ET in Paris - Montmartre memories

The ETers in Paris 07

I got to the RV at Les Abbesses late, but Len and Helen were still there and we joined the rest of the group at Bateau Lavoir where Afew was lamenting the lack of interest in the cultural history of the area in favour of keeping up the bohemian tradition and rapidly getting something alcoholic rather than artistic or historic.



Lilianne, Bob, Dasmonde, Metavision,(?), Afew (amused rather than bitching),
Fran, Someone, (?), the Dear Leader (just visible behind the lamppost), Helen, Bruno-ken.

The way up from the Bateau Lavoir - a very nice Parisian square:



Len (illuminated) enjoying fond memories of his two years in the area:



I listened as Afew gave some background of Dalida's house:

"... Her ex-husband Lucien Morisse took his own life sometime after her attempt at suicide in the wake of Tenco's death, and Haden-Guest compared her to Judy Garland, though musically she was closer to Astrud Gilberto. Dalida's later involvement marriage to a man identified as the Count of St. Germain, who turned out not to be a count and also to prefer male companionship, only added to the picture of a personal life in turmoil and seemed to make her that much more alluring to her admirers. In the midst of this, she won the Oscar Mondial du Disque (World Oscar of Recording), a French award, to be sure, for her "Gigi L'Amoroso," beating out competitors that included Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night," and recorded a peace song, "Salma ya Salama," in Arabic, on the occasion of Egyptian president Sadat's peace summit with Israel. Dalida's career in the 1980s had slowed somewhat as she entered her fifties, looking at least a decade younger but no longer doing 200 engagements a year as she had in her prime.

In 1986, she returned to her native Egypt to make a film, The Sixth Day, with director Youssef Chahine, an old friend from her early career, in which she gave what the critics felt was a superb acting performance. She continued to make Paris her home, where she remained a huge concert draw during her final decade. On May 3, 1987, Dalida was found dead of an overdose of barbiturates, an apparent suicide at the age of 54.

http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Dalida:1927118193:page=biography

Jerome and Helen calculate the energy expended in the ascent of Montmartre:



"We'd like two hours of resilience-inducing conviviality please":



Metavision, Someone's partner, Crazy Horse, Someone.

Beautiful light:



Helen saw it, I took it:



Helen seeing the light - again:



"Why don't we take the train down?":



The vertiginous descent:



Chez Pradel:





InWales, ?, ? Laurent Gerby.

Shoot-out with Colman (Fran on the right)



Firenze restaurant, Saturday:



Someone, Helen, Migeru, Montserrat.

Bruno-ken: "So I grabbed this nuclear power supporter by the throat ..."



My Monserrat:



A somewhat happier Ted than in the photos already up:



"Memories of Montmartre"

Art student in Paris

The recent ET get-together in Paris was nostalgic for me. Monmartre in particular brings back lots of memories. My first trip abroad, at 18, was hitch-hiking with a friend to Paris from London. I was a student at Camberwell School of Art at the time. We didn’t have a lot of luck hitching in France, but, just as we were contemplating a cold, damp night in a field, I saw a shooting star. I’m not superstitious, but said to myself: “I wish we could get to Paris tonight.” About 30 secs later a car pulled up, asked where we were going and, when we said Paris, they told us to jump in.

Les flics

A couple of hours later they dropped us off by the Seine, just across from Notre Dame. We found a piece of open ground and began to unroll our sleeping bags. A police car screeched to a halt beside us and two plainclothes police jumped out and searched us and our bags. When one discovered a pen-knife I had in my bag he got a bit excited, and said: “Qu’est que c’est - c’est pour couper la tete n’est ce pas,” (or something like that) and apparently someone had been stabbed not far away! Despite my four years of French at grammar school, I pretended not to understand: “Don’t speak French, mate.” I think they decided we were pretty harmless English tourists and couldn’t be bothered with getting someone to translate. One said something like: “Si vous etes Francais vous serais en prison;” We looked blankly at them and they got back in the car and, to our great relief, drove off.

It had been a long day so we slept quite well, but we were quite far apart in the morning and each complained about the other coughing noisily in the night - till we realised that some sick tramp had come and slept between us!

The next night we found a nice spot in some bushes by the Champs Elysee, but again cops arrived, in uniform this time, looked at our passports and told us that they’d let us sleep there for tonight, but we should find a cheap hotel. As poor students we didn’t want to waste money on that and spent a lot of time looking for somewhere else to sleep, but couldn’t find anywhere better (the grounds of the Sacre Coeur were too creepy) so we decided to risk going back to the same place. My friend sleeps more easily than I do and was soon asleep. After a while I saw the same two cops approaching, so shut my eyes and pretended to sleep. They looked in and then one said, in a resigned sort of way and with what I imagined must have been a Gallic shrug: “Oh - les Anglais” - and they wandered off.

The curious American

Being a student painter and full of the Romantic myth of the artist, I dragged my friend up to the Place du Tertre and did a little painting in the nearby Rue Rustique (with the top of the Sacre Coeur just visible at the end).



There I had my first encounter with an American, a tubby guy with a cigar, with a group of other American tourists. As he got to me, to my amazement, he grabbed the painting, saying: “What have you got there boy? Oh, you haven’t finished” and, thrusting it back at speechless me, he passed on.

A better encounter was with an old English lady who lived in the house beside which I was painting and who came out when she heard us speaking English. She told us she’d lived there for about forty years, and had met her French military officer husband when he was stationed in Woolwich, in south-east London, which, by coincidence, was where I had lived for my first ten years.

La vie boheme

My painting was in the typical Camberwell, rather dreary realist style of that period. A painter who sold his stuff in Place du Tertre, suggested that I brightened up the colours and added a few people - a suggestion I scorned as selling out. In retrospect I tend to agree with him; why not give people stuff that makes them feel happy; it wasn’t as if I was making any particularly profound point with my dull little painting.

