Paris on My Mind

Upcoming Events

2010-08-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

I have a number of public appearances scheduled in the next month or so. I'd like to draw attention to them in the hopes that you might be able to make one or another. Note that I'll be speaking in the Bay Area Tuesday, September 7th.

On Saturday, August 21st at 7pm, I'm reading with three other members of the writing group I've been part of for the past two and a half years. We call ourselves, The Usual Suspects. We're reading as part of Mendocino Stories, 7pm at the Mendocino Hotel. I'll be reading an excerpt from The Appassionata. I'm really hoping we'll have an audience, so please, if you can, come out and support us. Thanks.

Starting Tuesday, August 26th, I'm beginning a third round of Creative Writing and Critique. The groups meet either Tuesday or Thursday evening, 6-9pm and cost $50 for writing club members, $75 for the general public. The groups are open to all levels, all genres. I keep them small in order to make sure we can really spend time on each person's writing. It's been very successful thus far. The StoryStalkers are members of the critique group, and although I haven't managed to entice much blogging yet, I'm still hopeful that over time everyone in the group will begin to post thoughts and even writing on the StoryStalker blog.

On Tuesday, September 7th at 7 pm, I'll be at Book Passages in Corte Madera. I'll be speaking about Synchronicity and StoryStalking. Please spread the word and if you live in the Bay Area, please mark your calendar. I've been invited by Left Coast Writers, a Bay Area writing community.

So. Hope to see you one place or another.
Cross-posted at Ariadne's OWL.

Playing it Forward

2010-07-14T08:47:00.000-07:00

For the past couple of weeks, I've been complained about being stuck in my novel. Not writers block, rather an inability to see how to move the story along. I've now found an answer, and I want to try to share my experience because I like the synchronicity it kicked up. It's a bit complicated, but I'll do my best to keep it simple. The problem started when I couldn't see how to keep moving toward the resolution of my plot—which after some difficulty, I decided involved getting a couple of my characters together on the page.

I'm dealing with two women who come from very different social classes. Louise (upper left) is married and respectable and sheltered. Among other things, she's hiding her acquaintance with Juliette (right), who is an actress and a courtesan, and lives a much more Bohemian life than Louise. They originally met by accident and liked one another. Now, six years later, Louise needs Juliette's assistance.

Lousie Farrenc is a composer, and the first thing I explored was a conversation about a piece of music she was composing, Ma Tendre Musette. A musette is a bagpipe. I'd written a conversation in which, Aristide, Louise's husband, commented that he heard the pipes as a boy living in the south of France.

I've been talking in my classes about how, as writers, we leave breadcrumbs for ourselves, Hansel-&-Gretel style, as we write. And this reference to hearing bagpipes in the south of France was just such a breadcrumb. When I looked at it a second time, I remembered that Louise and Aristide had traveled together in the south of France right after they married. I decided they heard the pipes together during that journey and looked for a specific village where it could have happened.

Researching on the Internet, I found a village that advertises its old windmills as a tourist attraction. Since windmills were already mentioned in the book, I decided to use that village. So I moved from a vague idea about describing a musette for the reader, to a specific memory that belonged to Louise as she composed.

The next day I attended a piano concert at the music festival. (This is where the synchronicity kicks in.) It featured music by Franz Liszt, another character in my novel. The pianist quoted Rousseau, a philosopher who greatly influenced the times I'm writing about. "Music," Rousseau said, "gives the ear eyes" and can portray anything—even the physical world. Liszt, the pianist explained, had composed the music he was about to play to reflect the stillness of Lake Waldstein. I blogged about my experience in some detail a few days ago.

I came home and thought about Louise's musette. I knew she had borrowed the melody from an old folk tune and then created variations of it. Because the windmills were part of her memory, I decided she wanted to capture them somehow, in the same way Liszt tried to capture the lake. I also realized she could get word to Juliette by going through her brother, who was studying art in Rome at the French Institute there. The director of the Institute, Horace Vernet, was a painter who had been intricately involved when Louise and Juliette first met. Louise wrote her brother and asked him to have Vernet contact Juliette who was still modeling in Paris for Vernet's cohorts, including Delacroix.

It was a round about way of getting to Juliette, but Louise was being careful. She didn't want her husband to realize what she was doing, and she didn't know anyone else she could ask. One problem solved.

I still couldn't figure out how they were going to have this clandestine meeting, even when Juliette knew about it. That's when the windmill popped back up... Louise realized she could tell Aristide she wanted to go to the new café, Le Moulin de la Gallete, to be in the presence of the windmill there. Le Moulin de la Gallete is in Montemartre, which is in the northern part of Paris and part of the novel. The fortuneteller, my storyteller, had, only a couple of chapters back, told the reader about Le Moulin de la Gallete. Like Louise and Juliette, Madame Lenormand is an historical figure. She lived in Paris during the times I'm writing about and was quite famous; she'd read cards for Napoleon.

So now, not only can my characters meet; they're meeting at a locale where they might run into Madame Lenormand who may have something to tell them both that will allow the larger plot issue (the reason they're meeting) to move toward resolution. I'm not sure what's going to happen because I haven't written the scene in the moulin yet, but Madame Lenormand is the one who originally told Louise to seek Juliette's aid.

I hope I'm communicating the significance of what I'm trying to explain. Really, when I was first stuck, I had written that Madame Lenormand told Louise her maid could help her. That was the real dead end. The first change I made was to Juliette, mostly because someone in my writing group asked me what had happened to Juliette. Juliette Drouet, Victor Hugo's mistress, had been kind of a local color character—not that involved with the plot. Now, suddenly, she's relevant.

A couple of things: first of all, what I learned was the answers were in what I'd already written, and that I'd made a mistake that I had to catch and change. It's kind of like painting perspective wrong. The most important moment of undoing my problem came when I turned action over to a different character... when I realized the maid had very little to offer. Even though she had connections to the larger problem, she didn't have the connections that Juliette, as an actress, did. Secondly, I had to see how to involve this new character, in this case, get word to her. I didn't want my reader doubting the validity of how it all happened, which is where the windmills came in—they give Louise the excuse she needs to go off on a risque adventure.

The changes came from conversations, from the concert I attended, and from bits I'd already laid into the text. Executing it meant writing forward and back too—something I've begun to do more and more. All of this is based on the notion that it's better not to have all the answered figured out (outlined) up front in a novel... because it gives your unconscious more opportunity to be involved in the unfolding. Novelist Peg Kingman, who I heard speak this spring, pointed out that if she figures it all out ahead of time, generally speaking her readers see it coming and can anticipate everything before they get there. If, however, she allows the story to unfold, when her characters get stuck, the reader can't see how its going to work out. They're kept off-balance about where the story is going—a much more interesting story to read.

I call it story stalking.
____
crossposted at Ariadne's OWL: StoryStalking

Listening to Liszt

2010-07-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

The Mendocino Music Festival just started this weekend and I went today to hear a piano concert that included four pieces by Franz Liszt—a lecture and performance by an Englishman named Paul Roberts. He was not only a wonderful pianist, he was also an excellent teacher and storyteller. I learned a lot about Liszt's way of approaching music. Some of it was information I had heard before but presented in a different way. Some of it was just plain new to me.

It was so nice of the universe to bring Liszt to my doorstep. Roberts introduced the concert with a quote from Rousseau about music which I had never heard. "Music portrays everything," Rousseau wrote, "even those objects that are purely visible. By means of almost inconceivable powers, it seems to give the ear eyes." Roberts went on to explain the whole concept of program music and symphonic poems.

He described the first two pieces as Liszt's attempt to capture the music of water. The first was Au Lac du Wallenstadt, a piece that Liszt wrote quoting Lord Byron's Childe Harold.

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,

With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing

Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake

Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.

Liszt's wanted to create the same image and emotion with music Byron had created with words—the stillness of the lake in contrast to the call of the world. "Thy contrasted lake, with the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing which warns me with its stillness." Byron explains that nature tells him to beware of the world we humans create. So Liszt tried to create an acoustic environment that spoke of a stillness so powerful that it could lead Byron to speculate about abandoning his ways, or as the poet himself put it, the lake called him to "forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring."

Liszt's music is melodic and lovely. Here's a performance I found on YouTube. I did not know this quote or this piece. It all brought tears to my eyes. One of those wonderful relevant gifts The second piece Roberts played was also one in which Liszt tried to describe water. This time, the way a spring bubbles up from its source. Knowing all this changed the way I listened, of course, and gave me a much deeper appreciation of the pieces. Next Roberts played a musical score that Liszt created for one of Petrarch's sonnets. Petrarch was an Italian poet from the 14th century, and his poems of unrequited love attracted the Romantic artists of the 19th century. The final piece captured the sound of echoing bells.

So I learned a lot and got ideas for deepening my portrayal of Liszt. I've thought (and read) more of him as a performer. This was about Liszt the composer. It was good timing, as these things oft are. I've just started to write about Liszt again. He's just turning up in the book. And the quote by Rousseau too: "Music portrays everything, even those objects that are purely visible. By means of almost inconceivable powers, it seems to give the ear eyes."

Roberts made a distinction between "music and the mind's eye," as opposed to "music in the mind's eye." He prefers the first, he said, because it implies that what one hears, and how one experiences it, are separate and therefore unique to each listener. The mind creates a response to the sounds it hears, paints an inner picture to accompany music. We learn to do so in the same way we learn to imagine pictures from the words of stories. Though it's a learned skill, he was adamant about our ability to turn sound into inner images. The imagination at work.

Roberts spoke about 19th century Parisians and their attitude toward instrumentalization, something I've been trying to understand, really, since I began this project. He put it quite simply, which really helped. He said that for the most part, the French valued words, language, philosophy... and therefore songs. They didn't believe that music could say much on its own. Liszt, Berlioz, Chopin, the Romantics in general, even Louise Farrenc disagreed in range of ways.

Louise Farrenc was less interested in creating symphonic poems, story music, but she was completely invested in the fact of instrumental music and what it could communicate without words. I'm quite sure she would have agreed with Rousseau that music can "give the ear eyes," in fact, that's what I've been trying to say, without knowing it, as I've written about her approach to composing.

The rest of the concert was Debussy and one piece by Ravel, and although they come later and reflect the evolution that Liszt championed, they too helped me better understand what I'm trying to write about. All in all, a remarkable afternoon.

Launching Ariadne's OWL

2010-07-05T17:37:00.000-07:00

I'm launching an OWL, an online writing laboratory. Really it's a blog, but it's purpose is to create an online writing community. We'll see how it goes. I've had it in mind for years, but the technology was always out of my reach, now it really isn't.

When I say, it's always been on my mind, I have to go back to my Masters Degree, which I pursued in the 1980s at Sonoma State University. I remember sitting down in front of a computer terminal for the first time—in a lab directed toward math and science students. I was talking a self-directed course in Basic programming. Word processors and personal computers didn't exist, let alone laptops. There was no Internet, no web, no social networking, not even email—just math and science types learning to program.

The Basic interface was a bit like a word processor. To program required entering words, symbols, numbers and letters into the processor. Language. Basic is a language. It didn't take me long to realize that the computer was disinterested, that it didn't care whether I spoke Basic to it or English. It did things when I spoke Basic, returned error messages when I spoke English. But, the little space I'm typing in right now, to post this blog entry, is really not all that different than the little space I was using to type Basic into the processor, just more sophisticated.

As I remember, I was only a couple of lessons into it when I sat down one day and started a novel in which the main character communicated with extraterrestrial intelligence using the computer. I claimed it was some kind of electromagnetic device that was sophisticated enough for them to use to translate their normal means of communication into human symbols and words.... English, and that my main character (me) stumbled onto it by accident.

After that I logged dozens of hours in my self-directed course—my access to the techno-future that was exploding around me. About a year later, I had convinced Sonoma State to accept my proposal for an individual Masters in which I would study the impact of computers on the writing process. For my Master's Thesis I tried to design a nonlinear world of words, images, instructions and story. I tried to do it using Basic. I also tried to learn Cobalt, but even though I could spend the entire night in the lab, trying to make one little thing happen—without getting bored—I was never cut out to be a programmer. At some point I gave up. My vision was over my head.

A few years later some blessed soul developed Hypercard, a program that ran on Apple computers and was a simple form of what we take for granted about the web... a system by which you could highlight words and images and turn them into links. I had dropped out of my Masters program and was working as a small time graphic designer in a small time nonprofit in San Francisco. I remember someone there telling me about it at work. I opened the program and took a look around... a week later I had quit my job and gone back to my Masters program.

I finished my degree in about six months. I wrote my thesis using HyperCard to demonstrate what I was talking about, creating a nonlinear piece of fiction that was sort of like a library, footnoted with links. I had discovered a nonlinear process of digression, really, that allowed for all sorts of links and asides, suites of influence, worlds.

About seven years later, I ended up designing an English class for the Distant Ed department of a small community college that was trying to go online. The Internet was such that the World Wide Web was just one part of it... it hadn't taken over yet, hadn't "become" the Internet. I went back to programming and learned HTML, much easier to work with than Basic, and a whole lot clearer to me what I wanted to do with it... build a website. Simple. But still, I'm a writer not a programmer. I fell short again, couldn't make the language do what I was hoping, came up with something that sort of fit the image. I'd already found the poem about How to Build an Owl, was using it in my teaching, so it was an easy step to calling the thing an OWL.

I really don't think Purdue had come up with that yet, but it's so obvious that someone besides me was bound to stumble onto it. So, I think it was 1996 when I built the prototype. Then it all got lost. I went back to school and moved in a different direction and only came back around to the Internet when I published my novel and decided to build my own website. Tools had changed. It was a whole lot easier.

So there you have it.

The OWL is actually built not of HTML pages, but of blogs. Entirely simple—a suite of blogs a friend called it. At least to begin with. It does go back and forth between some HTML pages the blogs. It's likely to grow too. Who knows—maybe before I'm done, I'll find myself in contact with extraterrestrials. That's the novel I've been trying to write since the 1970s, by the way.

For now, I'm just inviting you to visit my OWL. It's just getting started, so it's a little like inviting you to a house that hasn't been lived in yet. I'm moving in the furniture, painting walls, that kind of thing. And I'm also thinking about how to grow the thing. It does feel like a little creature of sorts, like its a little bit alive. And, well, it also feels like my future.

Cross-posted at Ariadne's Owl

About El Khyam

2010-07-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to write about my horse for a long time. One of the curious side effects of my novel. When I was a girl, I had a horse. I lived, first on a large cattle ranch in Eastern Washington, and later on a small 7 acre farm. That's where I lived when El Khyam came into my life. He was about six months old when he arrived, a pure bred Arabian who had a bit of white above his front knees, something that prevented him from being kept as a stud. He was a wild fellow and I loved him.

I only had him a couple of years before my family moved. I gave him up just as I started my Sophomore year in high school. I was fifteen. Horses came up as I was researching The Appassionata. The emphasis comes from Géricault. Théodore Géricault has been a powerful force in shaping what my book is about. He painted horses and was an avid and passionate rider. Falling from a horse killed him, although there were complications. Some historians believe TB settled in his spine.

While in Paris I wrote about a desire that overcame me in the Loire Valley to go riding in France. It was a totally emotional response to the countryside that hardly makes any rational sense. My novel tracks Georges Sands riding through the area as a young woman, really as a girl about the age I was when I had to give up El Khyam.

I also wrote about visiting Versailles and touring the stables, watching a horse show there. That was a marvelous adventure; in part, because it was unexpected and off the beaten path, not part of an ordinary tour of Versailles. The horses were beautiful, the stables, pure Louise XIV.

In any event, when I came home from Paris, I wrote a horse into my novel—one from Géricault's paintings. His named is Giaour, after the anti-hero in Lord Byron's Turkish tale of the same name. The more I wrote about Giaour, the more I found myself wondering what happened to the Arab colt who had been so central to my adolescence.

One day, on impulse, I googled "El Khyam, horse" and much to my surprise, there was such an animal. At first I couldn't believe it was the same horse, but then, one-by-one the pieces fell into place. I had discovered my horse! The dates were correct, the geographical location in Washington, and remarkably, the bit of white over his knee was easy to identify. In the end I recognized his eyes and the bones around them. He looked the same, just much bigger than the green broke, 2 year old, my family sold.

El Khyam became a jumper, which is always what I imagined and dreamed for him. I wanted to jump him. I remember having to chase down a country road late one afternoon after he jumped the fence. He loved to rear and dance around on his hind legs whenever he had the slightest excuse. I don't remember what caused him to jump the fence, but I do remember seeing him do it. He was a beautiful animal, especially in motion. He loved to perform.

He was a National Champion in 1978 in the Hunter/Jumper division when he suffered an injury. He broke what's called his coffin bone, a tiny bone in the foot. And then he had a stroke. I had no idea a horse could have a stroke. The first picture I found of him, up at the top, was after his misfortunes. He came back from all that to again become a champion. This second picture is from before his injury. The whole story makes me cry. I'm so glad he had a full life.

I made an effort to find the people who once owned him; it went no where. Now, I'm trying again. And I'm still hoping that somewhere down the road, I'll go riding in France. It's one of those things that has slipped onto that "I hope I get to do this before I die," list. Who knows why. Synchronicity, perhaps.

Writing: Catching Time in a Frame

2010-07-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

I've always been of the mind that Hemingway is correct, the most terrifying thing in the world really is a blank piece of paper. He also said that "all good books are truer than if they really happened." I'm thinking about that one. It has to do with what I've been saying lately about framing, that making a scene work, even if it's a memory of something that actually happened, is a matter of finding a way to frame it. Our words are like a camera pointing at a subject.

When I was in Paris, one of the things I did was go to a hotel that advertised its 19th century lounge, The Hôtel Royal Fromentin—formerly Le Don Juan Cabaret. I wanted to try absinthe using the whole sugar cube ritual and they advertised their historical presentation. I wrote about it in a previous entry, La Nouvelle Athènes. The reason I mention it is because of one of the photos that came out of the experience. I managed to capture a drop of water falling from the chalice to the sugar cubes below. I took a lot of pictures that day. It never crossed my mind that one of them would catch a water drop in action.

The picture went black and white. For some reason, as it stop-actioned that drop, it caught the light waves in a way that stripped the color from the moment. It has always looked kind of surreal to me because it's not exactly realistic. The room and the experience looked more like the other pictures I took, none of which capture the "feel" of the experience as well. I'm convinced this is an example of what Hemingway is talking about: the framing makes the image "truer" than what actually happened. And the "truth" of it is internal or essential. That's what evokes emotion and memory, what makes it seem so real.

There's a lot to be learned from that for me because the picture I like so much was also mostly an accident of persistence. I don't remember how many pictures I actually took, probably ten or fifteen. I remember the waiter giving me a look like I was strange. I told him I was doing research, and I was. I wanted to taste the absinthe, although I'm not sure it tastes like it did in the 19th century because it's no longer made with wormwood. But more than taste it, I wanted to see how it turned all foggy and green and how the whole sugar cube thing worked so I could write about it. I learned all that, but in retrospect, the real lesson emerges from the photograph. I looked at it at the time and thought, "wow." I look at it now and think, "yeah, it was like that somehow."

The "that" is what the photo "feels" like. Because the color is stripped and the scene is not quite natural, but something slightly "super" natural, it looks to my eye like it happened in a different time. It looks old, just like I wanted it to "be" when I went there. That was the point, everywhere I went in Paris. I was always hunting for scenes and settings for my book, looking to frame them in the context of how it must have been in the 1800s. Paris in another time. Paris out of time. Eternal.

I seem to be glorifying Hemingway this morning, so for those of you who hate him, my apologies. I've always admired his ability to write. And one of the other things he said was, "I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can." My photograph is also reflective, I think, of that. It's "better" than I could actually do, and yet there it is. I have no idea how it happened. I didn't change the settings, I don't think, and I wasn't trying or expecting something as unusual as I got. I was after documentation, that's all, archival shots, not art. I've always thought what I got was art. And, of course, what I want when I write, is just that: art.

Cross-posted on Ariadne's OWL

Good Evening

2010-06-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

Well, isn't this a shock? Here I am writing on my blog after months of silence. I can't say whether this is a shot in the dark or the beginning of a new wave of energy. I'm more than six months into being home. Paris feels distant, but not nearly so distant as I would think six plus months should make it feel. I suppose that's because I'm writing a novel set in Paris and in one way or another, I seem to spend at least part of every day there. I do write just about everyday. In fact, I get very uncomfortable when I don't. I'm writing most of the time now. It's all I want to do.

So where am I? Well, I'm teasing together the writing I had started before I traveled to Paris with the writing that followed my return. When I came home, I essentially started my novel over again. I didn't quite think of it that way. I fooled myself into thinking I was simply rewriting the opening and shifting the focus "a little." The chess set is one of the "props" in my story. It's from the late 18th century, made in Lyon. I find it rather incredible. I'm aware that I write from a very visual place, that when something attracts me, it often finds a way into the story. Although in the case of the chess set, I wanted one, and so I went hunting for one and found this one. The picture below is a painting of the 1819 Salon at the Louvre, the year the Raft of the Medusa hung. I used it to help me write the scene set at that Salon. I loved trying to capture the feel of the Louvre in words.

Fact is, every thing shifted in Paris, and while it's true that the material I wrote before leaving is usable, and I am, indeed, using it—the book changed so much, that I'm having to do major rewriting on all the previously existing material. Depends on just where you catch me in the process how I feel about that. Mostly, to be absolutely honest, it's remarkably interesting. Sometimes frightening, sometimes frustrating. I have gotten completely stuck once or twice, but maybe "completely" is the wrong term, since I'm still moving forward, which means I've found my way out of those blind alleys.

I'm learning so much about writing that I'm almost beside myself. I haven't blogged about it because for the most part, I haven't known how to talk about the process. But at the moment, I'd like to try. I may even, in the next few weeks, if my process of blogging gets regular again, move on to a new blog. Sounds odd to say that, but I'm thinking, it's not Paris now, and part of the reason I don't visit my "blog," is because it's supposedly "about Paris."

What's going on in my life just now is fiction writing. When I was in Paris, I was doing research. I wrote almost no fiction during those three months, and, in fact, when I tried, I couldn't figure out where to begin. It makes sense in retrospect. It would have been a total waste to spend all my time in Paris in front of a computer trying to write fiction. I would not have seen any of the world I went to Paris to see.

I do wish I could go back. There are things I didn't see that I wish I had. However, the impact of those three months on my book has been remarkable. I'm extremely grateful to myself for facing my fears, which were many, and making the journey. It's not only a different novel in content for the journey, it's a different quality of novel, a better story to be sure. I'm content, extremely content, actually, to be writing fiction. I'm learning so much at the moment that it's almost impossible to explain. I'm too in the middle of it, I think, but a friend told me that my novel is a bit symphony.

I like that image because I'm writing about a woman who composed three symphonies, really remarkable symphonies. I like them. A lot. They're dramatic and dynamic and melodic and passionate. They're good. That's Louise Farrenc I'm talking about. She deserves to be better known. In any event, one of the characters told Louise that she has an "ear for writing symphony," that it's easier to create a single beautiful voice—much more difficult to bring independent voices together in a beautiful manner. That's what I'm trying to do with this novel: weave a number of stories together in a compelling and satisfying way, finding the interconnections and the parallels and the rifts that blend them one with the other. That's one of the reasons I'm learning as much as I am right now, about writing. It's very exciting.

I'm also teaching two ongoing critique classes. I'm very happy to be doing so. I always learn when I teach. I've got a few individual clients too, who I work with one-on-one. Most of my time is spent in the world of writing. It's an interesting way to live. It's edgy, not always comfortable, but it's also inspiring and feels "right," if you know what I mean. There's much more to be said. This is just a quick brush up against the medium—the blogging medium, that is. I wanted to get the feel of it again. So, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, I'll try to say more.

Writing Women Back into History

2010-02-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

Bonjour. It's been weeks since I was a regular contributor to this site, but I think I've reached the moment where I am going to take it up again as part of my writing process. I have several things on my mind this evening. Let me begin by saying that my silence on this blog has been balanced by intense activity writing fiction. I have written about eighty-five pages since coming home from Paris and designed a way forward that takes me from the beginning of The Appassionata to its end.

The pages I'm writing now precede the writing that I had completed before I traveled to Paris. I expect to reconnect with that part of the book in another thirty or forty pages. When I do, I'll have about two thirds of the book sketched out in prose, maybe 350 pages written. I'm actually hoping to have a complete draft of the book by the end of May.

So. Part of the reason I haven't been here, on my blog, is I've been too busy in the fiction. Another thing to say about my work is that, indeed, Madame Lenormand (the fortune teller) is the narrator, and discovering and sustaining her voice is quite challenging. Sometimes it's much closer than others. I'm learning a great deal, trying to keep pace with her presence.

What's brought me here tonight is the reading I've been doing this afternoon about the participation of women in the French Revolution. Madame Lenormand was born in 1772, which would make her seventeen when the Bastile was stormed in 1789. Women of her generation rose up and took to the streets demanding equality.

When I think of French history in vague terms, I always think of French women as being out in front of the push for equality, and there's truth in that belief, though, the truth is much more complicated and depressing than the romanticized version I have held all these years.

