Posts tagged with "music"

France: Day 18, Paris

The detour took a week off my time in France, and soon I was on a mis­sion to do the most impor­tant things with the two days I had left. I decid­ed to vis­it places that meant some­thing to me, instead of tourist attrac­tions like the Louvre and Eiffel Tower that did­n’t have as much of an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion.

Four Graves, Four Songs

Pere Lachaise Cemetery road

 

I’d only found out about ceme­ter­ies Montparnasse and Père Lachaise — both of which are notable for hav­ing many famous peo­ple buried there — after my arrival. They’re both huge (nav­i­gat­ing them requires look­ing up the prop­er street name), but Père Lachaise in par­tic­u­lar has the rep­u­ta­tion of being the world’s most vis­it­ed cemetary. I made no plans to vis­it them until I found out that Serge Ganisbourg is in Montparnasse, and Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, and Chopin are in Père Lachaise. So I made a trip to some­what oppo­site ends of Paris to find the graves of each of these musi­cians. For each one that I vis­it­ed, I put on my head­phones and lis­tened to one of their songs, imag­in­ing they were singing or play­ing to me at that moment.

Serge Gainsbourg (La Chanson de Prévert)

It was­n’t hard to tell that Serge is one of France’s most beloved artists; the tomb was lit­tered with var­i­ous baubles, plants, and even por­traits left for him. As I was lis­ten­ing to this song (co-inci­den­tal­ly, ref­er­enc­ing songs sung to Jacques Prévert’s poems, such as the one by Edith Piaf below), a tall, sandy-haired young man walked up to the grave, lit a cig­a­rette, and left his lighter stand­ing upright on the tomb before walk­ing away.

The French youth seem to have an healthy obses­sion with the genius that was Serge. I’d just like to know where these peo­ple are, because I don’t know a sin­gle per­son who loves Gainsbourg as much as I do. I need to find them so we can smoke cig­a­rettes, mock pop cul­ture, and talk about want­i­ng to fuck Whitney Houston.

Serge Gainsbourg's grave

 

Serge Gainsbourg's grave - details 1

The small white strips are metro tick­ets (they get spit out from the machine as a receipt when enter­ing the sub­way).

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The Partisan

The Partisan, orig­i­nal­ly titled “La Complainte du par­ti­san” in French, has always been one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. The lyrics are from the point of view of a sole par­ti­san secret­ly fight­ing an occu­py­ing force in his coun­try, but I had no idea it was specif­i­cal­ly about the French resis­tance to Nazi occu­pa­tion dur­ing WWII, as the only ref­er­ences to this are in the French vers­es.

You hear of sol­diers nowa­days with iPods and their mur­der mix­es; playlists of heavy met­al, used to keep them moti­vat­ed (or, in some cas­es, inhu­man so they can com­mit inhu­mane acts). I’ve long held the belief that if I was ever fight­ing in a war, this would be my song — the only one I’d lis­ten to, and on repeat — because the nar­ra­tor is so cold and sto­ic in his pur­pose.

Members_of_the_Maquis_in_La_Tresorerie

A group of par­ti­sans join­ing forces with the Canadian army at Boulogne, in September 1944.

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To begin again

It’s snow­ing. The first of the sea­son, and it has­n’t stopped for four hours.

Finally.

I have so many things to write about, but this is the only thing on my mind right now.

snow

The view out the back.

Nothing fills me with hope the way snow does. I write about this every year. If there were ever a Wikipedia entry about me that said love, depres­sion, and win­ter, were all themes in my work, it’d be right.

into the saddle

I’ve been build­ing up a col­lec­tion of new music for France. Stuff I’m sav­ing for when I’m on the plane, or the train, or walk­ing the streets. I can tell these tracks will define my time there, as well this point in my life.

Most of it has been dri­ving. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly loud or aggres­sive, but songs that mark the time with bass and a steady beat, remind­ing me that I’m still mov­ing, and that life won’t wait for me to catch up.

axe

Taylor NS32CE

hot.

