The past few days have been riddled with craziness and explorations, but here I chronicle Nuit Blanche.
The concept of a "Nuit Blanche" is international: a city opens all of its public museums, parks, and general public spaces in conjunction with collaborating with artists to set up installations and performances across neighborhoods of a particular city. In Paris, the 5eme arrondisement (Quartier Latin, where we go to school at the Sorbonne), 4eme (right in the very center of the city - largest metro stop in Paris), and the area around Belleville (NE Paris) hosted Nuit Blanche 2009. Metros runs between these neighborhoods all night long. There are huge huge numbers of humans, most of whom are very drunk and not in a state to be visiting museums or in public. But the concept is phenomenal: for people that work during the week and have families, are busy in general, etc, Nuit Blanche offers an opportunity to experience art in the community extremely uniquely: in the absolute middle of the night.
By law, public spaces involved in NB were required to remain open from 7pm (Saturday October 3) to 7am (Sunday October 4). Various private exhibitions closed down a bit earlier, but the general timeline stood strong. To begin our evening, Sally, Abby, and myself met in Belleville for cheap Chinese before going to see the funk band that Abby's host mother's boyfriend fronts. The Chinese food was indeed cheap and the family that presumably owned the restaurant seemed like nothing less than the Chinese Mafia, especially when they set out an enormous table of gratuitously good-looking Chinese food for dinner. After finishing our various styrofoam plates of deliciousness, we headed to 'L'Etage" where the funk band was playing. It was quite fancy and dark and had a bowl full of glowing punch sitting on the bar.
We danced and got in peoples' ways for about an hour and a half and then decided to head down to the Latin Quarter to kick off Nuit Blanche at about 10pm. En route in the various metro stations, we saw a number of uniquely French sights, such as people drinking bottles of wine bustling about to catch trains. There was a girl walking ahead of us in heels who was literally unable to stand up unless she clutched onto the handrailing. We were thrilled to finally see a French person not holding their shit together, until we passed her and she was, yes, American. Damn it.
Arrival in the Latin Quarter: I opened my bottle of Label 5 whiskey (less than 10 Euros - thankyouverymuch) and poured some into my Coke Light (Euro Diet Coke - it tastes a little different but it is nevertheless delicious) for our explorations. Choosing a vague path through the 5eme ended up being quite a good idea. We stumbled upon an installation piece of found objects about the dehumanizing effects of war, a huge screen in the middle of some street showing a video of engrossing images of almost-porn-but-not-quite, and a series of crazy video installations, including one called "The Camp" which was 3 cameras filming, from different perspectives, a group of people camping in a field absolutely INFESTED by giant mosquitoes. That alone was giving me the creeps, but once they whipped out a huge block of meat covered in maggots, I absolutely had to go outside and bum a cigarette from the cute security guard who didn't know that the English word for "cigarette" was "cigarette," just like in French.
Our ultimate goal was the Mosque of Paris, east of Rue Mouffetard, where there was supposed to be an installation of Earth and Sky concepts or something. It was worth the 30 minutes that we waited in line, for sure. I'll post photos because describing it was very difficult. At this point, my Label 5 was keeping me warm and cuddled up inside Abby's conveniently large purse and it was well after midnight. It was decided that we should go to the Monop' (small version of the omnipresent Monoprix) and get a bit of snack types of food, i.e. baguette, pistachios, yogurt drink, Coke Light.
Then we, yet again, ran into Melanie and Madison on the goddamn street. It must be our chemistry that calls to one another. Or something. It's very weird. They were with a girl in my new French class named Jackie, and since the 2 M's were on their way home, Jackie decided to come with us for some more exploring. We met up with a friend of Abby's and some people that he knew, including this girl who is getting her Master's at the American University of Paris. She started talking about living in France and how it's a socialist country (um, free health care does not socialism make you ignorant bitch) and how it's made her really grateful for capitalism (Abby said it best: "Maybe her dad invented Pop Tarts or something."). I was literally like gaping at her, and then she told me she was studying "Global Communications" and I only really wanted to LaughOutLoud.
After waiting in line to get into Jardin du Luxembourg, they informed us that we could not bring alcohol, so I and my Label 5 waited outside and then proceeded towards the Seine for a cool-looking installation at the Museum of the Middle Ages. However, it was after 4am at this point and #1 people were way too drunk to be out anymore and #2 shit was starting to close! ZUT! So we went to a cathedral on Rue Saint Sulpice where they had set up a large circles of speakers out of which chants were pouring loudly and it really gave one the feeling that every person around them had burst into immaculate 16th-century song.
Our final venture came on a trip to Chatelet-Les Halles to catch a metro up to Belleville again to see this crazy park that Jackie knew about. Unfortunately, when we got there it was after 5am and the park was closed. We met a drunk guy on the street asking for a lighter and, in truly garbled-drunk-French-person-speaking-English fashion, he asked us if there were only Americans here? Then he did an American accent and I informed him that we do not all talk like we're in a John Wayne movie, but that it was a good try.
The metro opens at 5:30, so we just hopped back into the station and went our separate ways. Back in my neighborhood and very tired, I and my whiskey made our way back to my house. About 2 blocks from my house, a man behind me started calling out to me. I proceeded to ignore him but he was starting to annoy the shit out of me so I yelled "qu'est-ce que c'est monsieur?" And pathetically, he attempted to ask me on a fucking date. At 6 in the fucking morning. I laughed in his face and kept walking, and he insisted upon following me, so I started yelling that I was going to call the fucking cops, to leave me alone, fuck off, and when he decided to creep on me right next to the door to my house, I turned around and shoved him into the nearest car and screamed fuck off or I am going to call the police in French. (Basically.) He was about 5'2", and as we all know, I am not a small lady. I don't think he was expecting that though. I opened my door, went inside, and Tweeted Ashley and Katie and went to sleep.
This afternoon, after sleeping until 2:30, my host dad came in and asked if a guy had been bothering me on my way home last night. I said yes and then he proceeded to tell me that he heard me yelling at him, so he got up, went downstairs and outside, and punched the guy in the face and then asked if he had a problem. Only after he was on the ground. I love my family.
Now to write my paper on "L'Age d'Or." Exciting.
A bientot!
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