We stayed on in the Place du Tertre, after the tourists had left. Some of the young Spanish guys, who drew tourists during the day, got out bottles of wine, guitars and sang. So we spent several evenings there - ah THIS was the bohemian life!

"We'll always have Paris"

Years later, as a lecturer (history and theory of the media) I returned with a girl-friend. I took her to Rue Rustique and told her about my experiences there during the first trip. It was an autumn day, leaves blew in little circles round our feet, we kissed and she said: “We’ll always remember this”. I still do - but she died, tragically young, years ago.

New Year sadness

Later still I went to a New Year’s Eve party organised by one of my ex-students (she is French and was doing very well managing a design group in a large media company). It was in a small Montmartre restaurant, but the atmosphere was a bit awkward as she and her photographer husband (who wasn’t doing so well) were in the process of splitting up. Later we all walked up to Place du Tertre and then round the corner, where there was a café with heaters and seats for a group of us - as there was this time, with the ET group - now another, happier, Montmartre memory.

ET meeting

On the way up, Len had told us about his memories of living in the area for a couple of lucky years, while Afew was a bit disappointed that most ETers weren't very interested in the history of the area - but in keeping up the tradition of many of its artists by finding somewhere to get some drinks. After several bottles of wine, beer, etc. and some good conversation we moved on as a shower died away and helpful Helen suggested photo-opportunities to me, one of which worked out very well. Then it was time to descend the vertiginous steps and leave the top of Montmartre with more memories, and, I hope, more to come.

Diaries/Art/BBC

Writing diaries (for www.eurotrib.com )

Warning - it can get addictive - we are social animals and relationships are very important (cf BBC series on Happiness) and getting respect is very important - from being a “made man” in the Mafia, to getting an honorary doctorate, or becoming a member of the French Academy. So once one gets some recommendations for one’s diary, one starts to want more. But then, if one gets, say nine, when later one gets ONLY 5 recommendations one starts to think: “What was wrong with THAT one? After all it had politics, history, nice photos, battles and terrible suffering - like Maximus in “Gladiator” one is tempted to demand: “Are you not entertained! Are you not entertained! Is this not why you are here!"” But, hey, 5 recommendations is not to be sneezed at :-)

But then one sees one’s precious diary gradually slip down the list of recommended diaries, then sink down in the recent diaries list - to disappear into oblivion - who looks back at old diaries? Well, there are those like those by Jerome which are about issues central to the nature of the site and which form part of a related, useful set, which will get resurrected when he or someone else does an update on a major issue and includes a set of links to previous diaries on the subject.

Comments

Then there is the question of comments, whether one will get any can sometimes seem puzzling, the first got 30 comments, but, as Whataboutbob said of one of my third diary:

Re: From Bonaparte to Sarkozy

Hmm, top of the rec list and no comments!?!? Well...thank you for this, TW!!

Tue May 8th, 2007

The recent one with 5 recommendations got no comments at all ! Then one sees a diary that just quotes a few recent stats and it gets 30 plus comments ! “And I spent hours on mine - where’s the justice in that?” - one is inclined to rant :-) But then I console myself, that, looked at in another way, it could be seen as a kind of compliment. If 5 thought it worth recommending, but didn’t comment, perhaps in a way this is a recognition of how much work went into it and that it does form a kind of completed whole which deserves reading but doesn’t demand a response.

Flow

Often, when I get started, what I thought might be a few brief remarks, starts to grow as connections suggest themselves and research on the internet throws up bits of serendipity and the diary entry takes on a life of its own. For example I thought this was going to be two short pieces, then they merged and expanded (but got so long I think I'll split them up again).

Then again, as the BBC Happiness programme says, one can get into that state of “flow” where one loses all sense of time, as one is totally immersed in what one is doing. Ironically that occurred in the diary where I was talking about overworking and the value of a “slow” approach to life - but I got so involved in it that I had no idea what time it was and was quite surprised when I finished to see that it was 2 am!

But as the slow philosophy says, it’s not so much about doing nothing, nor just relaxing; it's about doing things one really wants to do and fully enjoying the experience. So it shouldn’t really matter if nobody reads them and they don’t get recommended - but, of course, it does, even though one had a nice time writing it and a good feeling when it was completed.

For me it’s not just therapy; if one is really interested in the subject one wants to communicate it and share one’s enthusiasm - and with redaers NOW. Sartre said, in "For Whom Does One Write?" that: " ... authors and poets are outside of language and are trapped, and states that the writer must write for a public which has the freedom of changing everything." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_literature%3F ) - i.e. primarily for one's contemporaries and if posterity is interested that is a bonus.

Unfortunately a lot of literature has become about writing rather than the content; cf. Tom Wolfe’s excellent introduction to the best-selling, highly readable (I was up till 7am one morning) “Bonfire of the Vanities” - 149 review on Amazon, 93 of them 5 star recommendations!

In addition to criticising the over-emphasis on style:

Wolfe [said] that this attention to detail is essential and lamentably absent in most contemporary literature. In an article in Harper's Magazine, Wolfe chastised modern authors for making excursions into mythic fantasy worlds in order to keep the novel fresh and interesting. It is his belief that journalistic research reveals a world more interesting and complex than anything a single author can dream up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Magazine

The introduction discusses the relative lack of interest in current reality and how he had expected some young author to scoop him and write a big novel on life in US at that time. In one of those bits of serendipity, the first review on Amazon mentions his introduction (and provides a link to what was to have been the second short piece):

“Lot of useful reviews here. No one mentions Wolfe's 24-page introduction, 'Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,' which is excellent in itself as an overview of the alleged death of the novel, The New Journalism, non-fiction v. fiction & his own evolution as a writer. The introduction is worth a read on its own if you're a journalism student, a would-be or actual writer or just interested in the publishing world. As for the rest of the book, it's excellent. Wolfe is a master of the set piece, the extended vignette beautifully observing a situation or person.
... If you enjoy his fiction, his non-fiction is well worth checking out as great examples of very controlled, observant reporting & writing. I particularly enjoyed "From Bauhaus to Our House," an extended essay about modern architecture, and "The Painted Word," ditto on modern art.

