You name it

"Mr Evil Devil?"

"why do you insist on calling me that? you know I hate it"

"because I like it, and you never tell me why you hate it"

"obviously because the way you say it I sound like a caricature. I mean "evil devil", it's like all I do is being evil"

"maybe it would explain the name"

"which I didn't choose either, by the way"

"who does? and anyway what would you name yourself?"

"well if you must know, I like Yaveh...."

"you're joking"

"no! why do you think I got kicked out of up there??"

"I don't think it was only a matter of name!"

"name, my dear, is everything. You think stories are everything, but you're wrong. Stories are only an elaborate way of using names. You will argue that each name is a small story, but that's only word play."

"So really it doesn't matter whether I call you Mr Evil Devil or Simon. You just don't like my calling you"

"if you were as afraid of me as you should, you wouldn't even dare call me at all."

"but I'm not afraid!"

"Thank you, I noticed."

Full of the Devil

Anyone with extra time, you name the price, I'll buy it. I would sell a bit of my soul to the Devil, but he says it's not good enough.

He said: "I want pure souls that don't ask questions"
So I told him, "pure doesn't exist, and no questions means either over-confident or downright stupid"
"I mean I want souls that don't argue"
"You contradict yourself"
"No I don't"
"Yes you do. You know well the base arg- in argue means 'to be white, bright, clear', and someone who argues is someone who is willing to be crystal clear. So that's the kind of souls you're supposed to be looking for. Otherwise you wouldn't be Lucifer, the light carrier. More coffee?"
"Yes please. You see that's why I like spending an hour or two with you now and then"
"Because I argue well?"
"No, because you make good coffee."

Jazz me up

I'm going through a jazz week. I heard a bit of Miles Davis in some movie, and BAM! it hit me. The urge to dig up and dust Miles, John, Cannonball and co.... and they're working their magic:
Right now I have a lot of work to do that stresses me out, my shower is being renovated, the entire appartment next door is being renovated (that's a lot of people regularly hammering at walls, believe me), and the skies are shades of sad grey.
Yet "Blue in Green" is playing softly, making this not only a perfect moment, but a moment I'll be able to conjure up anytime in the future by just playing this track. Music has a way of making past feelings materialize like a photograph.

And now I see the sun decides "Autumn Leaves" is a right time to peak through. Perfect, I tell you.

Rush

almost

no time to post
no time to post
no time to post
no time to post
gone

My devolution theory

("Devolution Theory", not for sale)

From left to right:
Can no.1 comes from the Cocaniferous geological era.
Then it's the Cocapermian era, the Triassicola era, the Jurassicola era, the Cretacolaceous era, the Caffeinotiertiary era, and finally the Erectocan quaternary era. Always Coca-Cola.

"Go back to work!" I hear you silently say. And so I do.

Mon luth constellé

I love living on the fourth floor. Nancy is a small city, so downtown buildings are not very tall. I have these big windows and quite a wide view of the city -- roofs of old downtown houses, a couple of buidlings, the trees of the Pépinière park, the basilique St Epvre, the tall Park Inn railway station hotel, the stadium spotlights. These are on, so I know there's a football/soccer match tonight. The lights inside the bell tower of the basilique are still on so I know it's not past midnight.

The one thing I hate about living in a city is the sky at night. It's either shades of orange because of the reflection of city lights on clouds, or plain black. The only heavenly bodies you can see are the moon and some of the brightest stars. And a couple of planets, like Venus or Jupiter.

If you haven't already, you must download Stellarium. It's a great (and easy to use and free) planetarium. And very beautiful.

I remember our philosophy teacher in high school telling us about stars. See, latin sidus means "heavenly body, star, constellation", and desiderare (de-siderare) basically means "to stop seeing the star". So, desiring originally means you realize something important (the star) is missing. And he told us how desire is what keeps you alive and moving, that if you have no "star" to look for, you become still, and depressed. And that's a disaster, "a bad star". Consider means "seeing all the stars", which I think was a navigation term, initally. When you see all the stars, you can make the right decision, you know where to go.

