Armistice Day in Paris: Crossing Paths with World Leaders

It was raining off and on in Paris last weekend. We took our time with le petit déjeuner and the rain, and made our way to the Louvre, but because of the line, we decided to keep walking and try our luck with the line at the Musée d'Orsay. There we stood under umbrellas, cold and damp.

Then, a voice comes over the intercom announcing that the museum will close at 14h (2pm) due to raisons officielles, although in English they said "special event." It was 12:30pm. As I said to Carol, even if we get in at 1:00 it's still worth it to see the museum, which is itself a historic monument. The old Orsay train station, with its gorgeous original clock, was built in 1900 for the World Fair.

1900, Exposition universelle au bord de la Seine

And today under a gorgeous glass roof....

      ...the Musée d'Orsay houses art from the latter part of the 19th century through WWI. 

As we slowly move up in line while people are being turned away behind us, we hear that Trump is in town and that he and Melania are coming to the Musée d'Orsay, thus the reason it is to close. And when we leave as the museum closes an hour later, we see national security outside with vans and guns, waiting to sweep the museum before the president enters. Carol says what he would appreciate of the museum and I wonder where can one find old tomatoes for sale in the city center.

We were staying in the 8th arrondissement by the Madeleine in the center of the city. With police and closed roads here and there, a major stage set up under the Arc de Triomphe, and flags up the Champs Elysées where we had lunch, it made even more sense when we learned that in fact 72 of the world's leaders were having dinner at the Musée d'Orsay that evening. Those were pretty official reasons for cutting our museum visit short! It was kind of cool, in the end, that the trip I'd planned for my friend's 40th fell on the same weekend as the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the WWI armistice. (That part was not planned!)

And if many were delighted to see a reprint of the Le Figaro from 100 years ago declaring that Germany had surrendered in that morning's edition, we can only imagine the joy and relief of readers back then....

The next day, as we waited in a rainy line once again for the Louvre, three jet planes flew overhead with puffy, faded trails of the French tricolore, bleu, blanc, and rouge. I read that Macron urged world leaders gathered at the Arc de Triomphe to cast off nationalism. Admirable. Later, a young French man would tell me that he doesn't much like Macron. I ask why and he says, taxes. I asked, mais c'est votre système, non? He nodded, wobbling his head. Macron's speech is worth quoting in part as the French president asked how the photos taken that morning would be remembered in the future: "A symbol of lasting peace? Or the last moment of unity before the world falls into disorder? That depends on us."

To the ears that needed to hear it most, and which are perhaps the most deaf of all, Macron said: "Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. In saying ‘our interests first, whatever happens to the others,’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: its moral values."

  

Screw tomatoes! These women were much more resourceful.

In his speech, Macron also stated: "Old demons are resurfacing. History sometimes threatens to take its tragic course again and compromise our hope of peace. Let us vow to prioritise peace over everything."

LET'S!

And on a special note, when we'd fly home last monday, a 93-year-old WWII veteran who was invited by the president to the ceremony played the harmonica over the intercom in his pins and leather jacket, dedicating his rendition of the national anthem to pilots, crew, and passengers. It was very touching.

And when a young woman thanked him for his service as we boarded, I overheard him respond: "Thank you for yours!"

Impressionism & Belle Époque Paris

Salon of 1890

Paris of the Belle Époque was imbued with an ethereal quality and gave rise to revolutionary forms of art, music, and literature. The years between 1879 and 1914 bore elements of beauty, innovation, and highly multidisciplinary art forms, a legacy embedded in the ambiance of present-day Paris. The first metro line opened in 1900, daring women exchanged confining skirts for trousers, and artists, writers, and musical composers gathered in cafés and music halls. 

The Gare St-Lazare, Claude Monet (1877)

It was the era of invention—not only of the motion picture and telephone, but also of self-fashioning women who entered the public sphere as writers, actresses, and scientists. Yet if Belle Époque Paris was the center of progress and pleasure, it was also a time of decadence. In contextualizing both the hope and melancholy of the times, we look to Impressionist art for a sense of modern subjectivity as it grapples with changing conceptions of time and beauty. The Impressionists’ audacity to situate the mundane in the visual arts was deeply unpopular in the Belle Époque—a controversy that speaks to the angst underlying modernity as it continually brings about new forms of society and, with it, ways of feeling and seeing.

Today, we may look at serene, light-filled landscapes and portraits by Impressionists like Renoir, Monet, or Pissarro and wonder what is so radical about them. Why did these painters in Paris suffer, even starving at times? Unlike artists of the past who painted or sculpted in exchange for support from kings, popes, or nobility, Impressionists didn't create to endorse the status of any man or institution. They were shockingly autonomous!