I played around with Darren’s Seagull and imme­di­ate­ly under­stood how vis­cer­al it is to hear and hold a decent gui­tar. The tone response and res­o­nance was delight­ful­ly tac­ti­cal on the larg­er instru­ment. The log­i­cal result of this is me sav­ing up for a Taylor NS32CE six-string nylon acoustic/electric of my own. It has every­thing I’m look­ing for in a gui­tar:

  • nylon strings (for a won­der­ful­ly mel­low sound)
  • a grand con­cert shape (which is suit­ed to my small­er frame, and the pro­por­tions of clas­si­cal nylon gui­tar nev­er appealed to me)
  • a cut­away (for eas­i­er access to the high frets)
  • a 1 7/8 inch­es nut width (which is clos­er to clas­si­cal string spac­ing, and hence bet­ter suit­ed for fin­ger­pick­ing)
  • a sol­id wood body (sit­ka on top and sapele — a com­mon alter­na­tive to African mahogany — on the back and sides)
  • a non-flow­ery, non-metal­lic rosette (which I find far too com­mon on typ­i­cal nylon string gui­tars)
  • a gloss fin­ish on top (though the sides are satin, and I don’t know how I feel about that cause satin dents real­ly eas­i­ly in my expe­ri­ence)
  • bonus: a slot­ted head­stock (which I find to be more classy than reg­u­lar ones)
  • bonus: no fret­board mark­ers (cause I don’t like most, and this would help me cor­rect the bad habit of always look­ing at the fret­board)

Also, the sapele is a gor­geous dark red with light strip­ing that con­trasts allur­ing­ly with the light sit­ka on top. But mon­ey has been super tight late­ly, and I’m try­ing to hold off on all pur­chas­es until I come back from my trip, since I don’t know how much I’m going to spend over there.

daddy

My dad sent me pic­tures of his new drum set, bought for him by some women whose name and rela­tion­ship with him always seems to escape me. A full-out kit with three toms, a kick, a high-hat, a snare, a crash, and a ride. It’s prob­a­bly the last thing most peo­ple expect to see my dad play­ing, but I remem­ber when I was a young boy him men­tion­ing the fact that he likes drums. Along with a new Honda sport motor­cy­cle and a new Mercedes SUV, it’s hard to deny the fact that he’s liv­ing his dreams now. Darren jokes that he’s exact­ly where we are now — bach­e­lors, get­ting into music, no real respon­si­bil­i­ties, just try­ing to live as hap­pi­ly as pos­si­ble — only he’s almost 30 years old­er than us.

He signs his e‑mails to me as “Daddy”. It always reminds me that I’ll always be his lit­tle boy.

under warranty

My tenor uke is sit­ting in a box packed with Styrofoam, wait­ing to be picked up by couri­er. There was a defect in the neck that caused a buzzing on the 1st fret of the C string, and every string after the 12th. I was­n’t will­ing to put up with it for the price I paid, so I’m get­ting it replaced by the man­u­fac­tur­er. I’m glad I had­n’t named it yet.

I destroyed the strings on Joolie (my Mahalo Les Paul-style con­cert uke) and was too lazy to restring her. There was a length of time when I did­n’t have a playable uke, and this lead to the real­iza­tion that I’ve devel­oped the habit of pick­ing up and pluck­ing away on one impul­sive­ly every hour.

House Show II

I’m still catch­ing my breath from the awe­some­ness that was the sec­ond House Show. So much plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, and prac­tice went into one night that I felt like I’d giv­en birth when it was over; I did­n’t know how to feel, or what to think.

Darren came up the day before to hang out, and along with Shane, Blais (his son), and Chris, stayed until Sunday. After the show we stayed up talk­ing, pick­ing Shane’s brain about his com­po­si­tion process and influ­ences. Everything went bet­ter than I could have planned, and I’m thank­ful that so many of my friends were there to share the expe­ri­ence with me.

cupcakes

Meet the cupcakes (from left to right):

Black and White (Belgian dark choco­late cake with vanil­la frost­ing and choco­late sprin­kles), straw­ber­ry (pure straw­ber­ry cake with sweet cream cheese frost­ing and red sug­ar flower on top), hazel­nut choco­late (hazel­nut-choco­late cake with Belgian dark choco­late frost­ing dec­o­rat­ed with a toast­ed hazel­nut on top), vanil­la (vanil­la cake and frost­ing, flavoured with Madagascar bour­bon vanil­la with sprin­kles), and key lime pie (lime-infused cake and cream cheese frost­ing with lime zest).

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