Before I launch in that direction, however, I want to say more about what has me looking into women's history this evening. I am going to receive an award during Women's History Month (March) for my efforts to write women back into history. The award is being given to me by the National Women's Political Caucus of Mendocino County here in California. I'm thrilled to be receiving the recognition because, in fact, that's exactly what I was attempting to do when I wrote my first novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein.

When I started researching the life of Mary Shelley, she and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft were conflated into one person in Books in Print and in the card catalog in UC Berkeley's library. The books were shelved together. Mary Shelley was known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and there seemed to be either a confusion about the difference between the two women, or an attitude that distinction was unnecessary. Though I've never checked to see if this has changed, I know the distinction is much clearer in the culture today than it was in 1990, which is when I began my research.

It's because of the award actually, and also because I've been more or less at sea for a few days, not able to move the prose forward, that I started reading about women in the French Revolution. I am about to introduce Louise Farrenc's godmother, her aunt, Anne-Elisabeth Cécile Soria, who was an accomplished pianist and student of Clementi. Louise was two years old when Madame Soria began teaching her piano. Madame Soria is even more obscure than Louise, but I do know she was a woman of the Revolutionary era.

My sense is that Cécila Soria both encouraged and expressed concern over Louise's ambition—she worried that Louise would be harmed if she strayed too far from convention. Cécila Soria witnessed what happened to the women who stepped onto the "masculine" stage during the Revolution and I believe she grew more timid in the face of it. She most likely had Royalist leanings to begin with as Louise's whole family came from Royalist roots. They were artists of The Academy, though they were part of the group of artists that were invited to live in the Louvre once it was confiscated from the King.

In any event, the women who fought in the Revolution were essentially crushed by it. Feminism disappeared in France after the Revolution, or at least went underground. The women who took to the streets were dead or in prison or in insane asylums. They had formed political clubs and organizations; they had written political tracts; they had spoken out, demanding equality and citizenship. To sum it up simply—without the benefit of detail—these women sided with more radical Jacobins in the struggle for power, believing the Jacobins would be allies.

Once the Jacobins consolidated their position, they turned on the very women who had helped them obtain it. And, in fact, women may have made the difference between the Jacobins and the more moderate Girondins taking control. The Jacobins were ruthless, the purveyors of The Terror. The women were betrayed. Everything they'd fought for and hoped for was lost.

Their leaders were arrested. Olympe de Gouge was guillotined. Olympe had penned the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, possibly the best known tract on the rights of women from the period. Among other things, these women sought suffrage and the right to be elected; they sought equal rights in marriage, the right to divorce, property rights, rights over their minor children, and the right to be educated. In fact, in the backlash, all of these rights were delayed and women did not get the vote in France until 1944.

So in 1824, when Louise Farrenc published her first piece of piano music, there were rules to be followed. Women could compose for the salon: small pieces, usually vocal compositions, songs. Composing instrumental music was, for whatever reason, considered the dominion of men. Women were not supposed to have enough intellectual capacity, or creative strength I suppose, to compose musique sérieuse—sonatas, concertos, instrumental music for chamber orchestra. These were too demanding, beyond the feminine canon, too Teutonic in character.

Louise was not allowed to study at the Conservatory because she was a female. The fact that she composed three symphonies in her life time was really very radical. It was just not done, and certainly she was never allowed to conduct those symphonies (as did her male counterparts) and consequently it was extremely difficult to get any of them performed.

All this has to be understood for my story to make sense. The reader has to be made aware that it was not as easy for women in Paris at the turn of the 19th century as they suppose. Women's rights were losing ground in popular opinion too, perhaps the way a woman's right to choose is losing ground today, because of Tea Party politics and Christian fundamentalists, because of women like Sarah Palin having unlimited access to a platform, while women on the other side do not. There is a certain similarity that I'd like to somehow get across. I believe Madame Lenormand is the key; she knows the history and has the insight to be able to share it, to put Louise's struggle in context. That's the piece I need to write next and writing this, tonight was beginning of writing that. The painting is by Constance Charpentier, 1801. It's called Melancholy.

A Bit About Napoleon

2010-01-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

Napoleon is like the great pyramid
he stands alone in a desert
and jackals piss at his feet
and writers climb up on him.
—Gustave Flaubert

I watched a film about Napoleon last night. It was the story of his last days on the island of Saint Helena, after Waterloo, when he was a prisoner of the British. It was an interesting film, and the characterization of Napoleon was such that I found myself rooting for him—wanting him to escape again. I guess that makes me a Bonapartist. Films, of course, can do that, but my attitude toward Napoleon began to change in Paris as I learned more about what a complex figure he actually was. (Painting by Gros)

He was a striking figure in the film. Smart and commanding—and it seems he must have been. I read that he actually fought against the French on Corsica during the French Revolution. The battle was for Corsica's independence and it had three sides: the Royalists, who were seeking to control Corsica, the Jacobins, fighting against the Royalists, and the Corsican Nationalists (of which Napoleon was one), fighting for Corsican independence. He was promoted to a captain in 1792 by the Jacobins, who he had supported.

In 1793 he came to the attention of Robespierre and his brother after publishing a pro-republican pamphlet and was made the artillery commander for the Republican forces at the siege of Toulon. Toulon was occupied by the British. Napoleon's military plan in Toulon succeeded, the British were forced out and he was promoted, given command of France's Army of Italy. When Robespierre fell in 1793, Napoleon was placed under house arrest for several days and fell out of favor. He refused a post that was a demotion, wrote a novella and became engaged to Désirée Clary, a French woman from Marseille. His prospects did not look that good. (Painting by David)

The political scene in Paris was in turmoil at the time, lots of shifting power and one shift led to a change of fortune for Napoleon. In 1795 he was given command of forces tasked with defending the National Convention in the Tuileries Palace, which the Royalists were trying to bring down. The National Convention was the Republican power structure ruling France at the time—this was the First Republic.

Again, his military brilliance succeeded: the Royalists were routed and overnight Napoleon became famous. He was promoted to Commander of the Interior by The Directory, the Republican body of that ruled France from 1795 to 1799. "Within weeks" he and Josephine were an item and his engagement to Désirée was broken. "I awake full of you," he wrote in an early letter. "Your image and the memory of last night’s intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses." (Painting by Andrea Appiani)

In the film—which suggests Napoleon could have any woman he wanted—he makes mention of Madame Lenormand, calling her a clairvoyant and explaining that she has predicted he and Josephine would die at the same age. Josephine was six years older than Napoleon and died in 1814 at the age of 51. Napoleon died in 1821—at the age of 51. They married in March of 1796. The guide in Paris told us that Madame Lenormand met Josephine when both of them were in prison. Josephine was jailed (because of her husband's political leanings) during the Reign of Terror, between April and July of 1794. That means Madame Lenormand made her predictions at a time when Napoleon's political fortune was at an extremely low ebb and Josephine was married to someone else.

Two days after their marriage, Napoleon left for Italy and his famously successful Italian campaign. He became increasingly influential in French politics. He published two newspapers for his troops that were widely circulated, and eventually founded Le Journal de Bonaparte, which was published in Paris. The Royalists, who were highly critical of Napoleon, were still powerful in Paris and won a lot of seats in the 1797 elections. A coup d'état directed by Napoleon put the Republicans back in power, but left them dependent on him. When he negotiated a peace treaty with Austria, he came back to Paris more popular than the government. (Painting by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon)

The Directory wanted him to invade England, but Napoleon targeted Egypt instead because he didn't believe his forces were strong enough to defeat the British. He was convinced that a French presence in the Middle East and, in particular in Egypt, would undermine Britain's access to their trade interests in India and weaken their empire. (Painting by Paul Delaroche)

His Egyptian expedition included scientists and, among other things, led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. Napoleon returned to Paris by his own decision, not by orders—the British were attacking the coast of France. The Directory was very unpopular and it was broke. He was invited by one of the Directors into another coup d'état—this time to overthrow The Directory, the constitutional government. The conspirators succeeded. Napoleon was named a Director and quickly outmanoeuvred his fellow conspirators becoming the most powerful man in France. He took up residence at the Palace of Tuileries.

And on it goes: Napoleon centralized the government; transformed education; changed the tax code; modernized roads and sewer systems; created a central bank; negotiated a truce with the Catholic Church that left them powerless; set up the Code of Civil Law and codified criminal and commerce law. Much of what he established still exists—he's credited with modernizing France. The film suggested that right to the end, Napoleon was in control of his life, and even his death. If nothing else, I feel like I'm beginning to understand Lord Byron's fascination with the man. I suppose all this is part of my foray into War and Peace, which is about Napoleon's disastrous campaign into Russia. (Napoleon's Tomb, Les Invalides, Paris)

Celebrating My Pooties

2010-01-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

Pooties: I didn't make up the name. It's popular on the DailyKos, a political blog I read most every day where several times a week someone posts a pootie diary. I read those diaries pretty religiously and always intend to post pictures of my own pooties, but never do because I never have pictures. So. I decided over the last couple of days to try to get some. I confess to only minor success. I took about fifty photos, only a few worth salvaging. I'll try again another day. Cats, I discovered, move.

I also confess to not being able to write a decent diary about my pooties. It reminds me of my mother's Christmas letter, which always made me cringe. So forgive me—this is total self-indulgence, though it does reflect how I entertain myself.

I treated my pooties to a new adventure yesterday; I brought their old cat tree in from the garage. They hadn't seen it in about six months when I got tired of the way it looked and dismissed it from our reality. They were absolutely overjoyed. I haven't seen them that happy in a really long time. They played on it all evening and played with each other and pretty much with everything, which may have had more to do with the catnip than the cat tree. Nothing like cats on drugs.

I am very happy to be reunited with my cats. They make me laugh and though I couldn't really get pictures of just how funny they are, I did get a few that move in that direction.

They're Maine Coons. The real deal. They're sisters and about four years old. Mostly they like each other, but they do compete and on occasion fight. Péle, the bigger of the two (she weighs about 19 pounds) can be a pistol, but in all honesty, Sélène's been starting the confrontations these days.

Smaller though she is (weighing in at about 16 pounds), Sélène has a fierce little fight stance, which Péle walked away from last night, rather than fight. I was surprised. (I think Sélène was too.) Sélène is the more social of the two. When company arrives at the house, she's always ready for a meet and greet. She's also a classic paper-sitter, no matter what I'm working on, whether it be the keyboard or the kitchen, she likes to be in the middle of it.

Péle, for all of her bravado and size is actually shy. She comes across as miss-impressed-with-herself, and I believe she is pretty convinced she's a perfect specimen. The world does truly revolve around her and she spends far too much time in front of the mirror. I've also caught her with my earrings more than once, but at least she hasn't tried to wear them yet.

So. There you have it. It's really true that when I'm not writing or taking care of the business of my life, I can usually be found indulging my cats, which admittedly are counter-walkers and totally spoiled, and why not? They earn their keep; they help me write. In fact, some of my best ideas have come from them. Not only that, I swear, since I added all the accents to their names, they've started speaking French.

Writing Woes and Woozles

2010-01-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

I spent yesterday trying to integrate the voice of Madame Lenormand into the first chapter of my book. It's not easy. In fact, it's downright intimidating. I have a writing group that I share this stuff with and I've given them the opening chapter twice, plus I read them Madame Lenormand's prelude. The prelude was a hit, but it's such a different approach to the book, that it's no small task to wrap my head around what it means.

It seems to provide the freedom to be quirky in the telling of the story. I had, for example, a couple of "arrant cabbages" that "took advantage" of a tipping peddler's cart and rolled off. The fact that I anthropomorphized the poor things caused a couple people problems. One person liked it. The discussion eased toward "authority"... have I, as the author created enough authority on the page to get away with that?

In the end authorship is about authority, it seems to me. That's why I always tend toward the belief that you can do whatever you can make work. Making something work is about creating a relationship with the reader that gives you the authority to do something unusual like anthropomorphize a cabbage. I was struck that part of the objection one of my group raised was that it seemed comic. Comedy is such a difficult attainment for me, so unusual, that someone reading it is warning me of achieving it? Perhaps because it was not obviously intentional? And that because it is so rare in my writing? Fact is, I am looking for a more comedic voice in this writing.

The picture is of Gertrude Stein working in Paris.

Another critique came in the form of a back-handed complement. Someone said that I am capable of writing "magic" and this wasn't "magic," only competence. Actually, the reference was to Chapter One, which is realism... a scene unfolding in real time in third person. The comparison was to the original opening prelude which is a kind of poetic piece among the tombs of Père Lechaise which was criticized at the writers conference for not having action or character development, for not telling the reader anything about the story. Both the workshop leader and the voting audience said they wouldn't bother to turn the page on my "magic."

For my writers group, on the other hand, the story wasn't enough—the development of the action and characters didn't provide enough "magic" to open the book, even though it doesn't open the book. (Maybe that wasn't clear, even though I said it.) In any event, I find critiques about magic almost useless. I walked away assuming the only way to rework the piece was to start over. I mean, if something isn't "magic" what do you do to fix it? Wave a wand? Shall I—like the quote about amateurs waiting for inspiration while the rest of us work—wait around until magic strikes me again?

Perhaps my sour mood about all this is obvious? I did, in fact, rewrite my competent, but not magical piece. It also lacked (or had lost its original) passion. Originally there had been concern over the clarity of the piece, people literally couldn't tell what was going on. Now it seemed that at least for one reader, the clarity had destroyed the immediacy and with it, the breathless nature of the piece. (That breathless quality had been suspect for some in the first read-through.)

Yikes!

Anyway, I had a good conversation about what was better in my first effort—where the breathless, passion of the piece seemed to carry it. I applied that to the rewrite. I changed the placement of the information I'm delivering. I do have a tendency to want everyone to know up front what makes something interesting to me, and because of that, I like to tell the reader what I think they need to know kind of ahead of time.

For example, when I walked the streets of my Paris neighborhood—Nouvelle Athènes—it was more exciting and interesting to me when I knew what was there and what to look for. It was more interesting to hear about Chartres Cathedrale when I was there than just to look at it. It was more interesting to hear about a Picasso's cubism and what he was trying to accomplish than to just look at a painting. I'm like that. I like information and background. I'm always trying to get the significance across.

But doing so slows the action so there's always got to be balance. Convention has the modern novel moving very quickly. My writing doesn't want to move quickly. I'm trying to create a 19th century novel, which by its very definition and nature, moves slowly. Like fast food and slow food: I'm trying to start a new trend here—a slower story. Hmmmmm. Is that possible? How much can I teach a reader? Doesn't most of it have to do with whether I'm telling a good story?

I was so thrilled by my discovery of the "plot line" for my story. There's been very little enthusiasm from my writers group, most of them seem hardly to notice, one commented on the loss of the original story... how it's hard to engage because it's not the same story. All in all, it's disappointing. I've even heard that whatever happened to me in Paris is probably what's causing my discontent, like I want/need something now, from being back, that I didn't want/need before—excitement one person said—that I just can't get and the group can't provide. That doesn't seem like the problem to me, but I have wondered what it would be like to share my story with people who didn't have an expectation about what I was going to write based on what I was writing before I left... it has changed and if I keep going with Madame Lenormand's voice it's going to change a lot more.

Madame Lenormand was a hit speaking in first person, but that's not what I want either. I'm not writing a book where she tells her story in first person. I'm still telling a story about Louise and Tori Farrenc and the artists of their day that surrounded and shaped their life. Madame Lenormand doesn't get to take over. She has a roll to play that's very specific: she's the narrator. She moves in and out of the story. Maybe what I'm trying to do isn't going to work, I don't know. I know it seems radical. I wish I could get feedback from someone who is curious about what I'm trying to do.

So what's next? Well, I don't know. I see that my entry here today has taken on a completely different tone, but it is where my process is right now, and since this blog is really about me writing a book, then I have no choice, but to use this space accordingly. I'm not exactly stuck. I spent a long time working yesterday and I think I made some interesting and perhaps important forward movement. I'm not sure I'm in control of my prose yet—primarily because the change I'm making is intimidating to me. It's not something I'm all that familiar with, this use of a narrative voice. It's new territory and feels extreme. Oddly, it also feels right.

Narrative Voice: Madame Lenormand Speaks

2010-01-04T07:35:00.000-08:00

This is an early draft, likely to tighten and change as I work on it, but this is the voice that is emerging for Madame Lenormand who I'm considering as The Appassionata's "intrusive narrator." I'm pretty excited about the direction it's taking here. Once I discovered that even Chopin had been to Madame Lenormand for a reading, it seemed to me this might really be the way to move into the text as the narrator.

The Sibyl of Faubourg Saint-Germain
A Prelude

By my sibyl’s blood, I am one who perceives the fulcrum that connects past and present to future times. Like gathering storm clouds, my visions form even as the ink that here falls from the end of my pen reaches this my smudged page. You bear witness, my friends, not only to the tale I have to tell, but to the possibility that one such as myself, through a gift no one comprehends, can tether the past to the future and move the dead to speak. Were it not required, I should never presume to intrude my presence upon your solitude, for no storytelling, however intimate, can recall the fullness of even one moment. And here, I must remind you, dear friends, that you live only in our future and that though we reach to you, we cannot embrace you or impose upon you the direction you must take. It is your will to do what you will… as you will… when you will. We can only tell our tale.

I have seen the inside of more than one prison for the brazen certainty of my words, words I am compelled forthwith to deliver now to you. Truth be known, I am, as they say, but a messenger. I take my words from elsewhere and always have. One I presume to be an angel, who calls himself Ariel, speaks to me and thus I, his conduit, speak to you. He comes in dreams, and once when I was very young I sat with him before what I thought to be the Throne of God, though it looked very like the dining table in my uncle’s home. We sat reading from the Book of Life, a huge tome I struggled to hold in my arms. I could make nothing of the letters and words; they swam before my eyes like snakes in a riverbed. Indeed, I could barely see my companions, for there were two—the one I call Ariel and a nameless one who was his teacher. That one shone with such brilliance I could look upon him no more than one can look upon the sun. I squinted and took up the two slender knitting hooks that had been given me, for I understood I was to employ them. The tome was a manual, holding instructions for this great task, but since it swam as it did, I could decipher nothing of its wisdom.

The one called Ariel reached to assist me, explaining that even had I been able to apprehend what lay before me on the page, it was inadequate to the task confronting us. Something unprecedented was required; human history made it so. This angel—who had the stature of a giant—without abandoning his station enveloped me in gentle arms and guided my hands to make of pure light a stitch, such as I might make from my aunt’s woolly yarn. And thus emerged the fabric of the universe, which we all weave in varying degrees of self-awareness.

Were it possible to convey the power of this strange vision without words, for it happened in a world where words become flesh, I would say no more. I would, with a slight of hand, accomplish what Monsieur Hugo longed for as he undertook the tale of his hunchback: I would transport you without ink, my friends of future days, into a past so substantial in nature that you would leave your cynicism behind and walk the streets of Paris with me as you might walk among the tombs of Père Lechaise. Indeed, you would recognize why you are among the living, not the dead, and we would tell you what we have learned about this dear orb of ours and how to live that it might survive to complete its heavenly course.

Alas, this cannot be done. We have but human words in spite of our safe harbor among the dead. And our words, unlike those of the brilliant ones, do not dance upon the page, nor pulse with that uncontrollable force we call existence. They are strung one after the other in a tedium of unfolding logic and must—in order to be understood—be read one word after the other no matter the language. Such rigidity does not befit the truth of human experience which erupts in concurrence and concert, as when instruments play together in symphony. Yet, there is nothing to be done for it; you must follow our words individually, each in their turn.

And because I must begin somewhere, I will tell you first that it is true what they say about me: as a child I learned from the gypsies to read the grounds of coffee, the ash of fires, and the shards of the broken mirror. I studied the lines that crisscross our palms and the trajectories of heavenly bodies. During my tender youth, when I first walked the streets of my beloved Paris—a clerk in my uncle’s shop where ladies (and gentlemen) came to find that famous black lingerie he sold—I found my way to the alchemists and the mythic tales the Greeks and Romans know. I studied the geomancy of the earth, combed the sacred texts of the Kabbalah, and discovered that numbers hold magic. Whether it’s true I died a virgin, on this I shed no light, and leave for you to decide.

I will tell you I have indeed been queried by thousands, including many whose names now burn the pages of history. I have had them all at my feet. Men of power. Yes, Robespierre frequented my parlor. I reported to him his downfall and that of Danton, and I warned General Hoche of the poison, and Monsieur Moreau of an untimely grave, and though she did not welcome it, I told Josephine of her Emperor’s treachery and ultimate defeat. And yes, I saw kings too, even during the sorry Restoration of which I now write, though the practice of my art was called “black” and strictly forbidden. During those last years, I was obliged to veil my vocation and practice it within a besieged citadel. Indeed, I paid a good many a good deal to keep my sanctum sanctorum operative.

They came to me even then, as you will see, from the common serving girl to the sly mistress to the delicate gloved Chopin; they came seeking insight and advice, as so now, do you. And so, let us begin.

The Intrusive Narrator

2010-01-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

I'm finally getting serious, about this whole question of the narrator. In many of my favorite 19th (and even 18th) century books, the narrator has a personality of sorts and "intrudes" into the story: Tom Jones; Vanity Fair; Walter Scott's Waverly; George Eliot's, Adam Bede. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Tolsoy all used it. They say that, paradoxically, Tolstoy is both intrusive and "miraculously" absent. Hugo and Stendhal have narrators that intrude. Stendhal goes so far as to tell the reader that his character really is a fiction and if she were a "real" young woman, she would never act that way.

Hugo stops to fill in history in both The Hunchback of Nôtre Dame and Les Misérables. In the Hunchback he also tells us that it's too bad the building where his action is taking place is gone, because it means he has to waste time telling us what it looked like and we have to waste time reading his description. He says if only it were standing, he could just send us there to look at it and we would understand. I found that intervention fascinating. I really would like to say something like that about the Paris of 2010 compared to the Paris of 1823, which is when the events of my book start happening.

Perhaps the most famous intrusive narrator is in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre where she addresses us as "dear reader". The whole phenomenon was considered entirely passé by the end of the 19th century. Flaubert changed everything, making the narrator disappear and creating the "modern" novel—Madame Bovary (1857). Since then, it's been frowned upon because it supposedly separates the reader from the story by reminding them that they're reading.

As I read around the Internet about the whole concept, I was somewhat reassured by the discovery that there still is some defiant use of the technique, notably among "post modernists," people like John Fowles who wrote three endings for The French Lieutenant's Woman. Post-modernists want to remind the reader they're reading.

I don't think that's my point of interest. I'm not sure how to articulate what attracts me. I know that I really enjoyed the intrusion in Vanity Fair and more recently in Stendhal. I find it exotic, I think. It doesn't remove me from the story; on the contrary, it pulls me in. I guess I like being reminded it's a book. I don't know. In any event, I'd like to try my hand at the technique for several reasons. Primarily because I'm trying to write a 19th century novel and it seems like one of the primary elements that needs to preserved.

The second reason has to do with the fact that I have a narrator in mind who would also be a character in the novel, which is essentially what an intrusive narrator becomes. I've talked about this before, when I was in Paris, early on. It came up the day I took my first walk through the Latin Quarter with a little walking tour that was teaching us about the French Revolution. One of the places we stopped to look and listen was on Rue de Tournon.

This is where the fortuneteller, Madame Lenormand lived, until dying at the age of something like 75 (her date of birth is in question) in 1843. She saw some of the people connected to my novel. Notably Frederic Chopin, but she also saw Liszt's first mistress, Marie d'Agoult. In my telling she also ends up seeing Louise Farrenc, so it's nice to see that I'm not completely off the mark, and that she really was involved to some extent, with the celebrities of the my day, and particularly the musicians. I suspect I'll discover other important names connected with her if I search hard enough. The point is, I'm considering letting her tell this story—that is, be the narrator.

She's buried in Père Lechaise and dies, as I said, in 1843, right in the middle of my story. She's famous for her fortune telling. That's why Chopin ended up seeing here. He was morose about his love life and she was recommended. Marie d'Agoult too, was trying to figure out what to do about leaving her husband for Liszt.

According to biographical material I found today, Madame Lenormand had been trained as a young girl by the gypsies who taught her to read coffee grounds and egg whites and ashes and the shards of a broken mirror. They also taught her palmistry and astrology. Later, in Paris she studied alchemy, numerology, mythology, the Kabbalah and geomancy. That's a pretty interesting combination, and it's supposedly true. The picture shows her reading for Robespierre and predicting his death. He tried to stop her from doing readings after that, as did Napoleon when he didn't like what she said. She survived and continued.

Apparently she read behind a secret doorway that was hidden in the wall. People waited in her drawing room to see her and were ushered back to where she read and then ushered out the back. She read from a plain deck of playing cards that she had written little notes on and drawn pictures that associated specific cards with specific mythic moments, like the moment the Trojan Horse was pulled through the gate into Troy. She also named the cards. I found a deck right before I left Paris and purchased it. I've been studying it, learning how it works, how to read it. She laid out all thirty-six cards, but did not read them all. The readings are complex. I'm having a good time trying to learn the deck.

