pondhop | Entries tagged with france

What greeted me when I got home today:

I have a Voice France fangirl post brewing, but I need to go to bed, because I have a breakfast meeting tomorrow. But to sketch out / remind myself of what I'm thinking in case I lose steam:

* The camaraderie and banter among the coaches this season was so lovely.
--> Soprano checking on Jenifer after she was overcome by emotion on hearing a Roma singer and her mother, which reminded her of her grandmother
--> All the coaches teasing Mika about his "Bonjour" and "Alors" and "Les Blues," and Julien's appreciation of "delicious melancholy"-->
--> The other coaches also commenting on Mika's last-minute buzzes and his mannerisms, especially the look of apprehension he tended to have whenever buzzing (though, as a member of the Mika Fan Club forum observed, it totally made sense after he ended up with Coco)
--> Mika exclaiming "J'adore! J'adore! J'adore!" after trading "Yeah, he's got it" looks with Julien Clerc during Pierre Danae's rendition of "To Build a Home"
--> The camera cutting to Soprano appreciating the Mika-Whitney duet during the finale, and Mika likewise appreciating the high harmonies of Clement/Soprano during the same finale
--> Soprano's impromptu rap with Scam Talk
--> Mika's "Julien!?" when Clerc turned around for Mano, to everyone's astonishment
--> Soprano wanting to join Mika's team, Mika wanting to join Julien's...
--> The opening number of the finale, with perfect voicing (Julien with Soprano, and Mika with Jenifer) and timing -- watching how the experienced performers cue attention to the other singers
--> The appreciation/hilarity of blocks
--> Mika/Julien on the kiss-cam (which I normally hate, but I'm with Voici: here, priceless)

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/154196.html.

Current Location: Nashville
Current Music: Jennifer Lopez, "Ain't Your Mama"

The subject line is from Edmund Keeley's translation of René Guy Cadou's "Poème d'amour à Hélène" (Love Poem to Helen).

On the morning of 30 May 2009, I walked around Marseille for a little while before catching my bus. I hope to spend a longer while there someday, less encumbered with luggage and better versed in modern as well as classic writing about the city:

The Marseillais themselves [are] today as varied and original as Fisher described them in "A Considerable Town." They stroll, or rather, strut, in colorful African fabrics, or navy blue woolen fishermen's sweaters; in haute couture purchased from the fantastic boutiques along the Rue Paradis; or in skateboard garb. Fisher claimed that her classic university-learned French deteriorated while in Marseille, for she spent many happy hours talking with its inhabitants--Italians, Tunisians, Greeks--who spoke anything but Parisian French.

-- Mary Lou Longworth's 1998 essay on MFK Fisher and Marseille

The mistral is a violent wind that swoops southward from the center of France and along the Rhône valley. It torments the Mediterranean coast, particularly the stretch between Toulon and Marseille. It shakes windows, it tears laundry from clotheslines, it tears clay tiles from roofs. The people of Marseille like to say the mistral even causes temporary insanity.

--Jeffrey Mercer, When the Guillotine Fell

The bus took me to Aix-en-Provence:

Thou fair Marseilles, who openest on the sea
Thy haughty eyes and gazest languidly...
...and in this hour
Art proud once more; but other storms may lower.
Forget not, then, amid thy revelries,
Whose tears they are that bathe thine olive-trees!

-- Frédéric Mistral, Miréio

...Oh, that won't do for an ending. Here's Amy Wilentz in a 2011 blog post:

In one fishwife's basket there was a score or more of lovely striped rainbow fish that I was pining for; she was charging a lot.

"Awful," said my friend Grégoire Alessi, leaning in over my shoulder to see what caught my eye. "Don't even think about it."

"But they’re beautiful," I protested.

"Yah, yah," he said, giving a shrug, possibly the most common gesture in Marseille. "They may look good, but they taste terrible. They get caught by accident, I guess. I wouldn't even put one in soup." He pointed to a bunch of ugly, flattish brown fish. "Those are the good ones," he said.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/132841.html.

[Today's subject line is from Christophe Willem's "Berlin," which is on the album advertised on posters at Lyons Part Deux seven years ago.]

Seven years ago, I was staying in a (comparatively) cheap hotel in a slightly sketchy section of Strasbourg. From a 27 May 2009 e-mail to the BYM:

Slogging away on the [] manuscript and missing American ice machines (I literally pried four cubes out of the hotel tray yesterday afternoon so that my liter of Coke could remain drinkable), takeaway coffee, and clean glassware.

Minor nuisances: the shower's so small the water temp changes whenever I turn around (because my body keeps hitting the faucet), and some dude tried to hit on me by asking if I was from Japan, which is a lame pickup line in any language.

