. When I last wrote of them, it was a he-said-she-said situation; now it is more clear that the government is lying. According to Le Monde, someone in a neighboring apartment building took a video of the incident after it occurred that completely contradicts the government’s account of the accident. Comparisons to Rodney King appear to be particularly popular in comment threads.

Now, as opposed to the riots in 2005, these riots occur with guns: the rioters have acquired hunting shotguns, one of the few types of guns legally available to Frenchmen. Apparently the police have shown restraint in shooting back; they merely disperse crowds with tear gas and shoot paint balls to mark suspects for later arrest (who knew that paint balls would be used by anyone other than warriors who fight in their mind?). The restraint is admirable and needed—I suspect that fighting fire with fire would unleash an inferno.

What is clear is that at least Villiers-le-Bel (the specific banlieue that the fighting has touched off in) has been organizing somewhat. That people have been taking affirmative steps to acquire weapons where before they did not have any. And now, they are fighting “guerilla warfare” (Le Monde’s take) against the police, with children as young as ten joining in on the rampage: they are burning cars and shooting police.

This represents yet another affront to France’s ideal of France: that it is a country where everyone is French, that there are no subgroups, that everyone is a citoyen first and foremost. Note well how no paper, neither Le Monde, nor Le Figaro, nor L’Humanité, nor Le Liberation mentioned the obvious fact, the obvious cause of all this: that the children who died in the accident were North African. I knew it must be so when I first heard of the story, but I did not know until I read The New York Times. That is the clear cause—they know it. Le Monde quotes a child saying, “Celui-là, il est à la famille.” (Here [speaking of a geographic location in Villiers-le-Bel], it’s to the family.”) They’re a family, and they’re building barricades. And the rest of France’s immigrants feel a kinship with the immigrants of Paris—in 2005, the riot spread to all the banlieue of France; the riot spread to Toulouse last night. How could they have felt like an ‘us’ without a ‘them’? How does the ‘them’ come about? It comes about through mutual self-definition, which means that the ideal of the Republic was compromised at that moment.

To my mind, not acknowledging the problem allows it to fester. The French speak of banlieue and of immigrants and of assimilation (who else could they mean but non-Caucasian faces?) but everyone knows that the problem is that those immigrants have high unemployment and few prospects. We were discussing education in French class today, and our teacher mentioned that there are hardly any non-white people in the grandes écoles, the most prestigious universities in France, the ones that mold the elites for the country. It’s true, looking at ISEP, there are hardly any non-white faces. So there is little to do for these immigrants but roil in the suburbs.

****

My reaction to Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, with its grid of plus-sign shaped apartment buildings in the center of Paris, and the renovation of Les Halles was largely the same: one of confusion, of “what’s the goal here?” The new ‘skyscrapers’ of Paris provoke a similar reaction for me. A dreary utilitarianism infects all of these concrete slabs, and it’s easy to see why so much anger was directed at these monoliths. They were the harbingers of a gray, standardized system that paid too much attention to the general and not enough to the specific which is part of the French genius and exceptionalism.

Take, for example, the renovation of Les Halles. My family rented in a friend of a friend’s apartment in the second arrondisement this week, so I found myself walking through Les Halles in many different instances and environments. When it is gray, a gloom descends on the exterior of Les Halles; when it is sunny, it is merely acceptable but no one wants to stay. No matter when I saw it, the merry-go-round was empty and stopped. The underground mall is not interesting in its architectural vision (it is the worst of unfilled spaces, a void) and in its specific stores (which are the closest thing to a suburban strip mall, hardly the best exemplar of the United States, that I’ve seen in France). Even on Sunday, its busiest day, it was a mere artery of the circulatory system, not a destination in of itself. The attitude of everyone, unusually so in Paris, is to get to where you’re going and fast. This would not be so bad if Les Halles were not such a historically important district or such a geographically central neighborhood, meaning that there are two highly important reasons why it should be vital rather than the French equivalent of a ghost town, lacking only a tumbleweed bouncing in front of a saloon.

Of all the designs featured in the New York Times website, I find all of them lacking, but Koolhas’ comes the closest to my ideal. The colors are too garish, but the idea is right: the center of the city should have energy bursting forth like geyser, spilling out into the surrounding neighborhoods.

In fact, according to “Assassination of Les Halles,” the city stumbled upon the perfect solution in the process of its renovation. In moving the food market to the suburbs, the void left in Les Halles was one onto which activities could be projected; new businesses moved in, creating a diversity of cultural events and interesting happenings. That, to me, better reflects the spirit of the hurly-burly of Les Halles than the current circulatory model.

But instead they went to the current ugly model, thereby losing the chance of fulfilling multiple ambitious goals. De Gaulle’s ideal inspires the rest of design. He wanted Paris to be the capital of Europe, as it was in Napoleon’s time, for everything from aesthetics to industry. But being the capital in one arena meant sacrificing its comparative advantages in another—for example, building the Tour Montparnasse meant sacrificing part of the aesthetic of Paris. Unless—and this is the potentially brilliant move—the necessary modernizing improvements could be located in the suburbs, where their ugliness could not infect the rest of the city with its contagion. By and large, the project worked well, excepting the Les Halles disaster.

The conviction that all of these goals were in reach, despite the atrophy besetting France in the early post-war period, was a special manifestation of French exception. Yes, we are the best in high culture and low; we have a pure language that is ours; we can manufacture; we know how to live. In Paris at its best, this pride manifests itself as slaving over each and every detail with a conviction that excellence is attainable in all of them. In this, French exceptionalism is the same as the American version, if focused on different goals.

Those concrete slabs thrust into the ground at the outskirts of the city are a betrayal of that; they almost seem a capitulation to France’s conception of the United States as summarized by America the Menace, the 1930’s attack on America: “For this French visitor, the symbols of America’s modernity were its mass-produced, artless, and tasteless food and its endless rows of tacky wooden houses.”

It is almost as if the French operated by the light-switch conception of life: either the light’s on, or it’s off, there is no in between. This is as true in economics as in restaurants (I think the concept of a fusion restaurant would be alien to the French). One can have economic modernity, but at the cost of an aesthetic sense of life. But it’s a continuity, and perhaps the French should look more closely at themselves right now: their productivity is among the highest in the world and yet their aesthetic sense is still, after all these years, strong.

****

We met with Germaine Dagognet yesterday for lunch. It was for an interview; we ended up eating lunch along with it.

One particular comment of his jumped out at me. He said that the “People”-style of journalism was becoming far more prevalent in France. Before, details of politician’s private lives were largely uncovered, like FDR’s polio or JFK’s affairs. But now, with Sarkozy’s divorce and subsequent re-entry into the game (Germaine said that pictures of his “copaine” had surfaced; a host mother apparently believes he and Rashida Dati, his minister of Justice, are an item), the “Peopleization” of politics has apparently hit France in a big way.

It seems, however, that Sarkozy brought it on himself to a certain extent. I’m not referring to his divorce—I don’t know the details, I don’t care to know, and seeing as my knowledge is incomplete, I cannot judge. I mean a famous photo of Sarkozy’s, in which he took a picture of his family and him mimicking the posture of JFK’s family in a typical JFK-puff-piece-photo. Seeing as JFK remains America’s premier celebrity-president (I don’t exactly hear people singing the praises of Cuban Missile Crisis policy over his fucking Marilyn Monroe), that’s a pretty bold statement on Sarkozy’s part.

In a sense, though, the “Peopleization” of politics is inevitable, natural and more complex than its detractors give credit for. I too hate coverage of John Edwards’ haircuts and of Hillary Clinton’s cleavage, have no fear of that. But, upon thinking about it, “Peopleization” is a far more complex phenomenon than is given credit for.

The example that everyone brings up is JFK’s follies and FDR’s infirmities. Journalists did indeed keep that information secret. At the time. We know about it now, and both are seen as interesting, critical parts of the story of the two Presidents. Going back further, we love to talk about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s personal qualities. The reason is that the President is and always has been both a national leader and a moral leader. As such his personal life is, well, (how antique this phrase) a role model.

Nor is America alone in the elevation of its chief executive above mere technocrat. In that Vanishing Children of Paris book, the King Louis XV was demonized as a baby-killer, as a kind of vampire. De Gaulle fended off multiple coups largely on his moral prestige. As for Sarkozy, besides his marital business, he has made a point to meet both wounded police and wounded immigrants, as if to project by his mere moral presence the need for unity in France.