***

I'm a Charlotte

I finally saw Lost In Translation. I loved it. I knew I would.

Talking about translation, I have this beautiful text to translate into French: it's from Stephen Crane's "Open Boat". Here's one sentence: "The mind of the master of a vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a day or a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low and lower, and down."

To think I'm about to make a French mess of it!

The lovely treachery of sounds

Matt got me thinking (this is becoming a forum, really) about how I learned English. And it's actually all about imitating.

The earliest memory I have of English is in my parents's car, looking outside, and listening to 50's and 60's American hits, especially Tutti Frutti, which I thought I sang perfectly well. But since I was six years old, and had no idea what anything meant, it sounded more like "tooda frood, all rooda...". In France we call that "yogurt English". My parents later told me it made them laugh, when I was really doing my best to imitate Little Richard.
When I was nine, I started going to a weekly private English lesson, at my best friend's house. His mother is a great English teacher, and she taught us the basics of English with a "Chatterbox Student Book." It was fun time every tuesday night, for two years.

Since I could read basic English, instead of just singing songs in "yogurt", I learned lyrics by heart, and would listen to a song on my parents' record player again and again until I could sing it perfectly. The first one I learned was Chris Rea's Auberge. I tortured myself until I could pronounce the "th" and "h" sounds and sing it all both fast and articulately. I didn't understand half of the lyrics, and to this day I don't know why I felt the urge to do that.
But I kept doing that with all the songs I liked, and later on, as my English got better, and it was easier to find films in English, I started doing it with films. I imitated accents and intonations.
When I got in college, I lived in a students hall, and I only had a compact stereo, so back home I recorded my favorite films on audio tapes, so I could listen to films in English all the time. I still do that.

I know I'm particularly addicted to English, but the urge to imitate languages goes beyond that. I learned some of the Lakota parts in Dances With Wolves, and I can't help imitating all sorts of French accents. At school I was very bad at German, except for the accent, so my teacher was always puzzled. So in a way I always feel like I'm only convincing people I speak good English by imitating it. In Paris Frank (Tester) told me "your English is flawless", and I felt like a sort of charlatan. I wanted to answer "it is only a reproduction!"

It's a kind of Magrittean approach to languages, I guess.

Happy me

Today was sort of an empty day. I got up this morning with no sense of purpose, and no matter what I did, it seems I went through this day with no motivation whatsoever for anything at all. I have tons of things to do, and I was busy all day, but I felt like a robot. It got to the point when there was no music I felt like listening to, although I have an astronomic amount of albums, of every music genre you can think of.

I think the weather had something to do with it: it was positively gloomy. As a great uncle of mine used to say:"we would fare better with no weather at all!" or something like that. I can't translate it literally, it would make no sense.

Usually when I feel under-motivated, I can summon the right thought and feel better in an instant. It works with the cold, too: when I'm cold I make the decision that I'm going to relax and that I'm not going to let it bother me. Actually I do that all the time, whenever I feel that something is starting to bug me -- anything or anyone --, I rationalize and consciously switch to a different point of view. And it works 99 percent of the time! That's my way of being a happy person. The downside of it is: I can't understand people who complain on and on and about everything. I tend to associate it with a lack of will power, which is probably unfair of me.

Anyway today I was not unhappy -- thank God -- I was just frankly too lazy to switch to another, better point of view.

But it's all over now: I have found the right thought, the right point of view, the right music, and the right book to read. And it will be an in bed way of reading for me.

Happy me!