http://www.amazon.com/Bonfire-Vanities-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0553275976

Art for form's sake

Which takes me on neatly to my next point - the similar way in which much visual Art has come to be about formal issues, or demonstrations of theoretical concerns. Also the visual Art world, like the literary world, is rather incestuous, but, at the same time, increasingly part of and shaped by the business world. Wolfe’s “The Painted Word” is very relevant:

"In 1975, after having put radical chic and '60s counterculture to the satirical torch, Tom Wolfe turned his attention to the contemporary art world. The patron saint (and resident imp) of New Journalism couldn't have asked for a better subject. Here was a hotbed of pretension, nitwit theorizing, social climbing, and money, money, money - all Wolfe had to do was sharpen his tools and get to work. He did! Much of The Painted Word is a superb burlesque on that modern mating ritual whereby artists get to despise their middle-class audience and accommodate it at the same time.
…
The other bone Wolfe has to pick is with the proliferation of art theory, particularly the sort purveyed by postwar colossi like Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, and Leo Steinberg. Decades after the heyday of abstract expressionism, these guys make pretty easy targets. What could be more absurd, after all, than endless Jesuitical disputes about the flatness of the picture plane? ..."

James Marcus

http://www.amazon.com/Painted-Word-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0553380656/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9057639-9446445?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181604525&sr=1-1

BBC hagiography

I have defended the BBC against some criticisms in www.eurotrib.com, but I’m by no means an uncritical consumer of it. For example on Sunday night there was a particularly odious programme in the “Imagination” series. I can’t criticise the whole series, not having seen it. I’ve ticked off someone for criticising a BBC programme after only watching a snippet, so I did, of course, watch all of this programme; though it soon became pretty clear that it was unlikely to get any better. But, gritting my teeth, I watched till the bitter and farcical end. It was the programme on the painter Howard Hodgkin. You can see some examples of his work
here

But, while Hodgkin says that the subjects and hence the titles of his paintings are important, the BBC selection omits the titles - quite appropriately I think. However they are there in the labels of the web images, so this:

is "Undertones of War" - well of course!

My low opinion of his work (the colour is sometimes quite nice) isn’t just ignorance and philistinism on my part; I taught art for years and know lots about the various Art theories of recent years (as well as much earlier ones). Years ago, I was an art student at Camberwell School of Art, London (where Hodgkin had studied some years earlier as it happens). I attended a lecture by a follower of the Greenberg school of art theory (see quotation on "The Painted Word" above) and the head of the painting department asked me what I thought. I said that if the flatness of the picture is SO important, why not just put up blank canvases. I’m sure someone has done this and there are Ad Reinhardt's paintings, cf.:

“Reinhardt is best known for his so-called "black" paintings of the 1960s, which appear at first glance to be simply canvanses painted black but are actually composed of black and nearly black shades. Among many other suggestions, these paintings ask if there can be such a thing as an absolute, even in black, which some viewers may not consider a color at all;”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Reinhardt

Really deep huh?

But, decades before, Malevich had done a black painting (and a white one, etc.), and, when criticised, he responded with statement which sums up the Aesthetic approach and his contempt for the world and other people:

“Malevich responded that art can advance and develop for art's sake alone, regardless of its pleasure: art does not need us, and it never needed us since stars first shone in the sky.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimir_Malevich

Here's a really exciting one, with a black circle in it - seems a bit of an over-complicated compromise with popularity for him!

Despite the inflated theories, I find a lot of recent art rather boring and unimpressive (thank heavens for the bizarre and fascinating theories of physicists and astronomers, cosmologists), and the general public tends to agree. Of course many of the middle-classes go to galleries and try to look interested, or as if they’ve understood something deep; it’s the new thing to do on Sunday afternoons.

The “Imagination” programme claimed that Hodgkin was the most popular British painter - oh really - with whom? - and since when did popularity count with the Art elite ?

Here's another Hodgkin - guess the subject:

It's: "After Corot" - ah!

Like most people, I’d prefer a Vetriano to a Hodgkin any day e.g.

“Painter whose work tops sales charts lashes out at snobbish elite

David Smith, arts and media correspondent
Sunday January 11, 2004, The Observer

He is Britain's most popular artist, outselling Dali, Monet and Van Gogh. A month ago, he rubbed shoulders with David Beckham at Buckingham Palace as both collected OBEs.

Yet while even the Queen has embraced the phenomenon of Jack Vettriano, the art establishment stands accused of blackballing him and 'running scared' of public opinion.

Vettriano's images of beaches, butlers and lovers have come to adorn everything from posters and cards to mugs and umbrellas, but the nation's major galleries have never displayed a single example of the real thing.
…
In a rare interview, Vettriano said: 'The art world is not a lot to do with art; it's to do with money and power and position. Annually the national galleries are given a budget of taxpayers' money and they should spend it on behalf of the people of Great Britain, but I feel they don't.

... I would rather my paintings sold to ordinary people, rather than being stacked in a store house at the National Gallery.'

Vettriano, 52, has sold more than three million poster reproductions around the world and earns an estimated £500,000 a year from the royalties. The works themselves disappear from public view into the hands of private collectors, with buyers including Hollywood star Jack Nicholson, composer Sir Tim Rice and British actor Robbie Coltrane.”