When George Eliot starts out Adam Bede, she talks about the Egyptians and how "with a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertook to reveal to any chance comer far‐reaching visions of the past." She tells the reader that she's about to attempt the same. I'm thinking perhaps that Madame Lenormand might say something similar. She's buried in Père Lechaise and I think she's narrating the story from death, telling us something about the past the same way the Egyptian sorcerers do. She might even show us around and introduce us to the tombs of the various characters. She might find Tori there, hovering on Chopin's tomb. I don't know.

I watched a very intriguing documentary on Père Lechaise last week. It's called Forever. I found this collage of it on YouTube. The film seems to be saying something that I too want to say, about the eternal power of art to move and shape us, and like the pianist in the film, I somehow am paying tribute. It seems to me that this is part of what I'm looking for in the Prelude and in the narrator. I know that what I'm saying right now is vague and general and doesn't really communicate all that I'm feeling, but it's a start, a stab at it.

I'm thinking that by using Madame Lenormand, talking from the other side, I think, a ghost who walks us through Père Lechaise and introduces us in some way to the story we're about to hear, that I might be moving closer to what I want. Did I say I've started reading, War and Peace? Andrew Todhunter's assignment. I found the new translation and I've begung. It's about 1500 pages.

New Year, New Decade, New Story

2010-01-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

It's New Years Day. I realize that my writing is so sparse these days that most of you have probably moved on to other ventures. I too, have moved on. I'm not in Paris. I'm home. But, what I've moved onto is the fiction. I'm writing fiction, actually working on my novel instead of my blog.

When I went to Paris, I had the thought that I'd write fiction while I was there. What I didn't take into consideration is the time I actually spend writing, the hours and days it takes me to get even one polished chapter. I also didn't understand that almost instantaneously, I would see that I couldn't just "go forward" or "fill in the missing details of the environment," but rather I had to re-create the story I was telling.

The entire time I was in Paris, I had a "feel" of how the story was changing, but I did not know the new story. I tried things out in my mind and once I even tried my hand at drawing Géricault in through fiction, but I was unsuccessful, I didn't know how to do it.

I also was too busy to write fiction. Most of my days were spent out in the world of Paris and France. I only stayed home when I was ill, which I was for about a week near the end. Even then, I couldn't write fiction and spent my time hunting down more information via the Internet. In fact, that week of mostly staying in served me well, because I went back out into my neighborhood for two last walks right before I left, armed with much more understanding of what I was seeing and what I needed to be looking for. Those last two walks were some of the most important walks I took for my novel. They were literally loaded with specific information.

Now that I don't have Paris outside my door, I can only get there in one of two ways. I can read—and I have been reading a lot since coming home. I finished Stendhal's The Red and Black and I read my way through most of a book on called The Biography of Paris, an excellent history of Paris. I've also read through a guide book that was written in the sixties and traces the history of the ninth arrodissement, where my book is set. It gave me a lot of names of places that used to exist.

The second way to get there, is the obvious: I can write my novel. And that, I am happy to report is exactly what I've been doing. I've not only put out the opening chapter, the one I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, but I gone forward into the next chapter and, more importantly, I've been able to lay out the trajectory of my story—about forty chapters total.

I have discovered how the two pieces (what I wrote before leaving for Paris and what I've been writing since my return) fit together. I've discovered the through line, if you will. I've probably put something like 50 hours into the writing and mostly rewriting of the opening. It's on its second round this week in my writing group. That is to say, I gave it to my group last week, got their critique and went back to work on it after all that feedback and have now given it to them again. On Monday they'll give me more feedback.

I'm pretty sure that the draft I just gave them is getting close. I'm very pleased with it. I'm downright excited about it to be honest, and the changes that just went into this second drafting of it really make me happy. I keep seeing new things. The complexity keeps growing.

I also created a map. My old neighborhood, hugging Rue des Martyrs, is becoming a bit of a character in the book. The map shows me where everything I know about from the period is located—at least in my neighborhood, which in its day was known as Nouvelle Athènes. It's good that I have a sense of ownership and belonging, and sketching it really heightened that sense.

I started by drawing it out on regular typing paper. I used my handy-dandy Louvre pencil that I bought the day I went into the Louvre to sketch Delacroix and Géricault for my Art History class—which created the same sense of ownership and belonging for the Louvre, I might add. (More on this later.)

I copied the map once, and then when it really seemed I had it right, I copied it onto a large piece of card stock about 3 feet by 3 feet and marked things in different colors. (I bought a big eraser for the task and a pencil sharpener too.) My map is hanging on the wall right behind my desk and whenever I want to know anything about my neighborhood, I simply turn around. It's very exciting, actually, even though to say so must make me sound obsessive and silly. But, I can "see" where things are happening and that impacts what I write.

For example, I realized that Louise walked down Rue Bréda and that she got there because the bridal trail that comes up behind the hôtel where she was teaching her piano lesson went on past the house, and that she walked the trail, getting her boots all muddy.

About the pictures I've included: the first one is of a stretch of wall that's still standing. The Farmers-General Wall surrounded Paris in the early days of the 19th century and, in fact, cut Rue des Martyrs in half—it's southern end was incorporated into Paris, it's northern end was outside the wall climbing the hill toward the top of Montmartre. The next picture is Rue des Martyrs in the late 1800s, building renovation going on. The next picture is a sketch of La Brasserie, the café at the foot of Rue des Martyrs that was popular during the time of my book. The last gem is a picture of Ary Scheffer's house before the facade was modernized and painted green. I was so happy to find that.

The Louvre—Again

2009-12-22T11:51:00.000-08:00

Géricault began studying formally in 1808 with Carle Vernet, a French painter who specialized in horses. His son, Émile Jean-Horace Vernet was a close friend. The two of them had studios on Rue des Martyrs, Géricault at No. 23, Vernet at No. 11, but the gardens of the two studios were connected by an off-street path.

Vernet is another of those characters who I was ignoring, but who now seems to provide potential "glue," connecting my characters. This is a self-portrait of Vernet, painted in 1835—I'm pretty sure that's not tobacco in that pipe. I say "glue" because, like Louise Farrenc and her brother Augustine Dumont, Vernet was born in the galleries of the Louvre.

The Louvre housed artists during the French Revolution. Vernet was a third generation painter. His father was Carl Vernet; his grandfather Claude Joseph Vernet. I'm planning a scene in the Louvre with Louise and Augustine, now I believe Vernet must be part of that. He was older than the Dumont children, born in 1789. Augustine and Louise were born in 1801 and 1804 respectively. Vernet held David and neoclassicism in contempt. He had a particular hostility toward David who had done nothing to prevent Vernet's aunt from the guillotine when he could have. He and Géricault were both rivals and friends.

Vernet became famous for his contemporary battle pictures, which include a number that I've been using to study the revolutions of 1830 and 1848.

Vernet and Géricault were about the same age. When Géricault began studying with Vernet's father Carl—young Vernet was 19. The scene in the Louvre that I've been planning is of Géricault copying one of the masters. (Louise and Augustine finding him there while out playing.) Now I'm thinking that Vernet's there too; that he's the one who took Géricault there and showed him around.

So all of this is really about a decision to be made. I've got four artists to consider: Delacroix of course, who modeled for Géricault's Raft of the Medusa and was deeply influenced by him; Ary Scheffer who painted Gérucault on his death bed and lived in the neighborhood and held famous salons some years later that were attended by Chopin, Liszt and Georges Sand; James Pradier, the sculptor I was writing about in my last entry; and Vernet. Each one of those men has a role to play in the opening scene where Géricault is being brought home on a stretcher from his third and final fall off a horse—the final injury that, in essence, killed him.

And I'm still searching for images and information about what the Louvre was like during the Revolution when the families of artists were living there. This is a picture from 1824, the year Géricault died. This is one of the Academy's Salons—the most important art event of each year. The Raft of the Medusa was shown in the 1819 salon. The artists were forced out of the Louvre by Napoleon who turned the Louvre into an official museum for the first time. It was, however, a museum, really, from the time of Louis XIV.

I just have this image in mind about what it must have felt like to be a child in the Louvre, running, maybe even barefoot along the marble floors, free of any real authority, other than the adults living there. What an amazing childhood experience. It's quite caught my imagination. My intention is to let Louise remember it and to draw the reader into that memory.

And yes, I've been writing chapter one —that's how this whole thing about Vernet came to my attention. I originally sent him after the physician so he wasn't in the scene. Now I'm thinking maybe someone else should go, or he should return in time to be part of things. That's the task for today: to rework that section. This has been prep, so to speak. The picture is Géricault's courtyard today.

The Satyr and Bacchante

2009-12-18T16:12:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling excited this afternoon. I finally have some new material for The Appassionata. It's not the very, very beginning, which will still be a prelude woven into the fabric of Père Lachaise. I'm not ready to write that piece yet. But what I am able to write is the opening action —in time—in Paris. Originally the book opened in 1830, but since going to Paris I've known it had to start earlier. The Appassionata now opens in 1824—the year Géricault (and Lord Byron) died.

It opens just after Géricault falls from his horse and is being carried back to his studio on Rue des Martyrs. And now I know who is there with him. The scene takes place just south of Rue Bréda, which is the street where the prostitutes worked.

What's got me excited is I've found the connection between this new material and what I've already written. It's through a young Louise Farrenc and Mademoiselle Juliette Drouet, Victor Hugo's soon-to-be mistress. Juliette was an eighteen year old model in 1824, working for the sculptor James Pradier. Pradier is famous for his sensuous erotica that was mostly sold to private clients. He was, however, well-trained and has work in the Louvre. His Satyr and Bacchante is especially respected—something for which Juliette modeled.

Pradier was Juliette's first lover and there's even evidence that she may have been attempting to get close to Hugo at Pradier's request in order to help his career along. Hugo met Juliette at the staging of one of his plays—a couple of years after Hernani and after The Hunchback of Notre Dame had made him incredibly famous and quite powerful.

I've placed Juliette at the scene of Géricault's fall—which happened at Place Pigalle, right near the top of Rue des Martyrs. Several things make this reasonable: First of all, Juliette lived in the area. Secondly, there was an informal arts market at Place Pigalle where artists went to look for models. Juliette would likely have spent time there looking for work or just paling around with other models. It was a step above prostitution although there was cross-over. And Pradier, who paid for Juliette's apartment and paid her expenses—what all these young women were hoping for—had his studio in Nouvelle Athènes. That's the connection I was looking for and just found.

Pradier had a reputation as a dandy. There's a quote about how he got up every morning to head for Nouvelle Athènes and returned home every night by way of Rue Bréda. He was married and also the father of Juliette's one child, a little girl named Claire who was born about 1827 or so, about the same time as Louise's daughter Tori, in fact.

Which brings me to Louise Farrenc. Louise is also on Rue des Martyrs the day that Géricault falls from his horse. She's 20; Juliette is 18. Louise is already married, but Tori won't be born for two years. Aristide is just establishing his publishing business, Éditions Farrenc. They live over the publishing shop not far from Rue des Martyrs, but in a better part of town, closer to the Grand Avenues and the well-established wealth of Paris.

Louise has been on Rue de la Tour des Dames at the home of Mlle Duchesnois giving her daughter a piano lesson. Louise promised Aristide she would not walk home. The area is not one in which a woman of her position should be walking, especially alone. But Louise is intimidated by this celebrity who has money and fame, so rather than push Mlle Duchesnois to provide a carriage ride home, she walks.

And in so doing, crosses paths with Géricault. He's being carried on his cloak, which is being used like a stretcher by Delacroix and Pradier. This is Géricault's third and final fall. (He fell three times over the course of about two or three weeks and then, really, never walked again.) Louise has her nose buried in the piano music she's carrying in her arms. In fact, she's composing a piece of music in her head, thinking grand thoughts about being a composer when she rounds the corner and basically collides with Juliette Drouet who is gingerly leading Géricaults high strung Arabian stallion.

The music flies in the air. The horse rears brakes lose and races down the street. Everyone stops in confusion. What happens in the middle of all this is that Pradier recognizes Louise. Not because she's a composer, but because she's the little sister of Augustin Dumont, Pradier's peer, yet another sculptor. Géricault too, has seen Louise before—in the Louvre. She came with her brother to the Salon where The Raft of the Medusa was exhibited. Géricault is conscious, and when Pradier and Delacroix go after his horse, he calls Louise to his side and asks her to perform what is an almost impossible favor. He asks her to get word to Alexandrine of his injury.

The reason it's almost impossible is because Alexandrine's husband has forbidden any contact between them. Alexandrine has given up their son to adoption and she is sequestered in her home near Versailles, forbidden even any news of Gericault. If anyone recognizable tries to get word to her, they will be stopped. Louise has a chance because she won't be suspected. He begs her to use stealth and find a way to have a private conversation with Alexandrine. Louise is stunned by the request, but, in spite of all her misgivings—including the fact that Aristide will never allow her to undertake such a task—she agrees to try.

Scene One; Chapter One. I have my new beginning.

A couple of final notes: Géricault also created some of that "private art" for private clientele. Pradier found him the clients. He, like Liszt and Berlioz, actually took to the streets during the 1830 July Revolution. And finally, in one of those little sign-post things—Pradier is buried at Père Lachaise. So he's in. Basically, I'm weaving together the stories of several women here. Louise and Tori are two of them. It's not clear to me yet how large of a role either Juliette or Alexandrine will have, but they're both part of the glue. Hugo will have a larger part, and clearly Delacroix's role has grown.

My biggest challenge is going to be keeping the material under control. I've got enough story for several books—but I only want to write one about this time period, so I've got to make some choices. This opening is the first. It limits Géricault's presence, but allows him into the story.

Turkey Trot & Other Delights

2009-12-16T16:38:00.000-08:00

I took myself for a walk today and took my camera with me, something I've never done before, except of course, traveling around Paris. I thought, why not? For one thing, there's a bunch (what does one call a group of turkeys?) of wild turkeys making their home in the neighborhood.

Earlier this morning I saw deer and then the turkeys. That is, of course, one of the things about my home that I love, the wild animals that I occasionally see around my home. I've even seen a fox. So I thought if I go out with my camera, maybe I'll get some interesting pictures.

That's a little different than my thought process when going out in Paris, but it's related. I'm having a difficult time making the transition back to what I suppose I must think of as "reality"... that is life now that I'm back in the United States.

So, yes. Turkeys. I didn't get close enough to get a good picture. They were only semi-tolerant of my presence. I walked down the road that runs from my house to the ocean. It's foggy out this afternoon and very damp. It's been raining pretty much non-stop since my arrival home last Friday, or so it seems.

I do intend to continue this blog. I'm not sure what it will turn into, not pictures of Mendocino, but for the moment it's part of the transition, I think.

I've been reading about Paris this last week. Just before I left, I went back to Shakespeare and Company and purchased a book on the history of Paris. I've been reading it—so far from the Roman beginnings to the reign of Louis XIV. It makes sense to me on a number of levels. First of all, I usually have a sense of where things are now. Almost everything I'm reading about has some sense of familiarity. And it's exciting because I'm seeing the roots of some of what everyone takes for granted about Parisian culture. For example, I've read all about the roots of the Latin Quarter and the way academia developed in Paris in the middle ages. I've also read a lot more than I had a about the café culture.

It makes sense that now that I can't walk out the door and into the world of Paris, I'm finding other ways to keep myself connected. Books. I've also been reading about the literary community, Hugo and all the others that were around in the early hours of the Romantic movement. I've been delving much deeper into Hugo's story and his influence.

All this because I'm about to rewrite the beginning of the book. I've even made one sweep over the terrain in the last couple of days. I'm not satisfied, but I'm closer. I spent about three hours drawing out a map of the area that the main thrust of the book takes place in—the 9th arrondissement from the Grand Boulevards in the South the Montmartre border in the north... from Porte Saint-Denis in the east to Rue Blanche in the west. This is where I lived and where I walked the most. In fact, I covered almost all of it by foot. Almost everything I read about, I've seen. I've gathered more background since coming home, from the Paris history and from several of the books that I couldn't take with me when I left for Paris, that are now of new interest.

So. It's probably going to take another few days or so before I figure out how to make the transition, especially here, in the blog. But that is my intention. I do have a book to write. And I intend to use this format to help myself along.

Strangely Home

2009-12-13T02:41:00.000-08:00

I'm home in Mendoncino and was in fact writing this blog last night just about this time when my loyal laptop bit the dust in a drama of inappropriate behavior. I've tried to revive it, but with no luck. I believe the hard drive that was its brain is no longer. I'm not sure what is lost and what is saved. That's a topic for another time.

If it had to go the way of all artificial intelligence, I'm glad it had the wherewithal to wait until I was home. I suspect it was the journey that is to blame. Something about the journey was slightly askew, although, the universe was so good as to keep the plane ride simple—no turbulence, no drama. I'm most grateful for that.

But Friday morning, as I drug two very heavy suitcases out of my apartment along with my purse and a small cloth carry-on that had my computer in it, the elevator, that I had patted and thanked and prayed over for three months, chose to rebel. It would not come when fetched by its button. There was a taxi downstairs waiting to carry me across town to the 13th arrondissement (the FIAP building, which is a youth hostel where my classes were held and where most of my fellow travelers were housed). There a bus waited to carry me to the airport where a plane waited to carry me to San Francisco where a friend was waiting to drive me home. None of these conveyances would wait for long. I had to go down a flight with half my luggage and then back up it for the piece I'd left behind, the biggest of the bags and bring it down. Floor by floor, up and down, up and down, all five floors.

It's was like some kind of last laugh on the part of all the staircases (of which I had admittedly complained) in Paris. In any event, I imagine that it was during that unexpected exertion that I did not attend to my laptop carefully enough. I probably banged it on the staircase. It was not packed for such a journey. I had expected to use the elevator. Such is life. I don't believe the elevator answers to a call on the fifth floor. Perhaps that's the issue.

I had been prudent with the words I wrote, saving them. But all the photographs that I downloaded onto my laptop—alas, I never backed them up. I even thought about it and ignored the thought. I have not abandoned my belief that some technological genius will rescue them, but that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, not only am I home. My routine is entirely altered by the fact that I cannot use my laptop.

It turned on courageously on the plane. It even turned on here at home, but once it had been on for awhile at home it froze and made what can only be described as a most unnatural noise. That was that. The end.

I am writing this at 2:30am Mendocino time, which is 11:30am Paris time. My body's clock is still in Paris. I'm wide awake. Furthermore, I just finished the last fifty pages of Stendhal's The Red and The Black. What an amazing book. It has left me in this odd mood however and is responsible for the voice that is seeping into my blog entry. Poor Julien Sorel. He dies. In fact, he is executed for a crime of passion, he attempts to murder the woman he loves. It's a long story, and Stendhal was able to move me from amusement to despair with ease. His political and cultural insights are exceptionally interesting to me. I feel like he has educated me to the mindset of Paris in the 1830s. He manages to communicate the travesty of class division and the plight both of women and of the common people, however well educated.

I'll have more to say on that subject in another blog. I'm writing tonight to say, yes, I'm home in California. Yes, it is strange to be home. Yes, I miss Paris. Yes, I will return, yes. I say yes. I will, yes.

Au Revoir… Adieu… Good Bye

2009-12-10T07:06:00.000-08:00

It's about 3:30pm, on Thursday. I've been out. This is probably my last entry from Paris. I decided to do one last piece of research. I went to the address of the Farrenc publishing house on Boulevard Poissonniere. What I found was well worth the journey. First of all, the building was the original. Secondly, I was able to get into the courtyard that's behind the storefront and I found shop doors back there that felt like the business wrapped around the courtyard, like it was a place for delivers or something.

I feel like I got a sharp clear sense of what it was like and it's quite different than what was in my head. So. It's good I came. The more I sit with everything, the more I'm convinced that this is where the Farrenc family lived, where Tori grew up. It especially seemed so after seeing it. Nothing else really makes sense. If they'd had so much money they could own a publishing business and own a hôtel, they wouldn't of had a publishing business. They would of been aristocrats. It would have been beneath them to earn a living.

Furthermore, it just looks like a they lived there—or maybe the word is feels. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but there's something about the place. It's kind of like seeing the Versailles stables and realizing that the whole second floor was living quarters for the people who staffed the place. That's what this feels like—like the second floor is for living in. It fits the picture I had somehow too. It's the courtyard, I guess. A carriage could have, and would have come into that courtyard.

It's a little courtyard, but when I stood in the middle of it, looking up, I felt like I could see Tori up there in the window, looking down. Just like I wrote it. It made sense. I fit. It made me happy. And the windows above Tori's, in the eaves—that's obviously where their serving girl, Bette, lived. This picture is taken from the courtyard, looking north, away from the street front.

From there, I went to this covered passageway that is just a couple blocks from the publishing shop. It's a covered shopping street, 19th century style. I think even then they might have called it a mall. It was, and is, full of shops, very narrow, for pedestrians only. Passage Des Panoramas, it's called. All of this was just south of where I walked last Saturday.

What makes Passage Des Panoramas so interesting is that it was built in about 1800 and had gas lights by 1817. The Stern's Engraving's sign in the photo has been hanging there since 1834 (a restored version). The shop only recently changed and now days in Paris when shops change, for historical reasons they leave the old signs up. I really like that. Apparently a lot of the wood paneling has been restored as well and the glass ceilings are mostly the originals. This is one of the few passages that as survived more or less in it's original.

I stopped for lunch at a delightful little place that looked like it had the original woodwork and "decoration." It was one of those places where the tables are so close together, it's like you're sitting at someone else's table. Paris is this incredible blend of extremes, from the huge palaces to these tiny little shops.

Anyway, it had ceiling paintings along a panel on an overhang outside. It was remarkable. I didn't get a very good picture of it, unfortunately, but I was sitting right under these wonderful 18th century-looking paintings, kind of Rococo. The bright light is the heaters, which were nice because they made it cozy. I had an excellent salad.

And then, I stumbled on to my extra credit reward, a carved horse. For anyone who has read any of The Appassionata, they know that Tori has a rocking horse in bedroom that plays an important role—and there it was, right in front of me, Tori's rocking horse. The look in its eyes is so wonderful. Horses are a motif—and there it was again. Tori's horse.

I ended my day by going to L'église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine where Chopin's funeral was held to a performance of Mozart's Requiem Mass. I lit a candle. It seemed a fitting good-bye to Paris.

City of LIghts

2009-12-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

The tests are done, the papers are written. In fact, my bags are mostly packed. I have one day left. Paris is ending.

I spent the evening on the Left Bank, near Place Saint-Michel. The fountain is one of Haussmann's creations, built in 1855. I read the statue was originally going to be of Napoleon, but there was enough anger at Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III)—who had only recently declared himself emperor—that it didn't happen. I'm not sure how that worked. I mean, if Louis Napoleon was emperor, it seems he could have insisted. In any event, the fountain features St. Michael and his dragons. I like the dragons. In fact, I like the fountain, it's big and dramatic and looks like Paris.

Protesters gather here. They have for centuries. That's why I saw demonstrators here the day I purchased Stendhal's The Red and The Black. Remember? The Paris Commune made a stand here in the 1870s, and so too the students during the May 1968 riots. Les événements, (The events) they're called. One of our speakers, a wonderfully articulate woman who summed up several hundred years of French politics, was part of those riots. She got me thinking that book four, that's set in the sixties in San Francisco, might have a taste of Paris too...

I like the Latin Quarter. It's one of the places I keep going back to. There's a little church there, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, where I've gone several times to hear piano concerts. I'm contemplating spending my last night there, in fact, because there's a Liszt and Chopin concert.

It starts at 8pm, so I don't know. A taxi is arriving at 6am Friday morning to pick me up. My plane leaves at 10:30am... It's so strange, or maybe it's not strange at all, but I can't believe I'm going home. I couldn't believe I was coming and certainly couldn't believe I was here. So I suppose it makes sense that I can't believe it's ending. I keep swelling with emotion. I'm very sad to be leaving.

Paris at night is all alight. It really is. And where it's not alight, everything goes all soft and romantic. It looks like some old Cary Grant movie. The pictures: the bicyclists and the alleyway are from the walk I take to school. In the daylight it's a mostly modern, less than interesting trek through the 13th arrondissement. At night, voilà.

I sat in a cafe and drank a glass of wine. It seemed like the right thing to do. The weather has warmed up and I was sitting near one of those outdoor heaters. It was cozy and wonderful, except for the bill. It cost me 8 Euros for a glass of wine!

Still, it wasn't enough to suck the romance out of my evening. Since I'd paid for my table, I sat there for a good hour or so, writing, watching people and reading, yes, Stendhal. I'm almost done with the Red and The Black. I've read it on the Metro. It's absolutely excellent, the politics are fascinating and the book is full of footnotes—anything the translator figures a modern English reader wouldn't know. It's a treasure trove.

It was written in 1830 and right now, Stendhal is talking about a secret meeting of a bunch of Royalists who are hoping to get foreign governments involved to keep the people from trying to overthrow the king. This is right before the July Revolution of 1830—which is central to my book.

And speaking of books, I made a last pass by Shakespeare and Company, Hemingway's bookstore. It's a great bookstore, crammed full of books and overflowing. I shouldn't have gone in, but I did. I shouldn't have gone in because it meant that I walked out with another book. I don't know where I'm going to put it, but it's a history of Paris. Again the pictures: the blue lights are on Rue des Martyrs. The carousel disappeared last weekend and the lights went up. Shakespeare and Company is in the Latin Quarter near the cafe where I read Stendhal. I mean, really, where else does one read Stendhal?

