Life, theatre, and all that's post-dissertation…in Paris.
Author: effiegonis
PhD (2020) in Romance Languages and Literatures (French) at Harvard University, with a focus on contemporary French theatre.
Formerly with Columbia University at Reid Hall, Paris, and the University of Paris IV--La Sorbonne.
Goals: Publish my dissertation
Further goals: get a professorship (in Paris); stay relatively sane
Instagram : @effie143
Cocktails last night at Le Capsule
First things first: I finally finished writing that conference paper (hence the lack, in part, of posting here).
Second, I’ve been wanting to post something like this for a while, but wasn’t sure how. Partly because I didn’t quite have the words yet to fully express how I am feeling right now, partly because I felt almost self-conscious about it.
Let’s backtrack: not that long ago, I wrote about how I hit another low point in my recovery, a post which ended with a sort of affirmation of my presence here, and why that more than anything was pushing me along this strange, winding road to recovery.
In theatre, we often talk about catharsis, this purge or cleansing of emotion that often occurs in the midst of tragedy. Well, I don’t know if the travails of my personal life can compare to those found in classical drama, but to be completely honest, ever since that day, I have been feeling increasingly better, more myself, about everything.
The reason why I’ve been hesitant to talk about this, though, is that I feel sometimes to say that I am genuinely doing fine – actually more than fine, I feel pretty great right now – would be interpreted as doing a disservice to my past relationship, as though I hadn’t mourned enough. But if part of my goal with this blog is to be honest both about my journey through the dissertation nonsense, as well as my recovery process, did I not owe it to myself to embrace this happiness, this self-assuredness, this confidence that’s steadily and strongly been coming back to me? Everyone heals and recovers differently. One person’s timeline does not necessarily equate another’s. And to be frank, I think the reason I’ve been feeling this strong confidence is because I have – before and since the move – actively put myself in situations where I had to make choices about what I wanted to do because I wanted to do them. I can spontaneously buy that ticket to that show I want to see, for example, something I haven’t done in a long time, least of all here, because before I had a language-barrier issue (not mine, the ex’s) to take into consideration. The choice for me personally to be happy was right in front of me, so, since I have the privilege to make this choice, why wasn’t I taking it?
So last night when I met up with a friend for drinks and she asked me how I was doing, instead of doing my usual rundown of “yes, I’m doing alright. It’s been difficult. I’m getting by, etc.” I just flat out said that I was doing great. And it felt pretty fucking good because I meant it. And I understand I am very lucky to be able to say this and mean it. But I think the point I want to try and make here is that it is absolute shit that anyone has to question their recovery story/process, whether it be slow, fast, or somewhere in between. There is no right or wrong way to do this; it’s just a matter of working to a point where you can let yourself be honest (and what the hell, a little selfish) about what you want, what you need, and damn the rest.
I have a tendency at times to get a bit restless. The downside of this is that in moments where I’m hitting a block mentally, my mind tends to race in about as many directions away from what I want to focus on than I can possibly imagine. Normally, when a situation like this hits (like it did this morning when I was staring at my conference paper draft that I knew I needed to add…something to, but could not put my finger on what), I tend to seek solace not just in my usual walks, but in something more intellectually stimulating.
Like art exhibits.
The Picasso Museum in Paris is currently hosting an exhibit titled Picasso 1932, année érotique (Picasso 1932, an erotic year). There’s been a bit of good buzz around the exhibit, so I figured that, since studying erotics has been, if nothing else, at the background of a lot of what I do, why not spend some time around a thing that is both familiar yet has absolutely nothing to do with the paper I am currently blocked on.
And, as these things usually go, I think that may have worked.
I’m not an art expert by any means, but even I can say that the praise surrounding this exposition is not entirely unfounded. The whole thing is laid out like a sort of calendar/journal tracing Picasso’s life and art in the year 1932, with letters, newspaper clippings, posters and personal photographs interspersed amongst the paintings themselves.
And I’m not sure if this had anything to do with why I left with such a good impression of the exhibit, but I couldn’t help but freeze momentarily when, after stepping into one of the exhibit rooms, I came face-to-face with this :
If you are familiar with Hokusai’s “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”, maybe you’ll agree that there is something about this piece that harkens very strongly back to it. Or at least, I thought so. There was just something about the way the female body has become so refracted, so broken down, reshaped and manipulated that it regains a sort of animalistic quality as it reaches back to envelop the head in repose that I could not look away from for what seemed like the longest time. In any case, I think that somewhat snapped me out of my tailspin because I went through the rest of the exhibit with an almost clear head (let’s be honest with ourselves, my mind is never not racing on something, but better one or a few things than a hundred).
