remember that expo you went to with your brother, darcy, of that guy that invented a certain pigment of blue? because i think i saw 2 of his pieces at the musée de l'art moderne de la ville de paris (16th arrondissement, next to palais de tokyo) this afternoon. i was supposed to go with our art contempo class at cupa but since i'll be in stockholm on thursday...i like fauvist art. it seems gentler than later cubist works. also, L.H.O.O.Q by Duchamp is small, and funny. i wonder how many people actually understand the title (if you speak french, and even if you don't, say the letters together as they would be said...and comment on this post if you get it! no cheating).
such as it is, i am using cyrille's huge desktop computer in my host parents' absence, which is quite a luxury. then erin, bevin and i met up at petit palais on the prowl for ice cream, to no real avail...but we did get hit on by a french/tunisian guy named ali. he offered us couscous (and possibly marriage). oh wait, no, he was really just hitting on bevin. he complimented her eyes, tried to get her number at least 4 times, and gave her his on a used lottery receipt. did i mention that he works security at the petit palais?
sketchy, but harmless. off to see "nue propriété" at odéon - my first french movie in paris!
26.2.07
sweden-bound
the plan for wednesday: leaving home at 10 am with as little luggage as possible (keeping in mind it's under 0° C there right noz); taking the metro (line 10 to odéon, change to line 4 jusqu'à chatelet, take line 1 almost to the end); pick up the 13 euro shuttle to beauvais airport, pay 12 euro to check a bag (and cry a little because they will lose the bag inevitably, and i don't have many clothes) and take the 2 hour ryanair flight to stockholm. arrive in stockholm, frantically locate bag, take the 90-minute, 130 SED bus to the center of stockholm, where i will be picked up by my friend anton that i haven't seen in 2 years!! (we worked together at french woods summer of 2005) i will most likely be checking out fauvist art (so says pascal, my art contempo teacher) as well as some post-impressionists. frankly, i'm psyched to be getting out of the somewhat familiar and having pretty much free accomodation for a few days! i return sunday, which is my (real) father's birthday. i am a jerk and didn't send off his birthday card in time. maybe i'll be able to do that tomorrow. yikes!!
25.2.07
hiding away
this apartment represents a fluid environment, in which people tend to pass in and out...the best analogy i can think of is a selectively permeable membrane, where the selection is by relationships with the native (i.e. children or parents) inhabitants. in my suburban maryland household this never happened. the one sofa we have in our house does not collapse into a bed. every one other than the leather one here decomposes into a mattress and even has a drawer underneath for bedding. ingenious, really. it makes me feel like i'm never alone.
tonight, florent and claire ate with me and we watched the last half hour of a fairly morbid film with kevin spacey (dubbed in french of course) called "swimming with sharks." i have not the energy to stay up til midnight to watch the oscars. i suppose i will have to read about the moving speeches given by the teary-eyed directors and in-shock actors.
goodnight, tout le monde, and i hope that someone jettes un oeil at this blog sometime. and comments. i refuse to create an alternate universe. this is me, stealing a bit of wifi from a neighbor, in my hardwood floors room with high ceilings and leftover jazz posters from when cyrille slept in this lofted bed. i thought i would be scared of the height, but climbing down the ladder has become just another morning ritual, like pulling on my robe, bleary-eyed, and opening the shutters to greet the grey paris day.
tonight, florent and claire ate with me and we watched the last half hour of a fairly morbid film with kevin spacey (dubbed in french of course) called "swimming with sharks." i have not the energy to stay up til midnight to watch the oscars. i suppose i will have to read about the moving speeches given by the teary-eyed directors and in-shock actors.
goodnight, tout le monde, and i hope that someone jettes un oeil at this blog sometime. and comments. i refuse to create an alternate universe. this is me, stealing a bit of wifi from a neighbor, in my hardwood floors room with high ceilings and leftover jazz posters from when cyrille slept in this lofted bed. i thought i would be scared of the height, but climbing down the ladder has become just another morning ritual, like pulling on my robe, bleary-eyed, and opening the shutters to greet the grey paris day.
hiding away
this apartment represents a fluid environment, in which people tend to pass in and out...the best analogy i can think of is a selectively permeable membrane, where the selection is by relationships with the native (i.e. children or parents) inhabitants. in my suburban maryland household this never happened. the one sofa we have in our house does not collapse into a bed. every one other than the leather one here decomposes into a mattress and even has a drawer underneath for bedding. ingenious, really. it makes me feel like i'm never alone.