Gustave Courbet’s La Rencontre (1875)

Scandalous paintings such as Courbet’s La Rencontre (1875) allow us to understand emerging notions of the artiste libre who makes a forceful break with long practiced arts patronage to make his own artistic choices. Here we see the haughtiness of the artist who looks upon his mécène, Alfred Bruyas, accompanied by his valet and dog. This painting caused a scandal at the universal exposition, where it was described as une manifestation d'un monstrueux orgueil.

Caillebotte’s Les raboteurs de parquet (1854)

In contextualizing Caillebotte’s Les raboteurs de parquet (1854), we can imagine the shock it gave jurors who criticized its “vulgar subject matter” of half-clad, working-class men. 

Argenteuil, Édouard Manet
(1874)

And when Manet submitted Argenteuil (1874) to the Salon, critics ridiculed it for the vivid blue of the water, calling it “too intense” as they preferred the traditional, somber colors of academic painting. In its defense, writer Emile Zola offered this perspective: “Imagine that on the ruins of classical rules and romantic humbug, in the waste of dullness and the impenetrable fog of banality and mediocrity, a tiny flower has sprung up, a green shoot on the old, exhausted stump [….] That is why I feel cheerful when I look at Manet’s works amid those others, reminiscent of decay, that are hung alongside.”

Like Monet and Renoir who worked with tubes of paint and canvas in the open air, Degas, Manet, Pissarro, Morisot, and Gauguin decided artwork would be their own way of seeing the modern world, foregoing mythological, biblical, and aristocratic subjects of the past. This meant a more democratic type of painting, one that arguably mirrors France’s shift from monarchy to republic. What they were painting, how they were painting, and where they were painting were radical. Light changed the appearance of what one saw hour to hour and became an object of study itself as Monet painted haystacks or train stations at various times of the day. Impressionists realized something that John Berger said in the 1970s: “In the end, the art of the past is being mystified because a privileged minority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes, and [seeking] such a justification.” Impressionists invented ways of seeing the present, inviting spectators to engage with change itself, with the modern world, and with reforms in society. In this way, painting became a privileged mode for accessing and witnessing the world.

Un Atelier aux Batignolles, Henri Fantin-Latour (1870) 
Manet painting, with Astuc seated nearby. Standing, from Left to Right:
Scholderer, Renoir, Zola, Maître, Bazille, and Monet

To appreciate Impressionism, we turn to literature, musical composition, and poetry of the Belle Époque as these art forms looked to painting for interplay and innovation in the struggle to represent their experience. Literary movements such as Naturalism, which was also inspired by scientific methods of observation, became interchangeable with Impressionist painting: Zola was an Impressionist with a pen. As Kahnweiler, a well-known art dealer of Cubists Picasso and Braques, said: “Painting is in fact a form of writing.” The French musical composer, Erik Satie, contemporary of the Impressionists, would agree as he said he learned more from painters than he ever did from musicians. Like composers Ravel and Debussy, Satie was seeking new paths in musical expression, a quest predicated by “the necessity for a Frenchman to free himself from the Wagnerian adventure.” In his view, it did not matter whether music made use of methods discovered by Symbolism or Impressionism, so long as one went one’s own way. 

Indeed, the painting in series that Monet invented suggests that our observations of the world are incomplete and that modern life needs constant revision. The Belle Époque marks the awareness of change, and the back-and-forth of the various arts therein allows us to delve deeper into the limitless debate between Classical traditions and modernity.

Monet's study of the portal of the Rouen Cathedral

Bazille's Studio; 9 Rue de la Condamine, Frédéric Bazille (1870)
Left to Right: Renoir (sitting), Zola (on stairs), Manet & Monet next to Bazille

Poetry, musical composition, and paintings of the Belle Époque occasionally hearkened back to the Classical period, a period that--not without coincidence--witnessed the birth of La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. In peering from our own viewpoint to the Belle Époque, we exercise historical perspective once again as we look from the Belle Époque back to the early modern period, a time when Louis XIV’s renown was derived by the way he framed his own portraiture with attributes of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun. If seventeenth-century Paris is regarded as a time of high art and renown, it was in part due to its artistic emulation of the high beauty of Classical Greece. In observing how society grafts itself onto previous ones for stability, we see how art embodies the struggle to release the restraints of a heavily coded past and create newer expressions of experience. As Apollinaire wrote in “La jolie rousse” (1919), Pitié pour nous qui combattons toujours aux frontiers de l'illimité et de l’avenir.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Édouard Manet (1863)
The woman looks directly at the viewer, interrogating his or her way of seeing.

