Historically and presently, Paris has served as a source of inspiration for musicians, chefs, authors, inventors, designers, and artists who traveled to, or worked in, this city for a variety of reasons - to feel liberated, to be freed from constraints placed upon them by their communities elsewhere, to mingle with their heros and mentors, to become famous ...
I am not here for any of the above reasons, per se. I guess, though, it's always rather liberating to be in a new place and fend for yourself through a series of adventures and mishaps that end up taking your life in a direction that you couldn't have previously imagined. However, there is something to be said about a city that is known to be the epicenter of creativity and art on the planet. What does that mean in my day to day life? Other than being extremely fortunate to see a lot of performance art in theaters, I see all kinds of musicians and artists doing there thing pretty much everywhere, including a seven-piece ensemble that plays every Thursday and Sunday in the Châtelet métro, which I see on my way to dance class.
Side note/rant: I personally, have two issues with the metro in terms of artistic promise. The first is that people seem to really not appreciate my tendency to tap-dance while waiting for the train to arrive. It's a habit that I picked up in New York a while back and haven't been able to shake. In fact (little known fact), I do this quite often - in grocery stores, waiting for friends to come out of a store... you get the idea. I'm not good at it, but it's something that helps me pass the time, but the Parisians are not taking it. No one has said anything to me outright, but the death glares are making me think that I should take up knitting or something. Secondly, everytime I enter the metro, I see choreography. It's a huge issue, people. Then I daydream about the kind of awesome site-specific dance piece I could create about the permeation of people on Line 9. I have a bunch of ideas and I hope that some of you will volunteer to help me out with a little project I want to do on BART when I get back to the Bay :)
Yes, I know, the cliché is that art is everywhere, but here formal art (aka not street art or beautiful formations of children in line waiting for their croissants) is literally everywhere. On almost any corner you can see signs pointing to a variety of tiny museums that no one knows existed because it's around the corner and to the left of the Louvre. For example, my goal this week is to head to the Musée du Luxembourg, which is very near my school, but I haven't gone because it's not a "major" site and I haven't gotten around to it yet.
More fun art: While walking down the street yesterday, I found that it had rained letters!
Other than artistic explorations, this week involved heading to the Catacombes, which is basically a place several tens of meters underground connected by an complex tunnel system that holds an ossuarie. Essentially, in the mid 1800s, the city decided to expand and build housing, so they built over the cemetaries; however, in order to preserve the notion of the sacred state of the dead, they moved all the bones from all these cemetaries into the Catacombes. It was more that a little disturbing, but at the same time very fascinating. It looked like this:
Those would be bones and skulls.
The tunnel leading to the "L'Empire de la Mort" (Empire of Death)
This week, the agenda will include Père Lachaise cemetary where Proust, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison are buried; a wine bar excursion; writing a French paper and starting an Art History paper; fancy dinner; stroll through the Bois de Boulogne (giant park); yoga!
À bientôt!
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