tonight, florent and claire ate with me and we watched the last half hour of a fairly morbid film with kevin spacey (dubbed in french of course) called "swimming with sharks." i have not the energy to stay up til midnight to watch the oscars. i suppose i will have to read about the moving speeches given by the teary-eyed directors and in-shock actors.
goodnight, tout le monde, and i hope that someone jettes un oeil at this blog sometime. and comments. i refuse to create an alternate universe. this is me, stealing a bit of wifi from a neighbor, in my hardwood floors room with high ceilings and leftover jazz posters from when cyrill slept in this lofted bed. i thought i would be scared of the height, but climbing down the ladder has become just another morning ritual, like pulling on my robe, bleary-eyed, and opening the shutters to greet the grey paris day.
tonight, florent and claire ate with me and we watched the last half hour of a fairly morbid film with kevin spacey (dubbed in french of course) called "swimming with sharks." i have not the energy to stay up til midnight to watch the oscars. i suppose i will have to read about the moving speeches given by the teary-eyed directors and in-shock actors.
goodnight, tout le monde, and i hope that someone jettes un oeil at this blog sometime. and comments. i refuse to create an alternate universe. this is me, stealing a bit of wifi from a neighbor, in my hardwood floors room with high ceilings and leftover jazz posters from when cyrill slept in this lofted bed. i thought i would be scared of the height, but climbing down the ladder has become just another morning ritual, like pulling on my robe, bleary-eyed, and opening the shutters to greet the grey paris day.
alors, and we go...
recent events. in no certain order of importance.
last tuesday i went to a free flute and piano recital at the sorbonne. the pianist is in my machaut class. she played half-stick and drowned out the schumann violin sonata (transcribed for flute) as well as the 4th movement of the prokofiev sonata. tragic. the flutist was clean though. didn't love her tone, but these french flutists play cleanly, consistently.
haircut wasn't half bad. i got it done right by st paul metro, a hop skip from the wine bar/café meredith and i found a few weeks ago - 5 euro for a crêpe and a café crème. the cut is hipsterish (gasp!)
thursday i heard my flute teacher (cat cantin, of the paris opéra) play the complete mozart quartets on a grenadilla wood boehm system flute at st germain-des-près cathedral. the wood was all the better to match the strings in a very wishy-washy acoustic space. i dined after.
nadia, a former exchange student with the cheminal family, was visiting for a few days hoping that she could get a visa straightened out for her turkish boyfriend that she met at the london school of economics. she is a few years younger than claire, and speaks very good french (and apparently spanish as well).
cyrille leaves for london tonight by eurostar for his "stage," which i learned from darcy means basically anything that had any duration of time. in his case, it's a 6 month internship with dannon yogurt. he wants to learn english - and what better way than by immersion?
friday i wandered around les halles and found the mediathèque musicale, which is sweet! i got my free library card - it extends to scores and books, not to cds and dvds - and took out a score of bach inventions, only to find on my return to 18 blvd st-germain that the piano is woefully out of tune. d'hommage. i'll dream about the inventions, i suppose...
yesterday i went to the marmottan museum with bevin morrissey, a fellow cupa student who hearts monet, to see some estampes japonais from monet's collection, as well as some of his lesser seen paintings, some abstract ponts from late in his life (when his eyesight was decreasing), as well as a few renoir portraits of he and his wife. i then hung around the 16th with bevin, had a coffee at a nice relatively quiet café before taking a brief RER ride to blvd président kennedy to maison radio france for my next adès adventure.
this time it was mostly gerald barry's "triumph of truth and deceit" (opera in two short acts, for 2 countertenors, tenor, baritone and bass). i found the bass and one of the countertenors most compelling. it was unstaged, and the birmingham contemporary ensemble was unspeakably tight. the trumpet players and clarinetists in particular rocked the house. percussion wasn't bad either. i sat next to this extremely gentle older french man who struggled with stairs and didn't particularly favor barry's piece. he found it too repetitive. i would agree on some level, but i also thought it extremely compelling, especially in his use of vocal contour to highlight the text.
for the two concerts that i've seen there, the composers have all been in attendance. i think to play in adès' présence, in the maison de radio france, is a high honor. and all the concerts are free!
