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JA's JOURNALS
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Bonjour,
and when I say "Bonjour", I mean it, because we've been back from France for 2 days and I've been up at 4am on both of 'em, we adjusted to the new French time zone and new French lifestyle (drink coffee until you are comfortable switching to wine), and now I am an island, floating my way back to the old time zone and the old ways (drink coffee until it is time to drink diet Mountain Dew, and then drink Grain Belt beer). What a spinner this life is. I finished early September by finishing a rough cut of the new Keri Noble record, which selected industry shooters are reviewing, and clawed my way to the plane for our 9/13 departure to Paris. Our destination was the Hotel Saint-Louis, J.P. Brandt, proprietor. J.P. grew up in New york City and became a successful fashion photographer, smoking Lucky Strikes with super models and all, and then about 10 years ago his Mom (who was French) died and he inherited the hotel, a small gorgeous stone building in the French hamlet of Rosnay (pronounced row-nay for you ugly americans), a village that looks like it was painted onto the landscape, little bakery, church, stone cottages, and the Hotel, which has been serving travelers passing thru for 700 years, in one way or other. Jp's family has owned it the whole time. So when he sits in front of the fire, he is sitting contemplating not only his navel and whether or not he has enough Bordeaux for the evening, but also the fact that his bloodline has sat in that spot for 700 years, contemplating various and likely similar things. When JP took over, (he had spent time in france, and naturally, spoke fluent french, and also cooks, and is a diver, and plays a gibson guitar) he decided to hold concerts in the hotel, which the villagers thought was insane. "Sacre Bleu, this will never work! Mon Dieu!" was the opinion (I don't know what those French words mean, but they are fun to say and write). When Keri Noble, Ann Klein, and yours truly took the stage Friday nite, we were JP's 400th show. Laughingly, he will tell you that some of the villagers still say it will never work. The shows, friday and saturday nite, were magic. The three of us played together and alone. It may have been the wine, it may have been the handful of ex-patriates who joined us from Paris, including Anthony, Ricardo, and Bret (after Keri sang "I wrote the book" Ricardo erupted with "Goddamn!" in the brief gap before the applause), but for whatever reason, these were two sweet nites of music. Check out the pictures, Jeremy will have them up on the site in a few days, and we are already talking about next year--you better come. If you do, don't make the typical mistake I routinely see Americans making in foreign-language countries. As we all know, most of us (unlike the other cultures) don't speak other languages than our own. Therefore, I have observed that, when we are travelling and confronted with needing to talk to a native who doesn't speak english well or at all, we respond by simply continuing to ask for what we want in english, only we get louder and louder. Here was the scene in the Paris airport, moments after we had gotten off the plane: Older man, looked like he was from texas: "How do I get out of here?" French girl, happened to be walking by: "Zee la zoo zoo?" Older man: "How do I get out of here?" (increase in volume by 30%). French Girl: "fwee sans oot zee la zoozoo!". Older man: "How the devil to I get out of here?" (now grinding his teeth and shouting). I must say, we do not "come off" all that well in some of these other countries............... JA |
