Bou loves to play with our goats…but she has been for the past six months WAY too aggressive and powerful for them. They would try to play with her but inevitably Bou would crash into them and send them flying because despite being a little dog she is a bundle of muscle coming in at almost 30 lbs. And the goats are only 8 months old now—when Bou first started playing with them they were barely 9 weeks old. Typically Bou plays with dogs who are much larger, like our neighbor’s Lab/Mastiff mix or our friend’s bloodhound. When smaller dogs play with her Bou inevitably hammers them with a powerful shoulder shrug or head butt which sends them trembling and whimpering into their owner’s arms.
But our baby goats are growing and the male Cornichon now weighs only one kilo less Bou. As a result Bou recently learned a valuable lesson
Here is the vid:
Of course seeing this after the fact I’m deeply concerned about Bou’s hips and back—Frenchies have terrible problems and often require surgery. But it’s part of owning a Frenchie: she throws herself around like a lunatic every day, jumping off 6-foot high walls, propelling herself into orbit off the back of sofas and landing awkwardly, doing a vertical leap superior to that of Spud Webb and landing on her spine, chasing a ball and crashing into a hardwood bookcase at full speed. I wish that rather than filming Bou getting blasted into the stratosphere and crashing down I’d captured Corni’s victory dance. It was the most adorable thing to see him hopping back and forth and puffing out his chest at having bested his friend and rival for the first time. Now they play more as equals and it’s very cute.
I love how Bou immediately gets up after her chastening and goes after Corni anew–but as soon as he rears up she backs off. Makes me laugh every time.
These past two months have been a bit exhausting. We’ve hosted an open mic night with a full band, a harp concert, several workshops and a dance performance, as well as the usual run of weekly classes and ateliers. All of this on top of the two rental apartments ramping up into tourist season, the crush of garden maintenance, a quick five-day vacation in Spain AND working at the local street food festival, electrical and plumbing challenges, renovations, etc, etc.
We’ve also adopted a French bulldog, two baby goats, and four songbirds. I’ve put in at least 50 hours on fencing alone over the past three months–building the goat enclosure, then expanding it, adapting it as needed, and repairing it several times as the goats found weaknesses and pushed through.
And with all this work going on I’ve allowed some major milestones to pass unacknowledged here.
The Milestones
As of June 2024 it has been 6 years since we moved out of the USA. We left behind an elaborate social calendar, a Victorian rowhome filled with art and objects, political and business connections, the best next-door neighbors ever, our pet dove Godzilla (RIP), and a city with which we were infinitely familiar, where we’d carefully developed an intricate network of deep involvements over the years. And, of course we left behind beloved family members and dear friends.
But, I regret nothing. All of the challenges and myriad difficulties of being voluntary immigrants were worth the sacrifices. I was looking for a new push, a new means of developing skills and becoming a stronger and better version of myself, and moving abroad definitely pushed all my faculties to the brink on multiple occasions. I often thought about involuntary immigrants, those who have no choice but to migrate, and considered how my difficulties paled in comparison (while the privileges granted by my paleness greased many wheels for us). Our experiences in Panama–living in luxurious high-rises by the ocean, pushing ourselves professionally in a completely different environment than the Baltimore City Public School System at a swank international school, making friendships with locals and other expats from around the world, going routinely to beaches on two oceans, going into the mountains, rainforests, cloud forests, jungles, seeing wild animals, getting the most out of our crippled Spanish–we loved it all. Further, there is nothing more liberating (after the trauma subsides) of getting rid of all the stuff Americans accumulate over decades. So many possessions! It was a lot to let go but we learned how to do that.
As of the first half of June 2024 we’ve lived in France for 2 years. Our French expat experience has been much different from the Panamanian, and for beyond the expected reasons of climate, geography, culture, history, language, as well as living in a decolonized nation versus living in a former colonial power. In Panama we had jobs and an employer with lawyers and an HR department who handled the heavy lifting for us. For the move to France we did much of our own heavy lifting, with the help of an excellent hand-holding service based in Paris. And we had no employer, instead we started our own business, which I suppose counts as another milestone (In June 2024 we marked the two year anniversary of not working for The Manand became ‘self-employed‘).