Commonplace Becomes Precious

2009-12-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

It's Monday. I leave Friday. Today I went to school and took the hardest of the art history finals. It was alright, but I'm glad to be done with it. It was a tense morning with Line B of the RER, which is a commuter train (faster than the Metro) I take south. It has been the most problematic of all the lines the whole time I've been here. There was a strike on the line (or something like that) for about a week. I never did understand how a strike could just take out one line. So I don't know. Anyway, when it's not working and I have to get to school, it takes me an extra twenty to thirty minutes, depending on whether I know ahead of time.

This morning I didn't know ahead of time. I was heading south to take my final and I boarded the RER. I wasn't running late, but I didn't have any excess time, either. The train just sat there and ... sat there ... and then there was an announcement and I thought it said we'd be leaving in a few minutes, but then we sat some more... and clock was ticking. Outside on the information screen, it said something about "une problème matériel," which I think means a problem with the equipment. At that point I split and walked all the way to the other side of Gare Nord to catch the regular Metro (Line 4) south. I got to class about five minutes late after a lot of very fast walking. No coffee—I had planned on having time to have a café crème at school where they are good and also cheap. No such luck. I took my final sans caffeine.

Coming home, I found myself reduced to taking pictures of the common place. Like the guy who stands at the top of the stairs at the Pigalle Metro and roasts chestnuts. He's there everyday. I see him every time I ride the Metro. These are the kind of pictures I have not been taking because it seems rude. It makes me feel like a tourist. Now that I'm so close to leaving my nostalgia is overriding my resistance. The commonplace has become precious.

The chestnut seller just smiled at me when I took my pictures. I've never spoken to him. But maybe he recognizes the people like myself who use the Pigalle Metro on a daily basis. I mean, this is the Metro stop that I use whenever I go anywhere. It has an east/west line that goes toward Gare Nord and the RER that tripped me up this morning, and it has a North/South line that takes me up into Montmatre or down the east side of Paris where, for example, I transfer to get to the Louvre. One thing I feel pretty familiar with at this point is the Metro.

I'm still trying to build up my nerve to take pictures on the Metro. It does seem to be the height of touristy behavior, almost an invasion unless I happen to see musicians. There haven't been as many lately. I think it's cause it's winter and there aren't as many tourists. So. I walked home, and on the way, stopped to pick up a few things at my neighborhood supermarket.

I sneaked my camera out and snapped one or two pictures of the most mundane of the mundane—my grocery store. This woman is using the little scales that everyone uses to weigh their vegetables and fruit before paying. If you look at the picture closely, you'll see that the basket is sitting on a little wheeled contraption. You grab a basket and one of these wheelly deals and put them together yourself. They're pretty hard to steer, but they're small and so are most of the grocery stores. This is one of the larger stores, though I've read that there are some super big ones out near and in the suburbs.

Back in the beginning I tried to buy my vegetables without using the scales. It was my first time in a grocery store and I hadn't noticed how things were done. It was not at this store or at a store this big. The clerk, as I reported, was unimpressed. It was one of those, "oh wow, Paris is confusing" days. I think about how many things I've learned to take for granted. I can almost always get doors to work these days and my first day out, I couldn't figure out to push the door downstairs. I panicked because it didn't pull open. Jeeze.

So. I made it home in one piece my supplies in hand and yet again, as I do every time I come home, I tucked myself in to my tiny elevator and, ignoring the duck tapped numbers, pushed number 3 so the elevator would take me to floor 5. I no longer pray every time I get in the elevator, but I still thank the critter most of the time as I exit. Superstition, I suppose, but I am extremely grateful that it has held up so well, duck tape and all.

All in all, I'm in a much better mood this evening than I was this morning. I'm really glad to be done with the test I took today, and happy to realize that the one I have Wednesday is not going to be that hard. I'm pretty prepared. I'm finishing up a final paper—what I should be doing right now instead of this. But, while riding off to school this morning, I figured out the missing link—so I'm pretty sure I can finish it tonight. My plan is to spend my study time tomorrow in my favorite local café and, if I can squeeze it in, I'm still hoping to head up to Montmartre one last time and get portrait painted—and who knows, maybe I'll even buy a roasted chestnut.

La Nouvelle Athènes

2009-12-05T11:08:00.000-08:00

It's getting dark. I just came in from my long walking day in the neighborhood. I had a wonderful time and my health seems pretty good. I took a ton of pictures—this is one of my favorites. Apropos of nothing—just life on Rue des Martyrs.

I turned off Rue des Martyrs and headed west on Rue Clauzel, the street that used to be called Rue Bréda... where all the call girls plied their trade. How interesting the street looked as I applied that lens. No balcony seemed innocent.

I had studied the map before I left and thought I knew what I was doing, but one wrong turn and I was veering north instead of south. The reward was delightful... can you see it peeking out from the top of the street? The Moulin Rouge at a distance?

I came back later, at the end of my walk and sat down in a café that looked right at it. I don't know if the windmill blades are original, but they're very cool looking. I'm pretty sure Ary Scheffer could see the Moulin Rouge from his house—that would have been before it was the Moulin Rouge, the Toulouse-Lautrec famous night club, but still.... Scheffer was famous for his salons. It's where I have Tori playing piano. They were attended by Georges Sand, Chopin, Liszt, Delacriox, et al.

At the top of my agenda was Square d'Orleans where Georges Sand and Chopin lived. I'd gone looking for it way back when I first arrived but the double doors leading to it were locked. I'd read it was open on Saturdays, and yes! Square d'Orleans was open.

I'm so glad. It's huge, not at all what I expected. Pictures are hopeless in there because it's like a subdivision of something. The word subdivision is way too crass, but there are three courtyards and one little street and three covered passageways. Georges Sand's home was in one of the covered passageways.

Chopin and Sand each had their own home. They ate meals together. In fact, it was a kind of community. Alexander Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers lived their too and the opera diva Pauline Viardot—and they all ate together. I'm not sure how big the communal group was, but there were nine numbered homes, all connected and then there was this little alleyway street with a dead end.

It was very narrow with old cobbles and this wonderful balcony with a balustrade. I couldn't find any numbered apartments on the street. One of the public places there is a small French library. I'm going to try to find out more about it online. But mostly, I think people live in the buildings. They aren't offices or businesses.

All of this is in a private world behind tall doors. When you're walking down the street and the doors are closed—like they were the first time I came by—it just looks like doors that ought to open into an apartment building.

Paris doors are simply amazing, actually. There must be a book out just about them. If there isn't, there should be. Each door is a piece of art. This beast is the door knob to Square d'Orleans.

Anyway, I'm so grateful that I got in. It's one of those architectural structures that is simply impossible to understand from pictures. I sketched the layout to make sure I remember how everything fits together.

When I left Square d'Orleans I headed up to the famous Rue de la Tour des Dames, the street where all the neoclassical hôtels were built in the 1820s, mostly for rich actors and actresses. I'd read there was a bridal path going up to the street. It brought me to the back of the most unusual of the hôtels, the one with the concave curves that belonged to Mademoiselle Duchesnois.

I like this close-up; it's an old lamp post in the back. The building curves on both sides. It's a totally wonderful-looking structure—shaped sort of like a crescent moon.

Joséphine Duchesnois was the daughter of a horse merchant—which is how I think she knew Géricault. She was living there when he died. She had three illegitimate children. It seems to me she could have been someone that Géricault or Alexadrine might have confided in. She was about ten years older than Alexandrine, and might have been a kind of mother figure.

I like following the horse mantra, but Joséphine— like just about every incidental character I'm writing about—is also buried in Père Lachaise.

And it may be just "one of those things," but I stumbled onto a New Age bookstore today. I'd given up on the idea of finding Madame Lenormand's tarot deck in Paris. Well, today, low and behold, I found it in my neighborhood.

So, that coincidence got me thinking that the connection between Madame Lenormand and Géricault is Joséphine Duchesnois. Such an interesting looking woman— I believe she's costumed as Phèdre in this painting. Not sure who painted it. She played the role in 1802 and Napoleon was so smitten, he had an affair with her. So, she and Madame Lanormand have Napoleon in common. I don't know what to make of that.

My glorious walk ended at the Hôtel Royal Fromentin, once known as Le Don Juan Cabaret. Yes, I made it to the absinthe bar. I'm very proud of myself and it was totally cool. They brought me the absinthe in a glass, the sugar and one of those silver absinthe spoons to hold it, and they brought a huge goblet of ice water that has a little silver spigot on the side—you can barely see it in the picture.

It smelled like fresh anise. The waiter explained that it's a matter of taste how much sugar and water one uses. I took one cube and put it on the spoon and opened the spout. The water comes out in drops. Drop. Drop. Drop. And as it falls, the sugar melts. I can't believe that my little camera caught a drop falling, but it did. Look at that!

As the sugar dissolved, the absinthe turned milky. It was never green. I read that the color of absinthe varies, that it can even be colorless. This was definitely more yellow than green.

It made me happy and I've been happy ever since. The waiter, who seemed amused, wanted to know if I liked it. He smiled when I said yes. I laughed and said I was writing and that this was research—at least that's what I think I said, since I were conversing mostly in French.

I'd had about half of it when I decided I had to write something down, you know, reporter-on-the-scene style. I wrote, "How clever of me! The tang is sharp, the spoon silver. It tastes of elegance and danger." Obviously inspired, wasn't I? A few minutes later I wrote, "I feel a tad bit silly, which probably means, I'm a tad bit drunk. I'm a tad impressed with myself too—and pleased."

So there you have it. When I saw the reflection, I went for it. Not bad, eh?

Beginning the Long Goodbye

2009-12-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

Avoir Paris. Je suis triste, mais c'est la vie, non? I felt well enough to go out to the market this afternoon. My last time. That's why I am sad. But I think I should be well enough to spend the day out tomorrow, that is my hope, anyway.

I took pictures. I don't like taking pictures in places like the market because that's what tourists do, but I wanted to remember it. That's Montmartre in the background, clementines in the foreground below. I've been writing today about this area. I've done a big burst of research since I'm stuck indoors. I've been using the time to work on a paper about Romanticism in Paris—background for my book.

I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say after tomorrow, after my walk through the "neighborhood," and maybe up into Montmartre. That's the plan, to cover La Nouvelle Athènes once again and in more detail. It has crystallized into The Appassionata's main setting—especially now that I've been able to locate the Farrenc publishing house here. Makes me very happy.

Interestingly, this whole area was more or less developed in the 1820s. Right here where I live. As a matter of fact, there used to be slaughter houses on Avenue Trudaine. That's surprising. I think they were moved into Montmartre and then eventually pushed out of there. I think Napoleon forbade slaughter houses within the city walls.

And maybe here's why—before he was Napoleon the Emperor, back in the days when he was just Napoleon, the ambitious soldier working his way up the food chain, Josephine de Beauharnais lived here. Yes, that Josephine, the one who got her cards read from Madame Lenormand. She lived on Rue de la Victoire, which is just southwest of Rue des Martyrs, and I bet the slaughterhouses stank. And there were stables there too. In fact, it could be where Géricault kept his horse.

The point is, Napoleon slept in my neighborhood! And right here, where the farmers market is flourishing on Avenue Trudaine is where there used to be slaughter houses that he, once he had power, removed. Napoleon: what a bundle of contradictions that guy was. And just to keep my words and pictures somewhat coordinated—up above are the chickens I'm so fond of, at the stall where I can also find Toulouse sausages, another favorite. I will miss them both.

And I will miss the vegetables too. It's what I know the best and what I'll miss the most, this kind of "ordinary" level of being here, the survival stuff like eating and cooking and buying cough drops—just living life. I'm very grateful for all the ways I have not been a tourist, that I've gotten to pretend (as someone put it) that I actually live in Paris. Well, I have sort of lived here—three months is long enough to have to get down to the reality of living now and then. You know, buying toilet paper and dish soap. I'm going to miss the cafés. Nothing can replace them. I don't know what to do about that. These days I don't wake up thinking,"My God, that's Paris out there." In fact, lately, I've been waking up thinking, "Oh no, it's not going to be Paris much longer."

There's a flower stall at the market, and a flower shop that I walk by everyday on my way to the Metro. It spills out onto the street and I walk through it. I'm pretty sure that's why I cross the street where I do. I never think about it, but I take pleasure in walking through the plants and flowers, the color. That's the kind of thing I'm going to miss like crazy: flowers on the street in December and a French woman walking six little white Scottie dogs, sans their leases—I think she was the dog nanny.

I learned today that Victor Hugo knew this neighborhood well. His mistress, Juliette Drouet lived here and apparently they met every afternoon by the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette—that's the church at the bottom of Rue des Martyrs, down where all the excitement was happening in the 1820s. Her portrait's by Charles-Emile Callende de Champmartin (1797-1883). He also painted one of the famous images of Georges Sand and a beautiful portrait of Delacroix that I saw at the Paris Museum.

Delacroix spent time around here too. He wrote about it to Georges Sand: "This new district is likely to turn the head of an ardent young man like myself. The first sight that met my virtuous eyes on arrival was a magnificent lorette of the top flight, all dressed in black velvet and satin, who as she got out of her carriage, with goddess-like unconcern, showed me her right leg up to her belly. I won’t mention other encounters to which I already have been exposed and which may perhaps cause me to waver in the path of righteousness…"

The painting (The Young Courtesan) is by Alexandre Francois Xavier Sigalon (1787-37). I've found very little about him, other than like Géricault (1791-1824), he studied with Pierre Guérin, but left and, again like Géricault turned to copying the masters at the Louvre. Did they know one another? Seems likely. There's also the cryptic title of a paper delivered to the Society for French Studies in Leeds in 2005: Exclusion in French Nineteenth-Century Painting: the Meteoric Rise and Precipitous Fall of Xavier Sigalon, Romantic Painter. Ah, those Romantics, they rise and fall quickly. (Not trying to confuse anyone—this last image is Delacroix by de Champmartin.)

Limping Along

2009-12-03T07:34:00.000-08:00

The bottom line is I'm sick. I've been fighting with being sick for awhile, and even now it's fair to say, it could be worse, but it's not good. I've been inside all day today and was barely out yesterday. I'm very frustrated. I have a few things I really want to do before I leave and very little time to do them. So. I'm hoping that this fever will break. In the meantime. I have finally verified an address for Louise and Aristide Farrenc and I'm happy to say that's it's close to Rue des Martyrs.

The music shop in the above picture is a little later (as is the street scene), but Aristide's shop was probably something along those lines, if indeed, the information I found today is correct and Éditions Farrenc was not just a publishing house, but a music shop too.

I think it was a bit like the shop Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin kept in London. He published children's books. Aristide published music. The sketch shows women buying music because it was extremely popular for women to play piano and sing.

The address I identified is on Boulevard Poissonniere, south of Rue des Martyrs by about a half mile (about the walk I take from the Metro to the school, very douable). It was west of the Conservatoire de Musique by about the same distance, pretty much halfway between them. It was a busy, commercial street. I'm pretty sure the shop was No. 22, though I found one reference to No. 16.

I also learned that when Chopin first moved to Paris in 1831, he lived at No. 28 Boulevard Poissonnieres. That probably explains how it came to pass that Aristide became his first publisher in Paris. Apparently Chopin blew into town and performed and was a sensation. Just a few days later, Aristide had a signed contract.

Unfortunately Chopin was "slow" and had difficulty completing his scores. Aristide lost faith in his undertaking and the contract was abandoned. Still, Éditions Farrenc was one of the most successful publishing houses in Paris for about forty years. I also learned that Aristide was born in the South of France... in Marsaille, which is a port town on the Mediterranean just south of where I was. He and Louise married in 1821 and took off on a tour of the South of France, playing together. He was a flautist, second flute for the Théatre-Italien orchestra, which played for operas directed by the very respected Madame Catalani. He quit when she left and never really performed after that. Instead he promoted Louise.

The heart of Rue des Martyrs was its south end. That's where the paint store was, where there was a popular tavern, lots of activity. "Nouvelle Athnes," as the area became known, stretched west toward Rue de la Tour des Dames, a street where many smaller "hôtels" were built. A hôtel is a private home for a wealthy patron. The area at the time was quite rural, and the hôtels often included stables and were built around a courtyard. The rich moving into Nouvelle Athnes included actors, actresses and high class courtesans, writers, musicians and artists who, like Ary Scheffer, had the money.

One of the actresses who lived in on Rue de la Tour des Dames was Mademoiselle Mars who played the lead in Hugo's, Hernani. Another actress, a Mademoiselle Duchesnois, held popular salons. She purchased the concaved house pictured above in 1824. The famous tragedian, François-Joseph Talma, lived on the same street and Delacroix painted ("decorated") his house. He had a hall of mirrors which was obviously some sort of play on Versailles. Most of these buildings were designed and built by named architects during the 1820s. They weren't part of Baron Haussmann's later redevelopment, but rather an expansion of Paris into open land.

One of the things I'm still trying to ascertain is whether the Farrenc's lived in one of these hôtels, or above their shop. It's a question of wealth and I'm pretty sure they had the requisite wealth. Georges Sands, of course, lived in the area, in something that wasn't exactly a hôtel, but wasn't an apartment either. A group of small houses were built around a square and each was occupied by a different family or individual. Alexander Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers lived there, and Chopin. They all shared common meals. I learned that I should actually be able to see the place on Saturday. Last time I tried, it was locked up tight. The photo is taken inside the gate in the square.

I just need to walk the area. Hopefully, I'll be well enough by Saturday to do it. I really want to see that one house, the one that curves. It's got me curious about Mademoiselle Duchesnois. Joséphine. She was the daughter of a horse merchant, how's that for a connection? She was famous for her portrayal of Phèdre, and had several children out of wedlock. She was born in 1777, which makes her about ten years older than Alexandrine. Maybe she's the one who finds Géricault when he falls from his horse. She's also someone who would likely be friends with Madame Lanormande, the fortune teller.... Joséphine Duchesnois is buried at Père Lachaise.

Chez Moi

2009-11-29T17:10:00.000-08:00

I am back in Paris. When I arrived at Gare de Lyon, I had it in my mind that the first thing I should do is find out what the problem was with my Metro pass. So I stood in line at the ticket window and explained that there was a problem. They tested the card and said, "No, no, it is fine." And it was. It worked as it always had.

What to make of that? So curious. My sense at the time—on Friday when I was having trouble making it work, was that it was important I go south. I find that it's not unusual to have problems of some magnitude pop up when I'm trying to accomplish something of significance. You know—interference, as if there are forces at play opposing me, or opposing good things in my world, hoping I'll get discouraged and give up.

Certainly, I had a wonderful and meaningful stay in Provence. It was different than any of the other things I've done since arriving in France. First of all, the emotional connection I made was powerful. I fell in love with Janine and her family. It was hard to say goodbye. I feel like the connection we made is deep and potentially lifelong, rich—possibly leading me in a whole new direction.

Being there also gave me the opportunity to interact with a French family. And in that way, taught me a great deal about what goes on, on a daily basis with one French family, anyway. But as valuable as that is, I don't think it's the reason why the negative forces that like to spoil good things when they can got stimulated. I think it was bigger than just learning things. I think it was about establishing important, lasting relationships and perhaps even a professional association.

I played with the idea of my coming back to do a writers workshop somewhere in Provence. Because of Janine's knowledge and connections, it seems like something we might be able to make happen. She makes her living managing properties and the people who come to stay in them. She arranges vacations and organize events, mostly for foreigners who are rich enough to afford luxury. She's set a number of workshops and events in motion, including a set of culinary classes. The only thing that would be different in this configuration for her, would be the element of organizing it around writing.

At first glance, the idea that I might be able to bring a group of writers to the South of France for a week of writing seems little more than a delightful fantasy. But maybe I can. I've taught and produced writing workshops in Mendocino, and I do have experience organizing, promoting and facilitating retreats and week long events. Between us, we have a combination of skills that seem to dovetail nicely—a combination of experience and knowledge that goes together well. As I think about taking the steps to make it work, I see that Janine and I have the resources to pull it together. If we were to approach it in a systematic way, taking each step—we might actually be able to pull it off. What an idea!

I don't know, but certainly in meeting Janine, I have met the route by which I am most likely to return. We even talked about horses. We have connections there as well. There are wild horses in Provence. I didn't see them, but they're there, waiting for another time. And Janine has arranged horseback riding for people in the area.

And the pictures? I took them at the Provence Market in Arles. There was an artist there and he'd created a kind of window display of an old-fashioned studio, of the objects that would clutter an artist's studio. I took the pictures thinking I should study them closely, that they will help me write about Delcaroix and Géricault, even Ary Scheffer, the man who painted Géricault in his death bed and who hosted salons that were attended by Chopin and George Sand.

I've thought about possibly living in Avignon and apparently, my friend Toni as been having similar fantasies, thinking about the possibility of buying an apartment in Avignon, or something along those lines. None of this is clear, of course. It's just dreaming, but the dreams are pleasant and have the feel of something that could take root.

I only have a few days left in Paris. I fly home now in less than two weeks. That's kind of disturbing. I'm feeling less and less ready to leave as the day of departure rolls relentlessly closer. Tomorrow is Monday. On Friday I am taking a day trip to Normandy. I'm not sure whether that's time and money well-spent, but these decisions to travel seem to be pressing in on me in interesting ways.

As far as what else I must do in Paris, like I said, there's a day to be spent in Montmartre. I'm not sure which day that will be. Perhaps next Saturday. I want to have someone paint my portrait and I want to photograph some of the more common sights that I take for granted in my neighborhood. I want to feel the pavement under my feet one last time and think about where each establishment sat in relationship to the others: the paint store, the studios, the cabaret, the guinuette, and, yes, Louise Farrenc's house. These are her streets too.

One of the other things I said I would do, which I have not done, was to go back to Père Lachaise in the rain and weather—so that I feel winter there. I haven't gone to Delacroix's grave, either. And certainly, I must return to Géricault's and leave a rose for him or some other remembrance. These are things I must do and the time is short. Oh yes, and drink the absinthe. We can't forget that.

Picking Olives

2009-11-28T22:49:00.000-08:00

Picking olives. Ahh. I had fun. It was a great day. We drove up into the hills to what was once an old farm house, now remodeled into a pleasant country home. Janine and her husband come here every year to harvest the olives and amazingly, they get enough olives to have their own fresh olive oil for the whole of the next year.

They take the olives to one of the many to local olive mills where they are pressed. I felt a little like a kid who just realized that the milk in the carton at the grocery store actually comes from a cow. Things like olive oil seem so distant and exotic on the shelf, and now, all of a sudden, here I was putting my hands into the process that would lead to making it. Really. It felt very healthy to do that. Like we all need to remember where the foods we eat actually come from.

The trees were not that tall. These particular trees, my friends said, are probably about sixty years old. I couldn't reach the very top branches, but I could reach the vast majority of the olives. They were very dense on the tree. Janine and I did one tree together, taking all the olives off. It took the two of us, working diligently, probably about three hours, maybe four. Then we moved on to another tree where Hervé had been working with a ladder and the three of us kept at that tree until it was too dark to see.

According to myth, it was Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who gave the olive tree to humanity. Olives are one of the oldest cultivated plants on the planet—one of man's first accomplishments. I just read cultivated plants have been carbon-dated to about 8000 years ago and have been in the South of France that whole time. In fact, several of the world's best olive oils are produced in this region.

The trees flourish in the local, sun-baked soil. Apparently, the trees can grow to be fifty feet high with a spread of thirty feet, which makes the ones we were harvesting small, but small or not, they were absolutely loaded with olives. The olives start out green and then turn to a tan that ripens into a reddish, purplish black. When they're really ready for the press, they've wrinkled a little, which means there's not much water left in them. There are still a lot more olives on the property left to harvest, but we came home with one big barrel and one metal garbage can—full to the top, almost too heavy to move.

In the middle of the day we stopped for a picnic lunch that included Tapenade, a local mainstay made with olives, anchovies and capers that among many other things, is spread on bread. We sat at an outdoor table on the terrace with a meal of a quinoa salad punctuated with bits of chicken and avocado and onion and I don't remember what else. But like everything I've eaten with my friends, it was excellent—as was the wine and cheese and bread. It was lovely. And the view from where we were, up in the hills overlooking the entire area, was fantastic.

At sunset Hervé & Janine sent me around to the far side of the house to watch the Ventoux turn pink. It was amazing, an unbelievably rich glow of pink light glimmering off the mountain's limestone peak, which looks strikingly white in daylight.

I totally enjoyed myself. I found harvesting olives really satisfying and not that hard, the kind of work that I could sustain. I was happy to keep going. I just read that olive pickers, according to local dialect, cajole the fruit off the branch. Well, I don't know. But I did notice that we all felt the life of the tree and the sense that it was happy to have its fruit picked. And we joked about the life purpose of the olives and how they'd be disappointed to be left behind.

It felt so good to spend a day outside in the country air. It felt healthy and wholesome. The kids were chasing each other around, laughing, playing and squabbling the way kids do. And it didn't rain. In fact, the weather was glorious. The sun was out and there was no wind until late in the afternoon when we had just a bit of breeze. It was a warm late November day, kind of perfect. I didn't even need my jacket.

And it was quiet too—that kind of country quiet that happens when you're a long ways from any town out in the countryside. Very nice. I feel so fortunate to have been able to spend time in this way.