No, perceived moral standing in chief executives has always been important. And I think even the most cynical about the “Peopleization” of politics would agree that serious moral turpitude—no, religious conservatives, blowjobs don’t count—should disqualify a chief executive from legitimate office. So perhaps in some senses it is worthwhile to worry about the personal qualities and deeds of the chief executive.

But the problem with “Peopleizaton” is how very overblown it is. I very much doubt cleveage or haircuts reflect serious moral choices, for one. The whole phenomenon requires hordes to be deployed, and once employed, they don’t just go away, they have to justify their own presence. That’s how we get haircut stories.

Furthermore, that hordes hunt every spoor of a candidate’s life means that you, the candidate, either have to be really good at hiding your shit or not doing it in the first place. The first means we have exceptionally good dissemblers as chief executive, surely not the qualities we want to be encouraging in our leaders. The second means bland candidates who take no risks at all personally, and a lack of risks in one’s personal life denies one the chance to grow, meaning we get stunted sheltered bland candidates, again surely not the qualities we want to be encouraging in our leaders. So while we would love to have candidates with the public virtue of a Lincoln or Washington, it is clear that searching too hard for it destroys it.

****
A haze hung in Paris. It surrounded the Tour Montparnasse, lending it a mountainous distant aspect. The light filtered through it, as if we all saw the world through bad glasses. In the 14th where I lived, the haze floated above Parc Montsouris going directly north—as soon as I made the slightest move east, it disappear—and dampened and distanced the lights on top of the buildings making them seem like stars at first sight.

I did not and do not know what the source is; I have never seen it before. My first thought was: the banlieue are burning.

Microcosm

Tonight I saw the show at LCI, like I had meant to last Wednesday, before forces outside my control intervened.

****

The show is housed in Boulogne, the suburb to the west of Paris. Like most of the suburbs of Paris, the buildings are comparatively more modern. Across the Seine from the TF1 building—behind which the LCI (La Chaîne d’Info; translate that to: The News Channel) building stands—a crane ferried trash from construction into a garbage barge. A half-completed glass-covered bridge stretched forlornly over the Seine.

The sidewalks were narrow and the streets deserted, save for the occasional car driving past. The only people out were security guards, bored out of their minds guarding the front of the news networks. Craning the neck upwards, I could see solitary figures pacing and smoking. It seemed an American office park translated to France.

The buildings of TF1 and LCI were all sharp vistas of glass, with a curved tower rising above all the rest; the twilight fell upon it beautifully, reflecting a soft tranquility across the glass, a canvas for nature’s art. These buildings were resolutely modern in comparison to the center city’s insistent classicism. Both work, to be honest, in their ways, but it is difficult to see these new monoliths, however beautiful they are, encouraging street life or mixing outside of them. That isn’t really intended for the office park specifically, I can sense, but at the same time, they dominate over the landscape of the quarter, imposing its vision on the rest of the quarter, the tranquility of its reflected twilight falling on the entire ‘burb.

****

The tranquility reflected did not reflect inwards also. Stepping inside was stepping inside a microcosm, an ecosystem devoted to the production of news. I found myself sitting in the lobby on a blue leather coach, staring at two features that would remain constant: the digital clock, and the bank of televisions.

The clock is indeed everywhere in LCI, understandably so. Besides operating in the journalism business, which is all about scoops and time-sensitivity, the channel operates in the television division of journalism, which pays fealty to the minute, or else advertisers won’t pay. It’s also probably understandable that televisions are present everywhere, almost invariably (with two amusing exceptions, which will be spoken of later) tuned into LCI. It’s addicting to be able to see the products of your own work as they are completed, up to the minute, as well as being practical on some level.

These, however, were only the most obvious manifestations of the particular microcosm. Those brilliant glass facades of the building reflect light but do not provide a great view, enclosing the entire building. The screensavers featured a view of the Seine around Boulogne, with the LCI building magnified.

The organization of the workers creates further environments within the ecosystem. Each group of reporters sits in a pod, sharing space and conversation. As I wandered behind the producer, named Germain Dagnonet, for the Michel Field show Le 18/20, I saw that the organization aided community-building, even outside of one’s own pod. People routinely wandered outside of their pod, like bees carrying out tasks.

****

If there was a queen bee, it was the presenter of the show, Michel Field.

Once you see a person in real life who you’ve seen before on TV, you immediately compare the person’s real-life personality to that person’s TV personality, and it dominates your thinking of that person for a long period of time upon meeting that person. The comparison was neither negative nor positive for Michel Field, but it was still the primary locus of my thoughts.

You see, on TV, M. Field plays the large jolly man (who is smart) role, with a large grin and plenty of jokes, whereas in person, M. Field wore a stoic, detached, almost grumpy expression for the majority of the night. His entrance into my awareness was in the production room, where he said a quiet hello to the room and assumed his seat in the corner of the room at his computer. He reacted to all news and questions with equanimity. Clearly, everyone was eternally aware of his large presence and heavy, plodding walk when in the room even if they did not react.

Seen later, watching LCI in a TV outside the studio, he had mastered the trick of balancing a can of Diet Coke on his knee while performing a kind of introverted meditation while consulting his cell phone and TV simultaneously. It was a kind of game face, I thought at the time, and when the time came to do an interview “Oui/Non” with a French student leader (of which more will be spoken of later), he began to banter with her while standing opposite her on podiums.

Before the interview, I watched from inside the production room, and each started stiff, contained, but each warmed up while joking with each other and moving around. The girl, the French student, alternated between swaying and allowing her hands to fall against her sides after raising them. As M. Fields told his jokes, he paced in a circle without turning his torso. Eventually, as the interview drew closer, they settled into their positions and assumed their TV personalities with bright smiles and animated expressions.

Listen, it’s no secret that TV causes the watched as well as the watcher to behave differently; that personalities are changed under the heat of the lights and cameras (when the girl exited the studio, she wiped her face as if she had just finished a nice sauna session). It’s one thing to note it intellectually, and another to observe it yourself. And, still, further, yet another to wonder (although this too is not a particularly groundbreaking point): we have not made the realization that those who animate television do not animate real life as well; hence we assume that our M. Fields, television personalities, with their effervescence, will illuminate rooms, while M. Fields, otherwise, may not fill the room in quite the same way. The force of this realization has not quite penetrated the subconscious; we see politicians, particularly, but actors and entertainers also, and assume their television skills are just as commanding in other contexts.

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In the preceding paragraph, I tried to avoid the “real life”/”television” distinction. This is common to many critics of television. This implies that television is fake life. It is not, no more than writing or painting or other representations are fake life. No, it is seeing real life through muddied glass just like those others, only its verisimilitude fools us sometimes that we seeing the real thing, making our disappointment all the more potent when we realize it is not, leading us to toss around calumnies like “fake life.” Which is not true and we should have known it all along.

****

The vending machines, in a rebuke to the rest of France, sell huge, US-movie-theater-sized bags of M&Ms and sandwiches and the rest of the cheap fuel for the demanding lifestyle.

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Now is as good a time as any to mention the non-LCI shows that were being played. In the production room, which is the Mr. Potato Head of TV (each graphic can be added and subtracted with the flick of a button), two of the guys were watching amusing non-LCI related programming. One was YouTube hijinks. The other was a traffic cop stopping onrushing cars and pedestrians from a variety of angles with music video style moves. They glanced furtively at these things, but they did so. Heck, I can understand—who wants to watch The News Channel all day?

****

The stories that the show covered had a typically American balance of subjects: two deaths, a big business deal, and a ukulele player’s CD.

Is it any wonder that people in the US perceive the media as so negative? The negative, feel-bad stories—a murder in the RER and an fatal motorbike accident leading to riots—were so immediate, so visceral, so real in their consequences that only a dullard could fail to grasp their importance. On the other hand, in what realm other than the abstract can someone rejoice over Airbus’ big deal with China? I’m sure the PDG (CEO), the stockholders and the workers felt a thrill, but other than those people, who else really felt energized by that? I approve in the abstract, I suppose, but it’s hard for me to get my emotions involved. Which is how a lot of media works in the US too. Why is this? Is there merely such a great creative variety of the evils that we can do to each other that the various manifestations will always provoke interest? Are only the grand good deeds mold-breaking enough to be interesting? Is it merely the case that a person’s tranquil happiness is not interesting to us? I don’t know, but I suspect it’s a combination of all of those factors.

Particularly interesting was the motorbike death. The RER murder (on the D; I live on the B—no need to be nervous, I guess) is the typical monstrosity of murder-sexual assault which has become familiar to viewers of CSI and Law & Order: SVU. The motorbike death, however, is one of those stories which reveals something of the society underneath.