Our humble abode from an island in the Vezere River: Moulin Sage
We are loving the Correze region of France. The village of Treignac has proved to be everything we hoped when we chose it after touring dozens of small medieval towns across France as we researched moving here. Many people in and around Treignac have helped and supported us as we work toward our goal of creating an event space/concert venue/professional development center/arts and crafts atelier/pop-up cafe/retreat center/eco resort/organic farm/anarchist commune/naturalist resort/vinyard/exposition space. Yeah, we live in a run-down apartment in a largely decrepit old factory building, but it’s the best life! People come here for concerts and shit, which amuses me no end (our first concert was a gathering of about 30 people to hear ellen cherry). People we need seem to arise by magic at the exact moment we need them–could we host yoga classes here? A yoga teacher appears. Can we find a contractor willing to use recycled or repurposed materials found in the mill to create new useful spaces? Tom puts a home-made flier in our mailbox. It’s been a blast, and quite exhausting at times. But it’s different working hard for yourselves and your clients and not for somebody else.
We earn about 8% of the income we had when we had jobs. But our stress and anxiety is way down, and we can afford to live a quality life here on a small income.
Our growing menagerie of small mammals: Cornichon, Capri, and Bou-Bou the Frenchie
On May 13th, I turned 55 years old
So being in my mid-fifties is pretty much the same as every other age I’ve been. Differences? My collection of unguents and gels has grown, my toes suddenly look like my grandfather’s toes, and I go to bed before 10pm every day. 85% of the time I feel physically like I’m in my early 30s–in fact, due to Tai Chi I often feel more limber than I did back then. But the other 15% of the time is where mid-fifties life gets interesting: 5% of the time I feel exactly my age, 5% of the time I feel like I’m in my 70s, and the last 5% of the time I’m stiff and sore and feel at least 90 years old. I can do renovation projects and work in the garden cutting and stacking and digging like a maniac no problem, and then get injured standing up from the couch or opening a pickle jar.
The biggest realization over the first half of this decade? Shut the fuck up. Keep your opinions to yourself, listen to what others have to say and shut the fuck up. Don’t participate in or encourage gossip of any kind. Petty annoyances and grievances? Let that shit go. This is the time to work on the inner self and start preparing for the next stages. What books to read, what books to re-read, what places to visit or revisit?–all of these questions become more delicate and nuanced. Typically American dudes live to be 75. Maybe I’ll get there, maybe not–maybe I’ll go beyond? But it’s time to start considering the fact that you’ve got a couple strong decades left, and how to spend them is a key consideration.
As of June 11, 2024, we’ve been married 30 years. How does this happen? In the blink of an eye we’ve been married 30 years. It really seems like our 20th anniversary party was just a few years ago. It’s been a true pleasure seeing my wife bloom since we moved abroad–unfettered by an employer she’s just madly arranging events and ateliers and adding more and more artists and craftspeople and creatives to her roster. But as my Baltimore 8th graders used to say, “she do too much.” Sometimes I get completely wiped out trying to run logistics and preparing for all the gazillion things she’s got going on, and yet she continues adding more and trying more. We have this amazing piece of garden and an old stone building and sometimes I’d like to rest on my laurels and set a spell in a hammock by the river. Patricia tells me “you have to schedule some days off when you’re self-employed or you’ll burn out,” and then she adds two more retreats and another workshop to the calendar and buys some massive thing on FB Marketplace that I have heft downstairs. But it’s all about the love, and there’s nobody I’d rather spend 24/7 with as a business partner and life partner and lover and animal co-parent. She is a dynamo with a world-changing mission and has no interest in slowing down a bit, and I could not be luckier to see it all up close.
Cliff came ambling down Route de Gueret from the Brasserie, encumbered by three sacks and a backpack. We noticed him first because the dog stood to attention and her hackles rose, but Pat got there in time and the dog rolled over and showed her neck upon noting her lady’s displeasure. Cliff was allowed to approach with no danger to his ankles or eardrums.
As he got closer I realized who it must be. Cliff had contacted me weeks earlier via Google, where he found our website and sent me a message in French. From the grammar I could tell he was a confident speaker with a pretty good knowledge but was certainly not a native speaker, and after seeing his name I thought he must be a Yank or a Brit and I replied in English to the chat.
Cliff had requested lodging for two and a half months, he wasn’t sure when exactly, and he could only pay 25 euros per night because he was retired and on a budget. Of course that’s less than half of what we charge per night for our small studio rental! I told him I would need specific dates and that we already had bookings all over our spring calendar for both apartments, but I would send him some suggestions nearby. After a few back-and-forths via Google he said “well I’ll just come to Treignac around mid-April and we’ll figure it out.” I warned him that Treignac was out of the way and he should reconsider, and he replied that he’d been coming to France for 20 years, often simply showing up and finding a place to stay. His intention was to do so again. “I can camp in your garden if that’s OK.” Then I didn’t hear from him for a while and thought he’d given up.