The rest of my afternoon before my 5pm tutoring session consisted of stopping by the FNAC to pick up a book recently recommended to me (a French translation of an Icelandic novel) and then grabbing a quick snack before having to stop myself from getting too far into the book too quickly. Yes, this is a legitimate problem.
Sunny days have finally started to give over to the grey gloom of fall. You really think a bit of rain would stop me from going on insanely long walks??
Confession time: I’m kind of into visiting old cemeteries. More specifically, visiting old cemeteries in the fall (something about the juxtaposition of the changing leaves against the cool grey of gravestones, especially just after it rains…). As a tutoring session I scheduled with a student near Montmartre got pushed back fifteen minutes, I figured I’d kill (ha) some time by walking amongst some grave stones.
Instagram (@effie143) Instagram (@effie143)The Indian summer has been nice and all, but I’m glad fall is finally creeping in (and just in time for Halloween too…though no one really celebrates that here). Hello lil’ red leaf!
Friday. Reading. Reading and realizing I need to actually write this presentation for a conference in New Jersey in a couple weeks (literally) that I’ve been putting off. Eeep.
Saturday was much more fun though.
It’s always such a delight to me to meet up with friends/former classmates/former students (still cannot believe I can write this last one) when I’m in Paris, and yesterday was no exception. First up was coffee with a former student (who herself was also a grad student during her time in the course I was TFing, and yes, before you ask, that is a very strange thing to encounter) at La Fontaine de Belleville, which is quickly becoming my favorite spot in the city if for no reason other than the live jazz on Saturdays. I’m also kind of determined at this point to go there enough times that they start to recognize me and can predict my order of a café noisette with optional sablé cookie right away. Will update if/when that moment ever happens.
After enjoying the music for a while, we headed out for a bit of a stroll, during which we stumbled across what I am starting to consider as the new manifestation of the theatre of the absurd.
A suitcase was abandoned near rue Montorgeuil. Seeing that the state of emergency that followed November 2015 – and that Macron has pretty much signed into law – is still in full force, this seemingly innocuous navy blue object was treated with all the care of a live land mine. There was the cordoned off perimeter – which, let’s be honest, would have been about as useful as a paper umbrella in a blizzard if there actually was anything dangerous in the suitcase –, policemen announcing that passerby were to stay back, and a little robot poling and prodding the offending object, confirming what the exasperated crowd of onlookers already suspected: there was nothing inside. I think though what solidified the theatricality of the whole thing was what happened immediately afterwards. As pedestrians were allowed to move freely again, a small crowd of people gathered around the suitcase to stare at it, poke it, turn it upside down, take photographs of it, simultaneously elevating its status to ‘sacred object’ while debasing and destroying it even further.
Hyper-security can produce such strange spectacle sometimes.
Later that evening, I met up with another member of my cohort who is also living in Paris at the moment, and I finally tried Da Vito, the pizzeria that’s a front for that one speakeasy bar (Moonshiner) behind a fridge that I think I have written about here before. Honestly, not bad at all.
And finally, today was the last day of that Shakespeare monologue workshop/meetup I signed up for a few weeks back. As it was the final class, it mostly consisted of everyone presenting their monologues, getting a bit of feedback, and then heading out to a pub for some drinks to celebrate the end of the course. I think I’m going to try and keep a foot in this group somehow, if not just as a good resource to refresh some of the more ‘classical’ elements of my technique a bit (plus, it’s not like I’m actively hustling for auditions anyway).
The weather has started to turn a bit, and soon I think my walking habit will be tested. I’m going to try and hold out as long as I can. Wish me luck.
Tuesday was especially uneventful (another day of reading…yippee), and I’m really starting to wonder (again) if there isn’t more I should theoretically be doing regarding a little thing called my ‘as-yet-to-be-written prospectus’. The nagging feeling of imposter syndome – that I’m not doing this right/that my project is nonsense – tends to creep up at times like this, but, let’s be honest, isn’t that just part of the fun of grad school???
Anyway
Wednesday I decided to take some time away from all the reading I have been doing – the headache I woke up with that morning may or may not have been a factor in this – and, after my weekly market stop/meal prepping, I decided to spend the rest of my afternoon before my 6pm theatre class at the high school walking around and just being in the world. Before I could fully be, however, I made a quick visit to Messieurs-Dames, where I finally learned the value in going to a salon for a (free) bang trim, versus just hacking at them yourself and hoping for the best.