What is not in dispute is that two teenage motorcyclists crashed into a French police patrol car. The government claims that the motorcycle (two people were sharing the same one) was going above the speed limit; apparently “witnesses” (the vague term has been used with all reports) back that assertion up. But nevertheless, the community erupted, and a protest was organized, along with Molotov cocktails being thrown at the police station in Sarcelles, a Parisian suburb.

This is what happens when a conflict becomes, in the minds of participants, between one group and another, between ‘the police’ and ‘the immigrants.’ Any incident is liable to escalate. And why not? Once the logic of mutual group antagonism is accepted, it only seems as if each provocation is within that logic, even if it is a mere accident. This is the genius of the republican social contract system: it promises to treat each case as an individual case, not a case of groups warring amongst each other. It requires trust, on both sides: perhaps the immigrants would do well to integrate; the politicians would do better to stop muttering darkly about the immigrant threat. If we want to succeed in defusing the Middle East, we must succeed in convincing Muslims that we bear them no antagonism against them as a group. And we fail just a little bit more every time any Republican (pick ‘em) opens his dumb mouth.

****

I saw a man getting on the metro with a bag from a lingerie store in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other. He had a rigid set to his jaw, as if he were clamping down on a mouthguard. I thought, good luck but it’s probably not going to work out.

****

Last week I saw a performer on the metro. In between songs he spoke of his politics. He hated Sarkozy; referred to his immigrant policies as racist and fascist. Sometimes it’s tough to disagree, especially when you hear about the camps in the north of France where they send immigrants to be deported.

****

Two guys were in front of me in the ATM line. One was trying to engage his friend on every subject under the sun—Sarkozy, soccer, women, all the rest—and his friend was not effusive, speaking in tones that indicated even “Oui” was an effort for him.

“Hey, did you see my new phone?” The first guy said, as if, I know what will work.

“No, I didn’t.” His friends’ tone was more interested now.

The first guy practically tore off his front jean pocket getting his phone out. It had a huge screen. It was pretty cool, and they chattered about its 3G capabilities throughout the rest of the transaction. It seems like everyone everywhere loves their gadgets.

Catching Up

My right heel hurts. It sends a charge of pain up whenever it’s pressured the wrong way. I blame the strike, which makes that pain in my heel the last remnant of the strike. If you had taken a jaunt outside of Paris for the duration of the strike, and had not known about its existence at all, it would be difficult to know it had ever happened—no one speaks of it, average man or reporter.

The last day, Thursday, Thanksgiving, my patience had been nearly extinguished. I was taking the Four, the reliable Four, when the garbled voice came in through the intercom. It advised us that because of the crowds at Châtelet, the train would need to take longer between stops. This struck me as highly odd logic (the first time, I assumed I misheard it; after three more times, I realized that I understood the literal meaning perfectly) because the only way to alleviate the number of people would be to either: a) bring more trains along or b) frustrate people so much that they try out other options—which I guess was the actual intent of the policy. But if that’s true, I would venture that this is the only time that a business or service has attempted to purposefully piss its customers off (as opposed to merely not caring what they think: see most French businesses and all airlines, regardless of nationality). Anyway, after four or five stops with this process, the voice added, “take some time to breathe,” which provoked a sarcastic unified laugh from my car (the French are really, really good at those sarcastic, disbelieving laughs).

When we finally reached Châtelet, I saw the quai, and it was not a huge crowd (foule) as had been claimed, at all. It was moderately full, but this was average for the strike thus far. The only sign of something untoward were the RATP personnel lingering behind the crowd, leaning uncomfortably against the curvature of the wall. They, however, were not uniformed security but instead bureaucrats, with their matching navy blue-and-turquoise windbreakers and RATP ties. Then I turned the corner towards the exit and another part of the crowd revealed itself: like at a golf tournament, where the spectators are roped off from affecting the action, so too was the crowd sequestered to half of the stairs, not allowed to move until we exited. But, still, this didn’t strike me as crazy, insane or massive, merely the logical extension of their earlier conducting policy.

That was the sole logic in an irrational system where no one knew what was going on, neither web site nor bureaucrat nor taxi driver nor American nor Frenchman. The Metro system, usually reasonably competent and efficient, was crippled not by the lack of service, but the uncertainty with which we dealt with it: I had no idea which information to trust or how to plan for it. The constant comparison I’ve heard, both in French and in English, is that the strikers held the nation hostage. That has some elements of truth, but it does not capture the situation: instead, the strikers were extorting the country. Like some junior Mafioso demanding protection, they asked, “Oh, well you don’t want to pay? You’ll find it real hard to function without me.” So they did, and the uncertainty that reigned was not the enforced containment of being taken hostage but rather the lack of knowledge of what was going to work and wasn’t going to.

But then the strike ended on Friday and everyone returned to their usual placidity, as if nothing had occurred and their were no inconveniences suffered. It seemed as if coverage was banished from the pages and from the lips of Frenchmen and all was right with the world.

****

Some betook to alternate forms of transportation during the strike. Walking through Parc Montsouris, I saw a woman on a scooter, no unusual thing. But she was not traveling under her own power: a pair of terriers pulled her along, and the wind swept back her hair, and she assumed a regal expression surveying her domain, like a female George Washington crossing the Delaware. Everyone double-taked when they saw it, which is pretty impressive for Paris, considering that most barely pay a care to the most flamboyant of odd phenomena.

*****

Thanksgiving was normal: it was with family and friends. Thanksgiving was tremendously different: it was in Paris.

This meant no snow, no football, nobody driving in from vast distances (or you yourself doing it), no lazily sitting around while others busy themselves with making the meal (I am the most useless at Thanksgiving—I eat and talk), none of all that. Not to say my meal or experience was bad in any way—it was great; I could not have wished for more—but it was just strange, especially since Thanksgiving is, like most holidays, dominated by traditions (Dad’s sweet potatoes, Grandma’s biscuits, Lions and Cowboys).

This has been only my third major holiday away from home (in a row, now that I think about it)—last Christmas, last Fourth of July, and this one—and that each represents a break with tradition is directly related to the march of time. I’ve just turned twenty, and, being a nice round number (although not the big one next year), it’s got me thinking: I’m kind of old. Or something like that. I felt uncomfortable writing that, being old, which is probably the first time I’ve felt that, which is in itself a milestone. Jesus, I’m making it seem like I’m senile and seventy-seven. Let’s move on.

****

I got free champagne for my birthday, from the bar I went to. I note that not just because it was some really cool event or something—it is, because I’m really freaking cheap—but because the business aspect is pretty strange at first thought. As I cradled the thin glass and walked back, I asked myself, well how does this make sense? What if I just lied about it? Is it mere generosity that propels the deed?

No, to the last question—no other business offers free goods (except occasionally restaurants)—so either bars have an excess of altruism or there’s smart business here. I doubt altruism as an explanation in the general populace—it’s a rare thing and I know it when I see it, so that leaves sound business practice.

I discovered the reason when I sat down with my friends: unless you’re the sort of person who [insert tired metaphor for friendless schlub in mother’s basement, with D&D, with computer, etc.], you’re going to bring friends who will buy drinks for themselves, etc., etc. So there’s your reason, and I’m sorry that I am so slow on the uptake.

****

Place de la Bastille is one of those places that American tourists assume is more historical, more antiquated than it actually is. I remember the first time I visited Paris I wanted to go, to see the old prison, only to be informed by my high school French teacher that it is a mere roundabout centering on a monument.

Once you actually reach Place de la Bastille, you realize that not only is it a roundabout, but the central monument, a spire crowned by a golden angel, is dedicated not to the storming of the Bastille of 1789, an epoch-making event, but the creation of the July Monarchy in the Revolution of 1830, a merely important event.

The roundabout is quite large, stretching across several blocks. You get the immediate sense of an artery and not a meeting place. To the eastern part of the place, the Opera Bastille and the quarter itself squat.

The Opera Bastille is all clean antiseptic lines and clear glass. Mitterand intended it to be democratic, egalitarian, for the grand public. I can’t judge whether the interior meets its aim—another casualty of a strike—but the bank of steps certainly does, providing a perfect place to loiter, whether you’re waiting for friends or waiting for eternity, as it appears several beggars do.

A quarter grows out of one of the offshoots of the Place, filled to the brim with bars and restaurants, harkening back to the days when the eastern part of town was the working-class section (well, in terms of the establishments—the prices, however, are distinctly not working-class). Bouncers, invariably dressed in black-on-black-on-black (there appears to be a strict no-color policy, punishable by death—I actually saw a bouncer exchange his lovely scarlet tie for a “abstractly conceptual” black tie at the behest of a boss-figure), lurk in every bar. The restaurants are good and packed. Packs of people drift together, propelled by chemicals and cold. This is the party in Paris.