L'Art de Vivre

2009-11-28T01:17:00.001-08:00

The art of living. That was the name of the market we visited in Arles. It was in a big, modern conference center outside the walled part of Arles. It was busy and full of local products, all of which can be found in small shops in the different villages of the Provence, so in someway it was like a tour of the entire area via the shops and products. Most of it was too expensive for me to indulge, but some of the pottery and some of the handmade art—one woman's bags and purses, especially—were to die for. So beautiful.

It may help to see a map of the area. If you look closely, you'll see both Avignon and Arles. Avignon is north of Arles and I'm staying in Le Thor, which is too small and insignificant to make the map, but is just to the east of Avignon. The body of water at the south end of the map is the Mediterranean. Arles is at the top of the little area of yellow on the eastern side of the map. Just north and east of Arles, in the little white area is Avignon. The Luberon, as this area is often called, refers to a high plateau and mountains that run through the region.

As we were leaving Arles, we passed by the old Roman amphitheater and the old city wall. We also passed through the pretty little village of Saint Remy, another of the famous tourist villages here.

Once home in Le Thor, Janine and I took a walk, really a hike through the countryside near her house. The area reminds me a bit of the Mendocino Coast in California. Not because the two spots look at all the same—they don't—but the collection of small villages, some more touristed than others and the culture of country living is similar.

Our hike was through kind of scruffy, rugged country. This is olive growing land and reminds me just a little bit of time I spent in Crete years ago. It is Mediterranean in its feel.

The magic behind our walk was the climb up to an 11th century Benedictine monastery that overlooks the plain da Venaissin. It was originally fortified with three walls, three different gates that you had to pass through in order to gain entrance.

It was abandoned in the 14th century and, if I understood the information I found about it, was used by highwaymen and bandits for many years after that. There's a huge underground cistern that the monks dug, so there was always water and it has a commanding view of the country side, a perfect spot for robbers. Makes me think of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, only French highwayman style.

It was hugely romantic and the view is pretty much 360 degrees—in all directions. We were the only ones there and Janine, with her own sense of drama, did not tell me where we were going until we begin to climb toward it and then, to encourage me to climb, she directed my attention to the old ruin on the hill.... It was in those next ten minutes of strenuous climbing that I understood the appeal and the experience of my 19th century compatriots, finding their way to a distant ruin in the days before convenience and posted signs and tour buses... out in the middle of nowhere, perhaps even unexpectedly stumbling on such a treasure. It was lovely, of course.

After our walk we drove to the nearby village of Velleron to the Farmers Market. It was similar to the market near my apartment in Paris, but also very different. It was spread out over more area, for one thing, and in that sense didn't seem as compact or crowded. It's late November. I imagine the market feels different at different times of year. The local farmers drive their trucks and vans to the market and park behind their tables, which aren't covered, so I don't know what happens when it rains.

I had a glimpse into the way both the sellers and the buyers know one another. Just as Janine knows the people who run the chocolate shop in the area, this is a market she visits weekly. With my oh-so-limited French, I struggled to follow her conversations with the various sellers, recognizing that sometimes they were talking about the "writer" from America who was visiting, and sometimes about whether it was going to rain tomorrow—as we're planning to spend the day harvesting olives. As per usual, I couldn't say much, but here and there I managed to add some small thing.

Visiting in Provence

2009-11-26T23:22:00.000-08:00

I'm staying in a little village that's about twenty minutes from Avignon. It's where my friend Janine lives with her family. The weather is quite warm, although it does cool off significantly in the evening. The most interesting architecture in the town is the old city gate, which is crowned with a clock and a wrought iron campanile that's from the 19th century.

I had quite a wild adventure getting to the train this morning. For the first time in all of my time in Paris, my Metro pass stopped working. It appears that somehow it has become demagnitized or something. The attendant could not make it work. I was completely thrown off by it. I was already running late. I'd thought I would get a taxi, but had trouble making that happen... the limits of my ability in French—it was an automated system. So I gave up on the taxi and took the Metro, which wasn't that difficult, except that once my card didn't work, I boarded the wrong Metro... I was rattled, made one mistake after another. Fortunately, in spite of all the mix-up, I made my train and three hours later I arrived in Avignon.

It's a different world from my Paris apartment. Janine (whose British) and her French husband, Hervé, and their two children, Juliette and Loïc live in an old French farmhouse with two cats, Puss Puss and Teddy. Teddy, who's not quite a year old, is always in trouble.

Loïc, who is six, helped me read a simple children's story in French. He's just learning to read and he was sounding the words out and his accent, of course, is French, his pronunciation of the words, crisp and clear. He was helping me say the words, correcting me when I got it wrong, correcting my pronunciation. I'm pretty sure his parents found the whole thing quite comical. Janine said the kids play school a lot, but Juliette, being the older of the two is always the teacher... so now Loïc was getting to play the teacher. It was my favorite of all French lessons and, in fact, I learned a lot from him.

Juliet is nine. She made me several beautiful orgami flowers, very cleverly folded to look like tulips. She had just learned this in school. She also sang The Little Drummer Boy—in English—which she's also learning at school. Janine made a light dinner, a wonderful tasting carrot salad with feta cheese, olives, onion and olive oil. And we ate it with a loaf of excellent country bread. A simple meal, my French Thanksgiving. Absolutely charming; I could not have asked for more. A wonderful day.

And speaking of food, earlier, Janine and I stopped at a chocolate shop—the first such shop I've been in since coming to France. We arrived during the lunch break, when all the shops are closed, so we went around to the back door. The owners of the chocolate shop are friends of Janine's and so they let us in and I got to watch them behind the scenes making chocolate. I also got to try a couple samples...

Tomorrow we're going to Arles, a town about an hour south of here. It's Vincent van Gogh country at the mouth of the Rhone. An old Roman town famous for its bull fighting traditions, its Roman Amphitheatre, and as the home of van Gogh. Apparently Paul Gauguin spent a lot of time in Arles as well, and all the mischief between those men passed here. I don't know the story, but I did read not long before coming to France, that new research suggests that it was Gauguin who cut off van Gogh's ear, not van Gogh.

"… two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists' letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth."

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Green Fairies & Red Windmills

2009-11-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

I only have a couple weeks left before it's time to head home. I'm sad about that. Unfortunately, I've been under the weather now for four or five days, so my adventures out in the big world of Paris have been almost nonexistent, confined to local interactions with shopkeepers and other simple things like going to class. That's why I've blogged so little this last week; there hasn't been much to say. I seem to be coming out of it finally, which is a relief.

I have been writing, though. I've written a paper on Delacroix and his Liberty Leading the People. The sculptor, Auguste Dumont—who cast a work called the Genius of Liberty—is also part of it. He's Louise Farrenc's older brother, Tori's uncle, and the namesake for her doll, Augi Dumont. He's becoming a character the novel, an important link in Louise and Tori's life between music and art. Louise lived in the Louvre as young child—that's fascinating to me. I can see the two children running through the abandoned halls of the Louvre like they were streets.

I've walked all over the Louvre at this point and plan to go back at least once more. Napoleon kicked the tenants out. They'd been living there since the Revolution, when the Louvre was taken from the king and given to the people. Napoleon established a museum in the Louvre (Musée Napoleon, of course), but that's why Gericault could go there and study the masters, which he did for years. The Academy held their Salons there too, in the Grand Hall. So interesting.

Of course I wrote about Géricault and his visits to the stables at Versailles—stables that Napoleon turned into "Imperial" stables. So many scenes in my mind's eye that involve Géricault's life—I'm still trying to figure how all that fits and how much of it will make the page in "real time." I'm also finishing up a paper on the Romantic movement in general and how it emerged in art, music and literature in Paris at the turn of the 19th century—after the fall of Napoleon.

All of this has helped me clarify what I know. The fact is, I've learned a lot, and everything I've learned forwards The Appassionata—mostly in unexpected ways. In other words, it seems to me that I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish. Truly. Obviously there's much more to be done, but I'm no longer doing my research by flashlight. I can see what I'm looking at much better now. Fact is, I feel like planting myself in Berkeley and haunting the university library for awhile, the way I haunted the Bodleian at Oxford back 2004. There's no point in doing it here: I don't read French well enough. Yet. I intend to continue studying French even after I go home.

Coming to Paris seems to have changed many things about my novel—although I think I can use what I've already written. The shift is real and substantial, but I don't think it's going to undo what's done as much as change its centrality. (If that makes any sense.) I've come to several conclusions lately. One of which is, I think the story is going to work somewhat like a braid, with three pieces woven together until, in the end, it's all the same story. That seems to be what's taking shape in my mind. I have a lot of visual images, scenes that I haven't written, but want to. One of the tendrils which will hold the whole together is the street I live adjacent to, Rue des Martyrs.

Clearly Rue des Martyrs is central to my story, as is the neighborhood surrounding it. For one thing, it's an old street and not only were there two artists studios along Rue des Martyrs, (Géricault's and his friend Verney's), but also there was a paint store that sold to the artists and where they tended to hang out. And there was a cabaret, where they probably danced the Can Can back when it was still a partners dance. It's the kind of place Berlioz would have known about.

One thing on my To-Do list for before I go is trying absinthe. I've found a place not too far from here—The Hôtel Royal Fromentin—formerly Le Don Juan Cabaret—and it still has its historic bar. They not only serve absinthe using the whole sugar cube ritual; there's an evening presentation on its history.

There's more in Montmartre to mine too. Especially, Poirier-sans-Pareil, a guinguette (an outdoor restaurant) built in and around a huge old pear tree. A platform was built into the branches of the tree where people sat—a tree house of sorts, and there were two thatched cottages in a garden. All this existed in early 1800s. Its one of the places Hugo went to get his audience for Hernani. It's all gone, changed and finally destroyed in a fire, but I need to see where it was and imagine it—and the slaughter houses nearby with their salmon colored roofs, built at the order of Napoleon.

And les moulins—the windmills. Moulin Rouge is at the foot of Montmartre and not far from here. Moulin Galette is near the old pear tree. So something else I need to see before I go. And I would still like to get my portrait painted in Montmartre too. So. There's a plan for when I return from Provence (where I'm headed now.)

Day Tripping in the Loire Valley

2009-11-22T02:39:00.000-08:00

Where to begin? Sometimes something unexpected happens, I mean really unexpected. Friday we went to the Loire Valley, about 2+ hours southwest of Paris (southwest of Orléans), and I fell in love with France. I can't quite explain it. I don't even really understand what happened, but something did happen. I felt so at home in the Loire Valley. It seemed so familiar and in a very happy way.

First stop was the small town of Blois where we saw the Royal Château de Blois. Blois was pleasant, but not the bell-ringer. It's been the home to a number of ancient kings, including Francis I (1494–1547) who is France's Renaissance king—credited with building the Louvre. He brought Leonardo to France and, in fact, purchased the Mona Lisa. I didn't realize that Leonardo ended his life here. Château de Blois is older than Francis I—Joan of Arc came to Blois in 1429 to be blessed by the archbishop of Reims. She was on her way to Orléans at the time, and would shortly drive the English out of France. So lots of history.

Staircases were a sign of status in French Châteaux, which is why they're generally not part of the room, but a separate spiraling affair. The one at Blois is famous for its ornate beauty, but also because it's open, serving as both a staircase and a balcony for viewing events in the courtyard.

After Francis I, Henry II (1519-1559) ruled. (Actually, his brother ruled first.) Henry married Catherine de Médici and the two of them were not a happy couple. Henry had a "favorite" as they euphemistically call the king's mistress, the beautiful Diane de Poitiers. Doesn't this already sound like a novel? No, not one I want to write... And it's undoubtedly already written.

No. But Henry gave Diane the most beautiful château I've ever seen. (I've seen so many!) Right out of the fairy tales of my childhood. It's called Château de Chenonceau and stretches across the River Cher. I fell in love with it. That was the unexpected.

I walked around saying, "I could live here," which all my fellow travelers found amusing, but I couldn't help myself—that was how I felt. I was so taken by the place that I delved into its history for a long time upon my return yesterday, learning all the intriguing little bits I could find—and guess what?

Yes. Synchronicity, that's what. After an interesting and tempestuous history... the chateau was purchased by one Claude Dupin around 1720. His wife, Madame Louise Dupin, became the fifth woman to shape the history of the château des dames (they call this château, the "lady's château" because six women were involved in its design: Katherine Briçonnet, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Médici, Louise de Lorraine, Madame Dupin and Madame Pelouze. So. Madame Dupin is the woman of interest here.

Follow me closely: Madame Dupin (1706-1799) had a son named Charles Louis Claude Dupin (1716-1780), Lord de Francueil. Charles married twice. His second marriage, late in life, was to a young widow named Marie-Aurore de Saxe (1748-1821). They had son named Maurice Dupin (1778-1808).

Are any of these names ringing a bell? Vaguely, in the back of my head, they were... because Maurice is also the name of Georges Sand's son and Aurore Dupin was her maiden name. Yes. Georges Sand's grandmother married Madame Dupin of Chenonceau's son. Madame Dupin held onto Château de Chenonceau until she died in 1799. Undoubtedly, her daughter-in-law was, at times, a visitor.

In fact Madame Dupin de Francueil (as she was known) was a free-thinker and a follower of Jean Jacques Rousseau and was imprisoned for five months during the Revolution—many of the feminists were. Furthermore, it's possible Madame Dupin de Francueil met Rousseau at Chenonceau. Rousseau was quite dazzled by the older Madame Dupin and was at Chenonceau for an extended period as Madame Dupin's secretary and a as a tutor to her son—Georges Sand's grandfather. (Like that? I do.)

It's a long story, and I won't go into it, but Georges Sand was raised by her grandmother, the original owner of Nohant where Georges Sand (Aurore Dupin) grew up riding horseback aside like a man and being generally wild and free. In fact, Nohant is not that far from Chenonceau, south... perhaps a day's ride. Georges Sand was born in 1804.

Madame Dupin of Chenonceau died in 1799 but when she died, the château stayed in the Dupin family. It was not sold to new owners until 1864. George Sand's grandmother lived until 1821.

Did Georges Sand visit Chenonceau? Well, I don't know. I haven't read enough about Georges Sand's childhood yet, but... it's not that much of a stretch to think she did, especially before her grandmother died. It all depends, really, on the relationship between the two Dupin women. And, regardless, what a wonderful set of connections! (I did not take this picture of Chenonceau.)

One final discovery, of a different ilk, though obviously related. I learned that it's possible to ride through the Loire Valley on horseback, visiting the chateaux and staying in B&Bs. One itinerary in particular has really caught my imagination. It goes from Chenonceau to the Château d'Amboise where Leonardo lived in the court of Frances I and where Henry II and Catherine de Medici hosted young Mary Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart) in their court. Mary (another lifelong favorite of mine) married their son at—you guessed it—Chenonceau.

So. I have a new dream. The horseback tours run May through October... I must confess, I've found a compelling reason to return to this country... so compelling, in fact, it's got me scheming and fantasizing.

One more connection: Mary Shelley wrote a short story about the Loire Valley which I used in The Appassionata. I believe it's set in the time of Francis I, but I'm not sure. It leaves me under the impression, after my own brief journey into the region, that Mary Shelley too, must have traveled there. She was in France several times in her life and her description of the countryside in the story, overhanging the Loire River, seems suddenly very rich and real to me.

Elles at Centre Pompidou

2009-11-19T02:00:00.000-08:00

My Art History class was at Centre Pompidou this week. Among other things, there's a new permanent exhibit there dedicated to women artists. One of the many women with work on display is Frida Kahlo. Very cool seeing one of her works in person. It's small, but extremely interesting—paint on canvas behind paint on glass.

Centre Pompidou sees the exhibit as controversial: "It's a risk," they say. "Excluding men and showing only women is a revolutionary gesture of affirmative action. But the museum is avant-garde. It's part of the Centre Pompidou culture to do things differently. And we like a lot of drama. This is going to be dramatic in a big way."

In fact, the women of France were kept from participating in art for generations, and particularly visual art. They were excluded from the Academy and the Salons and marginalized in a multitude of ways. Those who managed to emerge from beneath the sexism were rare indeed. Louise Vigée-Le Brun (1755-1842), who did the portrait of Marie Antoinette (and earlier, a young Lord Byron), was one of the few. Perhaps she succeeded because her great-uncle had been Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), one of the dominate artists of the 17th century and a favorite of Louis XIV.

Suzanne Valadon, a turn-of-the-century, Montmartre artist was the first woman painter admitted to the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. Rosa Bonheur, who like her contemporary Georges Sand, wore pants and smoked cigarettes (I wrote about her in a previous blog) was refused admittance a generation earlier.

Valadon was a contemporary of Gertrude Stein and that crowd. She was the daughter of a laundress. (I like to think it was Delacroix's laundress who some say he painted into Liberty Leading the People.) Like the sculptor Camille Claudel, she worked as a model for many of the famous male painters of her day, including Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. And she had an affair with composer Erik Satie, whose portrait she painted in 1893.

Her The Blue Room (1923) parodies Manet's Olympia, which itself parodies Inge's Large Odalisque and Titian's Venus of Urbino. According to Art Historians, paintings like Venus of Urbino were created for male patrons (who in 1583, didn't have access to magazines, photos or films). One of the young men in my class asked why the Renaissance painters didn't include sexually titillating images for women. (I'm not sure if he's was being a smart mouth or if, at 19, he's really that ignorant about women's history.)

And speaking of women's history—I also visited Notre Dame cathedral with the Art History class that I'm not taking, the one studying the earliest of the early. Notre Dame: Our Lady. I just tried to draw the two square towers of Notre Dame into my sketch of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. (They're in the background representing Paris.)

Art Historians think Delacroix might have chosen Notre Dame because Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame had just taken Paris by storm. Hugo wanted to see Notre Dame restored. It had been trashed during the Revolution and Amy pointed out some of the missing fingers and the heads that are replacements. (If the photo looks unfamiliar, it's because its a view from the back of the cathedral.)

Separation of church and state is taken very seriously in France. Historically, religion supported the monarchy and manipulated politics with a heavy hand. Christianity as an institution is a hierarchical, patriarchy that cannot tolerate democracy or any challenge to its earthly authority, which it claims is sanctioned by God. A hard thing to prove, a matter of belief—and which church does God support? Historically this kind of thinking has given rise to such horrors as the Inquisition, which certainly, among other things, persecuted women.

If I'm not careful, I will launch a rant here. Suffice to say I believe its time for the United States to think long and hard about why democracy requires a separation between church and state—lest we find ourselves returning to the medieval mentality that gave rise to the Inquisitions and made possible the burning of women like me for witchcraft.

On a lighter note: This picture was taken a couple weeks ago in the South of France. Toni posted it on her Facebook page. So. A pretty common pose: me trying to to figure out my very complicated camera.

La Bohème

2009-11-15T13:26:00.000-08:00

I stood in line today at the Bastille Opera House—for about an hour and a half, which killed my feet because I was wearing my fancy-dancy dress shoes that look like boots, have heels, and are terrible for walking and standing. I was wearing them because it was the opera in Paris and I was dressed up—for the matinee—and happy to be so. I fit in. I looked rather French, if I do say so, and certainly everyone who interacted with me, from the minute I stepped in to line, seemed to assume I spoke more French than I do. (Imagine that)

And while we're on the subject of French, I was pleased by how well I could read the subtitles. I knew the story. I saw La Bohème this summer at the Mendocino Music Festival, so it was fresh in my mind. It was sung in Italian with French subtitles. I did well. I actually understood quite a bit. It was much easier than trying to keep up with Molière. The subtitles were relatively simple and when I added the visual action and my knowledge of the story, a lot of stuff just popped out at me. I was surprised. In fact, at one point I thought to myself, I've crossed the Rubicon here; something has shifted.

I'm still amazed that I stood in line—something I really hate doing—to see an opera—something I've never had any particular fondness for. La Bohème, of course, holds unique interest: it was written about the Bohemians and is set in late 19th century Paris, although this particular production was updated to 1930s costumes and sets.

The whole things was beautiful. I left feeling I'd made another leap of some sort in my understanding of the French, or the Parisians anyway. They loved it, and I'm pretty sure they loved it for the same reason I did. It's such a charming telling of Parisian history. It captures the legend of Paris so poignantly—even set it in the 1930s on the eve of World War II, (which crept in here and there in interesting ways.)

The crowd scenes were huge, with children and a bicycle pulling a cart. The café scene was absolutely sumptuous; there must have been a hundred people on stage. The sets were designed so the streets went back and around a corner. Sometimes we could hear someone singing, but not see them except through the windows. So we watched through the building until the singer rounded the corner. Very cool. It seemed so real that way.

My little epiphany was connected to a drama that unfolded while I was in line. It started when someone asked me if this was the line for tickets to La Bohème. I ended up apologizing for not speaking French that well. The woman in front of me got involved and then asked me to watch after her place for a moment while she stepped out of line. I said I would. (All this happened in French.)

Then another woman showed up and seemed about to crowd. The woman in front of me, who'd come back, objected. Words were exchanged, most of which I didn't understand, but it was definitely an altercation. The woman got in line behind me. Two more women showed up. (This is a long story). They were acquaintances of the woman in front and got in line with her. The other woman freaked out because they were crowding. The tension between these women continued for the rest of the time we were in line.

I was like an object of curiosity because I wasn't getting involved. All four of the women ended up speaking to me at one point or another. Each time I answered by apologizing for not speaking better French, but they seemed to think I knew enough. Well, long story short, I ended up sitting with these women in the theatre—we all got tickets at the same time. By that point, it was almost comical. It was as if we'd all come together or something. They were about my age too, all older woman who had arrived without male escorts for a matinee of La Bohème.

One of the women in particular was bigger than life, sort of fit my stereotype of an older Parisian woman: well-dressed, furs, kind of brassy and bold, talkative, intelligent, no English. She was one of the crowders, and she was friendly to everyone, but always seemed to have an angle. A complex character. In the end, I'm pretty sure she said something to me like, that was worth the wait, wasn't it? It definitely was.

At the curtain call all four women called out "bravo!" over and over. Lots of people were yelling "bravo!" But because I'd spent so much time with these women, I had a sense of the personalities behind the calls. It was enlightening and comical and quite wonderful. My words don't do it justice, but, quite by accident, I seem to have spent my afternoon hanging out with a group of older Parisian women who didn't speak English, but who included me because I was there. I think they found me amusing—the common bond being that we all wanted to see La Bohème enough to stand in line for it. Bottom line, they were just friendly people. It was quite an experience.

À la Cité de la Musique

2009-11-13T16:14:00.000-08:00

My day at the Conservatory of Music included a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Michel Tabachnik) together with three choirs and two soloists, about seventy-five voices, singing the Ode to Joy during the 4th movement. It was an amazing day, actually; and brought tears to my eyes more than once.

I left home about 11am and got back about 11pm. Five hours of that time was spent in the Museum of Music and I didn't see (or hear) it all. They provide headphones and fantastic prerecorded commentary and lots of musical opportunities, some of which are live. The acoustics are wonderful. In fact, every performance I heard today was amazing, not just the symphony.

I hadn't been there long, looking at all the beautiful old lutes, when I heard a woman's voice singing a cappella. Magnificent. Professionally trained. I was drawn to her like a moth to a flame even though I usually don't find a voice trained for opera compelling. That was the first time today music brought me to tears.

Later, there was a saxophonist playing Take Five and then accompanying the same woman in a rendition of Summertime. More tears. Truly. I'm not exaggerating.

The museum is filled with instruments, including a dozen or more very early, very small pianos. The museum traces the history and development of western music and then circles back around and looks at world music. No mention of Louise Farrenc anywhere, though. Just the guys: Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Berlioz—I mean from my book. There was a lot about Louis XIV too. My interest in him continues to grow. Among other things, apparently, he was a talented musician.

There's also a piano that belonged to Chopin and one that belonged to Liszt. Chopin played on a Pleyel, Liszt on an Érard piano. The two men were sponsored by the piano-makers—kind of like movie stars promoting a brand. Sébastien Érard is credited with creating the modern piano in 1821. He designed the double-action that's now standard.

I came to the conclusion that I'm not giving Berlioz enough substance in my book, that I've focused too much on his bigger than life personality without showing his depth. They quoted him: music, like poetry, must reflect the various movements of the soul.

His December, 1830 performance of his Symphony Fantastique caused a sensation. I need to get that across too. He actually passed out a program before the symphony was performed so that people would listen to it, knowing the story. It's the piece that won him the Prix de Rome.

After five hours, when I really couldn't take anymore in, one of the video commentaries talked about the way modern technology is and has changed the neurochemistry of the brain. Among other things, it effects the way we listen to music. I sat in a café drinking a café crème and thinking about that for quite awhile.

I was in the 19th Arrondissement, near the suburbs of Paris, almost at the end of the line for my Metro card. It was a definite neighborhood, and not one where I heard much English, either. Friday night. Paris is so vibrant at night. I ate a Thai Chicken salad and watched people and reflected on how at home I felt in the café scene.

The concert started at 8pm. Beethoven was deaf when he wrote his Ninth Symphony. He completed it in 1824. He died in 1827. It was his last completed work. I had a second row seat. Right in front of the violin section. In fact, right in front of the lead violin. The other performer I had a good view of was the lead cello. It was stunning. I understood Beethoven better in the seeing, how he moves the melody from instrument to instrument, creating echoing refrains.

