Billy's Lines Of Gibberish

I went to Lyon yesterday. When you come from Paris, it is a short and easy trip: about 500 km, two hours by TGV. I planned it meticulously several months ago though, when I heard Leonard Cohen would make a stage there on July 9, on his first tour in 15 years.

Obviously, L. Cohen is not any more the young writer of Beautiful Losers I blogged about lately. He is not any more either the folk singer who created Suzanne and Famous Blue Raincoat. He is a 73 year-old man with a history.

Although he was born in a Canadian Jewish family, and says he has always remained a Jewish, he has embraced Buddhist philosophy for decades. He spent several years in the nineties on Mount Baldy, a Buddhist retreat in California, then went back to the world, had most of his money stolen by his manager, recorded two more albums (Ten new songs in 2001, Dear Heather in 2004), and in 2008, at last, decided to tour again, starting with his homeland Canada, then Europe.

The Roman Theatre in Fourvière (Lyon)

Lyon was his first stage in France, before Nice on July 22 and Paris in November. The show was a unique evening performance in Les Nuits de Fourvière, a summer festival held every year from June to August in the marvelous site of the Roman theatre.

A very special place for a very special singer, the Roman Theatre was built more than two millenaries ago, during the reign of Augustus in 15 BC, as the centre of the Roman city of Lugdunum. It is just the best place you can dream of to be at a show. Just have a look at the picture above, I took yesterday in the afternoon, when they were making the stage ready : the site is gorgeous and its maximum audience is about 3,500 only, which means you're close to the stage wherever you sit.

At 21:30, the show began. Leonard Cohen arrived on the stage half-running, a puny-looking white-haired man with a trilby hat. He said "bonsoir", and for the first time in my life I saw a crowd cheering an artist with a five-minute standing ovation *before* the concert.

He then said the first lines of a poem every French-speaking person in the audience recognized at once:

Danse moi à ta beauté Avec un violon en flammes, Danse moi dans la panique Jusqu'au repos de mon âme...

Dance me to the End of Love

... it was a French translation of Dance me to the end of love, his musicians then began playing while he switched to English and started singing. He would later introduce most of his songs the same way during the first set, with a few lines translated into French. He talked in French also sometimes, so that everybody in France remembers (how could we forget it?) he is also a Québécois, born and raised in Montréal.

The Future, There ain't no Cure for Love, Bird on a Wire, Everybody Knows... and so on, Leonard Cohen sang 23 songs, including 5 encores, with his deep and steady voice.

The whole of the show was very professional, thanks to the musical direction by Roscoe Beck (who plays the bass in the band also), but the professionalism of the performance did not lessen the emotion the lyrics gave vent to, of which the meaning so often goes beyond the words.

The three vocalists sang beautifully — Charley and Hattie Webb, the Webb sisters, and Sharon Robinson, that Cohen repeatedly referred to as his collaborator — she is the co-writer of several songs. Every musician was good, and was individually named by Cohen several times during the show after their solos: besides Roscoe Beck on bass, there was Rafael Gayol on drums; Neil Larsen on keyboards; Bob Metzger on guitar; Dino Soldo on, well, maybe ten different instruments, from saxophone and other woodwinds to synthesizer and blues harmonica; and last but not least, Javier Mas who played several stringed instruments, among which the Oud, in particular as a wonderful airy introduction to Who by Fire.

Between songs, applause was so loud sometimes that Cohen had to repeat merci, merci, thank you, thank you so much, until he was "allowed" to sing the next song.

In order to make the stone-built terraces more comfortable to the public, organizers had kindly provided recyclable and reusable cushions before the show. After the first encores, people started throwing their cushions to the stage, like frisbees. Several landed on there, which surprised Leonard a lot at first, then made him laugh and take his hat, mimicking he would throw it back into the public. One of the Webb sister even took a camera and made pictures of the scene, and apparently kept one cushion as a souvenir also.

The concert lasted about 3 hours, according to my watch, since it told it was 00:35 when Leonard and his band left the stage for the last time.

"On n'est pas pressés" he would say during the show indeed (we're not in a hurry). I suspect my watch is a liar though: I can swear the whole performance certainly did not last more than half of that time.

Once upon a time in northern China, a small farmer lived close to steppes of which hordes of nomads had taken control. One day, he went back from the fair with a wonderful filly, for which he had squandered all his savings.

A few days later though, the young horse galloped away and disappeared beyond the dangerous border. The news quickly went around the village, and his neighbours each came in turn to sympathize with the peasant. Only he shrugged and said imperturbably:

Three months later, the mare came back with a superb wild stallion besides her. She was pregnant. Neighbours came and congratulated the lucky owner:

The farmer's only son broke the fiery stallion in, and loved to ride him. Several weeks later, he felt seriously and almost broke his neck. He came out of the accident with one broken leg. When the neighbours came and sang their complain again, the country philosopher answered:

A few days later, general mobilization was enacted in the district to repel a Mongolian invasion. Every able-bodied young man had to go and fight. Few returned to their home. Thanks to his crutches, farmer's only son escaped the slaughter.

I took this picture several months ago, in a street close to my apartment. Lost in a sweet inebriated state, these homeless persons were friendly, and agreed gladly to be photographed.

When I took the photo, I found it funny that in Paris, even homeless winos would drink wine in stemmed glasses.

I took the photo, put the file into my computer... and did not show it to anyone. I felt ill at ease because I realized afterwards that it was not funny. According to a counting published lately, there are approximately 86,000 homeless people in France, a country with about 65 million inhabitants, of which at least 15,000 are in Paris. One can guess there are even more in reality though. Many hide because of bad weather, fear, or shame.