I was immediately struck by Cliff’s age. I’d assumed he was early to mid 60s, but he’s actually 88 years old. To get to Treignac from his home in Kansas he’d flown to Texas, thence to London, thence to Paris, where he caught a train to Clermont-Ferrand, then a bus to Meymac, and in Meymac he hitch-hiked outside the Renault dealership without luck for several hours. Then he asked the Renault dealership for a piece of cardboard with which he made a sign. Immediately a woman picked him up and drove 26 km out of her way to bring him to town. Unable to find us via GPS she dropped him at the Brasserie next door, where the proprietors directed him to walk across the bridge. I’m almost 55 and that trip would exhaust me! While we had coffee in the kitchen our Frenchie Bou went out on the porch where we’d stowed Cliff’s bags, and a minute later she proudly marched through the kitchen with something in her mouth–an adult undergarment she’d pulled from his backpack pocket. Poor Cliff took this in stride and was more amused than mortified.
We had a bit of a scramble at first. We put Cliff up the first night but had guests checking into both apartments that weekend. So we moved him to a friend’s pilgrim hostile apartment for the following two nights, then back to us for two weeks. Now due to a previous reservation he’ll have to leave again, but we got him situated in a nice studio apartment in a rejuvenated vacation village at the top of town. They can accommodate his budget and host him for the next 2 months. He needed a spot where he could walk to town and to the grocery, and Domaine de Treignac fit the bill.
Cliff says he retired at 39 after making a mound of cash in the PR industry in Pittsburgh and NY and California, but then drank his money away. After sobering up, on $1200 a month social security he managed to save enough to do shoestring world travel a couple months a year by hitching and camping and relying on the kindness of strangers (one time he was adopted by a French actress and stayed at her place in Aix en Provence for two years).
Cliff has been everywhere and remembers dozens of small French villages, including many surrounding us in the Correze and Le Lot and in the Perigord and Dordogne. Of the villages we’ve both visited his memory is far more reliable than my own. He’s a vet who spent a few years in Seoul and when he told me he was an old Boy Scout I told him to help any ladies in town across the street. He said “I surely will, and right into my bed!”
We won’t make much money from Cliff’s stay because it’s been cold and he’s using the electric radiator. Even with the solar panels electric is very expensive. But it’s been amusing to hear his stories and see him each day and help him out with logistics. He’s always asking if he can do odd jobs or work in the garden, and when I say no he takes a stool and his kit into town to sketch and paint old houses and walls. Last night he emailed me a play he wrote about Marx, Carlyle, and Dickens.
I had this damn spigot attached to my arm for 8 days
I’d never spent the night in a hospital before. I’d had two surgeries over the years, but in each case was ejected callously onto the street after the anaesthetic wore off. This was to be a new experience.
Before I was shuttled upstairs from the ER I was told that the MRI was normal. No sign of stroke, bleeding, or clots in the brain. The EKG was normal and healthy. All my vitals were strong, and were in fact quite good for a man of a certain age.
And yet I was being kept for observation. I asked why this was so if the tests were negative, and was told it was because the doctors believed I might have clots in the veins of my neck.
My wife was informed she could accompany me, and then was told she could not when we got to the fifth floor. My roommate was asleep and they did not want him disturbed, so she was told to go home as it was after 11pm. She did manage to sneak in and make sure I had my phone before she left me there in the dark.
Needless to say I passed a pretty miserable night. I was put on an IV of anticoagulant meds. I was disturbed every two hours by nurses who pricked my fingers for blood sugar tests, who changed my IV bag, who cheerfully asked “are you sleeping well?” before jabbing a syringe into my thigh or giving me a paper cup of pills. I was routinely subjected to blood pressure, temperature, and pulse checks.
a few meals featured wrapped cheese and yogurt. little else was edible.
On top of all this my roommate was an old codger whose breathing was reminiscent of Regan Macneil sorely beset by Pazuzu. Any time I managed to drift off he would explode in a coughing fit, after which he would get out of bed, turn on all the overhead fluorescents, and shuffle around the room banging into things.
At 5am the nurses entered cheerfully chirping good morning and asking if I’d had a good sleep, to which I could only respond with sarcastic laughter. Again with the poking and prodding and the taking of blood vials. “I’m sorry to inform you” the older and more sour nurse said in French, “but you are restricted to bed rest and must remain prone until further notice. You might break off a clot and cause it to travel to brain, head, or heart. This would not be good.” She placed a urinal within reach and left.