This is no prison.

****

There was even, incredibly, a bouncer in a fast-food establishment. He filled the door with a indifferently angry expression (plus), but wore actual colors (minus). We tried to avoid him and slip through the space between him and the door frame, but he interposed between us. We wanted crepes and told him so; he told us that we could only eat in the narrow hole-in-the-wall without seats. This was obviously bizarre so we wandered up the street until the girls in our group caught up; we explained what happened; they offered to get the crepes for us. It seemed like a win-win-win(!)—it was definitely one of those rules that are made to be broken.

So after getting the first crepe, the man became very agitated, speaking wildly and gesturing wildly. He yelled about how “the police will find us” then slapped the crepe out of Kelly’s hands, staining the front of Brian’s pants, then went back inside and threw the payment on the ground to join its ill-gotten-gains.

This was a bizarre episode—after all, sure, we were breaking his rules and, yeah, I guess if they weren’t licensed to serve takeout food they could get in trouble (although this seems highly unlikely), but how would the police know that this particular crepe came from this particular anonymous hole in the wall selling kebabs and crepes? I can’t come up with a plausible scenario (unless there were police informants right around the corner or something), but it was strange, suggesting either a serious personal imbalance on the part of the bouncer (I mean, doesn’t he understand that the bouncer’s role is one of those roles where people constantly try to undermine you, like the DMV teller?), or something unexplained and mysterious.

****

Restaurants in Paris are all, upon reflection, very similar.

This seems a strange thing to write as an American because there are so many different American types. I know, the proliferation of the suburban chain like an algal bloom is no thing to celebrate, but nevertheless, that proliferation does not appear to be threatening the diversity of the American restaurant. Of course, there are all the various ethnic permutations in America, which is usually treated with respect—the food can stand on its own—to go along with the various clienteles served and styles cooked. The best American restaurants are cosmopolitan: they mix and match and synthesize different approaches and foods with occasional electric success.

French restaurants, on the other hand, are very similar in a way that represents France in a microcosm. All non-Western European food is basically ‘ethnic’ food, and as such, is kitsched-up to an exponential degree. Think your neighborhood Chinese Restaurant, and multiply it: every aspect of décor is suffused with the influence of the native land to an oppressive extent. There are probably two causes for that. Either, a contempt for non-French foods and styles; or, a sort of hyperearnest striving, where slavishly imitating each individual detail masks the lack of understanding of the whole, like a strong deodorant masks an ugly smell.

If non-ethnic, then a fealty to the old ways reigns. Restaurants have the same styles of cuisine the same way all the housing in Paris has the same styles even though they’re constructed in completely different eras. The effect of this city-wide style is a great compression: I’ve never been to a disastrous French restaurant, but only comparatively rarely to a spectacular French restaurant.

The situation is reversed in the United States. There, awful food infests every corner. It so infects our culture that, heck, I kind of enjoy that greasy stuff (oh who am I kidding? I’d gorge on an In-N’-Out Double-Double right now—although that’s the upper class of the American fast food restaurant). On the other hand, I know of a good number of really good restaurants (and, of course, the Emperor of All Supermarkets, Wegmans’) in Rochester, NY, hardly a famed food mecca like Paris.

*****

In the Centre Pompidou, there is a sign suggesting that “Pictures may offend your sensibility.” This, of course, suggests that the pictures have an emotional effect, an immediacy, a presence that the best art has, the kind of art you’d expect a famous museum in Paris to have. Few of the pictures affected me in that way.

For that matter, few of the pieces of modern art did either. There is a lot of bad modern art, and it comes in two varieties: first, art that says nothing; second, art that says something extremely facile. The first requires no elaboration. As for the second, we’ve all seen modern art that comments on, say, the duplicity of politicians or our media-saturated culture. These points have been made to saturation in an already saturated culture, and I don’t really need another easy collage of various pop art sources to prove it to me, either.

Both types unfortunately suffer from the need to be explained. The reason is incredulity: really? Is that all that’s going on here? I found myself referencing the cards constantly, like a traveler in a foreign land with his phrase book. But the phrase book was useless—“paradoxical dualities” “archetypes of womanhood in Germany”—and other easily-satired language, so the art too was useless. Visual art does not need to be explained; its power explains itself. Words are mere supplements.

Whenever I think of modern art, I think of that MIT joke. The engineers took a tray from the lunchroom, took off the fork, and put it in the gallery, titled, “No Fork.” No one noticed. It goes without saying that if someone tried to sneak in a painting done in the 17th century style into the Louvre, someone would notice. That tells us that the mere difference between much of the modern art we see in the museum and the rest of the found objects is mere confidence, a mere confidence game. “This is Art,” you have to say, and I suppose easily cowed critics and curators take you at your word.

The attack on the bad of modern art is motivated by love of the good. The Centre Pompidou has much that. One of my favorites was a facsimile airplane, a passenger jet, made out of bent wood with fans serving as propellers with sheets billowing out from them. Scissors and metal objects, those confiscated things, stuck out of the airplane as if from a stabbing. To see it was to know the point that the airplane is an immensely fragile thing, beset by a thousand tiny threats, despite its incredible technological grandeur. The best modern art in commenting in our times combines the different media in a genuinely innovative way (because it is necessary to express a point, because it could be done in no other way), rather than a mere display of virtuosity.

****

A related point: when I talk to people who aren’t art connoisseurs (I would count myself among them) about why really modern art leaves them cold, they always say, “What is it about?” Invariably something like pristine all-white canvasses are brought up (which the Centre Pompidou actually had, something I had always assumed was a joke). They like art that’s about something, is always the conclusion.

Why is it always the conclusion?

At this time, fine art has noticed the extreme increasing abstraction of our society. It notices the metaification of politics (note, for example, that the strike was not a mano-a-mano negotiating tactic but rather an appeal to the people, in France, and basically all of US political media) and the just strange weirdness of math and high-level physics and the entire premise of the field of statistics (that essential aspects of groups can be generalized by recourse to numbers rather than some reference to their souls).

Much of this is well and good. You can’t have science without abstract: the whole idea of a general principle is in itself abstract. Nor can economic business management or governmental management take place without abstraction; indeed, it is probably preferable that the bureaucrat Joe Schmo doesn’t care about my specific interests (assuming that he cares about everyone’s, which is a doubtful proposition). In other words, we rule and are ruled by abstraction.

So art has noticed this increasing trend and has responded with those random slashes across canvasses or funny-shaped metal bents and has declared that it is in tune with the zeitgeist. It comments on abstraction with further abstraction, in other words.

But people are tired with abstraction—they get their fill every day, thank you very much, they read their euphemisms in their memos and their papers—and the role of arts and humanities is not the general but the specific. Speaking for myself (and I think this is a general proposition), I have often felt that, throughout high school and college, I have been hustling towards some dimly imagined future with those adult things (the familiar trinity of job-house-marriage), without a sufficient pause to consider what, exactly, would be a good example of a good job, house or marriage.

A part of that burden is on the various arts, whether fine art, novels, movies or TV shows or whatever. Why do you think there are so many devoted Sex and the City fans after all these years? It unabashedly spoke to people’s hopes and aspirations. It did so in a simple, materialistic way, but it made a try of it, which is better than I can say for the random multicolored splotches on a red canvass.

Guess what? More strike!

The strike is not merely the main topic of conversation, it is the dominant one. It serves as introduction, as disclaimer, as theatrical source of complaint, as a joke, and as a way to curse those outside forces which conspire to shape our lives.

****

Speaking of cursing those outside forces shaping our lives, I was involved in a strange incident today on the train that changed the course of the events that were to follow. The line ten was suffering under the dual plagues of being crowded and being underserved. Only one car in ten, the disembodied authoritative voice proclaimed. So obviously I eagerly attempted to get on, after standing politely to the side waiting for people to descend. Nevertheless, despite the people getting off, the car seemed to be still quite full—it was not at anthill proportions, but it was close. But it could quite easily accommodate one more; in fact, at my earlier connection, I had boarded a train that was even more full, holding my backpack aloft over my head to minimize the amount of horizontal space I occupied.

As I got on, my momentum in the process of dissipating, a small middle-aged woman with huge black wire glasses leaned into me, softly yet deliberately, pushing me off the train, sending me onto the platform rearranging my feet rapidly as the simultaneous click and rushing train announced the sweeping away of my plans, to see a TV show for my internship.