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,1120728,00.html

More examples here: http://www.enjoyart.com/jack_vettriano.htm

Nicholson and Coltrane seem to be quite smart, independent guys and NOT the type to let elite opinion determine what they like enough to buy. It's no accident that Melvyn Bragg, himself from a poor, northern background, gave TV time to Vetriano - as he and his team have to many other popular artists/performers, ones often scorned by elite arbiters of taste:

“Bob Bee, who has directed and produced Jack Vettriano: The People's Painter for Melvyn Bragg's The South Bank Show, to be broadcast on ITV1 on 21 March, said: 'We wanted to ask Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, the criteria by which acquisitions are selected and whether he would consider buying a Vettriano. We were told he was busy curating his next exhibition.

'We wanted to ask Sir Timothy Clifford, director of the National Galleries of Scotland, why none of the Scottish galleries will show Scot land and the UK's favourite painter. We were told he was travelling in India and couldn't comment.“

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,1120728,00.html

Significantly Serota found time to appear in the BBC's Imagination programme to say very complimentary things about Hodgkin, and perhaps Clifford was visiting Hodgkin, who spends a lot of time in India, partly to collect miniatures - often beautiful works, done with superb craftmanship.

"Sir Terence Conran [British design and restaurant entrepreneur], who commissioned Vettriano to paint a series of oils now hanging in his Bluebird restaurant complex in London, joined the criticism: 'They turn their backs on him because his work has been reproduced on posters, which I think is incredibly elitist and snobbish. In Scotland the art establishment has sneered at him because he is self-taught.
'He's not a Young British Artist, he's doing something different, but just as the American artist Edward Hopper is revered [ recent major exhibition at Tate Modern], I hope some of that could rub off on Vettriano.'

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,1120728,00.html



"Duellists"

The Tate Gallery (run by Serota, see above) has a very different attitude to Hopper, who is also popular with the general public, and now with the Art elite; once he tended to be dismissed as an illustrator. Now he’s become accepted as one of the OK artists by the elite, and the price of his works has increased greatly as a result:

“Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is considered to be one of America's greatest modern painters. This retrospective exhibition is the first major Hopper show to take place in the UK for over twenty years and presents many of his most iconic images.
Hopper's enduring popularity stems from his ability to stage scenes from everyday life in a way which also addresses universal concerns.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/hopper/about.htm



"Nighthawks"

For a review which is not hagiographic see:

"For there are weak paintings, even in a tremendous show like this. When the buildings become flimsy, for example, or the colour is ostentatiously over-keyed. When the woman turns into a glib dollybird, when the figures get clumsier and more caricatural in later years. When he repeats himself: all those people gazing off-stage, into another world, another life. When even the light houses face off into the distance, eyes averted. Hopper can be just too plangent."

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/observer/story/0,14467,1227556,00.html

The same kind of thing could be said of Vetriano, but for most of the Art elite none of his is really Art:

“Hewlett, owner of the Portland Gallery in London, which will exhibit Vettriano's latest works in June, said: …'There are two art worlds: the popular one which anyone can understand, and the academic one controlled by relatively few people. The latter has a very different approach and tries to be sensational for the sake of it.
'People understand less an unmade bed or a pickled pig's head. There are no emperor's new clothes around Vettriano's paintings.’”

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,1120728,00.html

Hagiography

Now of course one can argue that popularity isn’t the same as quality/greatness, etc. - I leave that aside. The BBC “Imagination” programme used - inaccurately - the criterion of popularity. But what really annoyed me about the programme was that it was just hagiography; there was not a critical voice in it - I longed for a few terse comments from someone like Robert Hughes. But it was just unquestioning admiration and justification, from people like Serota, who, having organised a major retrospective and bought paintings for the Tate, has a vested interest, and from friends of Hodgkin. Where was the famous BBC “balance”, or even hint that perhaps not everyone agreed? But the presenter hardly questioned anything Hodgkin said, in that confident, arrogant manner which is rather typical of many ex Public (i.e. private in the UK) school types (he went to Bryanston).

The farcically uncritical programme was epitomised by its conclusion, which I would have thought was a send-up if it hadn't been for the rest of the proramme. Alan Yentob tells us that towards the end of filming something extraordinary happened, although he had said he wouldn't do it, Hodgkin actually paints for the camera - two red brush strokes - taking all of a second - awesome ! Then puts the little "painting" away to apply more of his genius to it later - away from the camera. After all someone might start making unfortunate comparisons with Picasso's extraordinary improvisations and transformations before the camera, for many hours, in the "The Picasso Mystery" (which, as it happened wasn't popular):

"Released shortly after Luciano Emmer's documentary Picasso, H. G. Clouzot's Le Mystère Picasso was an unmitigated commercial disaster - all the more tragic when one considers the groundbreaking nature of its content. Like Emmer before him, Clouzot offers rare and precious glimpses of Pablo Picasso at work. The film watches Picasso draw or paint 15 different works, often via tightly-compressed, time-lapse cinematography. All of the featured masterpieces were intentionally destroyed following production, meaning that they exist only in the cinematic realm. With this documentary, Clouzot comes as close as humanly possible to defining the genius of Picasso within the parameters of the camera lens."

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=34221

A far cry from this "Imagination".

Perhaps part of the explanation for the uncriticaml nature of the programme is to be found here:

Imagination

Sponsorship opportunities on BBC World’s arts strand Imagination with programmes examining music, dance, opera, art and sculpture.

E-BULLETIN

BBC World distributes a weekly e-bulletin to send to BBC World viewers featuring the week’s upcoming lifestyle programming

Sent to over 80,000 upscale individuals worldwide

PROGRAMME PAGE ON BBCWORLD.COM

BBC World will create a special programme page for the Imagination strand
Sponsorship: Client buyout of advertising sites on the page (skyscraper, banner and button)

What sponsor would want their "upscale" viewers contentment disturbed by any nasty notes of criticism? And this is the BBC !

From a lavish old palace to "Failed States"

Another "slow" day in Nice (cf.: Slow and happy).

