Friday, February 24, 2006

On the way to Paris ... Part 1

The trip from Madrid to Bilbao on a very slow train took us through high plains, mountains, olive groves, dry country most of it, and we observed the setting of the sun and the rising of the full moon over this golden landscape somewhere just before Burgos. I am astounded at the differences between the French and Spanish landscapes. For all its variety of topography, from the Alps to the oceans, the parts of France that I have visited most often are more or less flat, wet, slightly forested, and heavily cultivated with grain crops, vegetables or fruits, and everywhere dotted with cattle. This landscape seems natural to me, a place where things are grey and drippy in the winter, green and lush in the summer. Spain, from my limited experience, seems dry, aggressively so, a landscape that is beautiful for sure, but exigent, and it seems to me, that the culture of Spain is passionate but unforgiving, with none of the soft permissiveness of France.

When we flew over the Pyrenees and left France behind, the rain clouds ended and the endless golden Spanish landscape stretched out under the plane’s wings. Now, from the train, that landscape was even more empty, more brutal. Spain seems extreme to me; France has a certain “doucer.”

Just impressions. Ramblings on a train.

To continue, the Pont Aven band went to Bilbao from Madrid. Objective: to see and experience the most famous contemporary building and the art that it contains.

The Coast at Port Manech

I never made Bilbao a personal goal, primarily because, though I knew the building would be fabulous, I never thought the art inside it was worth the trip. I was right, and wrong. As to the building, it is wonderful. There are moments -- the main hall, a spectacular space filled with curving white walls, and tumbling glass forms, or the view back over the rooftop from a highway overpass near one end – when one literally catches ones breath at how interesting the spaces, forms and materials all are. There are other moments, (and I had the same sensation visiting the Disney Concert Hall in L.A.), when the building is overly complicated, when moving from one gallery to another means a complicated route that has more to do with an architect showing off than with good architecture. There are times when the building, seems like the vain rose in “The Little Prince,” beautiful but annoying. That said, a rather vain poodle, in search of constant reaffirmation of its own peculiar beauty. That said, it’s a very exciting building, and light years beyond what passes for contemporary architecture – can anyone really get excited about the new MOMA?

Spectacular moments at GMB: walking in and viewing from above Richard Serra’s mesmerizing tilting, curving, and spiraling steel plates. I have experienced Serra’s work before over the years, and it only gets better and better. His shapes are so rich, as well as the rich patina-ed surfaces. To walk among through these massive undulating walls is other-worldly. One final note on Bilbao. Do not miss the town itself. It is clean, almost obsessively, much to my surprise as it has always been described as a gritty industrial town. It might have been, but it seems like Switzerland now, with broad clean streets, handsome buildings, large plate glass shop windows, and a modern tramway that runs in a clean modern park along a river. The old city has a lovely stone square, a graceful cast iron train station, a oval theater, a classic church, and the hustle and bustle of people filling out their objectives. I only regret not staying longer and having the chance to look at the local museum, which is also a mostly modern structure in a park, and looks interesting.

So, they say every village has its idiot, and also its crazy old maid. Well, in Pont Aven, I happen to live next to the latter, and rather than freaking me out, it has added spice to an otherwise business like interaction with the local inhabitants. To be frank, Pont Aven might have been something in the 1870’s, but it is certainly something else today, and that new Pont Aven is a giant maw of a tourist trap. The galleries, every other building has one, splash yellow on every house, and violet in all the skies, or worse, offer croqis in charcoal (made yesterday) of coiffed Breton women knitting sweaters in the dark of fishermen’s’ cottages.

View from my studio at Pont Aven

The worst tourist drek. There must be ten stores that hawk cute Breton cookies in little painted tins, and god-awful mass production pottery -- argh! The shopkeepers in February seem to be biding their time, waiting for the cavalcade of tourist that must fill the village to the gills, but from my point of view, with all this pushy quaintness, I welcome the crazy lady next door as something real, her pain and anger tangible, her confusion and terror plain, simple, honest.