A guiding symbol for a discussion of modernity and the shifts it produced is the Eiffel Tower. This iron tower emblematizes the dramatic shift from classical to modern aesthetics, the effects of which toy with notions of time, timelessness, and beauty--as can be sensed in the protests that arose with its construction (1887-89): “We come, writers, painters, sculptors, architects, passionate lovers of the beauty, until now intact, of Paris, to protest with all our force, in the name of threatened French art and history, against the erection, in the very heart of our capital, of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower."

Technology and progress inspire disenchantment and nostalgia for former ways of living, sparking questions surrounding identity, culture, and history that merit ongoing discussion. The visual arts serve as an ideal point de départ for comprehending the crossroads of tradition and modernity. In truth, painting maintained a remarkable role in buffering, interrogating, and ultimately forming our modes of seeing. When we look deeper into Impressionist painting and its context, we understand the sacrifice and remarkable passion that these artists demonstrated as seers of the world: They took a decidedly active role in questioning the boundaries set forth by the values of their culture and their time. Still today, their perspectives intimate alternate ways of coping with reality as modernity marches on.

Many thanks to Dalia Judovitz for teaching me about the aesthetics of the visible.

Merci beaucoup

Regarding Tallahassee

In my last post, I found myself tackling an overwhelming issue that many of us deal with at a conscious or subconscious level--processing the overwhelming nature of violence in the headlines. I was kind of wondering why I was writing such a post. Although horrifying news is something I often grapple with, I wasn't quite sure why I was writing about such a hugely vast (not to mention relatively upsetting) topic. Minutes after I hit the publish button, I saw the news on my computer that there was a shooting in a yoga studio in Tallahassee, FL. This struck home for many reasons: I had just written on the topic, thinking of the fear of violence far off coming closer to home as we see in the news, and then I see in the headlines an act of senseless violence against a yoga community in a town that I grew up in as my second home. It was a bit surreal and uncanny. My sisters and I all felt it and the text messages in our group thread began.

Our father's restaurant was in Tallahassee from the 80s up through 2004 or so. My dad had several restaurants and many friends in the community. He was the Italian restaurant of Tallahassee, and made his third and fourth World's Largest Pizza just outside the capitol. Here is a commercial featuring my father and his restaurant to give you a sense of his legacy and love for Tallahassee. I also just found a recent article (from 2014) from the Tallahassee Democrat, (written years after my father left Tallahassee) describing the history surrounding the making of the World's Largest Pizza and his reputation as a bon vivant.

There are funny commercials that I have on video cassette: one of him in a tuxedo running from one restaurant (on Tharpe street) to his other restaurant (on W. Tennessee Street) to the sound of Vivaldi as he balanced a straw bottle of Chianti on a server's tray and red linen. You can see why many people I would meet in Tally admired the character my father was--not to mention his genuine hospitality and the delicious "celebrity pastas." When there was the question surrounding the re-election of George W. Bush, international reporters were at our restaurant. Many respected FSU professors and coaches, as well as senators, would eat there. FSU was also my brother's and my alma mater. It was--and still is--a peaceful, slow, resilient community. 

So, given this family history, given the swaying Spanish moss, sturdy oaks, and canopy roads of this southern town (Tallahassee is "more southern Georgia than Florida" as they say) and given the peacefulness of residing in such a town, it was startling to see Tallahassee associated with such a horrifying tragedy. Of course, the whole point is that these things can happen anywhere.

Yet what also struck me was something my older sister, Nancy, shared--it was a quote from Mr. Rogers, who in fact was quoting his own mother: In any tragedy, you can "look for the helpers." My sister followed this with a blurb about a man who, in his bare feet, charged the shooter and saved other lives that morning. The helpers. They rise up. As I was saying in my last post, people take courage when they have to. 

Soon after the news broke, sixty people gathered in front of the capitol to do yoga in honor of the doctor / owner of the yoga studio who was killed, as well as the young woman too. The beauty of the community practice does not restore the lives of those who were lost, not by any stretch of the imagination. And yet the photo is very poignant given the context, as they take their bodies and hearts to the mat on the pavement, honoring the women whose lives were taken. Here is the incredibly touching photo my sister found in the news:

Tallahassee, FL. November 3, 2018

Two beautiful souls are carrying on their voyage beyond Tallahassee. May they find peace.

"Put flowers in the mud baby"

~U2

Regarding the Violence of the World

Headlines are constantly being made and yet how are we processing the violence we read about? It seems to me that if we could understand even just one act of violence, whether against an animal, a child, a woman, a man, or a sacred site, then we would have understood the world and age we live in. Whether the genocides and terror in Cambodia, Europe, or Rwanda, whether terror against intellectuals, an ethnic group, or indigenous peoples, whether on a small or massive scale, acts of violence are overwhelming to deal with in their aftermath, let alone during the enduring trauma. Lives were taken and then there are those who survived--those who are left to go on, make meaning, uphold a memorial.