The Ninth Symphony also has those marvelous tymphani drums. Here's an excerpt. This is a different performance, of course, but I was right there, right in front of all that music, watching the violinists and the cellists and Swiss conductor Michel Tabachnik.

More Sketching

2009-11-12T13:20:00.000-08:00

I made it to the Louvre today and got lost wandering through the sculpture. (I never found the Dumont pieces.) Not only that, but the whole wing of 19th century French art was closed. I didn't find out why or for how long. Instead, I went to the room where Géricault and Delacroix have large works, where Liberty Leading the People resides along with the Raft of the Medusa and several other large works by the two. It's the salon I've gone back to almost every time I've been in the Louvre, so often that I noticed today I've developed a sense of entitlement when I'm there, as if somehow I have more of a right to the paintings there than everyone else walking through. Rather amusing. Rather odd.

I decided to use Géricault's painting of a charging cavalryman as the piece I discuss in relationship to the stables at Versailles. There are a couple of reasons for my choice. First of all, it's a painting that actually came out of Géricault's time at the stables. But another reason I'm going with a military picture is because when I was watching the horse show I had an insight I'd never had before about the relationship between a horse and its rider in war.

When I was very young, we lived on a cattle ranch and my father had a horse that was trained as a cattle cutter, which means it knew how to take one animal out of the herd. Once the horse understood which cow he was after, even my father held onto the saddle horn to stay atop his lightening-quick horse. I remember watching. Buck was my father's horse, but eventually, after we moved, Buck became my horse. He was unimpressed with his demotion, insulted I think, to have a little girl who wasn't that skilled as his rider. We never became good friends, but Buck was the horse who came to mind as I watched the intricate fencing choreography.

What I "got" was how skilled war horses were, and how the life of a cavalry soldier depended, at least in part, upon his relationship with his horse. When I tried to sketch The Charging Cavalryman, one of the first things I noticed was the look in the horse's eye. It does not look frightened; it looks excited.

When Gericault was sketching, the breed that was probably in the stables was the Portuguese Lusitano—bred for military purposes because of their bravery. They're described as having a tendency to move towards something threatening. They're also described as having a "calm," but "fiery" presence.

Another thing close examination revealed, was some kind of leopard skin covering the saddle. Exotic. I know Géricault liked to paint big cats. I've seen a number of them, including a couple with lions attacking horses. Delacroix too.

There are also two small scenes that disappear into the background, war scenes with horses. Like Byron, Géricault tried his hand at the art of war. Perhaps, like Byron, he thought it was more important than painting. In any event, he joined the Royal Musketeers shortly after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. I don't know what happened, haven't found any detail, except that his regiment disbanded not that long after he joined.

His painting was exhibited at the 1812 Salon where it caused a stir and won a gold metal. So. I sat in the Louvre with a sketch pad and a pencil and sketched it. I felt foolish, to tell the truth. I was afraid someone was going to look over my shoulder and see just how bad of a job I was doing. One thing I learned from the Louvre history book I purchased, is that The Salons were held in the Grande Galerie. So I walked through the Grande Galerie, knowing where I was, and understanding the history. Of course that added to my sense of being an insider. Fun.

I also sketched Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. It's an incredibly complex piece and I started over a second time because my proportions were so terribly off. But, sketching did get me to notice what the picture's really doing for the first time. I saw, for example, that they're all mounting a barricade, coming up over the top of it. I had never noticed that before. Nor had I noticed that some of the dead bodies were soldiers.

While I was sketching a guide came through, a French woman speaking English to a group. I eavesdropped. She said a number of interesting things, explaining Delacroix was depicting battle in a more realistic way, showing its cost. In fact, there's a stone in the barricade streaked with blood. The guide pointed out that Marianne—the allegorical Lady Liberty—is barefoot and carrying a rifle. These things, she said, suggest Liberty and victory, but not in a romanticized way. "I'm here for the French people," Lady Liberty says, " but following me means bloodshed and dying." It rends the fabric of society, putting brother against brother. The guide believed that Delacroix's message set forth the price, that the portrayal evoked emotion and an unnerving sense of the sublime.

Sketching

2009-11-12T02:06:00.000-08:00

I set out for the Louvre Tuesday only to discover that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. So much for plans. I ended up at the Place de Bastille—where on July 14, 1789 the storming of a medieval fortress and prison set off the French Revolution.

I went there to sketch the monument that now marks the spot. The July Column was created after the Revolution of 1830 and has at its top a sculpture by Augustin-Alexandre Dumont—the brother of composer Louise Farrenc, the uncle of my main character, Tori. Tori names her doll, Augi Dumont—after her uncle.

Augustin Dumont won the Prix du Rome in 1823 and spent the next seven years in Italy studying sculpture. I know he returned to Paris in 1830, but I'm not sure if he was there during the July Revolution. At the moment his presence in the book is only through the doll. As I research his life for the paper I'm writing, I find myself wanting him in the book.

Interestingly, there's more about Louise Farrenc's family in the short biographies I've found on her brother, than in the longer discourses on her life. She was Augustin's little sister. He was a fifth generation sculptor. Their father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather had all been successful sculptors. In fact, their father, Jacques-Edme Dumont won the Prix de Rome in 1788 and lived in Italy until 1793. He came back hoping to secure commissions from the Republic, but was not able to. I think his politics might have been too tied to the aristocracy—although he did carve a sculptured portrait of Napoleon's second wife, Marie Louise of Austria. All of this must have shaped Louise and Augustin. The Dumont family lived in the Louvre until Napoleon kicked the artists out around 1808. Jacques-Edme Dumont lived into the years my novel; he died in 1844. I've started thinking he too belongs in the book. In other words, Tori's extended family needs to be involved and on the page. It's not surprising, I suppose, that so far, I've found nothing about Tori's grandmother, Jacques-Edme Dumont's wife, not even her name.

Augustin Dumont sculpted The Genius (or Spirit) of Liberty, that sits atop the July Column. I just learned that there's a version of it at the Louvre—a bronze cast, I think. So, today, I going to the Louvre—I'm about to leave. I'm going there to sketch Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, but I'm going look for the sculpture too, and for ones by Augustin's father, grandfather and great-grandfather. They're all there.

My sense is that Augustin Dumont (and his father) walked in the same circle of artists that I've been drawing into book. Augustin went to the same school as Gericault and Delacroix. He won the same Prix de Rome that Berlioz won (it was offered across a number of disciplines). He was a male, moving more freely through society. I don't know how close he was to his sister or to his niece. Like his sister, he eventually became an instructor—at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. At the very least, it's a fascinating family and it seems foolish to write about Louise and Tori without including the context of Louise's family. I believe it was an aunt that first interested Louise in music.

"Genius in Roman mythology is the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing. It was extremely important to the Roman mind to propitiate the appropriate genii for the major undertakings and events of their lives.”

Les Chevaux à Versailles

2009-11-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

Horses. Today I visited the Grande Ecurie de Versailles (the Royal stables) that once served Louis XIV. I toured the actual stables, saw the horses and, in the grand tradition, saw a horse show. (They say that since the days of the Sun King, the greatest equestrians of France have performed in these riding halls.) What an unusual experience. How unexpected and entertaining.

The current show, Le Spectacle Equestre, is the brainchild of a Frenchman named Bartabas, an international equestrian celebrity who was brought to Versailles about five years ago to revive the stables and open a school of equestrian theatrical art. Bartabas is famous, among other things, for teaching a horse to gallop backwards. I watched classic dressage and contemporary equestrian choreography. His performers not only ride, they fence on horseback and on foot, perform archery, dance and sing.

The most amazing performance of the show, however, was when the horses were simply turned loose to play. They rolled and reared and nipped at one another. It was not arbitrary though, it was performance. Like nothing I've ever seen. The dressage too was amazing. It brought tears to my eyes and sent me wheeling back to my adolescence when I had an Arabian colt who was the love of my life. Horses are smart, and these creatures were brilliant—and shy. Something in their expressions, honestly, especially when we applauded, seemed humble—not frightened, humble.

All this came about because of Gericault. He spent much of his career painting horses and the stables at Versailles are where he went to study them. I have to write a paper for my Art History class that discusses a painting and a corresponding architectural environment. So I decided to use the stables at Versailles along with one of Gericualt's paintings.

I got to Versailles around 11am. There was an opportunity to watch the horses being trained, but I missed it because I got lost. It was an interesting time, my time being lost. There are two huge stables, one on either side of what must have been the grand avenue leading directly to the palace. I was on the wrong side, and intrepid explorer that I am, I found my way into the courtyard even though everything was closed up.

I walked all over the area, which was about the size of a football field, figuring I must have misunderstood the French on the website, and the stables were closed. Finally, I asked in the Tourist Office and found my way to the right place. While I waited for the afternoon performance, I perched on a big stone near the gate and sketched, yes sketched, the stables. That's part of the assignment for my class.

Jules Hardouin-Mansart was the architect who designed the buildings. He did all the original work at Versailles. The twin stables originally sheltered 600 horses plus all of Louis' stablemen and equestrians, along with pageboys and even musicians. You can see by looking at the buildings that people lived in them. The top floor was for servants. They're just huge, impossible to get the whole of even one of them in a single picture.

About thirty horses live in the stables these days, and they live in considerable luxury. They're mostly Lusitanian, a Portuguese breed with a creamy white coat and blue eyes, the preferred horses of Louis XIV. They were bred for military purposes originally and were valued for their bravery.

They were trained for bullfighting and dressage because of their flashy gait and powerful presence. Extraordinary animals. I'm still undecided about the painting I'm going to select for my assignment.

I'd like to use Gericault's Mazeppa, which comes from Byron's poem, but it's in a private collection and I can't see the original. Curiously, or coincidentally, Bartabas (the man responsible for the present day equestrian shows) made a film called Mazeppa which is about Gericault. He apparently likes Gericault too.

I may use this portrait, which hangs in the Louvre.

One more Gericault tidbit: the painting I wrote about, the portrait of Byron? I finally found some additional information. It appears that there's a big question about whether the painting is Gericault's. A Cambridge published book that uses the image says it was "formerly" attributed to Gericault but is now by "anonymous"... I imagine it's because no one has found record of these two artists meeting, although it's possible they met in Rome. It's hard to believe Gericault would have painted a "portrait" of Byron by copying another painting.

I did find a portrait of Byron I'd never seen—by a French painter, a woman who is actually connected to Versailles. Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun. She painted a famous portrait of Marie Antoinette that hangs in Versailles. I saw it when we toured there last month. It turns out she traveled to England in the early 1800s and Byron sat for a portrait with her. He's very young, in college; it's probably from about the time of the hanging scene that opens Requiem. Fascinating to see it. He doesn't look nearly as jaded as in later portraits. I've been thinking about letting Byron make an appearance in The Appassionata, especially when I thought I could tie him to Gericault. Now I don't know. They died the same year, only months apart.

Notre-Dame de Chartres

2009-11-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

We traveled to Chartres today. We rode the train from Paris and arrived in the fog. The steeples of the cathédrale were barely visible. Cold and beautiful. Chartres is an old village with many medieval streets and buildings. Everything closes for a couple hours at lunch time. Old fashioned. It reminded me a little of Avignon. Chartres is a place of pilgrimage, and has been for hundreds of years. Since 876, pilgrims have come to see the cathedral's relic, the tunic of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our guide, the renowned Malcolm Miller, admonished us as we left that we had not seen Chartres Cathedral. One cannot see the Cathedral in two hours, he said. That would be like thinking you'd read all the books in a library because you looked around for two hours. He'd given us only a small "taste" of what Chartres has to offer. Indeed, a small, but wonderful taste: Malcolm has been guiding groups through Chartres for fifty years. He's delightful, knowledgeable and very British—a consummate storyteller.

We sat for a long time before the rose window that is over the west entrance. I found it mesmerizing. It literally seemed to lift out into a three-dimensional illusion as I watched in the half-light. Quite extraordinary. Mind-altering. There were workers in the cathedral tearing down the scaffolding. They were noisy. We listened to Malcolm on headsets. A group of pilgrims came into the sanctuary singing. I found the cacophony exuberant. The acoustics were intoxicating.

Chartres was different than I expected. I've been searching for words that explain it. Intimate comes to mind. Gentle. Kind. Sweet. Sincere. I think it's the effect of all the blue glass and the reverberations, the palpable sensation of hundred of years of pilgrimage. It feels holy, sacred. It was an emotional experience that inspired an open heart. I have read that beauty is a way to God. Chartres reinforces that supposition.

We walked the village of Chartres too. Behind the cathedral there's a green parklike area that makes it's way down the hill with a staircase, moss covered walls, and a grassy maze. The cathedral sits atop a hill, the highest point in the area. The spires of Chartres can be seen for miles, guiding pilgrims to their goal.

The village is medieval in character with narrow alleyways and streets that climb the hillside. It has many wattle and daub buildings. Everything looks very old and charming. There's even a little river running through the center of town. All these things, the staircase, the river, the medieval buildings are part of a setting in my novel. Tori and Liszt walk down the staircase from Chartres Cathedral and stop on a bridge that crosses the River Eure where they watch some young boys playing. Quite by accident, we took that walk. I even found the old hotel where everyone is staying.

One thing that makes it likely that I'll keep Chartres as a setting in my book, is the fact that it seems a place that Alexandrine might have visited. Alexandrine is the woman who had the affair with Gericault. She was confined by her husband to their estate near Versailles, but Chartres is very near Versailles, and in the opposite direction of Paris. If she was allowed to travel anywhere, a pilgrimage to Chartres is one of the most likely.

I have been toying with the idea that her path might cross Georges Sand and Tori's in Chartres, that it's a place where a coincidental meeting, unplanned by either side might take place, where we might learn her story.

These are ideas that are in mind. I won't know if I'm really going in that direction until I start trying to write the prose that carry them. The big question I'm grappling with has to do with how the story is moving in time, whether it follows a chronological unfolding or uses something more like flashbacks. These are big questions that have to do with the telling. If, for example, my narrator is speaking from the dead... well, there's a lot of room in that. If Madame Lanormande, the fortune teller, is the storyteller, then she's likely to be doing just that, speaking from the dead.

Un livre d'historique

2009-11-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

I asked for a book on the history of the Louvre today, and I did it all in French. I was at the Louvre, so, you know, it made sense. But I got directed first to a different store and then to an information counter and then to a different person and finally to a book. Each time I was understood and each time the clerks answered me in French. I know they speak English, but they really went out of their way to respond to my French and I was able to understand the directions they gave me. It was satisfying and left me impressed with myself. It's the best I've done with French so far. I felt respected for my efforts.

I bought the book. It's interesting. I bought it because I've been thinking a lot in the last few days about the fact that Louise Farrenc lived in the Louvre as a child. There were artists living in the Louvre in the latter part of the 18th century, up to and during the Revolution. Napoleon seems to have evicted them around 1808. Louise Farrenc, née Dumont, came from a long tradition of artists, primarily sculptors. She would have been four years old in 1808. Her brother, Auguste Dumont, who would become an important 19th century sculptor, would have been eight years old. The family moved from the Louvre to the Sorbonne.

The Louvre was a museum, but it was also kind of like an art school and kind of like a commune of artists. It must have been rather amazing. All of this is just beginning to register. I had a lengthy conversation last night with a friend about the fact that Louise's family lived in the Louvre and that Gericault spent about six years going to the Louvre regularly to copy the work of the masters.

I want to make sense of the building's history, the story of the space. I think I'm going to stage a scene in the Louvre for my book. I felt it today. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I had a very strong feeling of what it might have been like to walk up and down the stairs without it being an organized, public space, but rather wild, almost like an art wilderness, or something.

The Academy held its first Salon at the Louvre in 1699. The French Academy was established in the Louvre even before Louis XIV moved the Court to Versailles in 1674. The Salons were all held at the Louvre. I hadn't realized that until just recently. And Molière performed theatre in one of the salles at the Louvre. What a fascinating place it must have been.

At first, the Louvre was decorated for the Royalty. Ceilings were painted in Baroque design. All that. Then in 1692 a collection of antiques were moved into the Louvre for display. It wasn't until 1767 that the idea of turning The Louvre into a museum was pursued. That was in the reign of Louis XV who had taken up residence in the Palace of Tuileries, which no longer exists. It was burned down in the uprising of 1871. The Palace of Tuileries was standing in 1830, however. It belongs in my book. Right now I have a scene from the July Revolution that takes place in the courtyard of the Louvre. I need to go back to my research and figure out exactly where, but it's very near the Palais Royal, which is just across the street from the Louvre.

We were at the Louvre for about four hours today for my Art History class. We spent the time looking at Renaissance art, first from the Italian Renaissance, both its origins with pieces like Botticelli's Three Graces all the way to the height of the Renaissance with works like the Mona Lisa. We also looked at a lot of Northern Renaissance art, mostly from Flanders. I didn't find that as interesting, but I did like being at the Louvre. It was my fourth or fifth trip back and I'm getting pretty good at finding my way around. (The picture is looking up from inside into the pyramid and the outdoors.)

Earlier in the day, we visited the Rodin Museum. Actually, that was for a different class. I'm taking two art history classes. We saw the original "Thinker." It's a small museum, but one room is dedicated to the work of Camille Claudel. I've been told by a number of artists whom I respect that Claudel not only inspired Rodin, but contributed, literally to much of Rodin's work. She was his model, his confidante and his lover, though he never left his wife.

After an unwanted abortion, Claudel ended her relationship with Rodin and pretty much flipped out. She destroyed many of her statues. Amy, our intrepid instructor didn't seem to have much good to say about Claudel, which I found frustrating. We don't exactly see eye-to-eye on all things art. Her explanations are a bit too academically conservative for my taste, and her history is often over-simplified to accomplish a tilt in a certain direction. She dismissed Claudel as an imitator of Rodin and said her images of embrace were "obsessive."

From the garden you can see the golden dome of Les Invalides in the background. We walked from there all the way to the Eiffel Tower, about a mile along windy Paris streets. Eventually it rained. It's definitely beginning to feel like winter. But, as I said in an earlier entry, I like the weather. Something about the rain and dark clouds makes it feel more like the 19th century to me. It's as if I find the bad weather familiar somehow.

Chantilly Lace

2009-11-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to put together the paper on Gericault. I have to choose a piece of his work that I can see here in Paris and find a way to relate it to some piece of architecture that's also here. There are a lot of options, and when I set out to put together my proposal this morning, I thought I knew what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to go to the stables at Chantilly (just north of Paris) and use them as the architecture—either that or the stables at Versailles, where Gericualt used to go.

Chantilly has a chateau that looks like a fairytale castle. I heard about it by chance from the taxi driver who took Toni and I to the train station the day we headed south to Avignon.

Gericault painted horses more than anything else and one of them is at Chantilly. There's an art museum there in the château, the Musée Condé, the biggest art museum outside of Louvre, which seems very much worth seeing.

I'm actually more likely to use Versailles however, because the stables at Chantilly are closed for renovation at the moment and because Versailles is where Gericault actually went to paint horses. But there's an equestrian show at Chantilly through November that sounds rather incredible. It's called the Les Princes de Chantilly and it's historically-costumed performance and dressage. I'd really like to try to get there, even though it's a bit of a hike. Apparently there are equestrian demonstrations at the Versailles as well, though not as elaborate.

So, it seems pretty straight forward except for the fact that I learned today that Gericault painted a portrait of Lord Byron. At first, I refused to believe it. I thought it must be one of those Internet "truths" that are all mixed up, but after hours of poking around, I've started to believe that it's actually true. The painting is housed at Musée Fabre in Montpellier, which is about as far south as Avignon, but further to the West.

What I don't know is what Gericault used as the source for the portrait. Gericault was in Italy. He left Paris late in 1816 and spent a year in Italy, returning in the fall of 1817. Lord Byron arrived in Italy in October of 1816. By November he was established in Venice, where he lived for the next three years. He did, however, travel to Rome in the spring of 1817. Gericault was in Florence and then in Rome. I don't know the dates. I haven't found any evidence as of yet that their path's crossed and that Byron sat for the portrait. I think if that were so, I would have discovered it already. But who knows? One could also argue that Gericault would not paint a portrait of Byron from a secondary source. In any event it's curious. Gericault would likely have heard talk of Byron's presence in Italy and might have known when he was in Rome. I'm thinking of my recent discovery that Stendhal met Byron. So anyway, that's one thing that I want to know more about.

The other connection to Byron is that Gericault painted an image from Byron's Mazeppa, a poem that also attracted Franz Liszt. Mazeppa tells the story of an illicit love affair discovered and punished. Mazeppa slept with the very young wife of a much older Count who was his host. (Does this sound familiar? It's pretty much Gericault's story, and the story Stendhal is telling in The Red and The Black.) When the young lover is found out, the Count has him tied naked to a wild stallion, which is then turned loose. According to Mazeppa, who is telling the tale in Byron's poem, he almost died several times before finally being rescued.

Gericualt painted the rider and the horse and it seems like a good choice for my paper, but I haven't been able to locate the original. I don't know if it's in Paris, or even in France. I've identified everything by Gericault at the Louvre, which is a lot, but it's not there. I'd also like to identify the date it was painted. I suspect it was after Gericault's affair with Alexandrine was found out. It seems like a kind of self-portrait, or at least it would be interesting to speculate about the degree to which it is. So. Now I'm feeling frustrated with my inability to read French well and with the scarcity of biographical detail I've thus far found in English.

Ultimately, all of this is only important in so far as it gets applied to my novel. But it feels like it is important to the novel. As I've already noted, Lord Byron was a huge influence on almost all the artists I've been researching. It's remarkable, really, the impact of his influence, especially after his death. I hadn't fully grasped it. It's another one of the organizing themes in the book, really. So. Tomorrow I'm going to find out from Amy how to locate Gericault's original Mazeppa. There is a way. I know that much.

Mon Ami Departé

2009-11-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

My friend Toni left about a half hour ago—on her way back to California. My little apartment seems suddenly empty. It was perfect timing to have a friend here for the middle of my stay. It was fun. I gave me an opportunity to go out into Paris to dinner and to the theatre and to travel south all with companionship. That's very nice and quite different than doing all those kinds of things alone.

It was especially wonderful to have gone to the South of France for a few days. I noticed it yesterday, again, that we had been there, that I had been away from Paris and now was back. It made me see Paris just a little differently. As is the case at home, things move differently in the country than they do in the city and traveling south gave me a tiny window into seeing that difference.

Paris is, well.... Paris. What can one say? It's rather wild and woolly here, a little aggressive, a little rushed, a little impressed with itself. How could it be otherwise? It's one of the most important urban centers on the planet and has been for centuries. Style. Paris has style.

We spent yesterday afternoon in the Latin Quarter near Place Saint-Michel. We walked all the little alleyways that make up the area and ate dinner in a delightful little restaurant that we stumbled upon. We chose it because it had an interesting menu and looked good with its traditional red and white checked table cloths and intimate ambiance. The food was excellent, some of the best I've had since arriving. I had salmon. But it was earlier in the afternoon when we'd stopped for a coffee that I felt Paris sort of settling around me.

We were sitting outside under outdoor heaters. That's how they do it here now that it's getting colder—they have roll-out canvas and plastic roofs and sometimes even siding, and they have heaters that look sort of like street lamps, so people can still sit outside. We had one of those tables where you are side-by-side, looking out toward the street.

We weren't far from Shakespeare and Company, which is near the Seine. Lots of young people and lots of smoking. You can't smoke indoors so the smokers do tend to congregate. And the maitre d was just a little rude and pushy to people and it was very busy. And I liked it all. I know that sounds overly romantic, but—you know—that's my schtick, I am overly romantic about these things. To me, it's all pretty much a big adventure.

I just want to take it in. I want to see the color of the water in the mud puddle not just worry about the fact I stepped in it. I'm trying to look without judging what is "right" and what is "wrong." I don't mean to sound naive or simplistic, and I don't think that's what I'm promoting, either. I'm talking about something else.

I believe to succeed as a writer, I have to succeed first as an observer. I have to see the world around me as it is and seek to understand what's actually going on. I don't think anyone can do that when they're busy with a lot of judgment about how it ought to be.

Bottom line: I really want to understand Paris, both in the present and in the past. It's impossible, of course, especially in the time I have, but I can get somewhere. Indeed, I've learned a great deal in the six weeks I've been here. And my affection for Paris seems more grounded these days, based in first-hand experience.

What disturbs me is the realization that my stay is more than half over. I don't feel at all ready for it to end. I'm just now getting my sea legs, I think. I take the Metro mostly with ease these days. I don't look at the map nearly as often. I'm going back now, to places I've been and even when its new, I have a better sense of where I am. What can I say? I like it here—more each day, actually.

Toni's departure signals another change in focus. I went back to school yesterday and in the next few weeks I have three papers to write. One on Delacroix, one on Gericault and one on Romanticism in Paris. I'm looking forward to the task. Each paper is small, only about five pages. I see it as an opportunity to kind of organize my thinking and kind of summarize for myself what I've learned.

