Mon Carnet de Voyage

This week has been a challenging one (hence, a week since my last blog). It has been spent trying to get the final pieces in place to the work I am here to complete, all the while finding the challenges of living in a foreign country, constantly speaking in a different language, all too difficult at times. I have always loved France, its culture and its people…but like in any country, the occasional negative experience can give you the impression that the populace in general, fits the stereotype we’ve been sold over time.

Each day, I am learning more about France, the French, and the language that has been swimming around in my head for 25 years. It’s been an interesting marriage. Now and then, we hit the rocks, and I am the one who learns to unconditionally love once again, being a Francophile.

It’s a bizarre thing – to speak another language. Anyone who does will always agree that it is in the first instance, a wonderful gift. The French language is a luxurious cashmere coat that you can put on from time to time to feel its silky texture against your skin. It’s a rich chocolate that melts in your mouth.

However at the same time, it is your constant, insistent companion begging for more and more attention. It’s a riddle demanding to be solved, but there is never a final answer to quench your thirst for knowledge. You never actually reach that final destination of perfect fluency; much like a native speaker of English who keeps learning a new word from time to time. But you keep at it, to find that you are living it, breathing it everyday, like I am now. I am truly grateful for this experience; to have the opportunity to let this chocolate in my mouth, melt.

So with a challenging week, came a little homesickness, and then an email in my inbox offered an opportunity to revel in it some more – an old acquaintance from my hometown Fremantle, was playing a gig at the Australian Embassy on Friday night to kick off yet another European tour. So, off to the gig I went, and I greatly enjoyed hearing the words of my own language clear and loud, bringing to life for me again, the streets of my beloved hometown and the landscape I know, trust and find comfort in, on the other side of the world. His beautiful lyrics reminded me of home, and just how good we have it in Australia.
(Carus and the True Believers, at Matilda's, Friday 18th April 2008)

Chateau of Versailles

That richness of culture presents itself in a different way in France. A Sunday spent at Versailles on the outskirts of Paris, left me feeling enamored of the country’s history, but also, possibly a little overwhelmed, by the sumptuousness of a palace that ignited revolt in its people. Wandering through the restored furnishings, royal paintings and gold adorned walls, I spent most of the time thinking about whether any of it, actually brought any true happiness to its occupants.
(Looking back at the Chateau, from the fountain of Apollo).

Versailles was first built in 1668 by Louis XIV (he took his father’s hunting lodge and renovated it). Three kings lived there over the course of the next 120 years. Nicknamed the Sun King (as he likened himself to the Roman God of Mars) Louis XIV sought to build a luxurious palace that would represent to the world, the power and glory of the French Monarchy. In the 17th century, it certainly did, and in the 21st century after its restoration, it certainly does. But in the 18th century, its grandeur riled the people enough to complain of hunger, unfair taxes, and absurd monarchical wealth. Everything that Versailles represented sparked the most exciting moment in French history. The peasants stormed the Bastille on 14th July 1789 (Bastille Day), and later they forced Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI from Versailles and off to Paris, where they were later guillotined four years later. (This is my favourite room - at Grand Trianon, at Versailles. It's just so garishly decorated, it works).

Orangerie

France certainly is a rich country, and in my eyes, it is for the contents of its libraries, galleries and museums. Last week I wandered past the Orangerie, for a quick peek at Monet’s Water Lillies.

The Orangerie is a two storey gallery, one level of which is two rooms, each containing four of Monet’s most famous paintings (eight of the 250 or so Nympheas, or Water Lilly paintings done by Monet in the last thirty years of his life). The below level contains a very impressive collection of impressionist art. However, it’s the eight paintings upstairs that attract the tourists. As they tend to take your breath away, the room contains very long couches, for peaceful contemplation of Monet’s works.

Monet actually painted the Nympheas when he was suffering from cataracts, and after he had the lens removed from one eye in an attempt to correct his malady, he was able to see ultraviolet light.

What I like most about the Nympheas collection, is that it is not possible to take a photo of them. Each is a mural, so long that it is bent around this oval shaped room, until you realise that you are in the middle of the pond, surrounded by the most beautiful colours: sunlight dancing on water, lilies that balance on the surface, their stems deep below the canvas. The only thing to do is to sit on the couch…and swim in it.

You can certainly try to take a photo (as I did below), and many others grappled with the same task – but the best art, is the one that forces you to admire it, in the now. Not later when you download the images from your camera. Your memory should retain the feeling it gives you, more so than the image.
(One of Monet's Nympheas, at the Orangerie).

Next blog will be my long-awaited Anzac Day trip this weekend to Villers Bretonneux in Northern France, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the battle there on 25th April, 1918. It’s being broadcast on ABC in Australia, and is currently in a lot of press back home (being deemed the other Gallipoli we have maybe forgotten about), so look out for me… and if you haven’t done an Anzac Day Dawn Service at your local war memorial, why not make this year your first.