One is that I am trying not to be so hard on the French. There are so many things I love, especially the era of Piaf, Trenet, et Chevalier.
This is the same Paris that gave us the cinematically breathtaking "Les Enfants du Paradis,"
which is not, by the way, about mimes.Here's a Trenet song that makes me tear up a bit and smile all at the same time (you probably know it best from Bobby Darin), "La Mer."
I always connect that whimsical yet melancholic song to another more powerful piece with some vague melodic correspondence. Or maybe it's simply that the Moonlight controls The Sea. For this opus, rewind a few decades to 1890, to hear Debussy. It is beautiful in arrangements with weepy strings, but the ones that really get to me (and they really get to me), focus on the piano. Try not to feel anything. You can't.
1 comment:
I too have resolved not to be so hard on the French. But it's hard not to be hard on the French. They gave us Proust, Rimbaud, cunnilingus, Artaud, the croissant, Boone's Farm Apple Wine, and the poem "The French they are a funny race/They fight with their feet and fuck with their face" and still they're... irksome. It's amazing, really.
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