I found myself on the quai and I went over to sit on a bench. I knew that a train would likely not come in time, yet I waited anyway. The platform quickly filled. As it did, I thought—had I done something wrong? I do not think so; if anything, on the earlier, more crowded car, people had applauded my ingenuity—one guy nodded at me, approvingly, which is a big deal on the metro (in ordinary circumstances—people have become far more aggressive towards one another, especially on getting off, because getting off is often an individual act; one must swim against the tide, whereas when one gets on, one is the tide) So I do not know what occurred and it shocked me.

But the strike is wearing on people. Our French teacher told a story about a woman who, on the full platform, was unable to get on. She took a picture, so that her boss would know that it was impossible to get on. Cameras have become increasingly common—a guy with a Nikon, a professional’s camera with a big lens, snapped a picture of the menagerie pressed against the glass window. If the people are taking pictures, then it is notable, in a country where the strike is accepted and normalized and so something about this go-around is a bit different, a bit notable.

As I sat, pondering the question of whether I had done something wrong, in a bit of shock—the fact kept returning to me that but for a rare self-possession of dexterity, I could have ended up sprawled to great pain—a father and a toddler came up. The seats were full, and in a gesture meant to appease the Fates with my good manners, I offered my seat to the father, a man with tattoos crawling up his neck and around his arms, who rejected the seat genially.

His daughter, a small blond presence, with the whiny helium cute of toddlers, was holding a branch from bamboo. She was quite proud of it; she began waving it. At some point—I had decided to start reading—she began waving it at me. This annoyed the father, and he told her to stop, and she didn’t, so he took the branch from her and threw it away, and with that, she began wailing at him to bring it back “s’il te plait!” (she constantly shifted between the familiar “tu” and the formal “vous” in an odd move—on the other hand, she is a toddler—on the third, you’d think if there’s anything you’d learn about language as a child, it’s how your parents would like to address. I could keep on adding to my anatomy, but it is more than a bit fruitless to speculate.) The father took it well and adopted the “I’m-reasoning-with-you” tone and eventually she began silent and, still, later, ebullient, using her father’s knees as a swing.

While all this happened, I adopted the fixed gaze of someone determined to avoid acknowledging another’s embarrassment, even though it had been precipitated on my behalf.

****

I ended up seeing a French sports show on TV. American pro basketball occupied the first block of times, with Joakim Noah and Tony Parker commanding the vast bulk of the highlights. The rest of the time was devoted to round-tables, showing that whatever the activity, the French love mostly to talk about it.

****

France’s Constitutional Council has passed judgment on Sarkozy’s immigration policy, concerning his adopting of DNA tests (fine) and ethnic statistics (not fine). I find the latter more interesting than the former, because it is more peculiarly French (in all senses of the word ‘peculiar.’)

Essentially, the Constitution of France has been interpreted to disallow asking citizens about their racial or religious backgrounds, on the basis that this is divisive to the French Republic. In the US, it is e pluribus unum; in France, there is officially just the unum, the French people.

But that strikes me as little more than a polite fiction. People are devoted to it, no doubt about it, especially the left. The government knowing about you strikes them as classifying them as different, as perhaps classifying as ‘lesser’ and ‘greater’ with attendant prejudices and discriminations. But those classifications are already in the public domain. Just look at Le Pen’s success with his dark fulminations against the immigrant menace. People know what he means by those arguments and many respond.

As with many instances, their positive response is based on prejudice and ignorance. There are some who worry that investigating statistics will only provide kindling for prejudice’s fires, but this is a misplaced fear. If counter that perception, or correcting problems is the goal, then don’t you need an honest picture of what you’re talking about? How can you know if immigrants, for example, are discriminated against without knowing…how many immigrants there are, and from where? The important big question cannot be answered before the small ones.

The problem is out there, and ignoring it by saying we’re all one nation is foolish—the answer needs to be found out.

The more I read and hear about Europe, and its Catalonians, Flemish and Walloons, Serbs, Croats and Bosnians all wanting desperately to be apart from one another, the more incredible and wonderful the United States’ unification is. Obviously there are still problems, but people are still African-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc., without the entire nation rending apart, fissures appearing everywhere.

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There is a new advertisement in the Metro which is the quintessence of French culture. It is for Galerie Lafayette, which is a big luxurious department store. The target and subject of the advertisement is one and the same: L’Homme, written in a deliberate indeliberate scrawl, dominates the lower middle of the ad, behind which a half-naked French guy stares out. He’s bearded and with long hair, and he seems to project a sort of steamy, arrogant intellectualism. In his hands, he holds Jean Baudrillard’s La Societé de Consommation.

That is a very complicated ad to deconstruct for the foreigner, but, here is the joke: Baudrillard believed that reality was “hyperreality” and a simulacrum due to the profusion of images and mass media, which of course meant that people consumed a lot of stuff, which is the defining characteristic of the capitalist economy (i.e. The Consumption Society above). And, of course, this is mass media attempting to convince you to consume based on the fact that L’Homme must consume; it is his duty. It’s a high-irony, postmodern version of a very typical ad: everyone else is doing it.

Actually, myself, I’m not sure that the ad communicates in the same shorthand that most advertisements do. Both foreigners and citizens have paused in front of the ad and really considered it, as if it were a work of art hanging in a museum until they get the joke, which probably bodes well for their brand, both that people are willing to try and figure it out and that people will eventually walk away thinking, that’s pretty smart.

On the other hand, I saw an ad on TV tonight that is utterly obvious (I thought by starting with American, but we are pretty good at advertisements). It was a coffee machine making coffees all on its own while James Brown’s “Sex Machine” played in the background. It’s the type of joke where you laugh involuntarily, almost out of shock that someone would try something that amateurish.

****

Of Napoleon III, Karl Marx declared, “History repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” On the upper corner of the Opera Garnier, amongst all the baroque ornamentation, a shield depends, declaring “Agriculture. Industry.” Baudelaire quotes a woman, his girlfriend, in “The Eyes of the Poor”, saying, “I cannot stand those [poor] people with their eyes open wide as a porte cochere. Please ask the manager to get them out of here!” Le Temps asked anxiously, “Are we no longer anything more than the capital of elegance and pleasure?”

Incredibly, all of these things are related more than just temporally. They are related by the vitality of the Parisian social scene of the Belle Epoque that came from Baron Haussman’s new urban design that made Paris walkable. In making the city walkable, the cultures, once provincial, began to mix. That mixture created a cultural explosion that led to those diverse reactions quoted above.

Shelley Rice writes on page 19 of Parisian Views, “This was the moment, this Age of Revolutions, when historical events changed faster than individual lives; when cities altered their faces more rapidly than people did…” There was “madness” about this time. The clamor, the great to-do, all were manifestations of the great energies propelled by Baron Hausmann’s reforms: of demolishing old neighborhoods and building grand boulevards in their place.

The sources for Baron Haussmann’s reforms were the malaise that blighted the previous era and the economic boom of Napoleon III. They unleashed potential energy like the removal of a dam from a pent-up river. Once removed, the welcome result was a grand mixture of classes and peoples.

Let us start with the earliest cause. There was, undeniably, a malaise suffused throughout Paris, and it was more than just the untreated cesspools. It was poverty at home and impotence abroad. There was a sense that the past had been better, and that the best move was a return to the source of that glory. Napoleon I was unavailable, but Napoleon III was. However, Napoleon III, by virtue of his perceived socialist leanings and Bonaparte familial relations, found himself distrusted by many of the powerful. Simultaneously, to make good on his reputation with the poor, he needed to establish something dynamic, of somehow evoking some perpetual motion machine traveling towards a prosperous future.

Part of his solution was to assert himself on the international state—it’s no accident that commentators always refer to his foreign policy as his “adventures”—to show France’s vitality on the world stage. The other part, more relevant, is to his actions in Paris to create a kind of permanent vitality.

Focusing on the Opera Garnier illuminates exactly what I mean. It is, as is frequently noted, built in a pastiche of different styles but emphasizing baroque ornamentation. I’ve seen the Opera Garnier before, and, between the enormous statues and warm interior colors, I had always been convinced that it was built in 17th century. Obviously not, but it shows that Napoleon III’s aim had been met: he had established roots with the past. But roots only nourish; there must be an object of their nourishment, in this case, a society to feed. That is why the shield in the upper corner of the façade declares, “Agriculture. Industry,” as if to assure all who see that France is about more than mere frippery, that the nation still has “it”.