-Girl With a Pearl Earring-

-Girl With a Pearl Earring-
Johannes Vermeer c.1665

This is her picture as she was:
It seems a thing to wonder on,
As though mine image in the glass
Should tarry when myself am gone.
I gaze until she seems to stir,--
Until mine eyes almost aver
That now, even now, the sweet lips part
To breathe the words of the sweet heart:--
And yet the earth is over her.

from The Portrait,
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

My first frontier

I remember as a kid being utterly fascinated by the idea of a foreign country. I remember "hiking" in the Pyrenees with my parents when I was six or seven, and one day we were in the Cirque de Troumouse (cf. map); my mother was pointing at elements of the cirque and naming them, and then she told me "...and this whole line of mountains is the frontier. Right behind this is Spain." I wouldn't believe her: surely that was not the real frontier, Spain could only be much further away! It was irrational, but to me, a foreign country was so remote psychologically that it was physically impossible to stand so close to one.

It was my first frontier. I tried to imagine what it was like beyond, people living in the same mountains, but speaking a different language. If they were so close, why couldn't they speak French, the real language?

When I walk in a church

(Laon et sa cathédrale, Aisne, France)
Photo de Jean-Pierre Gilson

I have been thinking quite a lot about God lately, probably because of The Power and the Glory, which is a sort of long meditation about faith shaped into a thriller. A "whisky priest" running away from the police in Mexico when the clergy was persecuted.

Anyway yesterday night I had a conversation about faith and God with a friend of mine who is a firm believer. I told her I'm really not sure I believe in God, but that I think about God a lot, and she said "if you think about Him then you believe in Him." She looked and sounded so positive, like it was completely obvious, that for the first time in years I really don't know what to think. All this time when I thought I had lost my faith, did I really only have a different faith of my own? It is always so difficult to distinguish culture from the cult, and the cult from the individual faith... that deep feeling when I walk in a church and light a candle: is that faith, then?

Then, as the conversation went on I realized we have a rather comparable feeling of what the faith in God implies/should imply. There was a moment when we deviated, because she clearly defines God as a person, and I don't -- I have a more abstract vision, I guess. But we both agreed that it is an absolute that can only transcend human understanding, and that at the same time God is the essence of humanity, with all its flaws and weaknesses.

I still don't know... but God has to be the most beautiful story ever written -- whether that proves His existence or not.

(St Quentin, Aisne, France)
Photo de Jean-Pierre Gilson

Use soap, and write stories

The question on everyone's lips when I tell them I study culture, art, stories and language: what for? who could it help? you can't cure someone with a story!

Yes you can!
Why is it so hard to remember that words can kill, wreak havoc, and bring salvation? All the stories we hear, read, see, imagine, shape both our perception of the world and our sense of self. People have used stories to undertake crusades. Forget about their power, and tyrants won't even have to burn books anymore. Remove stories from humankind, and the one thing left to distinguish us from other animals will be soap.

So, funny how this world, which is made of stories, so easily dismisses them as trivial entertainement -- the inconsequential thing we supposedly produce to forget about the real world, for a while only.

Brain storm

Devolution in the UK: a historical inevitability? -- The profane and the sacred in The Power and the Glory -- Language in Coriolanus -- Characterization in Pride and Prejudice -- Cleft sentences in English -- The Great Vowel Shift -- Translating Maupassant and Stephen Crane -- The place of Lewis and Clark in American history -- and on and on and on!

Whoever decided there was only 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year was not preparing for this exam.

O lilliterate loiterer!

While I was very seriously working on the specific aspect of language in Coriolanus, for some strange and unfathomable reason that has nothing to do with a lack of assiduity, I came across the extremely funny Shakespearean Insulter on the internet. I also recommend the Shakespeare Insult Kit. If you're going to insult someone, at least make it original. And never underestimate the element of surprise.

Loki Sky Walker

This is one of his names. But he is far more ancient and powerful than Luke. At least he used to be, before Christianization and Hollywood.

He is the Norse god of mischief, a master trickster, changing shapes and genders at will. Father and mother of many beasts, humans and monsters. He is the adopted brother of the great Odin, god of war and wisdom. He is a creator of chaos. A giant that hides in the smallest things.

