The French Connection

Well, it worked. The plane brought four of us as promised to Paris, we met our two other riding companions who came on a different flight and got into a van to take us into the city. An enthusiastic grey-goateed driver who talked non-stop (one of us actually speaks French!) as we passed the various sights— the Arc  d-Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the statue of Louis Pasteur, the flame sculpture honoring Diana and yet more. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the hotel rooms were ready and having hardly slept a wink on the 10-hour flight, I lay down in exhausted bliss and slept until my alarm woke me at 5.

 

The six of us met in the lobby (and there’s one more who came early who we’ll meet up with tomorrow) and wandered the neighborhood keeping an eye out for restaurants. Perfect temperature, the streets a-buzz with young people, kids bouncing on the playground trampoline, the iconic cafes with the small outdoor tables and cane chairs with people chatting, smoking, sipping coffee or wine. We sat down at one such place and while eating our first meal—and a promising one at that with a unique eggplant dish, gazpacho, calamari and such— I proposed a little game. Without looking a single thing up on our phones, what did we know about France and what were our associations with it? I suggested we do it by categories and here’s a first-draft list:

 

Children’s Books

The Red Ballon, Eloise, Madeline, Babar, the Little Prince. Tin-Tin. 

 

Literature (authors and select books)

Moliere—Tartuffe, Voltaire- Candide, Alexander Dumas- The Three Musketeers/ The Count of Monte Cristo, Victor Hugo- Les Miserables, Stendhal-The Red and the Black, Emile Zola—Germinal, Balzac—The Human Comedy, Louis Flaubert—Madame Bovary, Marcel Proust- Remembrance of Things Past, Anais Nin—The Diary of Anais Nin, Jean-Paul Sartre—No Exit, Albert Camus—The Stranger, Eugene Ionesco—Rhinoceros.

 

Poetry

Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Apollinaire, Valery, Mallarme.

 

Music: Composers

Guillaume Machaut, Guillaume Dufay, Josquin De Pres, Couperin, Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Faure, Bizet, Offenbach, Massenet, Poulenc, Saint Saens, Debussy, Ravel, Satie, Lili Boulanger, Boulez, Messian, Milhaud. 

 

Jazz Musicians

Django Reinhardt, Stefan Grapelli, Martial Solal, Jean-Luc Ponty, Michel Petrucciani, Jacques Loussier

 

Singers/ Songwriters

Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier, Michel Le Grand, Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour

 

Art 

Monet, Manet, Matisse, Degas, Pisarro, Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec, Seurat, Renoir, Rodin, Braque, Gauguin, Duchamp, Rousseau. 

 

Filmmakers

Jean Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Louis Malle, Francis Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Tati

 

Famous Films

Grand Illusion, Rules of the Game, Children of Paradise, Orpheus, Diabolique, The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, The Wild Child, Diva,La Cage aux Folles,  Jean de Florette, Amelie, 

 

Actors and Actresses

Charles Boyer, Yves Montand, Louis Jordan, Capucine, Maurice Chevalier, Leslie Caron, Jean Paul Belmondo, Simone Signoret, Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Denueve, Juliet Binoche, Jean Moreau, Gerard Depardieu, Marcel Marceau. 

 

Ex-pat Authors, Musicians, Dancers, Artists Who Lived for a time in Paris 

Statesman: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin Dancers: Josephine Baker, Isadora Duncan. Authors:Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, e.e.cummings, Rainer Marie Rilke, James Baldwin Artists: Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Miro, Modigliani Jazz Musicians: James Reese Europe, Sidney Bechet, Cole Porter, Mary Lou Williams, Memphis Slim, Big Joe Turner, Nina Simone, Hazel Scott, Quincy Jones Classical Composers Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Eliot Carter, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla 

 

That’s a mouthful! Quite a contribution to the arts and culture worldwide. And I confess that I cheated a bit with films, actors, actresses and poets once I got WiFi. But most came from the collective memory of the group and kept re-surfacing over the next day. Then new categories came up— philosophers, sports, politicians, food, fashion, cars and more. Stay tuned tomorrow! 

PS One of the movies I saw on the plane? The French Connection!