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(197) is today: Thursday, 22 July 2010.
As the title suggests, this is, more than anything else, a bunch of unconnected points I've been wanting to mention.
--My host family has a grandson - I'd say he's about as old as this blog - who stays here at the house during the day. This little guy is the world's most boring baby. He never smiles and never laughs. He has these cheeks that make him look like he's hording a pair of golf balls the way squirrels horde nuts; he knows he can't swallow the damn things, but he doesn't want to spit them out either. The only thing he does that attracts any unique attention is cry. And he does this a considerable amount of the time. When people say that they don't want babies because they do nothing but cry and poop, this is the little dude they have in mind.
--Classes aren't as fun when all you do that week are standardized prep exercises for a French proficiency exam you aren't signed up to take.
--Last night, I went to hear the soft, soothing, yet oddly syncopated music of trio Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette.
--No idea why, but I was craving a Sprite afterward.
--Tonight I'm having a farewell dinner with the CEA group at a local restaurant, after which I'm going to see my last Jazz a Juan concert, featuring Kyle Eastwood (son of Clint) and Diana Krall. Not a bad sendoff on Europe's part, I would say.
--Last item doesn't really work well with the bullet point format, so I'm giving it paragraphs.
When I'm not lost in thought (rare, but it does happen), I tend to look up at the sky. I've done it since I was a kid. And, when I was younger, before I left the U.S./North America for the first time, there was one question I used to wonder. It went something like this: "Is the sky the same in other parts of the world? Like color and clouds and everything?"
The answer's obvious enough in an adult sense - yes - but when kids ask questions like these, the point isn't really to obtain the answer. Well, maybe that matters sometimes as well, but the real reason kids ask those sorts of questions is because finding the answer requires them to do stuff first. The things they have to do for their answers provide knowledge that is almost always more important than the answer itself.
But anyway, of course I'd occasionally see footage on TV or in a movie of natural landscapes in foreign countries. But I wouldn't believe those; this was a question whose answer I had to see for myself. And when I make it to other parts of the world, I look at the sky and am just floored by it for an instant... It's the same, but it's not the same... somehow.
My pithy analysis of the quest for answers better be right, because goodness knows that poor confused answer doesn't justify the effort to search for it.
Even when I got to France in January and the sky was snowy (just like Washington's was), or even when I landed in Marrakesh and the sky was clear blue (not unlike the mountainous western U.S.), I was still amazed.
I think it's because of this fascination with the sky that the following quote from Kingdom Hearts (which is the best video game ever made, as far as I'm concerned) really captures my imagination. I've thought of it a few times in the last several months:
"There are many worlds, but they share the same sky. One sky, one destiny."
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Showing posts with label Jazz a Juan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jazz a Juan. Show all posts
22 July 2010
21 July 2010
(192-195): Stuff I've Been Doing
(194) is Saturday, 17 July 2010, and (195) is today: Tuesday, 21 July 2010.
Like I said before, I just sort of do stuff here... it's not like the travel entries where I was trying to jam pack every single instant in every single place. Here's sort of a bullet point summary:
--On Saturday, I went to Marseille for a few hours with Alex, an Austrian classmate of mine. We walked around for a while, saw the port and some other sights... Marseille isn't the nicest city (a little smelly and not so clean), but there are some nice snapshots to be had. It's also cool to see the prominence of the immigrant population. This is a port town, after all, and it's one of the 5 biggest cities in France (and, among those 5, certainly the closest to the French-speaking countries in northern Africa).
--Saturday night saw me at my second concert of the Jazz a Juan festival... first act that night was Dee Dee Bridgewater. I thought she was good - did a rendition of Billie Holiday's "Lady Sings the Blues" that's still stuck in my head - and she's definitely got a wonderful voice in general. Trouble is, she was doing her whole set as a Billie tribute and she picked some weird songs (probably with some weird original arrangements). Plus, she has this reputation as the favorite daughter/diva of Juan-les-Pins, and I didn't find her whole diva shtick that compelling.
--Melody Gardot, on the other hand, followed Dee Dee and had this incredible soft-spoken, mysterious, stylish, and altogether lovely presence about her. She did this bossa-nova/tuneless singing (in a good way) sort of style. Also, lighting design par excellence really helped give a sense that everything had been thought through carefully. Her act and personality came across as much more polished than Dee Dee's, and when she dropped two lines of "Fever" (made famous by Peggy Lee) into one of her closing numbers... I swear, that song was written for Melody instead of Peggy. And her encore of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was the quietest show-stopper I've ever seen.
--Sunday was kind of lazy, but I went with Belinda, another friend from school, to the evening's conert: an American big band. They were a nice change of pace, performing favorites like "Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got that Swing," "In the Mood," and "Pennsylvania 65000." The second (much longer) half was a Django Reinhardt tribute. They had some AMAZING musicians on that stage*, but the trouble wtih Django is that - since it's all strings and other bands have variety - the music all starts to sound the same after an hour and a half. Belinda and I left after two hours (3 hours of concert total), figuring we'd paid our dues.