(Updated 2 pm 7.6.07)

Montserrat insisted that I leave the computer and that we get out early (well, just after 11) - so we walked down to the old town and looked round the Palais Lascaris:

In the 17th century, the baroque look and feel of the Old Town came into being. If you look above the doorways, many buildings have their year of construction inscribed into the stone. The Lascaris Palace Museum in the heart of Old Nice, 15 rue Droite, is a Genovan-style palace that shows the grandeur of this burgeoning time for Nice.

http://www.medinheaven.co.uk/page_history_of_nice.html

I wonder how many peasants had to work how long at back-breaking tasks in baking fields to help pay for all this. It reminds me of a line from a BBC radio series based on Ronald Blythe’s excellent book on the village of Akenfield. An old agricultural worker (and I can still hear his strong accent in my head) said: “We was worked to death” and this explained why some young men were so willing to sign up for “the Great War”.

It was agricultural workers like these who provided the wealth for many of the English aristocrats who escaped the miserable climate to winter in Nice and who helped make it a fashionable resort in the 19 th century - hence Promenade des Anglais, etc. Some them had such vast wealth that they could build even bigger palaces and not even use them, such as:

” … the extraordinary Moresque-looking castle of Mr. Smith, which is well called the Folie d'un Anglais—the "craze of an Englishman." The latter stands on the end of a promontory, and with its lofty towers and domes closes in the view. It is perhaps the most curious residence in the world, being built on a barren rock, and its apartments literally hewn out of the marble of which it is composed ... This is the great saloon, and leading out of it are other fine chambers, all of them lined with polished marble and furnished with Eastern magnificence. Externally, there is no trace of these chambers visible. They are, as I have said, excavated, like Egyptian tombs, in the heart of the mountain.

The proprietor, an eccentric English bachelor, never inhabits this fantastic mansion, but lives in a second-rate hotel, spending thousands annually in adding embellishments to his astonishing castle, where, notwithstanding its magnificent suites of apartments, no human being has ever slept a night or eaten a meal.”

(From a magazine of 1878, see below)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14324/14324-h/14324-h.htm

At least the Palais Lascaris was lived in:

This Genoese-style palace was built in the middle of the 17th century for the Lascaris de Vintimille (a small Italian town near Nice); it was their family home until 1802. Tucked away in a narrow street, the richly coloured and decorated façade of this palace is flanked by old red and ochre buildings so typical of Nice's old quarter. The interior is sumptuous baroque with vaulted ceilings decorated with frescoes and huge sweeping staircases.

http://www.wcities.com/en/record/168,42861/17/record.html

A little bit of classical lasciviousness for the lucky guests.

Then we returned to the brilliant light in Place Rossetti:

The square is mercifully free from the traffic and one can hear the soothing sound of the fountain:

We had a slow meal and too much to drink. Then a slow look round a bookshop on the way back. We bought Chomsky's "Failed States" for one of M's friends and Fisk's "Liban, Nation Martyre"  for a relative from Lebanon. These were my suggestions of course, well it seemed more interesting than bottles of wine as gifts - (for our Paris trip) and one of the guys doesn't drink - (yes, he is French! - and is an intellectual, so Chomky in English will be OK).

The books are reminders of how lucky we are, e.g. in not being too directly affected by US foreign policy.

The Fisk has just come out in French, is a best-seller in English, despite being a big, slow read:

 

"Le reporter de guerre de « l'Independent », Robert Fisk, sort en France « Liban, Nation Martyre » son livre bestseller dans lequel il revient en détail sur les trente dernières années de l'histoire tragique de ce pays. L'occasion pour le Magazine.info d'interroger ce témoin clé du Moyen-Orient sur la situation toujours tendue de cette région."

http://www.lemagazine.info/spip.php?article611

 I'm currently reading Chomsky's "Failed States":

"It examines how the United States is beginning to resemble a failed state that cannot protect its citizens from violence and has a government that regards itself as beyond the reach of domestic or international law.

In the book, Professor Noam Chomsky presents a series of solutions to help rescue the nation from turning into a failed state.

They include: Accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court; Sign the Kyoto protocols on global warming; Let the United Nations take the lead in international crises; Rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror; and Sharply reduce military spending and sharply increase social spending."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/31/148254

What an optimist he is, despite all the incredibly informed, gloomy analysis of current realities.

But then history shows how radically things can change; sometimes getting better, sometimes far worse.

A little research on the net brings up a fascinating article about the history of Nice from an old magazine (see above on the Englishman’s folly in Nice)

Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88

 Nice has suffered due to "failed ststes" and terrible things have happened here in these prosperous, peaceful streets; some due to the treaty-breaking French and the selfish obstinacy of the governer of the time, the marquis de Caraglio - things that make even today's Baghdad seem like a holiday camp:

"... Nice has sustained at least a dozen sieges of more or less severity. That of 1706 was perhaps one of the most shocking on record. The city, by the treaty of Turin of 1696, had once more passed under the protectorate of the dukes of Savoy, but the French, who have always had a longing eye for the "Department of the Maritime Alps," as they even then called it, broke the treaty they had themselves framed, and sent the duc de la Feuillade over the frontier with twenty thousand men to conquer the country. Nice was then governed by the marquis de Caraglio, who, although entreated by the enemy to allow the women and children to leave the city's gates, positively refused to do so. The consequence was that during the siege, which lasted six months, more than a third of the inhabitants perished from starvation. Men are said to have killed their wives for food, and women their children. Sixty thousand shells fell in various parts of the town, and the castle, cathedral and many churches were entirely destroyed."