The rest of my afternoon was spent looking at art. Seen at the Tuileries
This weekend is the annual Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, or FIAC, and while I am in no place to shell out 30eu to go and see what’s on at the Grand Palais, I am more than happy traipsing about looking at free art installations around the city.
And speaking of artistic things….
The one time a random choice is a really, really good one.
I think I may have finally found a show that puts these ideas I’m trying to formulate regarding notions of plurality, temporality and the ‘destruction’ of the semiotic order on the stage into practice. This was a play with four actors – two men, two women – and for the first quater of it or so, the dialogue was structured in a way that although only one of the men and one of the women were ‘playing’ in the lit area downstage, when their mouths began to move, it became very obvious that the voices that came out were not theirs but those of their counterparts standing in the blacked out upstage area. As the show continued, this notion of dislocated, decentered voice and identity was explored further, with the ‘voicing’ actors – who were also mic’d – sometimes speaking to one another, sometimes directly addressing the silent counterpart of the voiced actor, even though they were responding to the latter’s words. Hell, at one point, even the formerly silent actors added their voices into the mix.
And just because it has to do with my project, I need to talk about the space. Much like my impression of the studio space at the Comédie Française, here I couldn’t help but get the impression that the actors were more ‘larger-than-life’ figures instead of characters, but this time it may have been a result of the fact that the stage space is actually wider than the house. It almost felt like it could consume you, swallow you. Comforting, but threatening at the same time. It’s beautiful.
So…I may have inadvertently auditioned for someone yesterday…
I’m not even entirely sure how it happened, other than it was somewhat organic. I was technically at the venu in question after a colleague in Boston put me in touch with the woman directing the show that was meant to be put on that day. I say ‘meant’ because due to some issue with the technician (as in: his lack of being there), the show could not go on because no one else knew how to run the tech board (small team; it happens). After chatting with said director for a bit about my work, the subject inevitably moved to whether or not I still perform (answer: when I can/have time), and soon she was asking me if I had anything I could show her.
Thank goodness I had my monologue from my Shakespeare class ready (as well as some text from last spring’s Le Siège de Calais)!
I don’t think this audition – if that’s what we want to call it – is going to lead to anything, but sometimes it just feels really good to share your art with someone, especially another art maker (something I don’t encounter as often as I would like anymore). To add to this, the managing director of the theatre, who also watched my ‘audition’, loaned me a copy of a collection of plays by one of their former resident writers. Naturally, I had to go to a café to read some of them. La Fontaine de Belleville ended up being perfect for the occasion.
Café noisette and shortbread: some of my favorite things.
Today was relatively chill with the majority of my time spent in the library reading more newspaper archives – although this time, they were dated from before the riots around the play I’m looking at now started, and I cannot tell you the level of dramatic irony that hit me every time I read something to the effect of ‘Oh, maybe all our worries about violent outbursts and reactions were unfounded’. The weather, however, was decidedly not ‘chill’, but more late summer pleasant, which made staying inside very difficult. Thankfully, I did get a good amount of walking in while on my way to a tutoring session with a student.
You know what’s fun? Reading through archived newspaper articles from fifty years ago detailing the very violent reactions against a certain play you are studying, and realizing that you could replace any number of the outraged comments with a certain orange man’s tweets and no one would be the wiser.
My, how little things have changed.
It seemed only fitting, then, that drinks on Friday night involved going the Illegal Mezcal popup at Red House, where there were various iterations of the following image: Truth
The weather has been rather…unseasonably nice lately, so this morning when I woke up, I was determined to walk from my apartment to the Comédie-Française where I was seeing a matinée at 14h. It took about an hour (so, a bit over twice as long than if I had taken the metro), but given that the show was scheduled to last for two hours, I didn’t want to risk not getting any sun time. As to the show itself…I honestly don’t know what to write because I’m still kind of speechless. Literally the fastest two hours of my life.
I say kind of because although there were elements of this show that really blew me away – the sound design in particular, especially the way music transitioned from Bach/Strauss-esq melodies to what I think was Rammstein, or if not, something like Rammstein, was especially on point – I think I am slowly coming to the realization that I don’t like the architecture/spatial dynamics of the scène à l’italienne (i.e. your basic stage setup with a proscenium, box seats, balconies, etc.). Something about the way the seats curl into the stage space makes it seem so constricting, which can be a detriment when, particularly in a show like this one that harkens back to the tragic familial downfalls of Classical theatre, you almost feel as if you want the stage to be invading your space, rather than the other way around. One of the closing images involved a character who, after having bathed in the ashes of his dead relatives, strips down, takes up a machine gun, climbs onto a platform upstage and shoots out into the audience while strobe lights flash and machine gun blares louder and louder. Knowing that the original production of this show was staged in Avignon in 2016, I can’t help but wonder if the openness of the Palais des Papes would have made that moment more impactful (not that it didn’t leave an impression because believe me, mentally juxtaposing that image with what happened in Paris two years ago definitely left its mark).