But it seems to be no accident that Haussmann’s urban renewal program is centered on monuments like the Opera Garnier. As was noted in several different readings, his boulevards and grand avenues all terminate at monuments or squares—public spaces, in other words, where people could mix. There is something distinctly Parisian in that, of still retaining the treasured past even as the future washes over us.

The idea of the public space, though, is where that unleashed energy showed its full effects. Consider the use of the word flâneur in both Baudelaire and historical texts. Everyone writes that genre of person, and deservedly so: the people-watcher becoming a central character in the drama of the city is a positive development. It means that people are mixing, that the poor can be seen along with the rich. That some, like Baudelaire’s girlfriend quoted in the opening paragraph, prefer to actively not see (a different thing from never seeing) underscores the obvious reality that that obvious reality is there to be seen.

There were some that decried the changes to the city, of the destruction of old neighborhoods, the forcing-out of the poor and the rising rents, as awful and sad. Obviously this can be considered bad. But it was, in fact, necessary for the city, for it was stagnating. The boulevards liberated the city. It was as if a shut-up, sweltering, heavy room had had its windows flung open: the breeze invigorated and relieved to great effect. The energy that pervaded Paris seems to me to be directly responsible for the growth in Realism, Impressionism and all those great artists and writers of the era.

It contains lessons for our own time. As has been demonstrated in study after study, isolated neighborhoods, especially by class, stagnate in their own assumptions. Much of the urban anomie of our time is caused by isolation. One of the most worrying studies I’ve seen is that Democrats tend to move in to congressional districts with Democrats, Republicans with Republicans with an accompanying hardening of opinion. But in Haussmann’s Paris, the rich saw the poor and the neighborhoods stayed open all night, mixing the social sphere together in a rich alchemy. Napoleon III, if he failed at many other things, succeeded in creating the closest thing to a perpetual motion machine as is possible: the Parisian social scene of the Belle Epoque.

*****

People are shoving and pushing now on the metro, and frustrations have, non-shockingly, gone up a notch. The ordinary etiquette is being thrown out in slow motion. Now there are RATP conductors manning the halls of Chatalet, acting like airline traffic controllers, ferrying people into lines and order. It’s probably necessary.

For me, while I am unhappy about the strike, I’m trying to let it affect me as little as possible. I cannot control it, and it is of little use to rage against forces beyond your control. This is a policy easier to say than to enact, but I am trying as best I can.

Overwhelmed

I have a theory, perhaps somewhat controversial and contradictory with previous statements. I think the strike is beginning to overwhelm Paris.

It is rare for me—perhaps I’ve been lucky, and I admit to it in the past—to see outright crazy people on the Metro. I’ve seen crazy, as in weird, people, but not crazy as in, please call the doctor to whisk him off the streets crazy. One guy was an apparently normally dressed person stood on the edge of the quai, gesticulating madly and holding an impassioned yet reasoned debate (think Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) with the empty space where the train would come. When it did, he busied himself about whatever tasks the insane find pressing, until—and this is so typical of the insane; they just cannot hold themselves to a schedule—the buzzer rang and the doors shut with their definitive simultaneous click and he came running up, rapped on the door and pointed in at my brother, face contorted. Also on the quai, but considerably more pacific, was a bearded jumpsuited fat man. But these have not been my only sightings of the indigent of Paris; in general, the strike has increased the mixture of me and the hobos. They, the homeless crazy, have been roaming about the stations rather than vegetating.

This is not an indicator of my point above, obviously, as the homeless are not representative of Parisian society as a whole, but they are symbolic. People are faster onto metro, quicker to snap up empty seats, shouting more and generally lashing out of their self-contained islands. One person conducted a speakerphone conversation with a thrilled, shouting woman over the course of ten minutes tonight.

It’s not the effervescent enthusiasms of night, either. Our French teacher was late today, by about thirty minutes (she arrived at ~9:33). She claimed that she had set out at 6:45. After her back began to hurt because of walking, she tried taking the metro. One line didn’t work because of, well, the strike. So on to the next line…But a stop later, there was a bomb threat because of a suspicious baggage (Incidentally, you know how there are always those warnings to watch out for abandoned baggage or suspicious individuals? I never do and I never see any, although the former probably causes the latter) So what can be done but to suffer on the taxi, and so on and so on?

But this is an extreme case. More usual is when you’re coincé (crushed, squeezed, hemmed in). At the big hubs like Montparnasse-Bienvenue, Gare du Nord or Chatelet-Les Halles you find a big tide wash in that carries and crushes you like some piece of driftwood. One of my friends crushed a woman who let out a moan, but he could do nothing and I sympathize of course… After one such tide today, a man who looked American but insisted on speaking in French (I have never heard a Frenchman unconsciously say, “oh boy” in reaction to something bad), found himself curled on the pole, like a fireman frozen mid-descent, or a stripper trying to be alluring: oh how he let “putains” and “merdes” escape from his mouth in the whiniest of tones. I knew he was overwhelmed when a lady didn’t wait a minute to hold the exit door open for him for a solid minute—“That was rude,” he said in French.

But, I wanted to say to him in French, you think you have suffered and perhaps you have, but you can do nothing about it and it’s not worth venting your spleen over the matter. You think you aren’t the only one who’s crushed under the pressure? Of course not. But he was merely the most overwhelmed of a society that little by little is becoming ever more frustrated by the strike’s disruption of their schedule.

****

The name on everyone’s lips is Sarkozy himself, who does not appear overwhelmed at all, despite his recent drop in the polls to 51%. “Putain” is the Parisian prayer addressed to that inscrutable being; most Americans have an entirely more favorable opinion: “I saw someone wearing a Sarkozy T-shirt...I’d totally buy that; Sarkozy’s awesome.”

I don’t know what to think of Sarkozy. I’m trying to avoid heuristics. On one hand, he’s for controlling immigration while pandering to the extreme right (Le Pen supporters are his second-best supporters, after the UMP), but has appointed the most diverse cabinet in French history. On one hand, he speaks in uncompromising tones about his planned reforms for the workplace; on the other hand, he strikes an immediate deal with the unions. For every action he takes, I can find another one that taints that clear view.

And all I have left is a snap judgment, the what-do-I-think when I see him. This is a particularly American judgment to make, I think. We are accustomed to thinking of our Presidents as more than mere political leaders, but as guardians of the nation-idea, of moral reason. That’s one non-hypocritical (but bad) reason that many people were offended by Bill Clinton’s philandering. It’s why Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and the Founding Fathers in general have semi-official secular religions, and Joesph Ellis, Simon Schaama et al. are their apostles and hagiographers. It’s why you can still sometimes see JFK’s portrait hung up in cheap bars. France doesn’t really do that as much, so it’s kind of strange to bring the American standard of judgment to the leaders.

Nevertheless, Sarkozy strikes me as potentially a more effective American than French President, because it’s clear what American archetype he’d shoot for, were he American: the Official Ass-Kicker role. This is the role George W. Bush was tragically miscast in, but for the reason that it is such a powerful archetype in American mythology. And Sarkozy, to me, appears to be aiming for exactly that archetype, and lord knows if he’ll succeed in pulling it off. But the critical thing about it is that the Official Ass-Kicker (whose roots are in the Western) will only accept the Honorable Compromise, which is one that attempts to fill the deep-felt goals of each side, not petty goals of expediency. If not, the Official Ass-Kicker must (wait for it) Kick Ass or Die (i.e. lose major political capital) in the process. This, therefore, does not bode well for the strike ending soon, assuming Sarkozy is really self-cast as the Official Ass-Kicker, which I kind of think he is—but those are the heuristics operating in the absence of overwhelmed information-processing centers.

****

Upon entering the Cour Carée of the Louvre, my brother Jason muttered “oh shit.” It actually might’ve been “Wow” but it doesn’t matter which. The point is this: it overwhelmed him aesthetically. This makes perfect sense. Noise is banished as annoying, aesthetically distracting. It looms over you, enclosing the sky and becoming the entire world. It is geometric like all French Classical architecture. Like all great art, it is easier to experience than explain.

****

One of the most hilarious underappreciated aspects of the Louvre are the explanatory plaques. For most of the art, especially the French, they are your usual plaques: this is who it was by, that is what it is about, this is the style it’s in, that is the other relevant information, etc., etc. Well, for the Greek and Roman antiquities, it became very judgmental and fussy: it got complimentary with a few (“sensible and naturalistic”), but oftentimes negative (“baroque and overdone” and “cold and academic”…their adjectives always came in pairs, incidentally.)