Hard to imagine, as lines of tourists stroll by bars and restaurants in the warm afternoon - we live in fortunate times - and the traffic isn't THAT bad. The article on Nice itself concludes:

Perhaps, it is owing in part to the brightness of the sunshine and the beauty of the scenery that soon after his arrival the health of the invalid often revives as if by enchantment. Alphonse Karr, a resident of many years, who knows every nook and corner of the place, and who has cultivated a garden in its environs as celebrated throughout the world as his own sparkling pen, says well:

"Who is there so downhearted as to resist the glorious heat of the sun, the beauty of that deepest of blue seas, the loveliness of the varied trees, the tropical vegetation, the scent of the orange-flowers, the music of the brooks, the sight of the ever-changing hues of the mountains of Nizza la bella?"   R. DAVEY

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14324/14324-h/14324-h.htm

Nice from the monastery garden in Cimiez

Well, it's not quite so belle as it was then, there's a lot less vegetation and a lot more buildings, but it's certainly no Beirut - though that used to be "the extraordinarily fashionable 1960s Mediterranean hotspot", before it too became the victim of "failed states" - Fisk:

"I came to Lebanon in 1976 when I was just 29 years old, and because I have lived here ever since - because I have been doing the same job ever since, chronicling the betrayals and treachery and deceit of Middle East history for all those years - I felt I was always 29.

...
I was here on [Beirut] the very last day of the civil war, following the Syrian tanks under shellfire up to Baabda. In conflict, you never believe a war will end. Yet it finished, amid corpses and one last massacre - but it ended, and I was free of fear for the first time in 14 years.

And then I watched it all reborn. The muck along the Corniche below my balcony was cleared and flower beds and new palm trees planted. The Dresden-like ruins were slowly torn down or restored and I could dine out in safety along the old front line in fine Italian restaurants, take coffee by the Roman ruins, buy Belgian chocolates, French shirts, English books. Slowly, my own life, I now realise, was being rebuilt. Not only did I love life - I could expect to enjoy it for years to come.

Until, of course, that Valentine’s Day morning on the Corniche just down from my home when the crack of a fearful explosion sent fingers of dark brown smoke sprouting into the sky only a few hundred metres from me. And that was the moment, I think, when the beautiful dream ended, as it did for tens of thousands of Lebanese. And I no longer feel 29."

http://www.selvesandothers.org/article9274.html

Slow and happy

The other day I teased Jerome (at www.eurotrib.com) about being so productive and warned about “burnout”. I’m retired, but still don’t seem to have much time. I was up till 1am doing some Eurotrib and blog stuff on Saturday. Sunday morning I researched and wrote the diary entry “NYT has more ‘Sicko’ news”. After lunch I walked down to the Promenade des Anglais and sat in one of the beach cafes. Of course - having had a protestant ethic background - I had a couple of books with me.

But I couldn’t read - my brain needed a rest and it had enough sense to tell me that, being lucky enough to live here in Nice, I ought - let me rephrase that - it would be very pleasurable - to just sit and enjoy the experience a bit more, rather than continually being elsewhere in my mind.



It was just great to sit in the shade (my skin is a bit fair for this climate) and take in the blue sky and the sea. So I just spent a couple of hours like that - DOING nothing, but BEING there. I moved on to the Cours Saleya and the early evening was so nice I had another beer and do-nothing session in the now weaker sun.

Today I browsed some Washington Post articles and came across this:

Breaking Free of Suburbia's Stranglehold

Jennifer McNelley: No Tears

McNelley knew she needed to change her life. Why else would she be crying all the time?

"I just can't wait anymore," she said. "I need to take a leap of faith and say, 'Screw it all,' and do what I have to do."

When her church, CrossCurrent Ministries, did the "Death by Suburb" series this year, she recognized herself in it, knowing she, too, was slowly drowning in the "toxins" of the suburbs -- the quest for more, the perfectly scheduled diagrams of days.

Her pastor ... counseled his flock to slow down, schedule time to contemplate, put off their latest Circuit City purchase (he was avoiding buying a digital camera), even consider pulling the kids out of sports for a semester.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/02/AR2007060201025_4.html

Americans giving up sports?! Things must be serious. But then Jerome has been telling us that it is serious, yet bankers don’t act on what they know, but on what the rest of the herd is doing. But the bubble might burst:

““Middle-class families are caught between low income growth, a high debt burden, and rising interest rates - and for the moment, these ingredients are here to stay. The most recent third-quarter delinquency, default, and bankruptcy figures show that the dangers to middle-class economic security are not theoretical concepts. They are a harsh reality for a growing share of middle-class families.”

http://www.moneyweek.com/file/25137/the-truth-about-us-mortgage-default-rates.html

But some realise that the problem is in going along with the herd and that one’s life needn’t be consumed by working in order to buy more; one can take more pleasure in basic consumption in a responsible way:

The Slow Food Manifesto

The Slow Food international movement officially began when delegates from 15 countries endorsed this manifesto, written by founding member Folco Portinari, on November 9, 1989.

Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model.

We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods.

To be worthy of the name, Homo Sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction.

A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.

May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.

Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food.
Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food.

http://www.slowfood.com/about_us/eng/manifesto.lasso

Now there are slow cities:

Cittaslow, (literally Slow City in English) is a movement founded in Italy in October of 1999. The inspiration of Cittaslow was the Slow Food organization; Cittaslow's goals include improving quality of life in towns while resisting the homogenization and Americanization of cities, where standardized franchise stores dominate. Celebrating and supporting diversity of culture and the specialities of a town and its hinterland are core Cittaslow values.

Cittaslow is part of a cultural trend known as the Slow movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cittaslow

However, don’t take the title too literally; enjoying a fast car, as in BBC's "Top Gear", could still be a form of “slow”:

Contrary to assumptions associated with the term "slow", advocates of the Slow movement stress activity, rather than passivity. The focus, therefore, is on being selective in our activity, and fully appreciating how we spend our time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_movement

So it’s OK for me to write this as quickly as I can (not very fast, I like the research bit) - there are replies to comments to reply to too.

The Slow Movement has led to some interesting reflections on the most profound questions.

Arise !