--Monday saw me go back to Nice with a few friends (Victoria, Camilla, and Nabil) for a few hours. We met up again a bit later for some pretty darn good thai food.
--Today, I went to class, where I decided I had had it with listening exercises taken from a standardized test I'm not taking. Afterward, my American group went to the island of St-Marguerite, a gorgeous little spit of land off the coast of nearby Cannes. It was lovely beach weather, so we sat for a while and enjoyed. And, thanks to Kristin (program person), who brought the gear, I went snorkeling in the French Riviera.
--When I got back, I met up with Victoria and Nabil. We went to see Shrek 4** and got dinner (moules frites for me) afterward. Then, I came back here.
--Oh, and at some point in here I picked up my train tickets for Saturday, but had to resolve a fairly complicated blip related to my not having the right credit card with me. But, I got it worked out and all in French. I was feeling pretty good about myself and my decision to stay in France and keep speaking the language for an extra little while.
----------------------------------------
Footnotes
* Best said by one musician who came out onstage. He congratulated the lead guitarist who organized the Django tribute group by saying (in French): "He [the guitarist] has played like a god this evening and I think we should all salute him for that."
** We were trying to see Toy Story 3, but they didn't have it in English. And I know I gave Shrek 4 some crap before, but it was actually so much better than I thought it was going to be. It had a villain I could take seriously, an actual plot, and it had all the clever twists on fairy tales that made the first two movies great. Yeah: all the expectation-surpassing is based on how bad Shrek 3 was.
Like I said before, I just sort of do stuff here... it's not like the travel entries where I was trying to jam pack every single instant in every single place. Here's sort of a bullet point summary:
--On Saturday, I went to Marseille for a few hours with Alex, an Austrian classmate of mine. We walked around for a while, saw the port and some other sights... Marseille isn't the nicest city (a little smelly and not so clean), but there are some nice snapshots to be had. It's also cool to see the prominence of the immigrant population. This is a port town, after all, and it's one of the 5 biggest cities in France (and, among those 5, certainly the closest to the French-speaking countries in northern Africa).
--Saturday night saw me at my second concert of the Jazz a Juan festival... first act that night was Dee Dee Bridgewater. I thought she was good - did a rendition of Billie Holiday's "Lady Sings the Blues" that's still stuck in my head - and she's definitely got a wonderful voice in general. Trouble is, she was doing her whole set as a Billie tribute and she picked some weird songs (probably with some weird original arrangements). Plus, she has this reputation as the favorite daughter/diva of Juan-les-Pins, and I didn't find her whole diva shtick that compelling.
--Melody Gardot, on the other hand, followed Dee Dee and had this incredible soft-spoken, mysterious, stylish, and altogether lovely presence about her. She did this bossa-nova/tuneless singing (in a good way) sort of style. Also, lighting design par excellence really helped give a sense that everything had been thought through carefully. Her act and personality came across as much more polished than Dee Dee's, and when she dropped two lines of "Fever" (made famous by Peggy Lee) into one of her closing numbers... I swear, that song was written for Melody instead of Peggy. And her encore of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was the quietest show-stopper I've ever seen.
--Sunday was kind of lazy, but I went with Belinda, another friend from school, to the evening's conert: an American big band. They were a nice change of pace, performing favorites like "Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got that Swing," "In the Mood," and "Pennsylvania 65000." The second (much longer) half was a Django Reinhardt tribute. They had some AMAZING musicians on that stage*, but the trouble wtih Django is that - since it's all strings and other bands have variety - the music all starts to sound the same after an hour and a half. Belinda and I left after two hours (3 hours of concert total), figuring we'd paid our dues.
--Monday saw me go back to Nice with a few friends (Victoria, Camilla, and Nabil) for a few hours. We met up again a bit later for some pretty darn good thai food.
--Today, I went to class, where I decided I had had it with listening exercises taken from a standardized test I'm not taking. Afterward, my American group went to the island of St-Marguerite, a gorgeous little spit of land off the coast of nearby Cannes. It was lovely beach weather, so we sat for a while and enjoyed. And, thanks to Kristin (program person), who brought the gear, I went snorkeling in the French Riviera.
--When I got back, I met up with Victoria and Nabil. We went to see Shrek 4** and got dinner (moules frites for me) afterward. Then, I came back here.
--Oh, and at some point in here I picked up my train tickets for Saturday, but had to resolve a fairly complicated blip related to my not having the right credit card with me. But, I got it worked out and all in French. I was feeling pretty good about myself and my decision to stay in France and keep speaking the language for an extra little while.
----------------------------------------
Footnotes
* Best said by one musician who came out onstage. He congratulated the lead guitarist who organized the Django tribute group by saying (in French): "He [the guitarist] has played like a god this evening and I think we should all salute him for that."
** We were trying to see Toy Story 3, but they didn't have it in English. And I know I gave Shrek 4 some crap before, but it was actually so much better than I thought it was going to be. It had a villain I could take seriously, an actual plot, and it had all the clever twists on fairy tales that made the first two movies great. Yeah: all the expectation-surpassing is based on how bad Shrek 3 was.
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