There’s a very simple historical reason for this. Paris, for a long while, simultaneously plotted its eclipse of and homage of Rome and the classical civilization, creating a very strange relationship between France and classical civilization. At least, that’s my guess. Either that, or the French are hilariously judgmental, which is also true otherwise as well. Probably a mix of the two, to be honest.

****

I don’t take pilates seriously, I will admit it. I cannot. I have been challenged often by pilates enthusiasts about the intensity of the exercise and I always pooh-pooh it (there’s a maneuver called “The Seal” where you clap your feet together—how can that possibly be exhausting? Seals and dolphins are the most fun-loving animals out there; it’s impossible to imagine them balancing their checkbooks or paying their bills or other exhausting things like that.). Then I actually try pilates, and it invariably defeats me. But after a week or so of tender muscles, I return to my former position: I don’t take pilates seriously.

My brother and mom were doing pilates today. My mom did it on a credible pad; my brother did it on a fur throw rug that looked like it belongs to a) a 19th century hunter’s cabin or b) a 1970’s swinger’s pad where the man has a throw rug for chest hair, as well as another on the floor. They were following the instructions of the demonstrator, who exercised in time with an ethereally pleasant voice along with soft music the elevator composer would be embarrassed to play. The video had a CGI background of the Grand Canyon or something. I’m unsure what this is supposed to make me feel—pilates isn’t a big deal? But don’t you want me to take it seriously? Isn’t exercise not supposed to be easy? This video clearly does not address the unconvinced.

Everyone Dressed Not-Quite-Right

The concert last night was just as much fashion show as concert. While the general attire of the French male is a blazer and dress shirt with jeans, the male concertgoers seemed to feel compelled to wear their “hip-hop” clothes. One pulled the Walter Payton jersey out of whatever back closet it had been moldering in; another pulled out a pink satin Yankees cap with oversized brim, endearingly, naively straight—I wanted to tilt it the proper angle for him; a third wore a Chien-Mien Wang jersey with snakeskin loafers. And that is only to pick three of the more memorably hilarious examples. Yet all of them who tried to adopt American styles had their own failings, even when I couldn’t really identify what was wrong, but I could instantly tell the difference between Americans and French.

Where do they find those clothes though? There was a kaleidoscope of BAPES, a multitude of Nikes, a wardrobe of jerseys—the variety on display was the same as any major American city. Now, of course you might say, hey, it’s Paris, of course they sell that kind of stuff. And sure, I’ve seen some American clothing, particularly shoes, but I’ve only seen Americans inspecting them, and I haven’t really seen any jerseys on sale yet. There must be some secret store secretly patronized, as I have never seen the multitude of American-influenced styles as at this concert. It’s natural that an American concert would bring out a greater concentration of American imitators, but the difference was staggering.

In contrast to the French’s fashion hijinks—those words together look strange—Kanye West often wore European-influenced clothes and looked completely natural (he had several clothing changes, as it’s Kanye West, and he has to make a big spectacle of everything). Part of that is Kanye’s cosmopolitanism in fashion and music, but part of that is something emblematic of American culture…we find it possible to wear new clothes easily.

****

Speaking of America, it came up in the taxi ride there. The girl who “didn’t” have money (actually she “only” had a ten) brought up, in a midst of a discussion about the difficulties of work and strikes, “once I’m in America, I won’t have these kind of problems.” The taxi driver, she was clearly sympathetic with her, but not so immoderate. After she left and paid with her fifty, the discussion turned to America and work once again, and she said, “One thing I like about America is that there, you’re obligated to work; in France, there are people who just sit on their asses all day.” (This is the best equivalent I think of for her addressing the lazy unemployed of France as “cons ards” amongst various other invective).

I informed her that yeah, Americans work, but they work harder and too often for less, not counting the whole health care issue. I think she was surprised by that, which surprises me; one of the prevailing French stereotypes about America is that we’re a bunch of neurotic, overly-hard workers who exhaust ourselves to depletion.

Isn’t it interesting, though, how we idealize each other? I’ve met a number of young French who speak in a similar fashion; they see America as a place where hard work can get you ahead, which is true of course. Many Americans—at least, the ones who don’t talk about “Freedom Fries” and “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys”—idealize Paris as the place to live the good life.

In terms of Western countries, America and France occupy nearly opposite ends of the possible social spectrum in many ways (the Scandinavian governments probably have more opposite social policies, but what American gives a crap about Norway aside from the blondes?). I think that’s the source of the idealization: the source of all our frustrations has its imagined cure in the opposite system. Each country has become a sort of perfect embodiment of its own system, which both is the result of and propels propaganda about that system. So because the Horatio Alger story, for example, creates the image of America as the hard-worker’s heaven, that solidifies the image and necessitates further expansion on that idea in future times, and so on and so forth. That’s how you end up with fuzzy conceptions of what a country is about, even when you have not so much as set foot on that country’s soil.

I always comment that I’m surprised by the number of French who seriously declare their desire to pull up roots and reset them in America, because I know where the soil is thin, whereas I have lived well here: my roots are not set but are well-looked after so, strikes aside, I do not know the frustrations that afflict French life and therefore cannot imagine seriously why someone would want to uproot himself from the splendor around him.

****

It was Sunday today, and the streets were empty. The shops were closed and dead. The skies were gray. The sole activity in Parc Montsouris were joggers making their circuits, straining against the muck and the rain, and families making a valiant attempt at play with their heavy ski jackets. Two daughters, one older and much taller, walked solemnly in identical pink shiny plastic overcoats. It was oddly effervescent against the dull background.

****

I have ceased to be informed about the strike, as has everyone I have spoken to, official or not. Instead I, indeed we, have adopted a blasé, “C’est la vie” attitude. The French utilized in the previous sentence was purposeful. Americans have gotten the most angry; by and large, the French handle the strike with equanimity. They stand, sometimes for hours on end, without complaint and without change in expression, as if this were a mere instant in their lives, soon to disappear behind them. Which, in the long-run, it is, but I always revolt against this the tiniest bit.

But I cannot know, and that’s what frustrates me most! Coming from the US, where everything is automated and archived, it’s rare that I cannot find a relevant piece of information on the internet or something. Someone will know who’s willing to say. Here it is all speculation, even on the part of the RATP. The only people who really know are the strikers, and they are not speaking out, not even leaks (although I’m unsure how much of a role the leak plays in the French press). I can do nothing, so all that is left is to adopt equanimity as best I can and march on.

Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger

On Friday, coming back to Cité Universitaire, the 4 passed through Montparnasse-Bienvenue. The other side of the quai was full. Full understates things; full is glass with plenty of water. This was the fullest full. A crowd stood on the quai and spilled into the stairs leading from the other parts of the station.

Yet there was little anger on their faces, merely resignation. I have partaken of the same resignation. Today, while waiting for the 5 to take me to the Kanye West concert, I found myself with another crowd, which only filled half of the quai this time. We waited, we waited, we waited. This was a special kind of wait: it combined the stultification of waiting for the airport with the nervousness of the ER. I never knew whether the metro was going to come and I never found out; I left and searched for a cab.

Unfortunately, a cab entails its own set of difficulties in Paris. Place d’Italie, which is where I had been waiting, has a taxi line, which is a perfectly good way of matching up cabs that are empty with people who want a ride. Wait, I’m being American here. Cabs that are empty is the wrong way to describe potential drivers. Let us start with the chief difficulty that Place d’Italie avoided, which is actually hailing the car. Now, black people in America (by this I mean people who actually look black and are black, unlike myself) know that it can be hard to actually get the car to stop for you, which is something that everyone can appreciate in Paris. First, it seems as if all cabs leave their lights on, regardless of whether they have passengers or not. Second, even if they don’t have passengers, their actually stopping to take you appears dependent on whether they feel like taking you—after the show, at Nation, I must have seen seven cabs zip past without passengers and lights on. Once you have actually gotten the car to pull over, you aren’t out of the woods, because you can’t ask to go just anywhere, you must negotiate with the driver to see whether he is willing to take you where you’re going. I unreservedly prefer American taxis to Parisian taxis.

However, having said that, the taxi driver I ended up with at Place d’Italie turned out to be a wonderful Sengalese who saved me seventeen euro, had a delightfully warm cackle, and was an amusing conversationalist. She saved me seventeen euro by taking another girl, about my age, with me. The deal was this: the girl would pay for her trip to République, and I would pay for the République to Avenue Jean Jaurès leg (where Le Zenith, the venue for the concert is located). This was hugely beneficial for me and the taxi driver, and not at all for the girl, who at first pretended as if she didn’t have enough money (!), offering the excuse that she works fifty hours a week. Then, when we reached République, she promptly dropped a fifty like it wasn’t a thang. This annoyed the taxi driver to no end, leading her to laughingly insult the girl the rest of the way, “You can work fifty hours a week, but you’ll have to pay like the rest of us.”