On the plus side, I do think I looked pretty good yesterday [], I bought strawberries and scallions at an open market near the Jewish quarter, and there was a fantastic countertenor busking in front of the Cathedral. Got in a half-day of sightseeing just from getting lost, so I will feel less lame about staying glued to the laptop/netbook all today.

Two mornings later, I took the train from Alsace...

to Marseille, which included a transfer at Lyons Part Deux, where some passengers sit on a bank by the tracks between trains:

30 May 2009:

Marseille even noisier and rowdier than Strasbourg, but I was expecting that. I'm getting a good sense of what 65 EUR hotel neighborhoods are like, I guess. ;-)

Also, the further south the train station, the crazier it is. Well, not really, but Lyons Part Dieu was like JFK/O'Hare combined (in terms of sheer mass of humanity and chaos and I even first got on the wrong train, because somehow everyone is supposed to know that the TGV to Marseille will be on track I as opposed to the normal train on track G, and though I at least suspected something was wrong since the train I was supposed to catch had two levels and the Ter had only one). When I got on the right train, some dude was in my seat, so there was a moment of "Oh no!" -- and then another dude mistook it for his because *he* had gotten onto the wrong car.

The drama at Marseille St. Charles was seeing a dozen people pelt through the station, trying to catch their connections.

Dinner was pasta from Chicken World, where I also threw back two espressos (at 11:30 pm).

Today, I ended up discarding plans A, B, and C in favor of housework, yardwork, and time with the dog. Lots of tugging at stubborn vines, stubborn roots, and occasionally stubborn canine. (Me to the BYM: She was chomping on some of ivy. Do you suppose it has hallucinogens in it, and would that explain why she ate half of my poodle-print scarf earlier this week?) I transplanted a hollyhock seedling (which didn't look happy about its new location, but it was one too many further down the row), a cactus cutting, and a bunch of pepper seedlings. I harvested a handful of radishes. I am planning to sow zinnias and maybe marigolds.

We are worried about the dog. Some days she gallops from one end to the house like a puppy; some nights, like tonight, her hind legs intermittently give out on her. It may be time to revisit medication options; it is certainly time to steal more time for her, as it were. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon pruning branches and yanking at stems in a corner of the yard she likes to disappear into, the better to let passersby know that they're on her street. I can't save her from tripping over herself, let alone most of the wide, ever-beckoning universe, but I can at least clean up some of the corners. Digging at the roots unearthed an old shard of glass, some blue-green netting, and the usual jumble of rocks and clumps.

Some of the branches are now propping up parts of the fruit-heavy mama pepper plant, whose pot I also tidied up today, adding soil to cover roots that our spring weather (or the dog) had disturbed. I am resisting the urge to stock up on sale mulch; given the music I need to have in my bones by mid-week (on deck: a recording session [touching up some spots on the forthcoming Heritage OP album], a workshop with Ysaye Barnwell, and two Music Sunday services [also featuring Dr. Barnwell]), I'm unlikely to get through the bags already on hand. As it happens, the dog is now napping in the room with the piano. When I practice tomorrow, she'll probably jog my left elbow before I'm ten minutes in, because (planting snout firmly in my lap) don't I already spend enough time not paying attention to her?

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/132142.html.

Current Location: Nashville

[Today's subject line is from Christophe Willem's "Berlin," which is on the album advertised on posters at Lyons Part Deux seven years ago.]

Seven years ago, I was staying in a (comparatively) cheap hotel in a slightly sketchy section of Strasbourg. From a 27 May 2009 e-mail to the BYM:

Slogging away on the [] manuscript and missing American ice machines (I literally pried four cubes out of the hotel tray yesterday afternoon so that my liter of Coke could remain drinkable), takeaway coffee, and clean glassware.

Minor nuisances: the shower's so small the water temp changes whenever I turn around (because my body keeps hitting the faucet), and some dude tried to hit on me by asking if I was from Japan, which is a lame pickup line in any language.

On the plus side, I do think I looked pretty good yesterday [], I bought strawberries and scallions at an open market near the Jewish quarter, and there was a fantastic countertenor busking in front of the Cathedral. Got in a half-day of sightseeing just from getting lost, so I will feel less lame about staying glued to the laptop/netbook all today.

Two mornings later, I took the train from Alsace...

to Marseille, which included a transfer at Lyons Part Deux, where some passengers sit on a bank by the tracks between trains:

30 May 2009:

Marseille even noisier and rowdier than Strasbourg, but I was expecting that. I'm getting a good sense of what 65 EUR hotel neighborhoods are like, I guess. ;-)

Also, the further south the train station, the crazier it is. Well, not really, but Lyons Part Dieu was like JFK/O'Hare combined (in terms of sheer mass of humanity and chaos and I even first got on the wrong train, because somehow everyone is supposed to know that the TGV to Marseille will be on track I as opposed to the normal train on track G, and though I at least suspected something was wrong since the train I was supposed to catch had two levels and the Ter had only one). When I got on the right train, some dude was in my seat, so there was a moment of "Oh no!" -- and then another dude mistook it for his because *he* had gotten onto the wrong car.

