Back here again. Every five to seven months it would seem.
I am writing now because I just returned from a trip to London and Paris; first time to London in many years, and the second time to Paris since last October. I went because, well, I could. And because I had just completed four wearying months closely examining. and teaching about media at Harvard and to a seminar group on Beacon Hill in Boston.
The actual dynamic in the classroom with the participants was not a problem, in fact it was exhilarating. It was having to make constant, daily, intense, detailed reviews of the workings of the media that did me in. I felt like I was slowly trudging through heavy, polluted waters most of the time, and the effort made me tired, discouraged, and in need of rejuvenation.
So, London and Paris was it. I know, I know: both of those cities have plenty wrong with them both inside the media and out. But I am not a part of that there, and these places have a grandeur, culture, and history which is impossibly alluring. They are also far away. So I went, and it was a cleansing experience. Fresh waters after foul.
I don't want to turn this into one of those dull, self-involved, living room travelogue slide shows. Like Rick Steves without any production values. What I want to concentrate on are the qualities in both cities that I found rejuvenating.
LONDON: First the people I met. Friendly, helpful, chatty, open, patient. In the underground where several times I had to ask hard-pressed Information booth people how the damned Oyster Transportation Card worked, while those queue-loving Britishers waited as the impossibly dense American tried to get it straight.The Information people always smiled, always took the time, and no one in the crowd behind me ever threatened my life, or complained at all. In the museums where, even though I was carrying a labeled map, written in my very own language, I was often not quite certain how to get to the painting or the sculpture I needed to see. There, the guards not only pointed me in the right direction, but
every time walked part of the way with me to make certain I was on the right path. Or on the streets and in the theaters, where residents struck up conversations and impressions, and invited me to share a table or a bench. They always seemed to have the time, and inclination to let me in. Every night I returned to my hotel restored and made happy by my encounters.
The city and the culture itself: London is somehow larger than I remembered from years ago. Unlike Boston where I came from, or Paris where I was going, I had to take the tube to wherever I wanted to explore. But once I was in the right area I never stopped walking.What there is to see is endless there. There's always one more museum nearby, a hundred more Impressionists to view, the restored original Churchill bunkers, or constant living reminders of the city's past like the original home of Dr.Johnson tucked, along with a memorial to his beloved cat, into a dense, urban city square. Building after building and park after park, small and large, all used, all defining the values and aesthetics of the city. There's plenty new that's going on, particularly across the Thames where the Tate Modern and National Theater are located. The cranes are up there. But it is the old that defines the city, giving it a weight and a connection to the past which is enduring and reassuring.
Then I took the on-time high sped train from the heart of London to the heart of Paris.
PARIS: It's all been said, practically. So I won't go on about the beauty, the romance, the history --- tempting though it is.
I did all the usual things. The long walk to the cemetery where Jim Morrison (and Chopin, and Piaf, and Stein and the rest of the gang) are buried. The Louvre, where even in early June every human on the planet was crowded inside, except for no one in front of the single Vermeer, which was all I really wanted to see there. The folk art Musee du Quai Branly which has placed its brazen modern self directly next to the stolid, massive Eiffel Tower. The silent beauty of the Water Lillies at Monet's Musee de l'Orangerie. And on and on.
But there are two moments in Paris that stand out.
One was the first touch on my tongue of the Cassis sorbet from Berthillon's on the Ile St. Louis. There is a god, and he or she runs that place, and makes those ice creams and sorbets. It is an instant reminder of what we can aspire to, and achieve. That the experience quickly disappears, and needs to be constantly replenished, is yet another important lesson.
The other was when I walked out of a small movie house across from the Pompidou after seeing (at a friend's suggestion) the new Woody Allen film, Midnight In Paris. The film is lovely, and intensified my feelings and my affection for the city for the entire visit. But the moment itself was the scene just across from the theater. Here it is:
This is Paris in 2011. His name is Antoine, and he is, as the sign really says, a
Public Poet. Typewriter(!) at the ready. My media person of the moment. It was a surging reminder that a Public Poet can still exist, still survive, still be relevant, and still be
needed, despite (and because of) these times where so much depressing information descends in an instant avalanche.
I felt cleansed.
Then I came home to Weiner.
