I was in Venice. Now I’m back in Paris.
Yep.
I’ll try to write about the Biennale when I’ve got some sleep….
Monthly Archive for October, 2005
Rosa Parks died on Monday at the age of 92
“For a long time people were a little bit afraid of Rosa Parks because she had created this whole new modern civil rights movement,” Conyers told Detroit radio late on Monday. “They didn’t know what to expect, and they certainly didn’t expect someone that quiet. She sought no limelight; you’d never hear her talking about her own civil rights activities and all the things that she had been in,” he said.
My first batch of Spain pictures are up. I decided to start with my favorite city – Granada
Start with the photo in the upper left corner. I actually organized the comments so that they sorta flow together if you keep hitting “next”.
I’m hoping to edit/scan/comment/post photos from Madrid, Cordoba, and Sevilla when I get back from Venice.
I posted my snail mail addy on a stable page. You can reach it by hitting the “Paris contact info” link to your left.
Real live URL:
http://www.residenthipster.com/blog/?page_id=41
I posted it a few weeks ago, but I realized that I never said anything about how you can find me. I like getting mail.
Would making this be:
a) cute
b) on the road to making giant lacy toilet paper roll covers
c) both
I think I just miss pumpkin carving.
‘les and I have been talking about going to Venice for the Biennale since we decided on moving to Paris. The show closes the first week of November so we pretty much have to go right now in order to make it there in time to see it.
We just got train tickets and hotel reservations today. There was some uncertainty about wether or not we’d be able to go because the trains had appeared to be booked coming back next week and we couldn’t really be gone for as long as we’d have to be to get a train back. We decided to go back to the ticket office and just make reservations for whatever dates we could get and magically the dates we wanted in the first place appeared to be doable. I have no idea what happened.
So! Here’s the plan:
Wednesday 26 October 2005:
Our train leave the Gare Du Lyon station in Paris at 8:04 headed to Milan. It arrives at 14:47. We then switch trains and take a 17:56 train from Milan to Venice, which arrives at 17:56.
We’re staying at:
Locanda da Scarso
Piazzale Malamocco 4 Malamocco Venezia
Venice
p. +39 041770911
This is on Lido island and not the lagoon-y part of Venice. It’s about 25 minutes by bus/boat to Saint Mark’s Square.
Satruday 30 October 2005:
Or train leave the Mestre station in Venice at 13:04 headed to Milan. It arrives at 15:55. At 16:13 we leave from Milan to Paris. We’ll arrive in Paris 22:51.
Then I guess it’s All-Saints day in Paris. I should find something appropriate to do for that.
I went to the opera twice this week. That would make the total times I’ve been to an opera exactly two. I really enjoyed both the shows I saw and I’m looking forward to seeing others.
Much like the SF Opera, the Paris Opera offers standing room only tickets for 5 Euros. You have to be at the opera house an hour and half before the show and you have to be one of the first 62 people in line in order to get these tickets. But since the Bastille is maybe a 5 minute metro ride from me, it’s entirely reasonable to go do this whenever the mood strikes. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve never done this in SF. ‘les and I had planned on it once or twice over the summer but I think other things kept coming up.
Anyway, I went to the Opera for the first time on Wednesday night. The show that night was La Boheme. Lovely. I’m happy that I already knew the story for the most part, though, because I honestly had no idea what was going on. They have dialogue written up in French that scrolls above the stage, which is only of marginal use to me since it’s difficult to both translate the subtitles and watch the show at the same time. The staging was gorgeous, however. I fell in love with the sets.
‘les had class Thursday night so I decided to go back to the Opera and catch the last night of Cardillac (that would be pronounce ‘cardiac’ even though I personally kept reading ‘Cadillac’). I was totally unfamiliar with this opera so I really had very little idea of what exactly was going on. It was really rather plot-y, though, so I could follow the basics of the story. Once again, I loved the staging. It takes place in the 20s and the costumes made me extremely happy. I want to be a big haired diva running around in lush hotel suites wearing sequined slips under great big dressing robes and sipping huge glasses of champagne when I grow up.
It’s weird going to these things and mostly paying attention to the sets and costuming. I feel like I should maybe be getting something different out of it. However, I’ve hung around enough non-acting theater folks to appreciate how much or all those element take so I’m happy to get to pay so much attention to it.
I got most of my idea about what’s going on from the emotional cues in the music. It works out ok for the most part but it did cause me some confusion about the details of what was happening. In the first scene of La Boheme, for instance, I kept expecting there to be some sort of comic misunderstanding between characters because of the lightness of the music and none ever materialized. How am I supposed to feel sorry for these people’s plight as starving artists if the music is running around being comical? Also, you’re hitting each other with baguettes. I need more tragedy, people. Ahem.
I’m also not totally sure I understand what the heck was going on in Cardillac. Something about jewels, murder, and mob rule. I enjoyed the mod scenes, though. The chorus’s parts were beautiful. I loved hearing all the parts change as people moved around on stage.
This post is long and I think I sound like an idiot, so I’ll just end it now…
Got back from Spain this morning.
Timanna and Vanessa are here for a few days. So we went to the Pompidou Center to see the Dada exhibition and wander around the recently re-organized permanent collection.
The Dada exhibit was painfully complete. I wish I could read more French since most of the exhibit involved letters and Dada journals.
The permanent collection is gigantic. I should have taken ‘les’s advice and saved it for a separate day. I breezed through a lot of it towards the end and it was still took at least 2 hours to get through. I liked the organization, though. Pieces were grouped by theme rather than by artist, chronology, or art movement. So there was a room that was just works that were white, and another with just translucent pieces, another on war, another on voyeurism….the list goes on.
After spending so much time looking at religious Medieval and early modern art in churches for the last two weeks in Spain, I have to say that spending some time with modern art was refreshing. I feel recharged.