It's not the same as writing fiction. And, believe me, that's always on my mind. I'm still working with all the thoughts I've mentioned of late... about the narrator and whether I'm going to give that over to the fortune teller and if so, who she's talking to and how it's all going to work in and out of time. These are huge questions for me, but I've learned the best way to solve those kind of things is to "sit" with them, let them percolate until something surfaces. Things surface in the most unexpected moments, triggered by unexpected things. I'm confident that it will fall into place. I even think the academic writing will help it along. So, to make a long story short, I'm happy this morning and ready for whatever is next.

Oh, and I haven't forgotten Stendhal. I'm about 100 pages into The Red and The Black and it's so good—so much information about the times and the thinking and relationships and humor. It's absolutely excellent and will inform my paper on Romanticism and ultimately, my novel. Haven't forgotten Hugo either. If I wrote about everything that's on my mind, we'd be here until next year.

Comédie-Française

2009-11-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

We went to the Comédie-Française to see Molière. L'Avare—The Miser. In French. I barely understood a word, but I enjoyed it anyway because it was big and bawdy and in period costume. It was obviously quite funny—the audience laughed a lot. I got one joke, a very simple one. There was a point where the main character crawled out over the seats into the audience and talked directly to us. That was the part I understood the best.

I read about the play before going, so I knew the gist of the story and what to expect. I caught bits of dialogue here and there. The Miser is about a greedy old man who loves his money more than life and he wants to marry a beautiful young woman who is in love with his son. He also wants his daughter to marry a very old man who doesn't require a dowry. It's kind of a dark comedy that pokes fun at the insidiousness of greed and the social structure that allowed men to do as they pleased with their children and wives. Mostly, it's a farce—very physical comedy.

Molière is for the French, what Shakespeare is for the English and part of what was fun about seeing it, was that it was classical French theatre. Molière is considered one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. He lived during the reign of Louis XIV who did so much for the arts. Louis established Molière's troupe as The King's Troupe (Troupe du Roi).

La Salle Richelieu, where we saw the production, has been a theatre since the French Revolution. It's beautiful inside even though many of the original boxes have been taken out and replaced with rows of seats.

The ceilings are especially wonderful, painted with a reverse perspective that makes it appear as if people are looking down from outside a window above you. It's called Di sotto in sù which means, "seen from below" or "from below, upward." We had to identify one such piece on our midterm, so when I looked up, I went, "I know what that is." In Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art, a technique called trompe l'oeil, (trick the eye) was used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. Di sotto in sù was a version of that.

It impressed me that I knew something about what I was seeing, and the painting is quite amazing. There's also a fancy chandelier that hangs over the audience, and that ceiling too, is very ornate and interesting. French Baroque, I think.

The Comédie-Française is across the street from the Louvre. It's next to (or part of) the Palais-Royal which is another of the elegant buildings that once housed the court. Molière used to perform in the Palais-Royal and in the Louvre.

The original Comédie-Française was on the Left Bank across from Café Procope, which is the first café in Paris, and the place that introduced coffee to the French. The Comédie-Française was established in 1680 seven years after Molière's death (from pulmonary tuberculosis). I saw the old theatre building several weeks ago when I went on a tour of sites related to the Revolution. It's not far from where Madame Lanormande lived, and yes, she was a theatre-goer.

I wanted to see a play at the Palais Royal because it's where Victor Hugo's Hernani opened in 1830—in Salle Richelieu, the exact same theatre we were just in, and, except for the redesign of the boxes, just as it was. It's actually a very small theatre, much smaller than Palais Garnier where we saw the ballet. It's not as grand, either, and it's much older.

All this helps me think about the staging of my chapter on Hernani. It was nice to arrive at night and think about how it would have looked when Louise and Aristide Farrenc pulled up to the theatre in a carriage on that cold February evening, (we, of course, rode the Metro). There's not much of a lobby in the traditional sense of the word. The "social area" is upstairs on the second floor. We had very nice seats, actually, in an area that was once all boxes.

We arrived in the rain, which in its own way was kind of cool. There's a fountain on one side of the square, the Louvre on the other. The fountain is actually behind, (or perhaps beside is a better description) the theatre. I'm wondering if that's where the carriage should stop.

Inside, I have a scene where Louise is sitting in her seat, eavesdropping on Delacroix. I got some very specific ideas about how to refine that. And the whole scene at the theatre has taken on greater consequence as I'm thinking that almost every minor character in the book, everyone who plays a role in supporting the story, will probably be at the theatre that night.

The Day of the Dead

2009-10-31T03:50:00.000-07:00

The French don't celebrate Halloween. They celebrate the Day of the Dead, tomorrow, November 1st. It's a day for honoring the deceased, remembering their lives.

We're back in Paris. The train ride home yesterday was less than comfortable. There was an accident on the line south of Avignon that made most of the trains run late. Ours was running over two hours late, so we boarded a different train (along with everyone else). Altogether, I think two trainloads of passengers were left stranded and they all crowded onto this one train. We didn't get seats. Fortunately, we were able to find stools in the restaurant car, but they weren't exactly comfortable and the ride was close to three hours.

The scenery was beautiful though. We were facing the window and it was actually very nice for about the first hour. After that my butt began to complain. In any event, we made it. It's cold in Paris. Seems colder than when we left, but maybe that's just because it was so warm in Avignon. It's crisp up here—feels like winter coming on.

The weather is evoking new thoughts about my book. It opens in winter and I notice that as the cold settles around me, I find it kind of exciting. It causes me to think in a slightly different way about my story and somehow makes the whole thing seem closer, more tangible.

I was trying, yesterday, to explain where I'm at in my process. It seems to me that I've been dumping ingredients into my pot since arriving. One thing after another, pretty indiscriminately and without much thought or concern for the implications. I feel like I'm cooking a stew or a witch's brew. Now, I seem to have come to the moment where I'm beginning to taste this concoction and wonder what I think. What have I got? What does it need? What am I after?

I'm absolutely looking for the opening lines. I'm trying to determine if they are going to stay as they are or change, and if they're going to change (which I'm pretty sure they are) then how and how much? Like I said yesterday, I'm pretty fascinated with the idea of giving the narration over to the fortune teller, to let her make the comment about how the stones of Père Lachaise weep for the dead. The questions that arise when I make that choice have to do with logistics. I need to know where she is, who she's talking to, what she's doing and when in time she's doing it. Is she alive or dead? Is she a ghost? She died in 1843. She can't be alive for the whole of my story. So I'm thinking.

Thinking.

Thinking.

What I'm trying to say about the weather and the feeling I got in the backstreets of Avignon, is that something seems to be brewing (hence my brew pot) just under the surface. I can feel it, almost taste it and it seems to be in the weather in the same way it seemed in the streets.

When I first visited Père Lachaise, I said that I needed to go back in a storm. I don't know about the storm, but I do need to go back now that the weather has changed. The cold seems to be literally creating a new layer of emotional information. Memories? Familiarity? I'm note sure. Perhaps. It all depends on what one believes possible, doesn't it?

I think it's likely the book opens in Pére Lachaise, though it might open in the fortune teller's parlor. I suspect the piece I originally wrote about Père Lachaise—which I've changed dozens of times—is still not right, that as interesting as it is, it's off, not what it should be. Finding the beginning is always the most challenging piece for me, it seems. I had a great deal of difficulty finding the beginning of Requiem. It was the last major change I made to the book, changing the beginning yet again, settling finally on the hanging scene, which I had tried to put into more of a chronological telling, but couldn't. This is similar, though I'm at a much different juncture in my process. I'm at a point where I can't seem to go forward until I know where I'm starting from. It's all about framing, kind of like staging and then cropping a photograph. So. Here I am, like I said, thinking....

The Sibyl of Faubourg Saint-Germain

2009-10-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

There's a maze of backstreet alleys behind the main square in Avignon, in the opposite direction of the hotel. It's an area of narrow passageways and buildings that rise for only three or four stories. Medieval. More like Paris in 1830s than most of what I've seen in Paris. I liked it so much I kept going back, and each time I did, I found more places to walk.

Some streets curve like the webs of a spiral, others cross at sharp angles. It's like the Latin Quarter without its shouting fast food booths and all the clubs and bars. Like the Marias—but in both cases more extensive, the walled city in its natural habitat. Which isn't to say that it's not filled with little shops, but when I walked through during lunchtime many were shut and the streets were almost empty. That got my attention. I started thinking: These are the streets that belong in my book. This is more of what it felt like.

The arched walkways were especially spectacular, and the church spires shooting up above the rooftops. It used to be that the churches were the tallest buildings, that they dominated and defined the geography. I love it when all over Avignon the bells chime the hour.

I kept walking back over the same territory, finding new corners to turn, new curves. I really like the curves, the fact that everything isn't all at right angles. In fact, more of it is not at right angles than is. I like the way it curves away to the horizon, so to speak, so that you can't quite see all the way to where you want to see. It suggests a mystery almost, as if there's something to expect round the next bend. It's also very easy to become lost or disoriented. Which way is which? Where was I just a few moments ago? Victor Hugo talks about getting lost like that in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

In it, his poet character, Pierre Gringoire, is following Esmeralda, the beautiful gypsy girl, through the alleyways of Paris, somewhere near the Seine. But he has no idea where he is anymore, and Hugo complains loudly and with great wit about how confounding the streets of Paris are. My experience of getting lost the first day I was here was some small version of what he was writing about, except that in his day (which is the day of my book, of course), there were pockets where the maze was simply overwhelming, it seems.

I've shifted a few words in the opening line of my book, but the shift is seismic. If I keep it, it changes everything. It did read: If stones could weep, would they not weep for the dead of Père Lachaise? Now it reads: "If stones could weep, my Lady, would they not weep for the dead of Père Lachaise?"

The changes are visually subtle. I added quotes around the statement, that's the most important thing. I added quotes because now someone is saying it. And they're saying it to a woman who is being called "my Lady".... The speaker is Marie-Ann-Adélaïde Lenormand, the fortuneteller they called The Sibyl of Faubourg Saint-Germain.

She was the most famous fortune-teller of her day and is reputed to have foreseen the outcome of the French Revolution and predicted the downfall of Danton and the death of Robespierre. She read cards for Josephine and Napoleon and lived until 1843. I'm contemplating making her the "narrator" so to speak, a bit like the housekeeper in Wuthering Heights—but I'm still undecided about who she might be speaking to.

That's the question I most need to answer: with whom is the fortune teller speaking? Who is the woman she's calling "my lady"? Is it really a lady? Is it Tori? At first I thought she was speaking to a man, saying "Monsieur." My friend Toni thinks I should have a modern-day character in the opening and somehow slide back into a past that the fortune teller precipitates. I like that idea, but am not committed to it, or to anything at the moment. I'm waiting for some sort of impulse. Interestingly, the streets of Avignon stimulated my imagination and even now, thinking about them, my emotional connection to the story seems stronger and richer and more complex than it was. That's where I'm looking, to the emotional thread.

Touring the Lubéron

2009-10-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

The Lubéron in a plane stretching on both sides of the mountain that gives it its name. The hills are craggy and there is white limestone atop the peak. The land is cultivated with grapes, olive trees, ancient plane trees, and fields of purple lavender. This is the Provence of the two amazing French films, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, that I saw last spring. Ah... je comprend.

It was a glorious day. Warm and welcoming and full of mischief. We talked writing and politics and the ways of the world. It was fun. Very fun. The scenery was sumptuous and, my god, we had our own private tour guide, taking us down back roads to view points, telling us stories and just being a kind friend.

L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is a village built on an island in the River Sorgue. It has waterwheels and lots of ducks and ancient narrow streets filled with antiques shops. And the church of Notre Dame des Anges, which I'm proud to say, I recognized as having a French Baroque interior. It took me awhile, but finally, as I stood there looking at the putti on the back wall, I murmured to myself, isn't that Baroque? And now I've read it is. It was originally built in 1222, which is why my first comment was Gothic. It was "rebuilt" in the 17th century and I'm pretty sure that there was a statue honoring Jeanne D'Arc in one of the niches.

We visited two hill towns—Gordes, which perches on a granite hillside and looks positively medieval, and Roussillon, which is made of ocre red rock that looks like it came from Utah. And we visited Le Thor where Janine lives with her delightful French husband and their two sweet children, Juliet who is nine and Liuk who is six. They have a classic old farmhouse that has huge beams in the ceiling and lots of character.

It was all one could ever need to have a memorable day in the French country side. And it was a rite of passage in a way, as I was, this very day, exactly halfway through my stay in France. I am sad to see time passing so quickly and feel myself growing just a little tense with the thought that all this will be over all too soon.

I don't mean to sound like a tour guide. I think I'm a bit brain dead when it comes to writing because I'm surrounded suddenly by people to talk to. What a concept!

It was also a cat day. Since arriving in France, dogs have ruled. The French, indeed, love their dogs. But today I met a cat in Roussillon who deigned to allow a stranger to pet her, and I met Teddy who lives at Janine and Hervé's house, and is still mostly a kitten. Teddy (at least in his mind) is pretty much Hervé's cat, and the relationship between them was très amusant. Teddy's favorite perch is in Hervé's lap with his paws on the table. Hervé, I surmise, finds Teddy's sense of entitlement a bit much. Unfortunately I was too entertained by them to think to get a picture. This cat is not Teddy; this is the nameless cat of Roussillion.

The day ended when we caught the local train home from Le Thor's tiny station and walked Avignon's narrow streets back to our little hotel which is tucked into middle of the walled part of Avignon. We ate a late dinner at a nearby restaurant and sighed contently numerous times. It was a long, full, fully satisfying day. Merci bien to everyone who helped make it happen, including all the cats and children and quail, and even the pigeon who flew low under an arch and almost ran into me.

Avignon

2009-10-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

We traveled 360 miles south in about two and a half hours today—and the last fifteen minutes, as the train came into Avignon, was considerably slower than the rest. The TVG (high speed trains) normally travel up to about 200 mph; they've set records up around 350mph. The only time I had any sense of how fast we were going was when we passed another train in the opposite direction. We had window seats in the upper deck. It was a beautiful ride. It's fall; the leaves are turning colors and we saw at least one fairytale castle.

Avignon is located on the south bank of the Rhone River in the region of Provence. It's warm. We stepped off the train into a balmy afternoon. We're about 50 miles north of the Mediterranean here and it feels like it.

Avignon is a walled city with ramparts and seven gates. Between 1309 and 1377 it was the seat of the Catholic Church (instead of the Vatican) and the city belonged to the Papacy until The French Revolution. Avignon is one of the oldest cities in Europe. It's origins date back to 3,000 BC. It sits along an ancient trade route and was a Phoenician trading post before it was Greek and before it became a flourishing Roman town. Just casually strolling, we saw evidence of Roman ruins. And the Celts were here too, from the 4th century BC.

Avignon is medieval in character inside its walls. It's charming and walkable with lots of narrow streets and alleyways. It reminds me just a bit of an Italian hill town. I thinks it's the age of the architecture, more than its style—but the many little squares and Gothic and Romanesque churches add to that sense.

There's a cathedral and a Papal Palace, which they say is the largest Gothic palace in the world. There's a beautiful garden park, a charming city hall, and a wonderful old theatre from the 19th century that sports a statue of Moliere out in front. There's also a two-story antique carousel that looks like it must be from the 19th century, and, of course, there are museums and lots and lots of shops and cafés.

There is a troubadour associated with Avignon, one Bertran Folcon. He composed and performed poetry in the high middle ages. Like other troubadours, he sang about chivalry and courtly love. Dante called it poetic fiction. The troubadours disappeared during the Black Plague, which hit this area hard around the middle of the 14th century.

Tomorrow we are meeting a modern day troubadour, my friend Janine. She's another writer and she's showing us around the neighborhood she loves. She lives in the village of Le Thor, which is on the banks of the River Sorgue. She was out hiking today with her son and daughter and bunch of local school children. She calls herself a concierge and makes her living setting up vacations for the very rich. The countryside around here is called Monts de Vaucluse. It's famous for its crags, its castles, and its lavender and truffles. I've never had a truffle, but then, I've never been in the South of France before, either.

Update: Persistence Pays

2009-10-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

So. Apparently this is a picture of the home of M. Caruel Saint-Martin and Alexandrine. I just read that Château du Chesnay is an 18th century structure, remodeled by M. Caruel Saint-Marin in the early years of the 19th century. The original chateau, built in 1638 (the time of Louis XIV) was torn down, but this house still stands.

The reference goes on to say that this is where Gericault stayed when he came out to Versailles to study and sketch the horses, that, indeed, he lived here between 1812 and 1816 when he went off to Italy. He probably painted the portrait of his aunt on horseback here. Perhaps they rode together. It's the home where Alexandrine lived and was eventually confined. It exists. I can't quite get over that—that it exists and I've apparently identified it. I'm not certain about the home in Montmartre. I have a feeling the information I found pointing to that might have been in error, might have been confusion around Gericault's studio at 23 Rue des Martyrs. I don't know, yet. I'm still researching all that.

What I do know is there's a garden behind the chateau with a fountain of a river god and… Pegasus. Pégase, the mythic horse that has captured the imagination of my main character, Tori, in the opening of the book. In other words, seems I've found something here that circles back around. Magic.

One more little piece that makes me happy. I'm reading Stendhal and I'm fascinated, charmed. He's a very good writer. And I've just come to a chapter that opens with a quote from Lord Byron's Don Juan.

And then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,

And stolen glances, sweeter for the theft,

And burning blushes, though for no transgression

Stendhal quoting Lord Byron. I love it. Stendhal met Byron in 1816 in Milan, Italy. Byron was famous, Stendhal was not, but they were moving in the same literati circles and Stendhal spoke English. At first, Stendhal reports, Byron was haughty, Stendhal timid. But the fact that Stendhal had been Napoleon's secretary for a time drew the poet in. He wanted to know about Napoleon. From what I know of Byron, that makes perfect sense to me—Byron was fascinated by Napoleon. Stendhal says Byron was "put quite out of humor" when Stendhal recounted Napoleon speaking eloquently to his troops.

Stendhal met with Byron over a period of some months and wrote that whenever Byron was present "there was the finest conversation which I have ever known in my life; a volcano of new ideas and generous sentiments." Byron, he said, was "the most amiable monster that I have ever seen; in poetry, in literary discussions, he is simple as a child; he is the opposite of an academician. When that singular man was elated and spoke with enthusiasm, his sentiments were noble, grand, generous, and in a word, did justice to his genius. But in the prosaic moments of life, the sentiments of the poet seemed to me very ordinary. There was much petty vanity, a continual and puerile fear of appearing ridiculous, and sometimes, if I dare say it, that hypocrisy which the English call cant."

What interests me about all this is that part of the reason I had thought to include Mary Shelley was to make the connection back to Byron. She was a character present in the novel who knew Byron. Clearly Stendhal didn't know him in the same way, but—he did meet him and could provide that continuity or insight or whatever it is I'm looking for, to the book. Lord Byron influenced a generation of writers and artists. He became one of the defining forces in the emerging culture of Romanticism. I might be able to employ Stendhal to bring Byron into focus.

I've identified the apartment where Stendhal lived while writing The Red and The Black. It's very near The Palais Royal and Comedia Français—and wouldn't Stendhal have walked the half dozen blocks down there to see Hernani? He was an outsider, true—not one of Hugo's Romantiques. Nevertheless, there's every reason to believe he was there; I'm thinking his face should be one of those in the crowd.

I Need to Visit Le Chesnay

2009-10-26T04:04:00.000-07:00

There are a number of things going on here. First of all, unfortunately, I'm fighting off being sick. I'm not sure yet, where I'm coming down in the battle, but I've done everything that has ever worked before to hold off a flu: Oscillococcinum, Airborn, Echinacea, lots of vitamin C.... all that stuff, plus gargling with vinegar (which Toni suggested—boy, is that stimulating!) And I've been snorting an essential oil that another friend swears by, called Thieves—a blend of a number of oils including cloves and eucalyptus. I've also thrown the kitchen sink at it.

So far, I'm barely holding my own. Coughing, congestion, all that. This morning it seems to be moving up instead of down. Last night it was definitely in my chest. So I've got my fingers crossed here. I really don't want to get sick and I've hovering right on the edge.

The upshot is we didn't do much yesterday. We went out in the late afternoon and walked a bit around the neighborhood, ending in my favorite little café where we sat and talked and then stayed for dinner. That's about all there is to say about voyaging dans la streets of Paris. Not much.

What I did do while I laid around feeling like my throat was a battleground between good and evil, was read. I'm back on the Gericault circuit, which was activated by our walk in Montmartre and my reflections about his relationship to it. What I've begun to piece together is both curious and interesting to me. It's connected to Stendhal as well. One of the fascinating aspects of The Red and The Black (Stendhal's novel, written in 1830), is that it tells the story of an illicit affair between a younger man and an older married woman; Gericault's story. It becomes even more interesting because in Stendhal's story the husband is the Royalist mayor of a small town. Gericualt's uncle, the husband in his affair, was the Royalist mayor of a small town.

There are a number of things that make me wonder if Stendhal didn't know Gericault's story and was borrowing from it as he wrote. One piece of evidence for this beyond the text is that Stendhal posed for a portrait with painter, Dedreux-Dorcy, who was a close friend and intimate of Gericault's. In other words, there is reason to believe that Stendhal might have known the story first hand. And I've found at least one online writer who tells me that "Gericault is the model for the Romantic man Stendhal proposes."

Stendhal was an art critic. He published a work on Renaissance painting called, Histoire de la peinture en Italie, which apparently influenced Delacroix. Stendhal believed that art appreciation was "not a matter for the mind so much as a matter of the heart." He wrote reviews of the Parisian Salons. He was living in Paris during the early 1820s before Gericault's death. He self-identified with the artists' community though he does not seem to have ever attempted to paint. It's quite possible he met Gericualt. I need to read more to find out.

The horsewoman is by Gericault. It's assumed to be Alexandrine. She was from a titled family, but had no money. She married Jean-Baptiste Caruel, a wealthy banker who made his money off of tobacco during The Revolution and Napoleon's Empire. He wanted titled respectability, and indeed, he achieved his goal, becoming a baron. In 1819, just a year after Alexandrine's illegitimate child was born, he added Alexandrine's family name to his own and became Jean-Baptiste Caruel Saint-Martin. He was not the brother of Gericault's father, but of Gericault's dead mother.

Stendhal's portrait of the small-town mayor, M. de Rênal, fits with my notion and colors my thoughts about M. Caruel Saint-Martin who was 27 years Alexandrine's senior. M. Caruel Saint-Martin was the mayor of Le Chesnay, today a suburb of Versailles. In their day it was a separate village that had been originally created for the nobles at Louis XIV's court. One of the sidenotes that all this explains is how it was that Gericault spent time in the stables at Versailles studying and sketching the horses. It's likely that his uncle, the mayor, got him the necessary permission, and was certainly a justification for long stays at Le Chesnay.

So all sorts of things about Gericault's life are becoming clear. The biggest question I have at the moment is how his story fits into what I've been writing. And actually, it's not his story that I'm after, it's Alexandrine's. She had no personal wealth. Her husband was able to quite literally lock her away after discovering her affair. He kept her more or less a prisoner at Le Chesnay, and it's quite likely that after his death in 1847, her eldest son—who became the next mayor of Le Chesnay—followed suit. I believe she is a character in my novel. At this point I'm simply waiting, thinking, and reading with the hopes of understanding how and where and why she fits.

I'm toying with the idea of Alexandrine appearing at Chartres. Chartres is not that far from Versailles. It's in the opposite direction of Paris. It's a place of pilgrimage. If Alexandrine, who lived her life "in pious retreat, like a nun," might have ventured out (been allowed to venture out) it more likely she'd be in Chartres than Paris. So I'm thinking maybe she's at the inn, having come to Chartres and that Georges Sand strikes up a conversation with her. That's what I'm exploring at the moment. I'm also thinking that horses have to be part of it... not sure how, yet, but... maybe that will become clearer after I go Le Chesnay, which I am now planning to do. The picture is of an estate in Le Chesnay—possibly like the one the mayor owned and lived in.

Montmartre In the Rain

2009-10-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

Toni and I ventured up to Montmartre today and it is up. Stairs and more stairs and streets that just go uphill. And it was raining. Not hard, but wet, though the air was warm, still in the 60s. We stopped in a café and strolled the square called the Place du Tertre where modern street artists ply their trade and sell their works. Even in the rain, it was bustling. A lot of them do portraits; I was tempted. Enough so I might go back another day and actually sit for one.

Montmartre is famous for its artists: Salvador Dali, Modigliani, Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh—they all lived or worked there. And Toulouse-Lautrec, of course. We visited the Musée de Montmartre, which had a number of Toulouse-Lautrec's works. He used to do publicity posters for the cancan clubs up there. The museum attempts to capture the history of the village. The main bit of information I walked away with was an understanding of how Montmartre became the center of the dance hall culture, which is one of the places where it connects to my novel.

The biggest piece has to do with the wall around Paris that I wrote about a couple days ago, the Wall of the Farmers-General, which was put up late in the 18th century just before The Revolution and was used to collect taxes on goods entering Paris. Because of the tax, goods sold in Montmartre, which was just outside the city walls, were cheaper—including wine and alcohol, and food. Furthermore, when Haussmann started transforming Paris, large sweeps of land near the center of the city found its way into the hands of his friends and financial supporters, forcing the original inhabitants to the edges of the city—and to Montmartre.