“I’m talking about how to get out of bed. Most of us manage to get out of bed, eventually. Employers expect as much.
…
In the seventeenth century, the philosopher René Descartes spent a lot of time mulling over the problem of whether he existed or not. He famously said, “I think therefore I am.” He thought he did exist. So he must have tackled the am-I-awake-or-not question.
If you are aware you are lying in bed, then the mind will eventually pose another profound question: “Should I get up?”

Great minds have thought deeply about this question. In 1650 Blaise Pascal turned away from his studies in mathematics to contemplate the “greatness and the misery of man.” He decided, ”Most of the evils of life arise from man’s being unable to sit still in a room.” It only follows then that lying in bed must be a virtue.

Marcel Proust stayed in bed for almost a decade due to real or imagined aliments. His bed became his workplace. You probably had to be ill in bed to read Marcel Proust’s one-and-a-quarter-million-word novel, In Search of Lost Time. But Proust was a genius because he knew how to slow down. He took seventeen pages to describe a man trying to get back to sleep in his bed.

http://www.slowdownnow.org/content/view/49/81/

But a documentary on French TV a few days ago brought out the really serious side of stress, caused by the kind of management techniques imported from the US; causing some employees to be unable to sleep and, in some cases, unable to go on living. From an earlier report in the Guardian - Money section:

Heading for a breakdown

French workers used to be envied, but after suicides at car-maker Renault, unions are blaming US-style methods for shattering the harmony. Kim Willsher reports from Paris

Saturday March 10, 2007 The Guardian

...
Now, the harsh world of globalisation, competition and sharp employment practice has hit France hard. For workers such as those at Renault's state-of-the-art design and development Technocentre, near Versailles, this new economic reality has come as a shock, both professionally and personally. It has also brought tragic consequences.

In January, 800 Renault employees joined a silent march in tribute to two colleagues who had committed suicide. Even as they snaked past the ultramodern plant, known as the Beehive for its honeycomb design, their heads bowed, another was reaching the end of his tether.

Just over a fortnight later a 38-year-old employee, whose wife and five-year-old son were on holiday, returned home from the Technocentre and took his own life. His was the third suicide at the centre in four months.

His widow told Le Parisien that her normally "poised and calm" husband was stressed by work. He was so exhausted he was beyond sleep, she says. "He suffered from enormous pressure bringing files home and waking in the middle of the night to work."

http://money.guardian.co.uk/workplacestress/story/0,,2030201,00.html

Happily ever after

But I don’t want to leave you with this depressing news - people are resisting, downsizing and going SLOW - they want to live more happily.

Scientists have finally got round to studying that very important thing - happiness - and the BBC has made a series about it:

“… it’s thought that we tend to see our life as judged against other people.

We compare our lot against others [that herd thing again]. Richer people do get happier when they compare themselves against poorer people, but poorer people are less happy if they compare up.

The good news is that we can choose how much and who we compare ourselves with and about what, and researchers suggest we adapt less quickly to more meaningful things such as friendship and life goals.

What makes us happy?

According to psychologist Professor Ed Diener there is no one key to happiness but a set of ingredients that are vital.

First, family and friends are crucial - the wider and deeper the relationships with those around you the better.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4783836.stm

So I look forward - even more - to meeting some of the Eurotrib crowd in Paris. But let’s take it - slowly - it used to be the French way.

More "Sicko"

Michael Moore's "Sicko" opened at Cannes recently. In this interview with Bill Maher, Moore says he's still recovering from praise from Fox News and condemns the "health" and drug corporations in the US. He says it's not only that millions of Americans have no health insurance, but also that the health insurance corporations try to maximise profits by avoiding making payments, a situation made worse by the high costs of many drugs from pharmaceutical corporations:



Cf.Chomsky:

"There are periodic scandals - meaning some horrible thing that happened by accident escapes, that's called a scandal - and the media feeders have to pretend to be very irate: how can our democracy survive etcetera etcetera.
"It is well known among serious journalists that after a major scandal, like say Watergate or Iran-Contra or something, there is a period of a couple of months when the media tend to be more open. And then you can sneak in the stories that you've been storing up.

"So if you take a close look at the media you'll discover that the really smart reporters often are coming out with things in that window of opportunity that opens up in reaction to the scandal.

"On top of that there is just plenty of people with integrity and who are really working hard to stretch the limits, and sometimes they get things through."

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/9501-journalism.html

The New York Times might have printed the following story anyway, but it may be significant that it has done so just after Moore’s “Sicko” got a lot of positive attention. Anyway, it documents a very sick situation:

“After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay

By GARDINER HARRIS and JANET ROBERTS

Published: June 3, 2007

… Medical ethicists have long argued that doctors who give experimental medicines should be chosen with care. Indeed, the drug industry’s own guidelines for clinical trials state, “Investigators are selected based on qualifications, training, research or clinical expertise in relevant fields.” Yet Dr. Abuzzahab is far from the only doctor to have been disciplined or criticized by a medical board but later paid by drug makers.

An analysis of state records by The New York Times found more than 100 such doctors in Minnesota, at least two with criminal fraud convictions. While Minnesota is the only state to make its records publicly available, the problem, experts say, is national.

One of Dr. Abuzzahab’s patients was David Olson, whom the psychiatrist tried repeatedly to recruit for clinical trials. Drug makers paid Dr. Abuzzahab thousands of dollars for every patient he recruited. In July 1997, when Mr. Olson again refused to be a test subject, Dr. Abuzzahab discharged him from the hospital even though he was suicidal, records show. Mr. Olson committed suicide two weeks later.
In its disciplinary action against Dr. Abuzzahab, the state medical board referred to Mr. Olson as Patient No. 46.

“Dr. Abuzzahab failed to appreciate the risks of taking Patient No. 46 off Clozaril, failed to respond appropriately to the patient’s rapid deterioration and virtually ignored this patient’s suicidality,” the board found.

