Brigitte, Monteverdi, Nessie and me.

Tuesday, October 12th 2o1o


Human Beings are tough little creatures, they are.

Of course, they look shabby, because they're easily bruised and torn and their hair gets messy if they don't take care of it.
They endure pain if they break, they endure pain when they mend, they would not even notice the difference if they did not, from time to time, encounter Joy.
Joy is the rare treat they're given to make them forget about that pain but again: joy is not that easy to handle, even if you're lucky enough to get loads of it. As long as you've met its nemesis in sadness or deception you're bound to admit it.
After all, when you're shaken by a bad piece of news, you're not far from the state your in after a joyfull announcement: you're shaken anyway.

Being well is the no-feel's-land inbetween, the temperature your skin does not even notice, the straight line running through the sinusoidal wave of ups and downs that you could even mistake for the main pattern if you look at it from a distance. But if you summarize the lot, Humans spend more time exhausting themselves with abnormally strong good and bad feelings than being simply, quietly 'well'. They spend more time trotting on the elbows than resting at the middle-junction.

And the amazing bit is that they survive! Tough they are, indeed!


All this long and odd incipit comes to highlight that we are all here today, me writing it, you reading it, because of this incredible ability to survive and, more important, because we've all been able to use it well and manage so far.

I hope you will accept my congratulations for this remarkable achievement. Hurray!



I have the unpleasant feeling though, that i've deserted these pages for ages and the truth is: i have indeed. Breaking a routine, even once, even for a short time, is as bad as deserting. This is why i intend to apologize for not having been 'just well', nor at least 'well enough' to be able to keep 'joy' and 'pain' on perfect balance and give the illusion of this straight line mentioned earlier.
My apology will therefore take the shape of Nessie: the bridges-like figure of a giant sea-monster, emerging triumphantly from the gleaming surface of a Scottish Loch. The upper part of the sinusoidal close-up on the well-being line. The joyfull part!



I'm afraid this will not include the visit of the Museum i had intended to see on the Second of October, because Bad Luck has forbidden me to put a foot in it on opening hours so far! The plan was to take Axelle and Erwann along to visit Gustave Moreau and to have dinner afterwards before meeting a couple of friends in the middle of Paris, in order to enjoy the multiple and drinkable advantages of a Nuit Blanche in Paris. It didn't go as planned at all, because we found ourselves getting lost on the way to the museum: it sounds very exciting here, you could picture us lost in the urban jurassic-jungle surrounded by unfriendly dino-cars and ptero-bikes, but we just got the address wrong and arrived when they were closing the doors! We ended up visiting an odd church-mise-en-abyme, and stopped for a Coke, a Grog and a Lemon Juice, followed by a Curry in a Thai restaurant and even more Grogs...



I wanted to go back to Gustave the next day, but i was ill, and then on Monday but didn't find the courage, then on Tuesday but it was closed, then Wedne...well, you got the idea...

Never mind: i've done and seen much, much better (easy to compare when i actually do not even know what Gustave Moreau's Museum is worth, but allow me the enthusiasm)! Let's put aside the private part of the 'joy' revolving aroud a fixed point now somewhere in the north and focus on the Parisian fat crumbles of excitingness taking us up to the 8th of the month, the day of the first Concert of the Musical Season!

My favourite seat in my favourite little church. It could have been enough to make my evening, had the concert been of poor quality.



But no such luck for my inner feel-o-meter which eventually exploded when the ten united voices of the Medieval Music Ensemble Discantus led by Brigitte Lesne produced, a cappella, the purest interpretation of the works of Gilles de Binchois i had ever heard.



But would all this pleasure have had a third of its impact had i not been invited by a Mary-Poppinsomaniac new friend to go, the following day, to the rehearsal of some Monteverdi she was directing?

Would it have had half of the impact had i not been asked to take a part in the adventure?

Would it have had a tenth of the impact had i not spent all the week-end focusing on this musical project whilst getting so many kind and affectionate messages on my mobile?

Probably not.



I then do hope you enjoyed the company of Nessie, because you can easily imagine how relieving it can be to count on such a highly arched friend, such a higly pitched joy that it can make you forget that the whole Nessie, especially because of its deeply immerged bits, can be a monter as well, and could be that monster mostly and in the same time, if the water-line was not there to make it look friendly and mysterious...


I'd love to use Nessie as a bridge. And i promise you'll know everything about Gustave Moreau some day.