Loki is the Sly-One, the Sly-God, the Shape-Changer, the Trickster, the Sky Traveller, the Sky Walker, the Lie-Smith and Loftur.

Loki can trick gods.

What say you to that, young padawan?

Anekdotos II

I'll start by saying that I have in my possession these two big, hardcover books called "La civilisation du phoque." They are, basically, a compiling of the journals Paul-Emile Victor kept when he stayed in Ammassalik, Greenland in the thirties. PEV, as he is often called, is a major reference in terms of exploration of the poles and of inuit ethnography. Now these two books he wrote with the help of Joëlle Robert-Lamblin, a great researcher who works on indigenous peoples of the Arctic.

I remember, when they told us our papers had been accepted, I told Chloé, "maybe even Joëlle Robert-Lamblin will come to the conference!" But then they sent us the list of participants, and she was not in it.

On thursday I was seated at the table in the projection room, waiting for the session to begin. Suddenly I looked up from my paper and saw Joëlle Robert-Lamblin looking for a seat. Slow-motion, close-up and dismay all over again (Anekdotos I). On my left sat Yvon Csonka and on my right Nancy Wachowich, both experts in social anthropology. Saying that at that moment I wanted to disappear would be quite an understatement. Since I could not very well run away or crawl under the table, I tried to focus on my paper.

At the end of the session, to my great relief, Nancy told me she thought my paper was interesting. And Mrs Robert-Lamblin came up to me, and told me the greatest anecdote about a very old film I talked about. She met the son of the main actor in the film, and promised to send me his email address (which she did) and I gave her a copy of the film. I couldn't believe it. It took me at least ten minutes to recollect myself.

Anekdotos I

So, at the embassy, Chloé and I recognized Christopher Trott, whom we had met in Rouen over a year ago. Fortunately he remembered us (we'd already had a great time in Rouen), and kindly introduced us to his friends Peter Kulchyski from the University of Manitoba as well, and Frank Tester from UBC.

We also met David Neufeld from Whitehorse. What happened is that Chloé saw "Northwest Territories" I think on his nametag, and started stealing glances at him and speaking in hushed, eager tones with me -- yes, just because of where he comes from (sorry Chloé!). I turned around and saw that he was smiling at us with an inquisitive look on his face. So, although I am dreadfully shy in this kind of situation, I went to him to explain the reason of our enthusiasm. He was very friendly and chatted with us for quite a while.

That night I also got to see two of the organizers, Béatrice Collignon and Michèle Therrien, whom I already knew, and they told me "oh, so, is your paper really in French? because it would be much better if it was in English, you know." Slow motion, close-up on my face, on which you could read total dismay. "I wrote it in French [until very late last night]! You really think I should translate it [until late tonight -- please say no]?" They said yes, it would be better, so the same night, I started translating my paper, with an enormous headache instead of a dictionary. At 2 a.m., I had only translated a third of it, and Chloé convinced me that I had to give up and sleep, and that I should do it in French as planned, and that no, I would not die from embarrassment.

It turned out that most people spoke or understood French, and for those who didn't I translated a bit of my paper and answered in English. And I didn't die from embarrassment at all.

By the way, up there is a picture of the new, rather controversial museum, where the conference took place.

Back on the air

The short version of what happened at the Inuit studies conference:

-- Wednesday: train to Paris, reception at the Canadian embassy for the opening ceremony. Champagne, refined food, meeting interesting people.

-- Thursday: big long day, including reading my paper about orality, representation and films, which went far more smoothly than I expected. Meeting more interesting people, listening to more interesting papers. Dinner in a small restaurant with some of the interesting people we had met at the embassy.

-- Friday: nice day, extremely interesting papers, lunch with a friend we had met in York a year ago. Dinner cruise with everyone on the river Seine, and had a late night drink with a small party of interesting people.

-- Saturday: closing ceremony in the morning, Isuma's latest film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen in the afternoon. I loved it. Had dinner at the Lutetia brasserie on the quai Bourbon.

That's the short version.