So my first stay in hospital was to be the full experience indeed!
Over the next 5 days of strict bed rest I was subjected to all the requisite indignities. The staff were extremely polite and empathetic as they stabbed my fingertips and blasted a fat injection needle into my thigh once day. When I asked about the injection I was told it was another anticoagulant, as were the powder and pills I received with each meal. I was bathed in the bed and changed, and my linens were swapped out by rolling me to one side and then another. From the bed I could see only the sky and the tops of a few trees.
I think 18 vials of blood were drawn over my stay. It got to the point where the nurse could not find a vein which had not been pierced and so she told me with profound pity that she had to reuse a hole and it would hurt a lot. “Je vous pique” was the standard greeting after a while.
I met the attending physician around noon on my first day. His French was accented and I pegged him as North African, which proved true. He asked what I was doing there and I told him my story and what the ER doctors had said. He shook his head, and replied in French “I don’t think you have clots at all. I think you had a brief episode as a result perhaps of a sudden drop in blood sugar, or maybe some sort of migraine. By the way you are in gerontology in the gastro wing because there are no beds upstairs in neurology available, but the neurologist is in charge of you and checking your test results.” He informed me I had further tests coming, and was not scheduled for discharge today or tomorrow.
My roommate was an affable old guy who’d had a stroke and collapsed on the floor of his kitchen. He was a lifelong bachelor and had come to after several hours and called the ambulance. He’d been in the joint 6 days but was scheduled to leave on Monday. We chatted a bit and he was interested to learn that I was American and living in Treignac, as he lived in Madranges a few km away. His French was a bit difficult to follow and it turned out he was Portuguese but had lived in the Correze since 1987. He had a portable radio and liked to blast it all day. His favorite program was a contest during which the announcer would play animal sounds. People would call in to guess the animal. “Nope, sorry, it’s not a dove, it’s a pigeon, you lose!” or “No this is not a pig, it’s a wild boar, better luck next time.”
On day 5 in the hospital I was still on bed rest. My muscles had atrophied and I was having spasms in my back from lying prone so long. I’d sat up to relieve the pain only to be clapped at and scolded by a nurse. When we’d left for the ER I’d brought a magazine in case we’d be there a while, and had read the entire thing the first morning. My wife brought me my tablet and several books to keep me busy, and while laid up I read even more than the typical daily allowance. My roommate had checked out and I’d actually had a couple nights of reasonable sleep. I’d made friends with most of the nurses and staff, and was joking a lot with the doctor who really regretted my situation. He wanted to release me but the neurologist was adamant that I should stay.
I was adjusting to the “food” served in hospital (the most edible thing all week was pureed peas with coriander). On Day 5 two interns arrived and rolled me out and up the elevator to another level. I was given an ultrasound of the neck to check for clots. After I was all lubed up and scanned the tech showed me my veins and arteries and declared me perfectly clear and healthy. “No signs of clots or even of plaque. You have the neck of a 20-year old, with nice flexible vertebrae.” So the anti-coagulants and mandatory bed rest were completely unnecessary! I was allowed to not only sit up, but to get out of bed and move around. I celebrated my new limited freedom by walking slowly and stiffly down the corridor from my room to the Christmas tree at the end of the hall and back. Then I had a sort of potato salad with vienna sausages mixed in for dinner.
Sitting up, and looking out the window–an unimaginable luxury
Friends visited and brought more books. I called my Mom and told her what was up and why I’d not told her days earlier. On day 6 I was walked downstairs by the doctor to another lab for an electroencephalogram. They attached a few dozen electrodes to my scalp and chest and then put on Pink Floyd and made me close my eyes. I had to breathe in different patterns and move my eyes in certain ways as they took readings. For ten minutes they flashed bright light patterns into my closed eyelids. Geometric patterns danced around my skull. I visited the Dark Side of the Moon and returned unscathed.
After the ECG I asked the doctor if I could go home. He gave me a wry smile and patted my shoulder. “The neurologist wants to do some more subtle cardiac assessments first.”
Day 7 and Day 8 were the same old same old, except that I was permitted to use the toilet and walk around on my own. Day 8 was the Friday before Xmas and I was starting to wonder if I’d be in hospital over the holidays. A nurse woke me at 5 am to drain another round of blood vials for further testing. They were looking at causes like epilepsy, migraine, tick-borne illness, MS, diabetes, but had found nothing. I had not been roofied at the bar. My blood pressure and pulse were healthy, my cholesterol was a bit high–but there was no indication as to what had caused my incident.