We live in a digital age where individuals' stories can be made much more available. Amongst the noise and babble of this world, stories of grit are getting amplified with technology and social media and they rise up from the concrete, from the ashes, from the dirt. One such enabler is Humans of NY, a photoblog of street portraits and individual interviews started in 2010 by Brandon Stanton. Humans of NY recently went to Kigali, Rwanda and the stories that emerged have an effect. This post is about grappling with that effect.

People take courage when they have to... The was the bare bones struggle for survival that the 400 children and family members hiding in the ceiling of a church endured for weeks on end. There, children heard six young men being tortured to death all night outside the church by killers who were demanding to know where the other Tutsis were hiding. The young men died in silence. Yet the powerful story of their sacrifice and bravery is anything but silent--if we have the means to listen. Such stories reflect a shared humanity that we can empathize with (in particular cases) through imagination and perhaps even through our own samskaras. Survivors of abuse, cancer, impoverishment or violence have much to share with the world about human dignity--as well as the paradoxes of survivorship. And then there are the living mute, whose story may reach no one or only the few who see and understand their living conditions. Then there is the power of photography--and yet, one must be careful to never exploit the suffering of others or to assume to speak for them.

So what's the purpose of taking in stories and photos of those who suffer? Perspective. Empathy, prayer, thoughtfulness. Kindness. Seeing how we can live responsibly and seek to give in the hope that the world may be filled with more of the light that we see in those who are made strong by trials.

And as anyone who has given knows, it is more about receiving than giving. I remember being 21 years old and going to Belgium to help at refugee centers there via a missionary church. Never was it more apparent that I had nothing to give. I wanted God to "use me" and yet all I could really do was appreciate the exchange of hearts that occurred in my time spent listening and smiling with kids and people from the Philippines, Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, the Congo.... How loving they were, detained in a holding place. I didn't understand the severity of their lives--or how to help--but I felt love.

From that experience though, I learned that the idea of giving to others is where we can still have it wrong. Helping others has nothing to do with the self or ego; it has everything to do with complete and utter humility. Realizing you are the blind one.

New sanctuary for rare black rhinos in N Kenya.
"The reality is that in the conservation world
we live in crisis," says Batian Craig

Here in the US, it seems most of our ills are caused by mental and spiritual illness, borne from boredom (tamas), excessive medical prescriptions for anti-depressants (over 100 million prescribed each year--see this incredible TED talk by Helen Fisher regarding this scary fact and more broadly, how it could correlate with love), the privileging of white males (the ones who, when disappointed, unload rounds on school grounds), as well as rajasic materialism and greed, not to mention a puritanical heritage that has become deeply perverted. There is a lack of good role models--in fact on TV and in mainstream culture we have quite the opposite. And while these impoverished cultural values extend to other places, there are yet areas of the world where luxury and materialism is not an option and where the focus is more on the family and doing what one needs to do to get by. There too there are hard choices. (I would contend that there is more innocence in other areas of the world, just as there are more political and social injustices there too.)

As a parent it is easy to fear what the world will look like in the coming years. Introspection regarding the state of the world may help us at the very least in understanding the need to teach our children that there are way more important things than their little bubble, and that the best we can do with our achievements, talents and resources is to have the right perspective on things--via values of family, education and faith-- and to be prepared and help others. These are perhaps lofty notions, but they are goals that will hopefully be made real by a touch of divine grace and direction.

As I draft this post, Ray Charles is playing on the record player and my son is dancing and skipping around and grabbing my legs. May love be a light to all of our feet. What we need is more play, more dance, more community, and more hands held. Less distraction too.

Our destiny is wrapped up in the human heart.

In closing, a poem that is replete with alchemy--as is the spiritual path or process. From the personal to the macro, our today is in need of nothing short of this kind of magic:

"Uncaged Love"

Free the bird of your love

from the iron cage of selfishness

and it will fly high into the open sky.

Yes, when love escapes the prison,

the needy thief becomes a generous donor,

giving precious gifts without demanding returns.

Pure, vast, jubilant,

it flies beyond the limits – even of this sky, 

suddenly changing from a sparrow to an eagle. 

Until it lands at the feet of the Beloved 

where it is instructed in a new art: 

to dive deep into the ocean of divine ecstasy. 

And when the mighty bird of your love 

returns from that sphere, 

it is no longer brown but dazzling golden. 

It loves like the sun – unconditional, 

giving its nourishing rays to all 

without ever asking for something in return, 

and never becoming tired or exhausted. 

~Sacinandana Swami

A baby Krishna cries for his mom