For those who are familiar with his films, yes, this play is based on Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), which was itself nominated for Best Screenplay in that year’s Oscar ceremony. The premise revolves around the Essenbeck family, steel industrialists – loosley based on the Krupp family, themselves still based in Essen, Germany – who, after the Reichstag fire, choose to begin doing business with the Nazi Party, despite the reservations of the family patriarch, himself a holdover of the former German order. As you can perhaps guess from the title of the play, things do not exactly go well for them. Indeed, once all the machinations, backstabbing, betrayal, incest and walking-on-a-tightrope nervewracking paedophilia (I honestly have no other way to describe how unsettling this particular scene was), the family is but a shell of what it once was, a monster ready to openly weaponize the Third Reich. And really, there is no point in which you see this people as anything other than damned. A key element of the staging were cameras that followed them around, projecting close-ups of actors’ faces on a screen upstage as well as small screens on the sides of the proscenium, sometimes in real time, sometimes integrating pre-recorded footage (during a depiction of the Night of the Long Knives, two male actors dance on stage while behind them, their virtual selves, as well as the virtual bodies of other men, embrace in a frenzied orgy), sometimes using a stylized filter. This latter element in particular, what with the usage of mise en abyme, turned these actors into more like disjointed bodies, especially when there was a slight delay between the movements of the physical body on stage to its ‘real-time’ projected image. There was no mistaking the fact that we were in a hellscape. Sometimes video elements can be overkill. Here, they worked just fine.
But of course, with the weather being as nice as it was, I needed a bit of a pick-me-up after all that intensity, so my last stop of the day was to Montmartre for one of my favorite Paris events : the Fête des Vendanges!
Bet you didn’t know there was a working vineyard in Montmartre. Now you do.
This is an annual celebration organized around the grape harvest in Paris’s last working vineyard (pictured above). Throughout the four days of the festival, the neighborhood organizes exhibits, concerts, talks, tours, workshops all with the aim of both celebrating Montmartre as well as wine/food in general. Honestly, it’s probably one of my favorite events of the year, and it serves as my annual reminder of why I love fall (although, you’d think it was late summer with the weather…). To think last time I was here, I was bundled up in a coat and scarf…
I started my afternoon with a visit to the Musée de Montmartre to check out their exhibit on Montmartre on film, as well as take a stroll around the gardens before the museum closed. The expo itself was very well organized and extensive, featuring clips, posters, props and memorabilia from various Montmartre-set films. This one, for instance, might be familiar to some: Yep, it’s the lamp (and wallpaper) from Amelie
I’m glad I set aside some time for strolling around the garden as well, because I managed to catch the tail end of this little choral concert near the museum café: When the sun’s out, every spot is a picnic spot
I’m not sure if I’ve really gone into detail as to how things have changed regarding security measures in the city since the events of two years ago, but I definitely noticed a difference between this year’s Fête and the others I’ve attended. Previously, the food and wine stalls around the Sacré Cœur were open access, and crowds could just flow in and out as they pleased. This year though, that area was fenced off with two security checkpoints, one for entry, one for exiting. The downside of this – other than the disruption of the normal crowd movement – was that people tended to bottleneck up near those two points, making navigating the area a bit cumbersome at times. I have more thoughts about the État d’Urgence measures, but I’ll save those for another time.
Fortunately, even with the bottlenecking, I was able to find the two friends I was meeting up with, as well as snag a commemorative wine glass: Love the amount of reusable glasses this year! Much better than all the small plastic cups from previous years.
As we were not too keen on spending the whole evening crammed amongst the crowds, the three of us pooled together to purchase a bottle of white wine (only 8eu I think!), as well as some Comté cheese, cured ham and bread, and then made our way to the back side of the church for our apéro-picnic. As I had not had anything to eat since my bowl of leftover butternut squash soup at lunchtime, let’s just say that I thoroughly attacked that cheese with all the muster my plastic knife could afford.
So, a week ago, during one of my (thankfully rarer) low points, I decided to download this app called Mend, which labels itself as a kind of personal trainer for heartbreak. Given the ‘cleanse’ style of this first week on the app, I think the idea is to download and start using it not long after a breakup, but honestly, sometimes three-ish months (holy shit) after is better than nothing.