Around 9 am on Day 8 the doctor arrived and teased me by asking if I was prepared for another week in the hospital. I told him I would throttle the neurologist and he laughed and said many had promised to do so, it was why he stayed upstairs. My ECG results were completely normal, no sign of anything out of the ordinary. The neurologist had finally cleared me to go. They wanted me to consult with a cardiac specialist and a neurologist over the next few months but they’d found nothing to explain what had happened to me. French hospitals are the exact opposite of American hospitals, it turns out. Back home if they find nothing wrong after a superficial exam, they put your ass out on the street; over here they will search thoroughly and do every possible test to make sure there is no problem before sending you home.
I bathed myself, my IV line was removed, I changed into street clothes. I felt like a new man, reborn and full of strength and hope. After 8 days and nights of dismay and fear and uncertainty I was bursting with optimism. I took a last look at my prison cell, and even though it was cold and rainy and my wife would not be there to fetch me for another hour, I went outside and walked around the parking lot gleefully.
I’ve logged onto my national health web account and seen all of my test results. I have a lot of health data indicating that there is nothing wrong with me. As for the strange incident at the cafe last week, it remains a mystery. I did learn a lot of new French vocabulary in hospital, at the least!
On Friday December 15th I was riding high. We’d been to the Prefecture in Tulle the day before in order to retrieve our renewed visas–applying was a somewhat arduous process which took almost six months, and we were quite pleased to find our renewal was not only for one year, but for four.
We’d had a successful year with our gite rental business, and had also expanded to host several successful events including multiple concerts and a huge Christmas Festival. We were considering maybe getting away for a week to explore a new part of Europe to celebrate. All in all, our move to France appeared to be going quite well 1.5 years in.
We went to the Treignac Christmas market and ran into friends outside the Salle de Fete, and after a quick tour of the vendors decided to go to Cafe du Commerce for a quick coffee. As we made our loop around the market I’d had a strange kaleidescopic prism worm its way across the top of my left eye, after which I felt a bit out of sorts–a tad tired and grumpy. I chalked it up to being spent after so many days in a row of work and stress, and continued on my way.
At the Cafe we had a wide-ranging conversation about spirituality and shamanism and drugs and Jesuits and life on an Indian ashram. I’d continued to feel a bit out of sorts and then realized that I was having trouble forming words. I finished my point speaking to the Irishman to my left and remember thinking “well, just stop talking. Be polite and nod and smile, but take a rest from speaking.” I’d only had a coffee to drink, but felt as though I were intoxicated. I could see everyone and was able to follow the social niceties, nodding appropriately, smiling, laughing a few times, but I realized that the conversation had grown beyond my capacities to follow. My awareness, my conscient core, was shrinking rapidly. Everything grew dim, and the people around me were all faceless. I could only recognize their hair, it was too much to decode their faces. A friend across the table was speaking to me directly and I knew I was being addressed but had no idea what he was saying. He handed me his phone to show me something, I took it and mimed looking at it, and nodded, but could see nothing on the screen. I felt like I was becoming smaller and smaller, and yet my main concern was an adamant focus on not alarming anyone or causing some sort of scene.
I took out my own phone to occupy myself and found that I couldn’t read or understand its function. I leaned over to my wife and said something about “all these messages, I don’t understand them, who is messaging me” but I couldn’t hear what she was saying in reply and did not even know for sure if I’d spoken.
Another friend arrived and joined our group. I reached over and shook his hand and smiled but had no idea who he was. At this point I realized there was a dog at the table but I had no idea how it had got there, and then looking around I discovered that I didn’t know anyone’s names. I sat back down and my wife was saying something and clutching my arm and suddenly I snapped back to myself. She was saying “I’m taking you to the emergency room, you’ve had a stroke!”
My full awareness returned so suddenly and all at once that I responded indignantly “what are you talking about, I’m fine!” But as I stood to pay our bill I staggered a bit, and then could not summon the basic French to interact with the bartender. I managed to pay and walk out and the entire time my wife was hammering me about going to the Emergency Room, but I felt completely fine. I drove us home, where she kept telling me names of people I didn’t recognize at the bar, and I kept saying that either I didn’t know such a person or that they hadn’t been there. She got very frustrated with me and called our German friend who drove over to assess me himself. After he left thinking I was OK I drove us back to the friend’s house where we were staying while we babysat their hound dog. I fed the dog, let him out, and played with him, and then the entire episode came back to me. The confusion, the sense of shrinking awareness, the inability to follow or participate in a conversation, not recognizing familiar people.
