(In progress like the rest of this ride)
This is “600 right angles”. The book is divided by 6 double page spreads showing architectural stories creating the double entente. A number of the early silver prints were acquired by the James A. Michener Museum.
What ever registers the passage of time is a clock. Not real hard to see where expectations are going well.
waiting … cafe rendez vous & rendez vous amuk at train station cases in point.
Remarkably we have two handsome women with cigarettes, each having opposite experiences. The essence of solitary existence is waiting .
I used “waiting” as a means of discovery … illustrating, in this pair the street numbers created by Haussman , in the first, and the transportation system in the second.
Our first lady anticipates with a certain becoming coyness, the second is disappointed and frankly my dear gives no damn. At least until someone makes an appearance
We have all been both places. S. ( I had also been working on a book on Jacques Lecoq’s movement theatre, both of us expending our lives studying body language.)train “It gives days like that.” Translated from PA Dutch not French. IN French I’d guess “Je fais payer.” Part of the reconstruction of Paris was the integration of rail lines into stations in the city.
Cafe Rendez-vous , an illustration of Haussman’s street numbers. Of course to have a rendez vous one must be able to find it.
( I had also been working on a book on Jacques Lecoq’s movement theatre, both of us expending our lives studying body language. The journey melded.
The neutral mask is a training where neutralizing facial expression always us to see what the body is saying… love the idea of hearing silence.
The neutrality of the question awaiting answer while moving by.
Exactly the nature of the neutral mask in theatre.
The original wooden Lecoq neutral mask macquette by Ameleto Satari after Jacques face when they were young in Italy. Used to make the leather performance an teaching masks.
It was the first time I have been back to the Lecoq family home in the 16th quarter Paris without Jacques’s personal presence. Fay made a lovely lunch and we spoke of the shapes of things to come. The unknown running at speed. Fay sold that home to buy the building where the school exists. It was once a boxing ring, which you can see in other posts.
Walking across Paris from the left bank to the Lecoq school in the 10th quartier , observations of his training presented time and time again. As I’m used to looking, as it processes of seeing … The difference between faux body language and a naturalness that I associate with the regular folk of Paris. In general I can tell the difference, between actors, many my friends, who has studied Lecoq at other schools and those that are studied under him in Paris.
Fay Lecoq regarding the Lecoq neutral macquette, made by Satori after Jacques’ face. it rests on Jacques home desk. The maquette alone, and the neutral masks with his coffee cup on Jacques desk at his school: Ecole Jacques Lecoq Theatre International .. all in Paris.
“dramatic neutrality (a state of availability without past or passion) enables us to better understand life through perpetual discovery without preconceptions and interjection of personal conflicts.” (my translation)
and earlier caption: Champs Elysees, at Christmas with terrorists setting off Bombs. Madame Fay Lecoq told in in no uncertain terms to avoid the metro and take taxi’s she would pay if needed. I walked almost every where like my days in New York. Unless I had a rendez vous. I took the metro just because … In stubbornness to those who would make the world ugly.
Fay Lecoq call my Hotel telling the family that I was to take a taxi not the the metro in the, any case … she would pay for it … it was not safe. My dear freind Madame Lecoq, Fay a Scot in good standing, thrifty and worked their way up.
In a sense, the refusal to believe one can walk off a ledge & “fall up”. Anyway I just walked the hour plus to the school, knowing it would more than likely I would learn something by foot that I wouldn’t by privilege.
Ah yes, a remembered dream. Of course it’s in Paris, I believe the newspaper is Le Monde. A long ago memory, in all likelihood, the response to a memory years before, that time.
Have heard it said, affinity for another, a stranger perhaps, is a liking for oneself. Believe more likely its the simpatico of outlook , accouterments, shared, in comfort. The communication of our bodies, the clothes we have to keep them warm. The glasses needed to read. And a hint of subtle measure against that which is secret, held as our own counsel. All very possibly, in error.
