Paris bulletin 9 2015

I’ve been thinking a lot about words since last Friday, about the words in the communiqué by Daesh to begin with, and thereafter, all the words spoken and written since by politicians, journalists, witnesses, bystanders... It is not my purpose here to comment on Hollande’s use of the word ‘guerre’ or the debates in the media about ‘la déradicalisation des jeunes’. It seems to me it is as much in how we act in the aftermath of an atrocity as in how we speak that we show ourselves in our true colours.

If so I would say that Parisians so far have disproved all the usual things that are said about Parisians: they are rude, pushy, arrogant. I have seen so much warmth, so much willingness to talk, and a complete rejection – at least among the people who have spoken to me and I include complete strangers on buses and sitting next to me in the metro – of the simplistic rhetoric of ‘send them back where they came from’ – of refugees; ‘bomb them all to kingdom come’ - of Daesh. There has been a restraint and a thoughtfulness in those conversations that makes you hope that other, better ways of tackling the splits and inequalities in the fabric of French society may yet be found. I wish I could say the same for the horrible web of geo-political challenges in the Middle East, (some of those relics of last century’s wars and colonialist adventures, others a direct result of our present alliances with some of the most unsavoury regimes on the planet, Saudi Arabia, to mention only one) – or the people we’ve mandated to deal with those on our behalf.

I have been to a concert, to an exhibition and to my drawing class at the Louvre since Friday. The concert was in the Bouffes du Nord, our local theatre, on Monday. The nation was still in mourning but the decision was taken by its ‘gérant,  Olivier Poubelle, who is also gérant of le Bataclan, to let it go ahead. An act of defiance which was warmly welcomed, judging by the crowded rows of the auditorium.

Two pianos, four pieces, the third, ‘Tourbillon’, a startling, whirlwind of a piece - the word is apt - written by Bruno Mantovani and played with extraordinary passion by Jean-Francois Heisser and Jean-Frederic Neuburger, to whom it is dedicated. Lots of small children in the audience, lots of emotion. ‘Un grand partage’ which did us all good.

And last night I went to my weekly drawing class at the Louvre. Caroline, one of our two teachers, took us to the cour Marly to draw ‘l’amour’ since, as she said, that felt like the right thing to do after last Friday.

So we spent a little over two hours drawing and painting three croquis of those putti-like figures in marble. Here is the one I like most: l’Amour et l’Amitié by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle

                                                    

And afterwards, crossing the empty hall beneath the pyramid, out into a dark, warm night. The beam from the Eiffel Tower swung round, the half moon rode high in a clear sky and under the arcade leading to the rue de Rivoli, a trumpet sang out like a clarion.