I agreed to go to the ER in Tulle, and after explaining in French what had happened, was quickly taken in the back, given an EKG and an MRI and told that the results were normal/negative. I thought “Ok, no stroke, no aneurysm, I’ll be on my way!” But no, they took me upstairs, admitted me and kept me 8 days in the hospital.
It was our great honor to host Marco Lienhard and his student Mark as Taikoza performed in our garden by the river. We’ve known Marco for more than 15 years, and he and musicians touring with him often stayed at our home in Reservoir Hill in Baltimore. To have musicians of this caliber perform in our garden for an audience of 90 people was quite special.
In my introductory remarks (in clumsy French) I tried to express that we host these events to share our garden space with as many people as possible, and hope to curate events which allow artists and audiences to forge connections. We actually met a man who lives in Paris but has a second home in nearby Veix because of this concert. He is French-Vietnamese and is a huge Taiko hobbyist, collecting drums and doing workshops for young people. He was so thrilled that Marco and Taikoza were performing in the Correze that he offered the use of his larger drum, and helped Marco carry it down to the garden and set up. Connection forged!
This was the third garden concert we’ve hosted, and by far the largest. It was the first time we charged admission and were able to give the musicians money, and a local Japanese caterer made and sold lovely Bento boxes which added substantially to the event.
Also, for the first time, we had a substantial number of French attendees–the previous concerts attracted a few but those audiences consisted mostly of Anglo-Saxon expatriates.
The evening was a huge success and we received positive feedback across the board. Excited audience members interacted with Taikoza during and after the show and asked about the drums and several T-shirts and CDs were sold.
Marco also performed on the Shakuhachi. He is an internationally recognized master of the instrument.
I must, however, address some concerns shared the next day by a friend who attended. I’ll preface my response by noting that this is an important topic and that I’m happy to have this conversation.
Concern “White Europeans should not dress in Japanese clothes to do such a performance. This is like white dudes who play the didgeridoo barefoot and think they are woke when they are actually appropriating and exploiting another culture.”
My response In this era it is common to assume that any white person performing music which is not of European or North American origin is appropriating another’s culture. Marco is of Swiss German heritage and his student Mark is American, so I can understand this assumption, and again raising this concern is important.
BUT, it is vital before making snap judgments to at least look at Marco’s biography. A “white dude barefoot playing the didj” likely learned to play the instrument betwixt snapping bong hits and most probably did not travel to Australia to study with an indigenous musician, perhaps deserving a bit of contempt. But Marco went to Japan and learned and toured Japan for 18 years with a famous Taiko group. Further, he attained mastery of various Japanese flutes in the traditional manner by studying in Japan with Japanese masters. He speaks and reads fluent Japanese and is deeply passionate and knowledgeable about the culture and history of these instruments and the music. It is his life-long mission and his career to share his knowledge and expertise of these art forms and this culture. In Japan he tours regularly and is regarded as a master musician and he performs regularly with Japanese musicians and in front of Japanese audiences. Any concerns that he is exploiting another culture are easily dismissed by a glance at his resume. Marco is hardly exploiting these traditions–he is a recognized master of these traditions, and has been a highly regarded teaching artist of these forms for decades with audiences around the world.
As for the costumes, they are a requisite part of the performance, and to perform this music in Western clothes–t-shirts and sweat pants or even suits–would be deeply disrespectful to the tradition and could not be advertised as a Taiko performance. Were Marco to do so it would actually be cultural appropriation.
I asked a Japanese friend who lives in Treignac and who was in attendance if she was worried that Taikoza was exploiting Japanese culture. Her response was simple: “This was a beautiful and authentic performance of Japanese music. I know many Japanese who go to the West and study violin or piano for years, and who perform Beethoven and Mozart around the world in Western dress. This is not stealing another’s culture.”
While it is important to raise these issues and have these conversations, we must not rush to judgment. We also must be cautious not to confuse cultural appropriation with cultural exchange. Artists of different ethnicities, cultures, nationalities have always traded ideas and learned each others’ music and instruments and traditions. They take each others’ art forms and are inspired to create new and evolving forms. Taiko itself owes heavy debts to Chinese art forms, from which it borrowed heavily and eventually evolved. In our quest to avoid exploitation and further colonial degradation, we must not stifle genuine work to promote cultural forms and to share them.
