A Long Walk North

Late this afternoon I took a long walk to the northern edge of Paris. After yesterday, when I found myself amid throngs of tourists in the Marais, I felt the need to get out and away from all that.

I didn't get out until about 4:15, which, these days, is dusk, but sometimes the lights and colors are worth a walk in the dark. I headed up to the top of my street, Rue du Faubourg St. Denis and took a left on the Boulevard de Magenta. This took me past the Gare du Nord and up toward the Porte de Clingancourt. The Boulevard de Magenta is a 'grand boulevard' and at this time of day it was relatively quiet. From my street up to Barbes Rouchechouart the shops are mainly clothing: shoe shops, discount clothiers and close to Barbes, mostly wedding boutiques.

At Barbes Rochechouart there is a clothing store, Tati, that is, a 'grand magazin' for what we might call the regular folks. This part of town is populated mostly by Africans, and the further north one goes, the faces on the street are increasingly black. Unlike the grands magazins of the Boulevard Haussmann, where are the tourists go, this is a place for low cost clothing and shoes. The Metro runs above ground here, so I passed under it and headed north on the Boulevard Barbes. This street is wide and the crowds picked up here. For the most part, the shops are phone stores and more discount clothiers. At the Rue Ornano, I headed left, still going north to the Porte de Clingancourt.

Just north of the Porte is the Marche aux Puces (flea market) to which I have been a few times, both when I lived here and when I visited with Valery and Maddie in 2012. By the time I got there, it was really starting to get dark, so I turned right and headed up toward the Porte de La Chappelle. This was a long leg, and completely empty--I was the only one walking on the rue Belliard.

I turned right, back toward the center of Paris on the Rue des Poissionnieres, which runs all the way back down to Barbes. At first, it was a solitary walk, but after crossing the Rue Ordener again, it got narrower and much more crowded.

This part of town is almost exclusively black. In fact, I was the only white person I saw for a long time. At this time of the evening the street was thronged with shoppers, and the shops were all small food stores featuring mostly African and Haitian goods. There were a lot of clothing stores, shoe shops and a many small African boutiques, featuring brightly colored dresses, scarves and hats. Small hotels, restaurants with fogged up windows and tiny cafes line the street.

By the time I got back on Barbes, the street was completely crowded with shoppers and families out for a walk. Again, I was the only white face in the crowd. At Barbes Rouchechouart the intersection was so crowded that it was difficult to thread my way through, but soon enough I was back on Magenta and down past the Gare du Nord and home to Faubourg St. Denis.

This only took about an hour and a half, but it was fascinating, a reminder that Paris is full of much more than tourists. It was a relief to see real people going about their lives in a way that has been going on for centuries. One of the things I wanted to experience here was the 'real' Paris, and today, I got a wonderful dose of just that. I will start going out to the edges more often--perhaps I can make a full tour of the city from the 'outside' in the coming weeks, in spite of the cold and dark.

Winter in Paris

Well, winter has finally arrived here in Paris. The temperatures have been below freezing for the past couple of days, but at least it was sunny yesterday. After spending a few days indoors during Christmas, I got out for a walk and it felt good.

I have been in a bit of a down mood for a week or so, having stalled on what I hope will be the last (for now) version of Oui Madame. Of course, it has a lot to do with the light, but at least we've passed the solstice, so I can take some comfort from that. I do miss summer, among other things, especially my family.

I can also take comfort from knowing that this little struggle is far from difficult, considering what others have to endure. I noted, for example, that one of the two men crossing Antarctica, alone and unaided has reached his destination (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/sports/antarctica-race-colin-obrady.html). The other man will reach his goal in the next day or two. I mention this because the burden of writing a screenplay hardly compares to what they've been through, and I should indeed consider myself lucky. The apartment is warm and I am well-fed.

In the news today is a story about a 71 year old Frenchman who is crossing the Atlantic in a barrel, so when I think about what he will go through in the next couple of months, again, I am not going to complain. I noted in the article (https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/27/europe/barrel-atlantic-crossing-scli-intl/index.html) that his space is roughly the same size as mine, but at least I can get out and do not expect to get seasick!

Yesterday I went looking for a kosher deli, thinking that in a city this size, I should be able to find a good pastrami sandwich and perhaps a bagel, but alas, it seems not to be the case. I walked down to the Marais, which was known as the 'Jewish' quarter when I was here in the 70's but found it to be completely transformed into an 'upscale' shopping district. It seems as if this is all that's left in the new millennium, the same stuff that one finds in every city from Austin to Paris. A recent trip to Amsterdam revealed the same reality: Chanel, Gucci, Coach, The Kooples, Louis Vuitton etc, on and on. And it's all the same, derivative and repetitive, as if the imagination from the fashion industry has long been drained and with a purpose toward self-advertisement: wealthy consumers want to wear a brand, devoid of originality, simply proclaiming their excess assets to the world.

