Paris
Paris travelogue ©2008 Mick Cusimano
I met up with my friend Sho in Paris and we started out doing the traditional things..checking out the Louvre, the Mona Lisa, the painting of Napoleon's coronation..at 500 square feet it may be the largest painting in the world. That night we met my friend Maria who took us to an international party on the top floor of a Paris apartment. The host was an Australian guy who works for the United nations. There were people from Australia, Paris, Ireland, Russia, America, and a woman who couldn't remember where she was from.
As we drank more wine the group become more theatrical. This grad student sang her blues about the pressures of the academic world. One guy recited Shakespeare, another the Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. I did a poem about the Sixties. Lydia sang a song in Russian, and Maria told us the story about how she danced at a festival in Marrakesh where they had her make her entrance riding on a camel.
Truly revved up we went out on the street near St. Michel but had to wait while a procession for an African saint walked by. We were off to an underground night club. Walking down the stairs into this cavern with no windows were 100 people jammed dancing and drinking. There we danced late to Israeli music.
One day Sho was visiting her cousin so I took my video camera to the Paris Zoo. There was a hill covered with several dozen baboons. Watching these animals fighting, grooming each other, and swinging on trees was so fascinating that I must have filmed them for half an hour. This one baby baboon was trying to keep up with the older ones. He would try to climb up a wall they easily mastered but he slide back down again and again. He was the Charlie Chaplin of hairy anthropoids. It would be ironic if they turned out to be the stars of my Paris movie.
Sho and I had lunch at a 100 year old restaurant from France's gilded age and visited the Picasso Museum. I climbed the Arch de triumph and looked over the bustling Champs Elysées .
I hooked up with Karine and Jacques from that New Surrealists art show we were in together back in 2003. We ate French chicken which gave us stamina to climb the 300 steps to the top of Sacre Cour.
That night was a vernissage and met up with Surrealist sculptor Jacky Kooken. It was a controversial show of Israeli and Arab art spread out on 5 floors. Lots of people coming through. Too bad no one in the US thought of having a show like that. Jacky invited me to join him at the Maata gallery near Gare D'Lyon.
There were some paintings, furniture, a collage of a naked woman walking across a roof, and some metal blinking spaceships. It was a smaller gallery and less ambitious than the first one. They served peanuts and whiskey at the reception table on the street. Once we partook of that Jacky seemed a bit uneasy. He didn't know anyone there. The situation looked sort of dismal so I had to do something. I saw this striking blonde woman standing next to us alone. I talked to her in my very deficient French. Her name was Cecile and was from out of town there waiting for a friend.
I introduced Jackie to her and he was quite taken by her. Then her friend one of the artists showed up and the four of us hung out much of the night. As I pulled out my video camera the scene unfolded as sort of a Fellini movie. One woman showed up with her baby. She was tall, had tattoos and was the spitting image of Amy Winehouse complete with gigantic beehive hair. Another guy was walking around wearing a dress. I don't think he was the father.
This other woman friend of Jacky's Milene showed up with this wild hair and wardrobe...a true eccentric artist.
She had a furniture piece in the show. Evidently Jacky knew her and has been pursuing her for a long time. I interviewed her about her art for my video. She also has some kind of barrel installation that she is showing in galleries in London, Paris, and Germany. She is some kind of famous award winning artist and engineer and she wants to show this barrel all over the world. She wants to find a gallery on the East coast to premiere her work in the US. Of course I suggested that she contact my friends at Out of the Blue in Cambridge.
Seeing me videotape this woman inspired all these different people to jump in and pose for my camera as they made speeches in French including Jacky and Cecile. When we were leaving Jacky gave her a book of his scuulpture and at and I gave here Underground Surrealist Magazine. She was so pleased she kissed both of us as we left. I can't remember when I saw anyone having as much fun as she did. She was just laughing all night. What do the French call it Joie de vivre the Joy of Life...or was it just something in the whiskey?
On the Metro back Jacky was also going to place D Clichy. He bought me a glass of wine at a bar called the Cave. He then did a handstand on a chair in a bar which freaked out some of the patrons. A useful skill he picked up in the circus. That was it. There was nothing that could top that on my last night in Paris. So I headed back to Boston hopefully with a little Joie de vivre.
Posted by mcusiman
at 7:50 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, 10 August 2008 6:26 PM EDT