Avenue Jean Jaurès was unfortunately clogged like a cold, which allowed a couple of Asians to hop on, slashing my costs even more. The taxi driver then joked about how immigrants don’t use taxis, especially the Chinese, provoking laughter from all concerned. But then they left, and the emboutillage was so bad that I felt compelled to run from No. 40 Avenue Jean Jaurès to 211 Avenue Jean Jaurès.

Once actually at 211 Avenue Jean Jaurès, I joined the current of the massive stream of people drifting down a tree-lined pathway towards points unknown. I assumed that they must be going towards the concert, and they were. But then I was confronted by another line, which was the checkpoint for actually gaining entrance.

It moved painfully slowly, so much so that it made me wonder what was going on up there. I guessed that it had to do with searching bags, and I jokingly thought that the only way the line could be slower is if they were individually hand-searching each person. So after flashing a ticket at a fleshy security guard, I found that exactly that was occurring. After submitting to my search from a gap-toothed old woman, I had finally gained entrance, and how glad I was.

*****

The concert was certainly the whitest hip-hop concert I’ve ever been too. Also, too, whereas in the United States, people wave cell phones almost exclusively instead of lights, the concert-goers of Le Zenith waved a mix of cell phones and lighters. The fashion was imitation American. All this is to say that this concert was heavily attended by the French.

This might perhaps seem natural to you; the concert took place in Paris, therefore isn’t it natural that the vast, vast majority of attendees were lily-white Frenchmen? To which I say no, it is not natural at all, in a way that was very clearly brought out by Common’s performance.

When I ordered the tickets, I ordered them mostly for the chance to see Common because I hadn’t seen Common yet. I was expecting a strong performance from Common, and we got one. Common attacked the concert with passion and verve and really got the audience on his side, starting strong with “Forever Begins,” “Go” and “Be (Intro).” Common utilized a very simple arrangement, performing in front of a white sheet, with merely a DJ, drummer, keyboardist and gofer backing him up (whose sole duty seemed to be bringing in fresh towels for Common to towel himself off in his snatched-instants-long breaks).

This last paragraph, actually, was not clear at all why it is not natural at all why it is a bit strange that the audience (which admittedly was smaller than the eventual audience, which I will blame on the overzealous security, the strike and the remote location—the concert is in the nineteenth arrondisement in the northwest of Paris) should be Frenchmen who responded relatively well to the concert, but I’ll attempt to show why it was pretty strange. The aforementioned three songs are great, three of the best in Common’s catalogue in my opinion. They are all hits, and deservedly so. What Common is doing right now is to me one of those miracles of artistry, as he is an intellectually substantive rapper who is producing hits and endorsing the Gap, which is a triad that not many rappers have achieved (at best you can get two). Common absolutely does not condescend to the audience.

However, once Common shifted to songs that are critic’s favorites but not popular favorites, the crowd became slightly less response. Few people know “Paid in Full” by Eric B. & Rakim, and while “I Used to Know H.E.R.” made Common’s critical reputation, it was not a huge hit. Even Nas’ “N.Y. State of Mind” rebranded as “Paris State of Mind” put in a medley with “The Corner” produced little plaudits from the people (well, except from me—I loved it).

That’s why it’s a bit strange to me, to hear the Parisian crowd thrilling to my favorites “The Light” and “Drivin’ Me Wild,” to name two other examples from the concert. As a genre, Rap, for all the criticism directed at it to the contrary, is powerfully connected to the language, perhaps the most powerfully connected to language of any form of art. Because rap must be played over a fast-moving beat and comprehended at speed, it demands a level of efficiency from writer and a level of investment from listener unparalleled lyrically. So you have to be really, really good with language to produce good rap, and in turn, to appreciate rap, you must appreciate the particular form of English that rappers speak. It’s a language-intensive enterprise. Not to diss the French here—their English is far better than our French—but few French that I have met have the fluency with English to really get the references that rappers make on a line-by-line basis.

I’m probably being too elitist here—Americans, too, don’t get everything out of rap that they should, whether from prejudice or laziness—but still, the basic issue remains, why would the French appreciate the most language-intensive of all contemporary American music?

What was always true is the audience loved when Common lived up to his name and showed the common touch. High-fiving the audience is always an easy way to obtain cheers, but the audience really responded to “The People,” I think in part because of the title. That might be what these French love about rap. They like that the genre is the most democratic of all: all it requires is someone with a voice who can organize words rhythmically in time, and the listener gets out what he puts in, a kind of citizenship of music.

For me, having listened extensively to Common, I appreciated the passion, variations on his own music, and general showmanship that he brought to the table. I’m surprised that he was willing to be the opening act to Kanye West, but he probably wanted to build his brand in Europe, and that was a smart move. He left and we waited for Kanye.

****

Kanye came preening, which is a typical move. He entered through fake smoke. It was pretty cocky, of course, but that’s Kanye, of course.

The whole cockiness issue does not sit well with some, but I’ve always accepted, because he makes great music. It was only during this concert that I realized how non-disposable it was, how much a part of his narrative his arrogance is.

The narrative of Kanye is a kind of bildungsroman. His points of departure, and consequently his touchstones, are these: college (he’s a college dropout, haven’t you heard?), Chicago, his mother and the car crash. In dropping out of college to follow his dreams, he embarked on a typically American journey. That, his mother and Chicago, all of them must be honored, and hence his journey. It’s no wonder that many of his stories reference some sort of journey or height that must be ascended (“Jesus Walks”, “Spaceship” [Quote from concert: “One of my favorite songs”], “Touch the Sky”) in order for Kanye to prove himself worthy of his rewards. But the next question is, are the rewards I’m receiving the proper ones? (“All Falls Down”, “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, “Diamonds From Sierra Leone”, “Gold Digger”) Do I care more about monetary or spiritual validation? That Kanye, like many athletes, chooses to portray himself as a constant underdog despite his evident successes (“Take this, haters!” he cries in “Stronger,” before saying “Now that that don’t kill me/Can only make me stronger”), may show that all rewards, whether spiritual or temporal, are transitory in the Buddhist mode. (Actually, one psychological experiment shows that people’s happiness, after a great gain, always regresses to the mean, leaving one always wanting more, more, more.)

That Kanye is arrogant and shows it is meant to display that he’s earned it. It’s true, he’s made great music. Few popular artists display as rich a command of musical idiom that Kanye does: for “Spaceship,” he started, with a backing bass guitar, in a blues confessional mode, shifted to a conventional rap, introduced his band in a jazzy-funk-rock mode, with each member taking their solos in turn. His latest album utilizes techno and electronica; Late Registration embraced the orchestral like few rap albums before it. Kanye is voraciously cosmopolitan, and that, I think, is the successful root of his arrogance: it is meant to convey that he has considered all options along his journey, he has consumed all materials, and this is what he likes and he absolutely knows what he likes and doesn’t care whether you like it or not. Put another way, his arrogance is his integrity. And while it lands him in public trouble, it is the source of his success, for he is absolutely confident in what he knows and is therefore willing to experiment broadly and hence succeed grandly.

Because Kanye West is one of the most formidable hitmakers of recent times. Even if you leave aside his producing career (good enough, that), and just consider his solo career, here are the songs in the concert that produced appreciative roars of recognition: “Through the Wire”, “Jesus Walks”, “Get ‘Em High”, “All Falls Down”, “Gold Digger”, “Diamonds From Sierra Leone”, “Stronger”, “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, “Good Life”, “Champion”, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten some. That’s a pretty damn good list right there, and think about the variety of musical styles represented there. That’s impressive, and it’s all due to Kanye’s integrity and his trust in his touchstones as representing as where he’s come and where he must go.

But he has lost one of his touchstones. His mother died recently. It came out during the concert. “Hey Mama” began playing, and the band went on like everything was going to be OK, and the light shone down on Kanye, and he just stood there rooted for a second and it looked as if he were merely waiting for the beat to ride out until his entrance until his hand came up to his eyes to cradle his face. The vocalists stopped singing and came to comfort him and the DJ and keyboardist joined them and formed a huddle shutting him from the world and I knew, just knew that it must have been the greatest of emotional fissures opening in his soul right at that moment.

****

That is not all, but it is much of what I wanted to write. More tomorrow.