Gérard de Nerval, a poet who makes a brief appearance in my novel (along with his pet lobster) was one of the early artists to make his way up to Montmartre. And of course, I've already talked about the fact that Gericault's aunt and lover, Alexandrine Caruel, lived in Montmartre with her husband. And then there's this story I've bumped into abut the Summer of 1831 when a bunch of the jeunes France, (Hugo's followers—including Nerval and Gautier) camped in tents in Montmartre. Inspired by Lord Byron, they slept on animal skins and ran around naked "emitting animal howls" until the neighbors drove them out. So far that's all the information I have on the subject. I'm looking for more.

The guinguette (dancehall) culture got started because the places in Montmartre could undersell similar ones in Paris, and because some of the nuns up there made darn good wine. (The word guinguette comes from the name of a local white wine.) The guinguettes were popular (and so avant garde) in 1830 that Hugo passed out free tickets in them for Hernani. He expected their clientele to support his controversial play—and, indeed, they did.

The Chat Noir was a famous 19th century club that began as a salon in a private home and evolved into a public cabaret located on Blvd Rouchechouart, the main street I walk when I go to catch the Metro. The place still exists. Eric Satie (I love his music) used to play piano there in the 1890s. We walked past the building where he lived. Apparently Chat Noir was one of Picasso's favorite spots, and Debussy too spent time there.

At the museum we saw one of the only grape arbors that has survived, but in the early 19th century, the hills were dotted with vineyards and, even more wonderfully, with moulins (as in the Moulin Rouge)—that is, windmills.

The number of artists connected with Montmartre makes my head spin. Some names to add to those already mentioned, include: Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, Henri Rousseau, Camille Pissarro, Renoir, Degas and Édith Piaf, of course—(Montmartre was the setting for La Môme). And I'm just naming the people I know about. As I'm quickly learning, most of the names I'm unfamiliar with (as an English-speaking American) have fascinating stories to tell.

One final word: Gericault should be considered a Montmartre artist. I keep finding references to the fact that he lived in Montmartre, referring to his studio at 23 Rue des Martyrs. It's an easy mistake to make, Rue des Martyrs does go up the hill into Montmartre, but No. 23 was inside the city walls.

But Gericualt clearly spent time in Montmartre. He painted this picture, Le Four à Platre, after walking there. It's of one of Montmartre's gypsum mines, which I learned about today. Alabaster comes from gypsum and much of Paris was built from the gypsum mined in Montmartre. They closed down the mines around 1830 because of the instability of the ground. Before that, they were haunted by the underbelly, thieves and dangerous characters. Once they begin to close those people moved on and Montmartre became safer, again increasing the migration to the village both to live and for the pleasure of the dance halls.

The last piece about Gericault is the most curious. I've been thinking he must have been riding in Montmartre when he injured himself. He fell from a horse and the resulting injury cost him his life. According to one of the French sites about him, I am correct. "His passion was to ride on the Butte Montmartre." And the injury that killed him was from a fall at the Barrière des Martyrs—the gate in the Wall of the Farmers-General that's now called Place Pigalle. I walk across Place Pigalle everyday to the Metro. In fact, I walked there today on my way to Montmartre. (This is the intersection about 100 years ago.)

Mon Ami Arrivé

2009-10-24T03:49:00.000-07:00

My friend Toni arrived today, bringing thoughts of home with her. So it seems like a good day to post the pictures my friend Sheri, who is housesitting for me, sent of my menagerie of creatures. I do miss them. Can't help myself. Arthur and Merlin to the left and below, Pelé and Sélène (note the French spelling), are posed in one of their favorite spots.

I waited for Toni at the little café next to my apartment—they were most kind and turned on the heaters for me. It's definitely beginning to feel like winter and it's raining today. While I waited I drank coffee and read Stendhal's The Red and The Black. Such an interesting book. I'm really enjoying it.

One of the best things is that it's footnoted with all sorts of historical information to help the modern English reader understand the historical references that Stendhal, of course, takes for granted writing in 1830. It's set in the countryside, but it's very politically-pointed. He makes all sorts of observations about the Liberals and the Conservatives of the day. I swear it sounds contemporary. The hatred of the Right for the Left… very familiar. Stendhal is sly. So is Hugo. I don't know, but it seems that might be a "French" characteristic. I've read that the French value wit in conversation, that they score points more through wit than through factual logic... I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well, but there's something in both books that I really like, a kind of satirical voice that I'm calling "sly." In any event, I'm not only reading a good, well-told story, I'm also learning a lot of interesting bits of detail that point directly to my time period, which is great.

When Toni finally arrived, I'd been reading for close to two hours. It took her longer to negotiate the train than she had expected. She speaks French much better than I do, although she hasn't been here in quite awhile. I think she figured it's been ten or twelve years.

Later in the afternoon, we moseyed over to the Anvers Market and had a lot of fun buying groceries. We bought these huge shrimp. They aren't shrimp. I don' t know what they are, smaller than a lobster, but bigger than the biggest shrimp I've ever seen. We're planning to have them for dinner tonight. They cost a fortune, so I hope they're worth it. Didn't realize how much they were going to cost because it's so hard, still, to make the shift between grams and ounces and pounds.

We also bought mushrooms and spinach and a green pepper and a couple of avocados, a real shopping spree. Lots of fun. We didn't leave the neighborhood. Toni just flew the ten plus hour flight from San Francisco that I did six weeks ago. Amazing that I've been here six weeks, and she lost 9 hours, so we're taking it easy for the moment. We're planning to go to Montmartre this afternoon and poke around up there.

Last night we went out to dinner in a little café that's across the street from my apartment. I had rabbit with mustard sauce and a medley of steamed vegetables. It was excellent. I've been wanting to try rabbit, which I don't think I've ever had before. It does taste a lot like chicken. So. Not a lot of exciting news from the home front. Just life. It's very nice to have a friend to travel with. Tuesday we're heading south to Provence.

C'est tout pour aujourd'hui.

Le Marché Aux Chevaux

2009-10-22T04:02:00.000-07:00

The Paris Horse Market—painted here by a woman artist Amy told me about when we met the other day. Her name is Rosa Bonheur and she was born in 1822, which makes her about the same age as Tori. She is a Realist and an Animalière (known for her skill in the realistic portrayal of animals.)

Rosa came to Paris from Bordeaux in 1828. She was six years old and her mother was a piano teacher. It's possible the Bonheurs could have met the Farrencs through this fact. Rosa's father was a painter, a friend of Goya's and a passionate Saint-Simonian socialist who believed in equality for women. Saint-Simon influenced many of the artists I'm writing about including Georges Sand, Berlioz, Delacroix and Hugo.

Rosa, like Georges Sand, became famous for walking around in men's clothing, smoking cigars, and riding horseback astride like a man. I like her look. (She changed this portrait, which someone else painted—adding the red bull.) She apparently studied animal physiology by going to the horse market (animals not sold for equestrian purposes were sold for meat) and butchers. She even obtained a special dispensation from the Paris police saying she could dress in men's clothing to do her research. Most interesting.

The market was located along Boulevard d'Hôpital between Barrière d'Italie (now Place d'Italie) and the Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, which coincidentally, was the asylum where Gericault painted a famous series of portraits for French psychiatrist Étienne-Jean Georget. (Salpêtrière is known these days is a prestigious teaching the hospital—where they took Princess Diana that night she died.)

The Barrière d'Italie was a city gate in the wall called the Farmers-General. The wall was built in the late 18th century and was unpopular because it was built not to protect Paris, but to enforce tax collections on goods entering Paris. I'm pretty sure it's the wall Hugo is writing about in Les Misérables. I have to do more research, but from what I've found so far, the taxes were dropped before the French Revolution and then reinstated by Napoleon. It's not clear what was happening in 1830, but as I remember from our Revolutionary Paris tour, the wall was still being used. It was not completely demolished until the 1860s.

Interestingly, every time I go to my classes in the south, I get off the Metro at one of the old gates in that wall, Place Denfert-Rochereau. The gate, called Place d'Enfer, is a setting in the opera La Bohème, which is taken from Scènes de la vie de bohème written by Henri Murger, a contemporary of my time period. It's about Bohemian culture. He was part of a group of artists who called themselves "water drinkers" because they were too poor to afford wine. Among other things, Murger wrote lyrics, the most famous being La Chanson de Musette, which Gautier reviewed. (Gautier is the author and literary critic who wrote the ballet Giselle—a friend of Hugo's who appears in my book.) Gautier said Murger's lyrics were "a tear, which has become a pearl of poetry." So, whether or not they all knew each other, they knew of each other and obviously all this fits together, n'est-ce pas?

Back to Rosa. The question, of course, is who knew Rosa? And the connection has got to be horses. Gericault, Delacroix and Rosa Bonheur were all fascinated with horses. Delacroix may very well have visited the horse market. Gericualt certainly did. Like Rosa, he studied dead bodies and went so far as to visit morgues when he was working on The Raft of the Medusa. But then, so did Michelangelo and da Vinci—and both Rosa and Gericault spent time copying the masters in the Louvre to learn their craft.

I'm pretty sure Rosa studied Gericault's horses. You can see evidence in her work. Certainly Delacroix poured over Gericault's horses when working to paint his own. According to Amy, one of Gericault's images—of a lion attacking a horse—which I found at the library is almost indistinguishable from Delacriox's, (which, of course, was painted later.)

And these guys rode horses. Amy likes to say that horses were their "hot rods," their fast cars. One thing Tori and Rosa share in common is a love of horses. Perhaps Tori needs to ride before this book is over. And there's Georges Sand too; she wrote about riding astride (like Rosa did) as a girl. In fact, one would think that Rosa and Georges would have been well-aware of one another. Maybe a scene of these women riding together? Could such a thing have happened?

Rosa was accepted into the 1841 Salon with a painting of rabbits. She was only 19—still the Academy refused to allow her to study at the prestigeous École des Beaux-Arts because she was a female. The same thing happened to Louise Farennc. She could not study at the Conservatoire de Musique because she was a woman, but eventually she was asked to teach there. These are women pushing the envelop, moving the destiny of women along; the kind of women Virginia Woolf was referencing in her famous "Shakespeare's Sister" discussion.

While studying for my midterms, I read that when Louis XIV established the Academy in the 17th century, he explicitly said it should include artists regardless of their sex. Only a limited number of women were ever accepted, however. And at one point, The Academy passed a rule that no more than four women could be part of the Academy at any one time—younger women had to wait for someone to die. And then in 1770, the Academy eliminated women altogether. They couldn't compete for any of the prizes either. In other words, no professional career was possible. Women were not allowed back into The Academy until 1922. That's intense.

So, like Georges Sand, Rosa Bonheur fought dramatically against the limits placed on women in her day. "What a bore to be limited in movement when one is a girl," she's quoted as saying. She never married and seems to have had two women partners over the years—so if I include her, she will bring another dimension to the book. She feels a little like Gertrude Stein.

One last tidbit about Rose: she had a pet lion. This photo was taken much later in her life. Curiously, Rosa, Géricault and Delacriox all painted lions and other big cats.

Cats and horses: they certainly have my number.

Done With My Tests

2009-10-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

I've taken three tests and two quizzes and turned in two journals in the last three days. And tonight I'm done. Good thing. I've barely slept. Sunday I was up until 4am studying, last night I was up until almost 5am.

The brain has had a real workout—the equivalent of all that walking. Art History is mostly about memorizing: the artist, the title, the date it was created, the style and in some cases, the location as well. Over the last several days, I've memorized those bits of information for some sixty pieces of art. I had to identify twenty of them on the tests, and analyze another eight. One of my favorites is by an Italian Renaissance artist Uccello. The work is The Battle of Romano; it was painted in 1440.

For one of the essays we had fifteen minutes to compare Donatello's David with da Vinci's Vitruvian Man—that was the question I most enjoyed trying to answer.

I am glad to be done. I'm sure by tomorrow 90% of the information that I absorbed in the last couple days will be gone, but some of it will probably last. I have begun to understand something about the conversation going on, the way art is a response to art and culture, the way art begets art. I know there's a lot more that I could say and probably would, if I weren't burned out from the effort. It has to do with what Virginia Woolf was talking about in A Room of One's Own. She was making a point about women, but it actually has another, larger application. Her point was that genius emerges out of the conversation. That's not what she called it, but it is how my Art History teacher refers to it. When I'm not so tired, I'll try to say more about it.

There's not a lot else to report. I ate dinner out last night, at my local café. I had cauliflower au gratin with mussels. It was unusual and tasty. It was very nice in the café. I stop there often. It's the first café I went to and I keep going back. Last night in the dark, with these round, 19th century-looking lamps, it was quite atmospheric. I hadn't realized how much it could change from morning to night. I took this picture from the outside some days ago. It's appropriately called, Des Artistes.
Just an ordinary, run of the mill café, that's what I like about it. Mostly locals, very little English.

The other exciting moment was when a young French-speaking woman asked me for directions. I guess I'm looking French, or at least not lost. I understood what she was asking, but didn't know the answer. I surprised myself by telling her that I was a "foreigner." It was a more sophisticated answer than I usually give. My French is still so basic it's pathetic, but, little by little, I seem to be remembering and using more vocabulary. I understand quite a bit more too. As I was walking out of the Metro Monday, I was given a handout about the fact that the line I ride was going to be running a special schedule on Tuesday. It was all in French of course, but I figured enough out to understand. So, like that. I am getting better.

It's almost 1:30am. I really need to try to get some sleep for a change. One more picture for the road: Paris in 1830, not far from where I'm living. And one more thought too: I met with Amy about my book, that was one of the journals I turned in, all my work tracking down the particulars of the book. She knew about a horse market in the South of Paris, a place that Gericault, for example, probably hung out. I'm writing a paper about him for Art History, and it has to be tied to a architectural event as well, so the horse market might do it—if I can hunt it down. I'm very in to horses these days. Wish I could go riding. In fact, I intend to before too much longer, though probably not until I get home from France.

Tuesday Morning Coffee

2009-10-20T00:59:00.000-07:00

I'm studying for midterms. I have two quizzes and three tests, plus two journal hand-ins that all have to be completed by the close of day Wednesday. I've taken one quiz, one midterm, and turned in both journal assignments. I've also met with Amy over my Independent Study project, which is like having "class" for my book research. She keeps coming up with good suggestions, which is great.

I've got a test this afternoon and a test and a quiz tomorrow. Feels like school. I stayed up all night memorizing the artists, titles, dates and styles of art Sunday night. I'm doing the same again now. I can tell you it's a tedious process, but I'm happy to see that, for the most part, my brain can still pull it off. Memorizing the night before, taking the test and knowing the material.... lucky for me—though clearly my brain is more taxed by the process than it was when I was in my twenties and thirties.

I lost the most points (on the quiz) identifying this wonderful piece of sculpture. (This is my picture, taken from behind it.) Trusting Wikipedia, I decided it was called Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss. Had I bothered with my text, I would have seen that it's actually called Psyche and Cupid. Plus, I spelled the artist's name wrong, one of the very few I did. It's Canova, not Cadova. And I got the date wrong, although it was within the window. I said 1800; it was actually commissioned in 1787, though not finished until sometime in the 1790s. I had memorized the dates and knew the others, year by year. I also called the sculpture Romanticism, which must have been because I was tired and secretly think of it that way.

In fact, it's Neoclassicism. The reason I did not have the answers at hand for this wonderful piece of sculpture is because it wasn't on my list of pieces to study. We had a list to work from for the midterm and another list for the quiz (which for everyone but me came first). The midterm list eliminated several of the items from the quiz list and not thinking it through, I didn't worry about them. Canova's sculpture was (fortunately) the only eliminated piece that actually made it onto the quiz. So, I was guessing, pulling from my casual memory of it.

None of this is that important. I'm taking all this pass/fail. But it annoyed me. My instincts to do well are, as per usual, aroused. I am the perpetual student. I love to learn; I love to compete academically. I love to do well. One of the most pleasant aspects of my life, actually, as been how much of it I've spent in academic settings, either as a student or as an instructor. I love them both.

I've been reading, for another of the tests, about the French educational system. It's centralized, and the author discussing it, who is Canadian, finds that fact pretty unacceptable. There really isn't an equivalent to a state in France. It's not a group of united states. It's a single state, the state of France. There are no local governments with local authority. They are all acting under the authority of the central government, what we call the Federal Government. France is not a federation. One of the consequences of this difference is that educational standards are set centrally and are the same in every corner of the country.

I actually like that. I think the fact that the Far Right in the United States has been focused for years on taking over School Boards and, in my opinion, undermining educational values by trying to prevent students from learning about things like evolution (for example), is deplorable. I think it has undermined civic life in the United States. In my opinion the Far Right is pretty medieval in its thinking. They want their religion to be the governing power, like the Church (and the divinely appointed Kings) of old, with their inquisitions and all the rest. No. I'm not impressed by that form of governing.

The French also have the best health care system in the world. So, I'm on their side. I think it makes sense. One of the main things the author I'm reading fails to consider, among the many, is that both the United States and Canada are huge in comparison to France, which is more the size of a US state or a Canadian territory. I'm not sure what advantage there would be in having a loose federation of states rights advocates in such a small region of territory. And, as I watch the US deteriorate while the Far Right yells about taxes and flushing government down the toilet, I'm not sure Americans are making the best choices they can, about our collective state and governing it. It seems to me we are moving towards a corporate theocracy of sorts. So there you have it.

In any event, I'm going back to my books and my own education. All my work will be completed on Wednesday and on Friday, Toni arrives and we'll be heading off to Provence next week. I'm six weeks into my stay. It's gone by way too fast. We all knew it would.

The Red & The Black

2009-10-17T16:19:00.000-07:00

Curious coincidences today... the kind that arouse my curiosity. I got on the Metro headed for Shakespeare and Company, the English bookstore that Hemingway made famous. I like it. I was there the other day and almost bought a couple of books. I went back today to get them and, I thought I'd add Tolstoy to the mix. I read on the Metro, which I always do. I'm reading How Fiction Works by James Wood, a fascinating book that analyzes what makes good fiction. Today, I read about The Red and The Black, a French novel by Stendhal. Wood got my attention: I started thinking I should read Stendhal. (The photo is not of the bookstore, but is nearby.)

Stendhal is a contemporary, alive in my time period. In fact, The Red and The Black was published in 1830, the year my book opens. So, when I got to Shakespeare and Company and they didn't have the translation of War and Peace that Andrew told me to get, I bought The Red and The Black instead. About an hour later in the midst of a serious rain storm, I sat in a little café, drinking wine and reading the introduction—I learned that:

On 29 July 1830 in Paris during the July Revolution, a red and black flag was seen flying from the Vendôme Column signifying a fight to the death. On 25 February 1830 at the first night of Hernani, red and black tickets were issued to the claque chosen to champion Victor Hugo's new Romantic drama within the last bastion of Classical taste, the Comédie Francaise. What better title could Stendhal have chosen…

The Vendôme Column was erected by Napoleon to celebrate a war victory. At the time of the 1830 uprising, it was topped with a statue of Napoleon crowned in laurels and holding a sword in his right hand, a globe in his left. The statue resisted an attempt in 1814 to pull it down. Thus, the "fight to the death" symbolism. This is not something I knew. The statue of Napoleon was finally pulled down, after the 1830 rebellion. Louis Napoleon commissioned a replacement probably in the latter part of the 19th century. The Vendôme Column is near the Madeleine church, where Chopin's funeral was held.

Within about an hour of the time I read that, I saw a street demonstration—people parading with red and black flags. The Left, communists and anarchists. Yesterday farmers came to Paris and burned hay along Champs-Élysées. They were protesting the prices they're getting for grain. I'm not sure what today's demonstration was about, but it was Red and Black. Truly. Lots of red and black flags, perhaps signaling "a fight to the death." Synchronicity. The street violence of 1830 must include flags. Demonstrators in Paris run with flags. And the church bells were ringing this afternoon; I don't know why.

I was in the Latin Quarter because I decided to go to another piano concert. 160 years ago today (October 17, 1849), Frederick Chopin died. Is there any connection between Chopin and Stendhal? They were friends. And I do know Tolstoy said he "was indebted to Stendhal." Another interesting tidbit: Stendhal knew Lord Byron, and like Byron, seems to have been obsessed with women and falling in love—though for Stendhal, it was mostly unrequited. He wrote a book on love.

It was held in the same little church—the Church of Saint Julien le Pauvre—where last Sunday I heard the Beethoven and Chopin concert. This time I got a front row seat, a perfect view of the pianists hands moving on the keyboard. It was phenomenal. It made me cry.

One more bit of curious synchronicity: the main character in The Red and The Black is named Julien. My interpretation of all this? I'm not sure, except clearly I must read the book. I have the feeling it's going to be both useful and influential. Stendhal is not considered a Romantic. He's rather one of the first Realists and his psychological analysis of character, so early in the 19th century is considered unprecedented. His real name is Marie-Henri Beyle; Stendhal is a pen name.

Saint Julien le Pauvre is just around the corner from the bookstore, Shakespeare & Company. There's a tree behind the chapel, in the little park that abuts it, that was planted in 1602. If you look carefully you'll see the cement in the trunk that's helping, I guess, to support the trunk? I'm not sure.

I spent the afternoon walking around the area near the church. I found a little shop that sells purses, scarves, hats, gloves and jewelry. I loved their stuff and ended up buying gloves, which I had been wanting for last few days, and also a big warm scarf, which I was very happy to have sitting in the church. It was cold enough to cause me to worry about the pianist. I guess the fact that she was working hard kept her warm.

The Workshop Has Ended

2009-10-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

Five days, nine to five. I've been studying writing. It's been intense and in many ways, impossible to write about. I've learned a lot, but I'm looking forward to the open, unstructured space that tomorrow represents. I came home today and shopped in my little marché (farmers market) that comes every Friday to Place D'Anvers just a couple blocks from where I live.

I found this picture of Place D'Anvers from the turn of the century, with Sacre Coeur in the background—painted by Monsieur Victor-Gabriel Gilbert. Now the view looks more like it does in the picture below.

I purchased more string beans than I wanted at the market and bought a very tasty Toulouse Sausage. I also bought an inexpensive coffee mug, something I've been contemplating since my arrival almost five weeks ago. And I had a bit of a conversation in French. A young woman—probably in her mid-twenties—was selling jewelry. She asked me if I was English. I said no, American, and I told her I was from California. She liked hearing that so I added that I lived near San Francisco. She asked about hippies—I think she said, wasn't San Francisco was where the hippies lived.

I said yes, and told her that I'd been one of them. She liked that too. I told her I was here in Paris for three months to work on a book. She asked what kind of book and what it was about. I was able to tell her it was a historical novel about 19th century Paris. She found that very odd. I think she couldn't imagine why I would be bothering to do such a thing. Eventually, I ran out of my capacity to speak French, but it was the longest sustained conversation (in French) I've had with anyone about anything. She was asking the right questions, the simple things that I learned to talk about when I was studying French this summer. It was clumsy, but I was happy to have said as much as I did. It was fun.

I still get very excited when I'm able to communicate in French. This morning I purchased my coffee at the bar in a little café. It's cheaper that way, you don't pay for a table. You stand at the bar, like in Italy and just drink your coffee and go. I did that and later purchased a new French Press coffee pot, having broken mine last night. All these things I managed in French and that makes me very happy. They each reflect the ways in which I have started to adapt to my world and get more comfortable moving through it. I'm more relaxed.

My friend Toni is coming next Friday. She'll be here for ten days and during that time, school will be on fall break, both for the French and for me. Because of Janine—who lives in Provence and has offered to help us find a place to stay and has said she'll even show us around one day—we're planning, now, to go to the South of France.

It's about a two and a half hour train ride to Avignon, a little longer to Aix-en-Provence. I'm excited by the prospect of traveling south. I don't know much about the area, except that everyone loves it and I know there's a café in Aix-en-Provence called The Deux Garçons, which was built in 1792 and frequented by Cézanne, Émile Zola, and even Ernest Hemingway. Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1832. Aix-en-Provence is very old, going back, basically to before the time of Christ. It's a city of art, fountains, markets and country beauty. Also, I hear, it's the best place to eat French cuisine. So. Sounds good to me.

In fact, I just read that Provence has been inhabited since prehistoric times. There's a cave somewhere in the region called Valloet that dates to something like 600,000 BC, and also some underwater cave decorated with drawings of bisons, seals, penguins and horses. The Greeks, the Gauls and the Romans have all inhabited the area, and, of course, early Christians. Around 1300, the pope moved to Avignon. Janine has suggested we stay in Avignon, but it's a city, so I don't know. All this will become clear in the next several days.

Meanwhile, there's tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow, but I'm very happy to have the opportunity to make up my mind. I may go to Montmartre for the day. I'm feeling like interacting with my environment, though the weather is changing. It's starting to get colder. It's crisp in the mornings, cold at night. I feel like writing and may even take my laptop with me and work in some café. That's something I've yet to do. I always have my journal with me, though, and write in it—but it's quite different to work on my computer. On the other hand, I'm also inclined to go to an English bookstore, probably back to Shakespeare and Company and I won't want to drag my computer around if I'm going to do that. Who knows, I may even buy War and Peace, and do as Andrew has spent the week encouraging me to do—begin studying it. There are several other books on my mind too.