According to another study, 112 homeless people died in France from February to October, 2005. Their mean age was 49, while life expectancy of men and women in the country is 77 and 84 years, respectively. The youngest one was 31 year-old, half people were under 50. Twenty-one died a violent death: 8 murders, 7 blazes, 6 falls.

As a doctor myself, and although I rarely receive homeless people as patients, I know these persons often suffer chronic diseases. Their main illnesses are related to undernourishment (lack of vitamin C and calcium essentially): infections, anaemia, bleeding, neurological and cardiovascular disorders, bone fractures. They can be treated for free thanks to universal health coverage, but most of them are outside any network of socialization, and they don't know. Then, chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure are not diagnosed or treated. Furthermore, homeless people often have heavy consumption of tobacco and alcohol, that induce cardiovascular diseases, cirrhosis and cancers.

No, after all, this pic is not that funny.

The Statue of Liberty — Ellis Island, New-York.

The Statue of Liberty, whose actual name is Liberty Enlightening the World, has stood in Ellis Island in New-York for more than 120 years: aimed at commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies in 1776, it arrived at New-York in 1886.
The Statue was the work of French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, with engineering help from Gustave Eiffel, and a present from the people of France to the people of the United States, dedicated to the friendship established between the two countries during the American war of independence.

The Statue of Liberty. Jardins du Luxembourg, Paris.

There are a lot of replicas of the Statue everywhere around the world, but Paris is probably the only city that gets two. First, a small Statue de la Liberté stands in Les Jardins du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Gardens), a nice park in the centre of Paris, behind the French Senate on the left bank of the Seine River.

Les jardins du Luxembourg are in two basic parts. The organized part is a typical Jardin à la française, with straight dusty paths bordered with trees and playgrounds; there are also tennis courses, and pony rides, a marionette theatre, food kiosks and open-air cafes, and a big round fountain basin where you can rent sailboats and float them in... with the other ten-year-olds.
The wild part of Le Luxembourg is quite different. It is wilder, with deep bushes, many flowers, a fruit garden, beehives, and many statues, including this tiny model of the Statue of Liberty. In fact, it is not a replica, but the original bronze model of the statue. Frédéric Bartholdi used it as a pattern to have the New-York statue built, about 15 years later. He gave it to the city of Paris for the 1900's Universal Exhibition.

The Statue of Liberty. Ile aux Cygnes, Paris.

There is another Statue de la Liberté in Paris. It stands in the Ile aux cygnes (Swans Island), near Grenelle Bridge on the Seine River. This statue is a copy. It was given by the city of New-York to the city of Paris in 1889. It faces west, towards its 'sister' in New York Harbour, which was erected a few years earlier and looks east, to the old world across the Atlantic Ocean.
To Auguste Bartholdi [...] America, with its democratic ideals and Republican government, was already enlightened, Barry Moreno, a librarian at the Statue of Liberty National Monument, once wrote. Europe, still full of czars and emperors, was not. Sadly, things have changed; enlightenment now appears a feature of countries on this side of the Atlantic rather. Yet hopefully, it will reappear in the U.S.A., with time...
Anyway. Happy July 4 to all the U.S. Americans!

Postscript : I could not imagine when I wrote this blog that Ingrid Betancourt would arrive in Paris this afternoon, after she was rescued by Colombian forces on Wednesday.
Over the years of Ingrid Betancourt’s captivity in the Colombian jungle (almost six and a half year), France championed the Colombian-French politician and anti-corrupt activist as a symbol of endurance, holding rallies, marches and other events to draw attention to her plight.
Large posters bearing her face hang from the entrances of hundreds of French city and town halls, including in Paris, and on the summit of Mont-Blanc in the Alps. The posters are now crossed by the word LIBRE! (free!), at last.
Today was undoubtedly a great day to publish a blog about Liberty.

The steeple of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Paris - May 2006)

Taking photos of monuments and places in Paris is often discouraging: wherever you go for a stroll in the city, you see hundreds of postcards on display, whose pictures are identical or (most often) better than yours. Nevertheless, I've never seen something similar to the pic above, of which I must admit I am quite proud. It is the steeple of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris' oldest church, seen between the bronze slabs of a fountain situated on the opposite sidewalk of the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Home to a number of famous cafés, such as Les Deux Magots and Le Café de Flore, where artists, writers and philosophers would meet, Saint-Germain-des-Prés area used to be the centre of gravity for the surrealists painters and writers (André Breton especially) in the 1920s and 1930s, then the headquarters of existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in the 1950s and 1960s. The area is much older though: the first parts of the church were built as an abbey in the 6th century.

There is a fountain in front of the church, in the Place du Québec, at the crossing of Boulevard Saint-Germain, Rue de Rennes and Rue Bonaparte (see Wikimapia location).

It's a modern fountain, the work of a Québecois artist named Guillaume Daudelin. More than an ordinary fountain, it is a sculpture, given in 1984 as an hommage from Quebec to the city of Paris. It is called L'Embâcle, which means Ice Jam (that is, obstruction of a river bed with blocks of ices). There is no gap between the sidewalk's large paving stones and the fountain's four slabs of bronze, so that the pavement seems lifted up by the water that sprays through it.

L'Embâcle beautifully conjures up break-up of ice in Québec when springs arrives at last. It is famous because of its artistic value, and functional originality as well. Among kids, it is well known also... as the best slide in the neighbourhood!

The day I took the photo on top of this entry was my lucky day: the fountain had been switched off because the weather was cold. No spray any more, no water inside, only little puddles on the ground. I could sneak into the fountain as a housebreaker, kneel down in there, and steal a couple of shots.