This was long enough ago, that, the lovely woman surely has some gray hair, and what I hope has been a remarkable life. Considering the location, as a journalist I would feel, it proper, to assume her to be a student at the Sorbonne. With evidence of a desire to learn. And the inherent ability.
There is affinity, as I was once a student at a City University (NYU, then New School). And worked a kids job at Associated Press, tending to photographs that came over what was then known as a telefax. Then too … a troubled time, and the present protests and difficulties in Paris have returned it to mind. With the clarity of first experience.
It was troubles in Paris that brought me to University, opened the studied journalism of Albert Camus. & the visual work of Cartier Bresson & Bob Capa. The reportage and observation of human beings upon each other. And later the New York sarcasm of Bill Klein. “Bullshit” said in that New York City Jewish accent which always made me smile.
And I had a girlfriend, there in the village, also an NYU student, who, this young woman in Paris brought to mind. We would sit in cafés, sometimes after my night shift, with the newpapers that I brought back, and could usually pick up at AP. We would talk and see where things fit. Mostly they didn’t. And commenting good sense as measurement. What liars and jerks those who would be “leaders” appeared to be. We were not always correct … but usually right. For we were not fools.
more given to carbon than silica … obviously with greater adventures considered.
A franc for your thoughts Madame. This was pre Euro.
There was no point trying to make sense of what they were saying … And unlike now, real journalists, did not see their jobs as public relations flacks, trying to make disreputable politicos … Truthful. To explain gibberish and idiocy to make it palpable was not the job. Lie was a lie, and interestingly enough it was also many of the kids working at newspapers, often having faced the lies of the Vietnam war … being less than convinced by repetition and certainly not yet conditioned to repeating a lie and calling it reportage.
My friend who was studying psychology knew this as “reflexive control”. What I would later learn in journalism as “maskirovka”, as it was called in the parlance of Russian “desinforatsiya”. Over eggs and Greenwich village coffee, as I was coming off nite shift, the buzz of too muxh coffee and the stimulation of the world. A double scotch was not unusual (NYC a grown up place where if one was old enuff to be drafted, New York trusted you to order a drink.)… To try to drain off the caffeine from the night.
We spoke of how many times something had to be repeated before enough people believed such crap. As my friend explained, it was a long process of untruth, in which the yardstick of rationality was attacked by one fool after the next. She said it was necessary, that for everyone to believe it … simply involved a process of unrelenting, concerted confusion. Of course there will be people with mental defects who will believe that we can “go over a ledge & fall up.” They will bare witness, repeatedly, wherever needed or for that matter wherever allowed. (False witness was the term from the meeting house.) A terrible and disconcerting thought. Worse as an experience. “People have to be smarter than this.” “Not the same; they want to belong.”
So when I saw this young woman in Paris, memories came back. I had now been traveling for years, and was sad that I began photographing only after those breakfasts with my friend. But my Parisian reader brought it all back, the glasses with the clips, a real desire to know, somewhat combed hair, and the traces of a gold necklace beneath the unadorned cotton sweater. Absorption sans pretense. Sitting alone for that matter. An elegant solution.
Still have the glasses, and the sweaters, but by then it also was a heavy bag with serious cameras (spare … less easy to use badly. One had to concentrate. And know little bit about what one would be seeing. For it was still important to tell the TRUTH … And there was a truth in the faithful use of cameras,
Some go to dinner with their cell phones – may or may not be smart, surely a date to take the check, those companions resting their face in hand … … others, well others … leave the plastic, glass, trolls, and adverts behind, more given to carbon than silica … obviously with greater adventures considered. Nasty con man offered Eve an Apple … to hold in her hand: “Your money for your mind”. Dinner with Drumph tweets and donky kong in Paris.
An old Parisian legend … a fabled aristocrat went bonkers , for the rest of his life would only play the tambourine. His mind gone …his fame and fortune meant nothing.
Died before facebook.
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