The drama at Marseille St. Charles was seeing a dozen people pelt through the station, trying to catch their connections.

Dinner was pasta from Chicken World, where I also threw back two espressos (at 11:30 pm).

Current Location: Nashville

[The subject line is the opening line of Wislawa Szymborska's "Clochard."]

The first day I spent in Paris: 8 May 2009. There were daffodils painted on poles within CDG airport, and I paid I think two euro for a bouquet of muguets from a Latin Quarter street vendor:

I had to bring work along (plus ça change...), and I also had a requiem I'd promised to learn by the time I reached Prague, which would be the following morning. But first there were pork rillettes for breakfast, with gherkins...

and there were sights to be seen, including flowers tucked into statues (this one is of Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu)...

and pianos being played:

Everything's mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.

- Szymborksa, "Travel Elegy"

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/131601.html.

Current Mood: thankful
Current Location: Nashville
Current Music: Juliette Gréco, "Parlez-moi d'amour"

Subtitlers face a number of questions beyond how much to translate. Slang and jargon are perennial tests, but so is humor.

Pascale Joseph, who specializes in translating from English to French, used to go to gun shops to find out certain arcane vocabulary; now it’s message boards on the web.

-- Nicolas Rapold, A Freelance Career, Found in Translation

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/84399.html.

Current Mood: amused

Par la bouche de ce canon il neige. C'était l'enfer dans notre tête. Au même moment c'est le printemps au bout de nos doigts. C'est la foulée de nouveau permise, la terre en amour, les herbes exubérantes.

Snow is falling from the mouth of this cannon. There was hell in our heads. At the same time, spring's at our fingertips. Permission's granted to step forth again, the earth's in love, the grasses exuberant.

-- René Char; translated by Ralph Freedman, Donald Justice, and Paulène Aspel

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/79335.html.

This one's for the lawyers... ;-)

He often took his manuscript [of Physiologie du Goût] to court. In fact, it was in idle moments in the halls of justice that he wrote most of it. His other companion, besides his manuscript, was his dog, who went under the uncompromising name of Ida. She followed him everywhere and sat on the bench next to him both in the courtroom and in his favorite Café Lemblin. [His biographer] Monselet relates that during the hunting season the judge's presence was sometimes pungent. This was due to his habit of shooting small game birds and then carrying them around for days in the capacious pockets of his Prince Albert-like coat. As the birds became higher, his neighbors on the judicial bench became more uncomfortable, understandably enough.

-- Samuel Chamberlain, Bouquet de France

I also finally finished Amy Stewart's Flower Confidential last night (it seemed appropriate to do so on V-day), and then I turned to my Southern Living handbook to see if it had anything to say about building cold frames. (We have two window frames, one with the glass still intact. I shall probably turn them into cold frame lids eventually -- but right now it would be an elaborate variation of procrastination. Back to reading about bisphosphonates and selective estrogen receptor modulators...)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/75819.html.

Current Mood: amused

This one's for the lawyers... ;-)

He often took his manuscript [for Physiologie du Goût to court. In fact, it was in idle moments in the halls of justice that he wrote most of it. His other companion, besides his manuscript, was his dog, who went under the uncompromising name of Ida. She followed him everywhere and sat on the bench next to him both in the courtroom and in his favorite Café Lemblin. [His biographer] Monselet relates that during the hunting season the judge's presence was sometimes pungent. This was due to his habit of shooting small game birds and then carrying them around for days in the capacious pockets of his Prince Albert-like coat. As the birds became higher, his neighbors on the judicial bench became more uncomfortable, understandably enough.

-- Samuel Chamberlain, Bouquet de France

I also finally finished Amy Stewart's Flower Confidential last night (it seemed appropriate to do so on V-day), and then I turned to my Southern Living handbook to see if it had anything to say about building cold frames. (We have two window frames, one with the glass still intact. I shall probably turn them into cold frame lids eventually -- but right now it would be an elaborate variation of procrastination. Back to reading about bisphosphonates and selective estrogen receptor modulators...)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/75819.html.

Current Mood: amused

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the roses really want to grow
"Like a river that's begun / to love its journey"
je me perds dans l'univers
je me perds dans l'univers
In Paris, on a day that stayed morning until dusk
research then and now
from "The Library Is on Fire"
more on Brillat-Savarin
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Tangents

notes about traveling, tennis, and other things

Entries tagged with france

the roses really want to grow

"Like a river that's begun / to love its journey"

je me perds dans l'univers

je me perds dans l'univers

In Paris, on a day that stayed morning until dusk

research then and now

from "The Library Is on Fire"

more on Brillat-Savarin