You can find links to Marco’s recordings for sale here
After 13 months in France my confidence with the spoken tongue has developed reasonably well. I try to push myself to read French daily, to read literary French and also news media French. But I should listen more to the radio and watch television and films in French because my ear needs work–sometimes I simply don’t hear things correctly, and I need much more facility with he idioms and also the shortcuts French speakers use, their means of simplifying and contracting and making musical the language.
Also–I need to speak French more regularly with locals. I do speak to clients often but these are formal and simple interactions, well-rehearsed host-client stuff, typically very basic. Occasionally a client will have more complex questions, or will venture into questions about my origins or accent or how we ended up in remote rural France from the USA, and I’ll get to push my French a bit. Often I end up in these situations trying to remember the subjunctive form of a verb and stalling out. Nobody cares, however, about the subjunctive and I should simply throw the verb out in any form because the sense will be understood and that’s what matters more than grammatical exactitude and precision. I need the confidence to say something incorrectly rather than the confidence to speak fluently.
I was outside last week speaking to a gite client from England and a small white van pulled over. The driver said something to my guest but he did not understand, and waved me over. There was a woman at the passenger window nearest me. The driver asked from over her shoulder “Is there a store in this town which sells paint and paint supplies?”
I replied, in French, “Yes, there is a store called Brico, and it is about 800 meters up the road on the left at the circle.” The driver of the van looked at me and was a bit confused. Then I realized he had asked the question in SPANISH, not French, so I replied in Spanish as best I could and he smiled and waved and drove off.
It was a weird experience to understand his question and how to answer but to have not realized which language it was. For a moment I was in that zone where instead of thinking about language and response I was simply doing it. But in the wrong tongue!
Recently I’ve caught myself mixing Spanish into French again. At a local flea market yesterday a French woman asked how I was doing (“tous va bien?”) and I replied “Muy bien,” which made her laugh. I’ve also been saying “y” instead of “et” for and regularly–not sure why!
The quest for speaking and listening fluency I suppose will last as long as I’m here. I want to learn some German or Italian also to make things worse.
This morning I had a To Do list, which I’ve been working through this week. I glanced at it around 9am, and looked at the weather forecast, and thought: “I’m not going to get most of this done before it rains anyway.” I did a bit of gite prepping for guests arriving tomorrow, I put a first coat of paint on my antique window greenhouse, and I hopped in the car to do a bit of site-seeing.
Just around Treignac and throughout the Correze are multiple layers of history: neolithic sites, Druid/Celt sites, Gallo-Roman sites, medieval ruins, Romanesque and Gothic churches and abbeys, painted caves, etc. We’ve lived here a year and have done some exploration, but it’s easy to get into a rut of “I’m working in the garden” and to forget one of the primary reasons we chose to live here: to see cool shit.
Today I drove 10 minutes over to the small village of Lestards. Sprinkled about Lestards in the forested hills are several medieval crosses–some dating back to immediately after the fall of Rome. I’d passed a small sign next to the main road several times which read “Le Croix en Haute.” Today I parked alongside the entrance to the trail and hiked up.
“En Haute” is an apt description. The hike was short–perhaps ten minutes, but it was steep. The path is an old rocky lumber road mostly overgrown and it runs directly uphill between pastures dappled in the typical French wildflower display.
There is on the left hand side a forest after a bit of a climb, and at the edge of the forest is a grove which feels different somehow from the rest of the landscape. One gets the sense immediately that this is a sacred spot, and likely was long before the Croix itself was placed, probably by monks desperate to convert the local pagans to Christianity by decorating their holy sites and sacred wells with crosses and saint’s names. The air is fresher and cooler in the grove, the loamy moss-covered earth invites one to move slowly and thoughtfully. The birds sing but they are less raucous than elsewhere. Whatever spirit or deity was originally evoked in long-forgot rites at this place still whispers around the trunks and amongst the grasses and flowers.
Le Croix en Haute from behind
But there is room here for the early Christian sentiment as well, and it pervades the spot with a more dense and contemplative mood in counterpoint to the brisk and playful fay. I spent a good 40 minutes at the site, examining the cross and its surroundings, then doing my daily Qi Gong routine at the grove’s edge. As I moved through the sequence of slow movements, village church bells rung 10 am–the first sounding deep and bronzy from Lestards, then a moment later from Veix somewhat tinny and a bit further down the valley. The long-stemmed flower varietals swayed in a strong steady wind up the slope from below, indicating an approaching storm. Somewhere above and behind a woodpecker did his tapping devotions .