In an interview, Dr. Abuzzahab dismissed the findings as “without heft” and said drug makers were aware of his record. He said he had helped study many of the most popular drugs in psychiatry, including Paxil, Prozac, Risperdal, Seroquel, Zoloft and Zyprexa.

The Times’s examination of Minnesota’s trove of records on drug company payments to doctors found that from 1997 to 2005, at least 103 doctors who had been disciplined or criticized by the state medical board received a total of $1.7 million from drug makers. The median payment over that period was $1,250; the largest was $479,000.
The sanctions by the board ranged from reprimands to demands for retraining to suspension of licenses. Of those 103 doctors, 39 had been penalized for inappropriate prescribing practices, 21 for substance abuse, 12 for substandard care and 3 for mismanagement of drug studies. A few cases received national news media coverage, but drug makers hired the doctors anyway.
…
In cases involving Dr. Abuzzahab over 15 years in the 1980s and ’90s, the medical board found that he repeatedly prescribed narcotics and other controlled substances to addicts, renewing one patient’s prescriptions six weeks after the patient was jailed and telling another that his addictive pills should be thought of as “Hamburger Helper.” He prescribed narcotics to pregnant patients, one of whom prematurely delivered a baby who soon died.

In explaining his abrupt discharge of the suicidal Mr. Olson, Dr. Abuzzahab told the medical board that “if a patient is determined to kill himself, he can’t be prevented from doing it and hospitalization postpones the event,” records show.
Mr. Olson’s sister, Susie Olson, said Dr. Abuzzahab “had no time for my brother unless David agreed to get into a drug study. He said, ‘You’re wasting my time and the hospital’s.’ It was all about money.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/health/03docs.html

In the interview with Maher, Moore says that he hopes Al Gore will run for President again. Perhaps Gore has changed, but while he was Vice-President he defended the interests of the corporations attacked in “Sicko”:

Drug Corporations and Crumbling Health Care

by Nastya Petrovitch

“For example, “in 1998, [Al Gore] put great pressure on South Africa, threatening trade sanctions if the government didn’t cancel plans to use much cheaper generic AIDS drugs, which would cut into U.S. companies’ sales, [something that would affect] three million HIV-positive persons among its largely impoverished population [and was done at the time because] he had significant ties to the drug industry” (Blum 2000, p. 6). The big pharmaceutical companies would have a significant loss in profits if a country with as high of demand for AIDS drugs as South Africa stopped buying their drugs and bought generic versions instead. They used their power and influence to make sure that they could maximize their profitability off of the poor, dying people in South Africa (Blum). And because of their great control over government, the AIDS epidemic has been ravaging Africa, despite the availability of medicine that could allow them to live a long fruitful life.

Pharmaceutical companies charge astronomically high prices for drugs to get as much money as they can from consumers. Drugs have risen twice as fast as inflation, causing many Americans to not be able to afford the medications that they need (Anderson & Taylor, 2007, p. 374).

http://www.bloggernews.net/16985

It seems that Clinton has changed since 1998; it's easier when you're not in power and not subjected to huge power of the drug corporations. But recently corporations have become increasingly aware that they need to try to create a more favourable public perception of themselves):

"Companies understand the power of publicity and that charitable giving helps build a strong public image. Some enlightened companies view giving as essential for good corporate citizenship. However, corporations expect concrete rewards for their generosity.

Many companies use the Internet as a means to advertise their philanthropic activities. By posting grantmaking information on the Web, companies make the public aware that they are involved in improving the quality of life, particularly in areas of company operations. This exposure gives the company a positive image and improves public relations, which ultimately translates into increased profits."

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/funding/page5226.cfm

So now Clinton is able to persuade corporations to work with him - and he can even work with the French !

"Citing the importance of keeping AIDS treatment affordable, President Clinton also announced the “next generation” first-line treatment, taken once daily, is now less than $1 under new agreements. The equivalent product in the U.S., launched in July 2006, is widely perceived as a gold-standard treatment, as it offers greater convenience, fewer side effects, and improved treatment outcomes in comparison to the regimen used most commonly in developing countries.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, chairman of the UNITAID board, added, 'Every person living with HIV deserves access to the most effective medicines, and UNITAID aims to ensure that these are affordable for all developing countries. I am pleased that our partnership with President Clinton is lowering the price of second-line treatment, and that the new prices will be available to low and middle income countries alike.'”

http://www.clintonfoundation.org/050807-nr-cf-hs-ai-fe-next-generation-hiv-aids-treatment-now-less-than-one-dollar-a-day.htm

Nice traffic

Traffic seems likely to get more confused/confusing. They are now changing the one-way systems of lots of streets and changing bus routes and stops. Traffic will now be able to come UP the main street, Av. Jean Medecin, from the sea to the station - but I doubt if it will make the traffic in our street (Rue Diderot) any calmer:



They are makng sure that the main Square - Massena - is ready for the tourist invasion in July and August (when we hope to be in the tranquil heart of Normandy) - but they now admit the tramway won't be ready in Sept. as promised, but work will drag on till the end of October - IF we're lucky.

Meanwhile, some the less appealing parts of Nice:


Av. Jean Medecin and the Voie Rapide

Find your way through this - if you really want something at KFC



Things can only get better



Cafe life is not quite the same:





Ah for the days of the first tramway, horse-drawn carriages - and no bloody "deux roues" roaring around the city.

Italian taste

Another lovely day in Nice - till 7pm when there was a downpour, but by then I was just round the corner from the apartment.

There was also a festival of Italian food and wine on the Promenade des Anglais:








"I say - this is in awfully bad taste !"



"Since these are the most powerful olives in the world and because, in all this excitement I forget how much chili I added, you have to ask yourself a question: "Do I want her olives? Well, do yah? - punk!" ( An "homage", as Tarantino would put it, to "Dirty Harry").