this morning, after a brief night's sleep, i walked out (rainy, grey, kinda cold) to chatalet to meet maggie eisenman and her husband at the théâtre for an 11 am recital given by joshua bell (violin) and jeremy denk (piano). the program was: mozart sonata 24 k 304, faure sonata 1 op 13, prokofiev 5 mélodies op 35 bis, and he added rach vocalise, sarasate introduction and tarantella, and as an encore a transcription of a tchaikovsky song. 1h30, beautifully executed, no surprises. denk was SUPERB, in caps because i had never heard of him and was surprised they chose full stick...but this man can play so cleanly, so quietly, and the prokofiev was spot on. mozart too, just beautiful.
please tell me what you think of this blog, i am a newbie, and i have really no idea what the hell i'm doing. it's just me rambling for the benefit of all me obies across the atlantic.
last tuesday i went to a free flute and piano recital at the sorbonne. the pianist is in my machaut class. she played half-stick and drowned out the schumann violin sonata (transcribed for flute) as well as the 4th movement of the prokofiev sonata. tragic. the flutist was clean though. didn't love her tone, but these french flutists play cleanly, consistently.
haircut wasn't half bad. i got it done right by st paul metro, a hop skip from the wine bar/café meredith and i found a few weeks ago - 5 euro for a crêpe and a café crème. the cut is hipsterish (gasp!)
thursday i heard my flute teacher (cat cantin, of the paris opéra) play the complete mozart quartets on a grenadilla wood boehm system flute at st germain-des-près cathedral. the wood was all the better to match the strings in a very wishy-washy acoustic space. i dined after.
nadia, a former exchange student with the cheminal family, was visiting for a few days hoping that she could get a visa straightened out for her turkish boyfriend that she met at the london school of economics. she is a few years younger than claire, and speaks very good french (and apparently spanish as well).
cyrille leaves for london tonight by eurostar for his "stage," which i learned from darcy means basically anything that had any duration of time. in his case, it's a 6 month internship with dannon yogurt. he wants to learn english - and what better way than by immersion?
friday i wandered around les halles and found the mediathèque musicale, which is sweet! i got my free library card - it extends to scores and books, not to cds and dvds - and took out a score of bach inventions, only to find on my return to 18 blvd st-germain that the piano is woefully out of tune. d'hommage. i'll dream about the inventions, i suppose...
yesterday i went to the marmottan museum with bevin morrissey, a fellow cupa student who hearts monet, to see some estampes japonais from monet's collection, as well as some of his lesser seen paintings, some abstract ponts from late in his life (when his eyesight was decreasing), as well as a few renoir portraits of he and his wife. i then hung around the 16th with bevin, had a coffee at a nice relatively quiet café before taking a brief RER ride to blvd président kennedy to maison radio france for my next adès adventure.
this time it was mostly gerald barry's "triumph of truth and deceit" (opera in two short acts, for 2 countertenors, tenor, baritone and bass). i found the bass and one of the countertenors most compelling. it was unstaged, and the birmingham contemporary ensemble was unspeakably tight. the trumpet players and clarinetists in particular rocked the house. percussion wasn't bad either. i sat next to this extremely gentle older french man who struggled with stairs and didn't particularly favor barry's piece. he found it too repetitive. i would agree on some level, but i also thought it extremely compelling, especially in his use of vocal contour to highlight the text.
for the two concerts that i've seen there, the composers have all been in attendance. i think to play in adès' présence, in the maison de radio france, is a high honor. and all the concerts are free!
this morning, after a brief night's sleep, i walked out (rainy, grey, kinda cold) to chatalet to meet maggie eisenman and her husband at the théâtre for an 11 am recital given by joshua bell (violin) and jeremy denk (piano). the program was: mozart sonata 24 k 304, faure sonata 1 op 13, prokofiev 5 mélodies op 35 bis, and he added rach vocalise, sarasate introduction and tarantella, and as an encore a transcription of a tchaikovsky song. 1h30, beautifully executed, no surprises. denk was SUPERB, in caps because i had never heard of him and was surprised they chose full stick...but this man can play so cleanly, so quietly, and the prokofiev was spot on. mozart too, just beautiful.
please tell me what you think of this blog, i am a newbie, and i have really no idea what the hell i'm doing. it's just me rambling for the benefit of all me obies across the atlantic.
it was time.
i have caved. it is time for me to have a blog page for this experience. facebook is old. i am a modern girl! so here's my debut message. my blog inspirations are joel selby and sean nagamatsu, and though i might not have profound art or words to scribble into this page, i will do my best to convey this experience.
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