Christ on the cross is pretty clear in this rough carving, as are the faces of two others beneath his arms. Are they those crucified alongside him that day? Or witnesses to his execution? The two Marys perhaps, or Roman centurians? Were I to scrape away the lichen and moss on its base would I find any markings? Or spots worn smooth by the touch of generations of genuflecting seekers?
Definitely a mystical aura to this place
I imagine I’ll come here often over the years we spend in Treignac. It’s a very evocative place, and Lestards with its small thatched-roof eglise and spring water fountain is a favorite regular destination for us. I might later this summer or fall have to tackle the trail which hits several of these crosses around the village.
This weekend in Treignac there was a water sports festival. The local power company turned on the taps at the dam upriver from our house and let loose a torrent from Friday to Monday. Last year Treignac hosted the world kayaking championships, and does so regularly–but this year they hosted the championship trials. Our home is on a bend in the river and it was interesting to see how dramatically the water level and mood of the river changed behind our garden.
We signed up for a rafting excursion which started on the north end of town and wound around to the south end. Our total time in the raft was about 45 minutes.
My wife and I have rafted several times in the USA, and once on the border of Panama and Costa Rica. She got a group of friends together to join our team and after the typical safety gear and instruction period we were off.
Our guide was a bit adventurous. There is a small dam 300 meters upstream from our house which has a gentle ramp built in for kayaks and rafts. He told us “We are not going down the slide, we are going over the wall.” Quite exciting to take a 4-foot vertical plunge into churning foam!
The Barrage du Pisciculture at the end of our property–our rafting guide took us down over the wall!
It was lovely seeing our building from the water. The most tranquil part of the river floats around a slow bend which borders our garden and then goes under the Pont de la Brasserie, built in 1840. A friend was stationed at the wall to snap photos of us as we passed. Poor soul–she was originally a team member but fell and broke her arm a few days before the adventure and could not participate! We definitely owe her a bottle of wine for waiting so long at our place.
Photo by Kate Gratton, taken from our garden as we passed Moulin SAGE
I was pleasantly surprised by the course–I thought it would be rather tranquil and had no idea how choppy and full of attitude the water would be. There were a few really rugged spots of more than 100 meters and at least 3 substantial drops of class 3 or more. Fortunately our raft was equipped with foot straps or we would have lost crew members at different points. On one steep drop by a large outcropping we almost tipped over.
Photo by Barb Wigley, taken from her garden near the Vieux Pont, TreignacPhoto by Barb Wigley. “You two look like marauding Vikings in this one,” she wrote.
We got to pass under the medieval Vieux Pont in the center of town, and see the famous post card view of Treignac from a raft. My favorite spot however was seeing the Rocher de Folles from underneath. We’d done the hike to the outcropping previously, and got to see it from a different vantage.
It was quite an experience, and already we are looking forward to doing it again next year. Today is all about recovery after the strenuous workout–and also about cleaning up the gite apartment after a 5-man kayaking team checks out later this morning!
Back in the early spring I was cutting brambles and digging out weeds and noticed in the side of a steep hill on our property that there was a tiny bird nest.
Inside the nest were three very tiny eggs. In this part of France there is a law that one cannot cut hedges between March 15 and July 31 because of nesting birds, and I take this rule seriously. I pay attention to all the birds I see and like to observe breeding pairs and note where they hang out. This nest made me very happy because it was in the ground and easy to see when I walked up and down from the garden daily. The mother would often flit in and out as I worked nearby.
Last week I noted that the eggs had hatched, and I could see moving chicks in the nest. I didn’t stay to watch or examine because I didn’t want to cause anxiety in the mother, who I figured was close about and foraging. Again I was quite happy to see these babies and to think about nature and its small miracles. Often a trip to our garden is like an un-narrated David Attenborough special.
But shortly after I noticed the chicks had hatched, I found two of them on the cement path early in the morning.
I don’t know if they fell out, or were pulled out by a mammal, or if the mother had cast them out (which happens sometimes). I did hear and see a cat very early that morning on the other side of our building. One chick was completely gone, the other two were left behind.
How devastating! My entire day was colored by this discovery. I’d looked forward to seeing these little guys go through adolescence and thence into the world, ideally to return to our garden with mates to create future generations. I thought how cruel Mother Nature can be!
But of course Mother Nature is not cruel, she is indifferent and neutral. Can’t have yang without yin, after all.
I feel for the mother, who worked so hard! Hopefully she and her mate try again next year with more success.
Mysterium Coniunctionis 