Using the app has been alright. Sometimes the ‘training’ it provides can feel a little too…simplistic? Surface level? I’m not sure how to describe it because it’s clearly designed in such a way that it can be applicable to a variety of situations, and which can kind of leave you feeling like you want to probe deeper, while knowing that you can’t because you’d be talking to a recording.
Anyway, what I have liked about the app are the journal prompts. I’ve started refocusing my thoughts more on myself than solely on the breakup and all that came with it, and although I’m still not quite where I want to be mentally/emotionally speaking, I feel like I’m slowly getting back there. The key word being slowly.
As I had finished the first week of using the app today – and as my mood was a bit shaky from all the wandering my mind inevitably does when I’ve been reading/studying for a while – I decided to take up the app’s prompt to ‘treat myself’ this afternoon. So I got an ice cream cone from Berthillon.
Perfect lil’ scoop
I’ve mentioned before how much I like black sesame, so you can bet that when I saw it listed as one of their available flavors, there was no way I was changing my mind. And yes, I am aware the scoop is a bit on the smaller end, but you’re paying for quality here. For a treat, I think it did just fine.
I actually could have treated myself a bit more as well, had I left the BNF a bit earlier, but fortunately for my wallet, the bouquinistes were closing up shop for the day by the time I got to the Île St Louis/ Hôtel de Ville area.
Honestly, when books can cost as little as 2eu, there’s precious little that can be done to keep me away.
Overall right now? The ups and downs still happen, but slightly less. At times it gets hard being alone – especially when you’re so used to having someone around to share your day with -, but I’m readjusting I think. And when the days get particularly hard, all I have to do is go outside and see this : And remember that I’m here.
I know I’ve talked before about the perks of walking in this city, but I just want to take a moment and add this…gem to that list : Nothing inspires confidence in an Italian restaurant quite like a dead-eyed gladiator mannequin.
With some determination on my end, I did manage to get up early enough to get a workout in and have time to hit the market early. This is the same outdoor market I visited before, but I think after today, I might designate Wednesday rather than Saturday as market day.
I mean, look at how not crowded it is : First in line for all the produce…me.
I didn’t take a picture of it, but I made a pretty excellent butternut squash soup with some of the produce/herbs I bought today (including carrots that were some of the sweetest I’ve ever tasted). Unfortunately, being somewhat of a klutz at times, I kind of bumped my thumb on the top of the oven when putting in the squash and carrots for roasting, so now I’ve got quite the scar forming. I did not, however, have a breakdown while cooking (like what happened last week when I tackled another post-market cooking project), so I’m still chalking this one up as a win. Baby steps, after all. Baby steps.
So I think I underestimated just how exhausted I was from this past weekend because yesterday I slept in until noon. This threw somewhat of a wrench in my study plans (as well as my grocery-shopping plans), but I made up for most of that by going to FNAC and buying a book that I think is going to kick my ass (hello again Merleau-Ponty…). I did manage to get a bit of reading in over a pot of tea at La Fontaine de Belleville – as well as a new bag of Belleville coffee…finally -, so I’m not about to call the day entirely wasted.
Today though brought my reading experience to a whole new level. The INHA reading room at the BNF – Richelieu
Pictured above is the reading room of the Institute Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Art (INHA) at the Richelieu site of the BNF. This is actually the site where the original national library was located before moving over to its current location in the 13th, but as it has been under extensive renovation for the past few years, I wasn’t able to stop in here until now. Most of the people who come to study/work here are art/art history students – as evidenced by the kinds of books on their desks -, but I and my small yet very substantial philosophy book felt very much at home. The downsides of this reading room, however, are that places are first come, first serve, and I can’t exactly request all the materials I need to be delivered there, considering they are either 1) housed in the main library, or 2) housed in the collections of a specific department, and thus cannot be transferred out of said department. Ah well. I don’t doubt that I’ll be coming back to work here again, though. The pull back is too strong.
In any case, now that I’m finally caught up on all my sleep – which, yes, I am aware that such a thing as catching up on sleep doesn’t actually exist – , I’m going to try and make it to my local market tomorrow morning (bright and early!) before getting started with whatever else I plan on doing. While I’m on the subject of food shopping, it’s crazy how much I miss having someone around to bounce ideas off of in terms of what to cook for dinner that night/week. Normally, cooking projects are things I look forward to, but lately I’ve been feeling kind of meh about the whole process of cooking in general. Maybe a market trip will help. I certainly hope so.
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