And she'll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away
(Fun, fun, fun, 'till her daddy takes the T-bird away)
- Fun, Fun, Fun, Mike Love & Brian Wilson (1964)
Late-afternoon, Friday, 13 March, the day they shut the schools and universities, Karine and I were watching choreographer Christina Towle rehearse a new piece she calls Bounce Back at Regard du Cygne performance studio.
Towle’s Bounce Back piece shows basketball as movement rather than game. Good idea, good show. Intriguing dramatic challenge, too.
We did not know then that this was the last dance piece we would be seeing for an unforeseeable future.
We did not know that “bounce back” might apply to our future hopes as well as to basketball. We did not know that, as we sat, Gaiety was shooting the moon, stiffing the help, taking the last train out.
To help slow the exponential spread of Covid-19, they had shut the bigger theaters, performance, athletic and leisure spaces, with a single decree effectively laying off most, but not all, performing artists and entertainers in the Paris, in France.
As we were leaving, a guy from city hall came to discuss Regard du Cygne’s fate with Towle – a performer and choreographer, she is also the studio’s programming chief.
Karine and I speculated on that as we walked home.
Saturday night, 14 March, Karine and I ate late in a crowded brasserie. The supper was meant as a cheering goodbye. Karine had decided to go home early the next day.
The little boy-girl duo of barely-legal servers were urging another drink on us; not something servers usually do in this country.
Enjoy it while you can, the boy said, They have shut us all down from tomorrow morning.
It’s true? Karine asked the girl. For once, she said, smiling, Honor bright.
The brasserie was stuffed with anxious, youngish foreigners speaking English of every native and international accent. Students? IT people? Tourists?
While we were guzzling extra-large portions – waste not, want not – and swilling those last blushful Hippocrenes, the authorities shut down the goddam gyms.
This hit home. A key element in the Nine Circles of Life, Gym is enthroned in Movement but has at least a modest claim to a stool in Conversation, Desire, Pleasure, Open Heart, Good Humor, Reason, Imagination and Fair Dealing. I met Karine at Gym.
Next morning, Sunday, 15 March, I saw her off.
The weather was as fine as it gets on a 15 March along the 49th parallel, north; for some reason, I just love the walk down from Gare de l’est to République.
Since there was no rush to have any old how now, I threaded down to the canal, figuring to double back to République by a deliberate and circuitous route made short, sweet and straight by Movement and Imagination.
People were already out in their droves enjoying the warm sunshine. No sort of social distance at all. As usual, they were casually close, grasping paws, rubbing muzzles, giving and getting those friendly little blow-on-the-cheek kisses.
Even approving social distance now, as I certainly do, I have long approved social closeness, this touchy-feeliness among friends, family, neighbors and work partners, the old and the young. Doing distance when closeness is so obviously better takes practice – it’s plumb tough to turn aside a neighbor’s handshake, let alone turn aside his toddler’s dimpled hand and shy little smooch.
Under the bright sun, in the warming air, feeling well rhythmed in the rhyme of this agreeable 75th episode of 2020’s Comédie humaine series, I decided to walk all the way home.
I made sure to pass through Père Lachaise. I went in the front, took a right, climbed a bit and went out the secret door in the eastern wall to the wild garden, what is said to be the last truly natural patch of Paris.
I felt like seeing what kind of life was wiggling in the little pool of troubled water that gathers on the weedy brim of the patch. More than a bit of a ghoul, it tickles me to think the seep of the cemetery’s moldering citizens, Balzac surely among them, is the trouble in the water that nourishes the brackish little pool – waste not, want not.
It was early evening before I got home, as I suppose it was for everybody else.
Sunday’s citizen snuggle-bunnies, the apparent reigning légerèté d’esprit and obvious inconsequence, were said to have riled Monsieur le Président de la République, Emmanuel Macron. That it riled him is not surprising, but I don’t think, as some evil wags mutter, it affected what was to follow.
While Mrs. Macron’s wunder-boy is surely no fool, he is rather too-earnest, even pinched-up. He’s the kind of fellow inclined to think that closing cafés, forcing parents and children to spend more time together, keeping proper social distances and a generous dash of Darwinian struggle will improve morals as well as health outcomes. This is why Monsieur le Président has the costly habit of getting it so damned wrong even when he’s damned right.
At the report I received on Monday, 16 March, Regard du Cygne, like that brave little radio station in the War of the Worlds, was still open. And like that brave little station’s lone reporter, I told myself, with a wry chuckle of course, Regard du Cygne yet promulgated the human spirit in the face of the terrifying, silent marauder from afar …
Tuesday morning, 17 March, I went to get a 3-liter box of wine – at this point in my life, waist-line be damned, I need wine more than admiration.
I found long, straggly lines at each of the three local supermarkets and the two exotic markets in the neighborhood.
To judge from their overflowing Ikea carrier bags, shoppers seemed to buy a lot of noodles and chicken. Peering into the windows showed there was plenty of toilet paper to come back for later, so I went back home, empty-handed.
My email announced they had closed Regard du Cygne until further notice.
Plato’s ghost! Thus, a world-historical achievement! From the City banned, Representation, Illusion and mountebanks, big and small!
Death of one Age or Birth of another? Or just more careless slouching toward Jerusalem?
Anyhow, for the next couple weeks, they were going to have more say over my doings than usual.
But. So What? I haven’t got any say over the pandemic. Why shouldn't they imagine they do? Far better I can blame them for its inconveniences, then, than be forced to accidentally blame myself for what neither I nor they can really do piddle about.
Comments