My apartment is on the second floor of a stone house, and I am obliged to enter the building through a covered alley that passes underneath the neighboring house, and gives access to both buildings. As the houses that line the main street of Pont Aven all touch, there is nothing remarkable about this. Consider also, as the street’s buildings are all stone, with no vegetation, the street acts like an echo chamber, and every car truck or tractor is loud, really loud. I tell you all this not to complain, actually what is a single street village but a place where trucks slow down? No, I tell you this because the woman that inhabits the apartment, and specifically the room above the common corridor is obsessed with the noise that I (and several renters before me) make when putting the key into the lock and locking or unlocking the door.

I was warned, “There is a crazy woman who lives next to you. She will complain about the key making noise and the door slamming, but don’t pay any attention.” And from the first just that happened, so that every day or two, either from her window over the door on the village side, or from an open window in the common courtyard, or somewhere in town when I happen to cross her path she complains about how noisy I am when entering and exiting my temporary home. At first, I reassured her that I would try to use the key more quietly, not let the door slam. Then, finally fed up with the constant nagging, (I know its hard to believe, but I know how to open and shut a door in polite company) I simply told her that I would not spend 4 months discussing the door noise. “Madame je ne vais pas passer les 4 mois que je vais passer a Pont Aven a discuter les clefs de la porte.” I turned around and walked away. I think this must have broken some kind of code, whereby the foreign professor does his or her best to placated her on a continual basis, probably more because they don’t speak French than they are really engaged in guarding her wellbeing.

Last weekend, though, I think she flipped her biscuit, or her crepe, so to speak. Nathalie D. was visiting me from Versailles, an old friend whom I had not seen in a couple of years. Nathalie’s from the region around Laval, but her father was from the Antilles, and so Nathalie is what they called in French “Métisse,” descendant from a mixture of races. She is tall, thin, always wears clothes that she makes herself, and her skin is the color of hazelnuts.

Nathalie smokes, and as I wouldn’t permit her to have a cigarette in the apartment, she had one on the landing overlooking the interior courtyard around ten pm on Friday night. I went out to join her, and we were chatting. Suddenly the neighbor's window opened and she started yelling, that we hade no right to talk outside my house, that this was France, that we needed to shut up, etc., all of which I had seen before but Nathalie was taken aback a bit. Just as suddenly the neighbor slammed the window shut, without either one of us uttering a word in reply.

The next morning as we were showering and getting ready to depart (to a beautiful island called Ile de Groix), we noticed that a letter was left at my doorstep, which hadn’t been there when Nathalie had her morning cigarette. The neighbor must have come up my stairs and left the letter, which didn’t make me feel very comfortable, as she really has right to enter my courtyard and climb my stairs. The letter contained the ranting of a lunatic, “The Police were already here in 2004, if you remember, Monsieur, to check on your noise,” or “You are not allowed to have groups of young people making noise at all hours on your porch,” etc. Nonsense. I paid no attention to it, and put the letter in my backpack.

That night when we returned from the island, where the locals were celebrating mid-February madness with a costume parade with horses, ponies and lots of jubilant music, Nat and I decided to make a Pot au feu, a pork and vegetable soup that needs to cook for about an hour and a half in a pressure cooker. During this time we decided to go out for a walk. When we got out the front door, the upper story window opened and out popped the neighbor with the most vicious and violent verbal assault. She said this was France, that we needed to go back to the US, that we have no rights, etc., etc., etc. At one point she was cursing at us in German saying over and over “shiessa.” Nat tried to speak calmly to her, but I just said we should ignore her, that she was really in a rage and looking for a fight. As we walked away, a neighbor on the other side of the street opened her window and told us not to worry, that everyone knows that she is crazy, that she has done this to many of the American profs that have stayed there, all of which was good to hear.

A few days later, when I met with the owner of my apartment, (after all I had to say something), he said that he had heard that maybe the reason she became so aggressive over the weekend was that Nathalie is dark skinned, and this kind of racism could not be tolerated. As to how he had found out that I even had a friend over, I had not yet told him, and certainly not mentioned her race, he said that the shopkeeper downstairs had mentioned it. Small village. So that is the story of the village folle.

-Daniel