The first song that came up on the tape player today was Michelle Shocked’s ‘Anchorage’. I love that song. Don’t know anything about her, or what else she’s done, but that is a great song and a great production. I remember asking Pepsi when I was staying with her in Fons Sur Lussan whether she knew it and she said, “Know it? Every time I hear it I burst into floods of uncontrollable tears”, and I know exactly how she feels. There’s something about lines like, “Hey Shell, we was wild then”, and “I think I’m a housewife”, and the way she sings them, that really hits the spot.
The other day a friend asked me about the painting on my kitchen wall, which was given to me by its painter, Barbera, in Fons. It’s very impressionistic, painted in Barbera’s shaky hand, and depicts in thick layers of white and green paint the chalk hills she can see from her garden. I often look at it and think about lovely Barbera, how I met her in Daniel’s bar in Fons, and how she asked me to take photos of all her paintings before they went on show and on sale in Daniel’s place, La Goulade.
I wonder what she’s doing now, and how she’s coping with her multiple sclerosis. She phoned me a couple of months ago and it was so heartwarming hearing her lovely voice down the line - her lovely accent, still full of lightness and laughter. That time in Fons was the first and only time I’ve ever spoken with and spent some time with anyone who has MS. I must get round to printing the photos of her other paintings. I must phone her.
I have such fond memories of Daniel’s bar and all the brilliant music he played - rock, blues, jazz - and all the brilliant people who wandered in and out of the terrace of the best bar/café I’ve ever been in. There was such an amazing connection amongst the people who lived in that little ancient village, and so much of that was down to Daniel’s bar as its social hub. It was Daniel’s bar that inspired me to think about setting up a similar kind of place when my own daughter expressed an interest in running a pub. My own Blues Brasserie.
I remember the trip I made with Barbera to the local swimming pool, and then on to visit her parents’ farm, and watched her mother making goats cheese by hand in their little dairy. Such a different world, unchanged for centuries.
It was Daniel who insisted I phone Yanique to say goodbye to her on the day I was leaving, and through that phone call he brought about her surprise journey to Avignon, where I was staying that evening prior to catching the early TGV to Paris.
Apparently she’d been waiting in the bar at lunchtime to say goodbye, but as I was over two hours later than I’d expected she’d given up and gone home, taking with her a poem she’d wanted to give me.
Yanique with her mass of unruly red Breton hair, the same colour as my daughter’s. Over dinner in Avignon Yanique introduced me to “Les Passants”, Georges Brassens and Antoine Pol.
The way she recited the poem from memory with such expression and feeling gave me a real frisson. She worked in Daniel’s place, and I’d enjoyed talking with her and Daniel in the bar after hours, but I’d no idea she’d been thinking in terms of “passantes”.
The next day, sitting on the TGV speeding towards Paris, I read and re-read the printed copy of Les Passantes that she’d handed to me at the end of the evening. For the first and only time in my life I found myself welling up with . . . . something that was more a spiritual feeling than something that was emotional, to the point where tears started streaming down my face. Thank you Yanique, and Antoine, and Georges. It’s a brilliant piece of work.
Lighting one of the joss sticks I brought back from Japan the fragrance immediately transports my spirit back to ancient Zen temples and the incredible spiritual peace and harmony of their interiors and their gardens.
Speaking with Yoko on Skype yesterday, listening to her laughter and her giggles when she saw me on the webcam for the first time, had the same effect of making time and space seem irrelevant, at least in terms of who I am now and what I’ve been fortunate to experience in my lifetime. So many unforgettable and formative spiritual and emotional experiences. A long, strange trip indeed.
http://www.gard-provencal.com/an/vv/fons.htm
http://www.travelpost.com/travel/Oxzen
http://www.travelpost.com/EU/France/Languedoc-Roussillon/Fons-sur-Lussan/6177640
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fons-sur-Lussan
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Here’s a brilliant video of Georges Brassens singing “Les Passants” -
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Brassens/video/x18qox_brassens-les-passantes_music
It also has a copy of the words of the poem/song under the clip.
Nice comments posted after the clip and the lyric sheet:
Le thème des "belles passantes" de ce poème est magnifique. Voilà une belle façon de sortir de l'oubli le poète auteur du texte Antoine Pol ... Il était évident que ce ne pouvait être qu'un autre poète qui le fasse ... Merci Georges Brassens ...
ça me donne des frissons chaque fois que je l'écoute. a signaler la superbe reprise en anglais par jehro dans l'album putain de toi. c un pur délice
I know exactly what they mean by frissons - I still have them too when I listen to the song or read the poem. Un pur delice.
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/george-brassens-les-passantes-english-subtitles/1390312055
Another rendition on video - with translation in on-screen subtitles.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=l4Q7urIVYAE&feature=related Same song - with slide show. Some excellent comments posted on the site:
Brassens, poésie, génie, langue, sensibilté, joie, tristesse, réalité, connaissance des gens, respect, tout partagé dans ses chansons, que dis-je? Ses manifestos. Bravo Brassens
Quand ils ont annoncé la mort de Georges Brassens, j'ai pleuré à grosses larmes. Je n'avais que 10 ans. Heureux ceux qui ont connu l'époque de Brassens, Brel, Barbara et de Ferré
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C27QQXWle6c
This excellent version is sung by Francis Cabrel, with some nice bluesy guitar work and a fantastic blues harmonica solo in the middle. 5 minutes of real bliss.
http://dbarf.blogspot.com/2007/08/les-passantes-i-hope-you-enjoy-this.html
This is a really nice blog site on which a retired lecturer has posted a very good translation of “Les Passantes”. Also has other work by Brassens. Also lots of interesting stuff on the site about education and politics, and the politics of education.
http://www.paroles.net/chanson/19792.1 Just the words.
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Wikipedia
Today I made my first contribution to Wikipedia, and set up an account as a Wikipedia editor.
Maybe it was just a coincidence that the cover article in yesterday’s Guardian G2 was about the amazing Wikipedia: How I Fell In Love With Wikipedia. No doubt my little piece about Fons will get thrown off the site because it’s based mainly on opinion and not Facts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet
http://www.travelpost.com/travel/Oxzen
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Anchorage
http://www.last.fm/music/Michelle+Shocked/+videos/+1-vVxDIrhjLxk Site has video and lyrics. Also on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVxDIrhjLxk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hffcyJ1GAg
Amazon.com: The '80s folk revival yielded a diversely talented generation, some reared on the aesthetic and ideology of punk, some on their '60s singer-songwriter predecessors. They were looking for the directness of expression and connection with audience that stripped acoustic music promised. Michelle Shocked built an audience through her strident activist messages and raw, almost naked songs; she had the sincerity that the audience craved. Despite the militant cover--in which a cop is seen choking a protesting Shocked--the record is memorable for its reveries of childhood, its simple sense of hope, and Shocked's minimalist guitar and hoarse, youthful voice. --Roy Francis Kasten
http://www.amazon.com/Short-Sharp-Shocked-Michelle/dp/B000001FOH The site also has clips of other tracks that are on ‘Short, Sharp, Shocked’.
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