I have long wondered why people wear advertisements on their sleeve without compensation, but the way the major brands have evolved, that's all that's left and is perhaps the whole point. If you can afford Prada, you want everyone to know it. What's worse is the fact that these stores look not much different than Walmart, with racks and racks of identical clothing and accessories. I think if I paid that much for a dress or a purse or a suit, I'd want it to be in limited supply if not unique. But in store after store, neighborhood after neighborhood, it's all the same.

Having just seen a documentary on Paris haute couture, I realized that while Karl Lagerfeld may indeed be a creative genius, what becomes of his vision is just more trash, coveted but hardly valued except in the basest sense. It must be disappointing to him, I think, to realize that once he's let it go, the world will corrupt his vision by reducing it to the lowest common denominator, the sale rack.

Ok dear reader, just a little venting today. Tomorrow will be better, I am sure.

On Art

Art is human, the rearrangement of light matter (more on dark later) by humans.

This is an intentionally very broad definition.  This means that thought is art. In fact, it was the first art, a manifestation of what makes the human experience unique among life forms on this planet: consciousness. The fact that we alone possess this trait makes us unique is the basis for concluding that art is human.

If we begin within the brain and move outward, we can conclude that every action we take results in art. Our breath, our footsteps, our lives and deaths are all art. Of course, this means that most art is invisible, or at least so ephemeral as to go unnoticed--marks in the sand on the beach. Most art is never seen, lost in the very moment of creation.

This broad definition opens up the vector of thought about art to allow for more important questions than 'what is art?'. There are many such questions, some having to do with the purpose, or the value, or the need for art.

The most important question is one I have grappled with since I saw a painting by Monet in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1976. I had never seen anything like it in my life, and thanks to my parents, it was hardly the first time I'd seen a painting. I stood in front of that painting for a long time--so long that my parents had to come back and get me.

Why? For a long time, I had no idea, nor did I think of it much. A couple of years later, I took a course on aesthetics and started the long process of thinking about beauty and art and the intersection of those two ideas. What is beautiful art? As so many have said, 'I'll know it when I see it' certainly applied to me, and I really tried to figure it out. What happened to me in front of that Monet?

It's happened to me many times since then, of course, which is why I now love going to museums and seeing art, new and old. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, when I am arrested by a work of art and stand transfixed by it, the feeling I have is a delight, unique and familiar all at the same time. A rush, brain on fire.

That rush is resonance. It is like a pair of tuning forks--one vibrates and the other responds. They resonate. This is what happened to me in 1976 and what happens every time I see good art. I resonate, I feel something physical that is so sensitive and unique that it can only be measured by human consciousness.

Physically, that force, that exchange of energy during this resonance is so small as to seem inconsequential, but the fact is that it is an exchange that is non-zero. Something happens, not always and not to all, but sometimes and to some people, there is an exchange, a 'real' physical exchange of energy when observing a work of art. Consider that the case of the Monet, it was light that conveyed that resonance, just a few photons, but enough to cause a chain reaction in my brain, leading to this very essay.

The question of what is beautiful art is misleading. The intersection of beauty and art is an interesting trap. I do not equate resonance with beauty because it leaves unanswered that key question of the location of beauty: In the work or in the viewer? It's a trap because the answer is: It's in both. And that seems too simple, an answer with no depth, like Schroedinger's Cat or the Particle/Wave duality. It's an answer but a non-answer.

So, my question is different: What is good art?

At first, this looks like the same question: beautiful, good, aren't they the same? Isn't beautiful always good and the other way around? A couple of thought experiments can set this assertion aside, but there is still the question: What is good? Specifically, what is good art? And why does matter that good is not always beautiful?

It matters because without trying to substantially define either good or beautiful, I can address the question I came for: Why did I resonate in the presence of the Monet? The answer is that I thought it was good. I may, at the time, have thought it was beautiful, but looking back, I realize that it was good. Or at least I thought it was.

The difference here may seem semantic, but trying to decide why I think a work of art is good. Basically it's a simple as admitting that you like it. In this way, I can see a painting and say that since it does not resonate with me, it's no good. Or at least, not good enough for me. This allows for the fact that some people resonate with some works and some resonate with others. The fact that these overlap fairly frequently is why we have art galleries and museums.

Museums in particular are evidence of this. The history and basis of museums is theft. We steal what we think is good and put it on display. To me, many things in museums are no good, but the fact that they are there is because somebody at sometime thought they were good enough to steal.

I think that when we talk about what makes a work of art beautiful, we are actually talking about what is good. Good is what we like. The lines, the color, the subject. We can say 'I love this line, or this color or this subject'. It's personal, but then, that's what we are experiencing, a personal resonance with art. It's always personal, even if we share that feeling with a million people.

Good art is what you like.