songs from france

my favorite newlyweds

So this blog is called La Cueillette, which, if you remember, means the harvest, usually of fruits or nuts or something. It's also called Songs From France. Now, there are songs from France.

They are here and they are waiting to be listened to. By you.

D and L and I recorded four in the small guesthouse next to the pool. Curious? Hmmm???

We had an incredible time together playing shows and talking to people about music and also about everything else. There is so much I could say about it, but if you would like an idea that is better than what I could say with words, watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsjZf4BLf7Y

That was an impromptu couple of songs we played in Cordes sur Ciel, which means "strings on sky." An appropriate place for sharing a love for music with strings. Medieval village. Absurdly beautiful. Lots of dancing little kids that came out of nowhere when we started playing.

Also this. This is what our day-to-day life was like for three weeks. Um...yep. What a gift.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP8tHlLCo7k&feature=autoshare

I have just returned from a visit to Angers, in the Loire Valley, where I was visiting a dear friend who I met two years ago in Rennes. Since we hadn't seen each other in two years, and also the weather wasn't great, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen making way too much food and catching up on life.

angers

pad thai for two

On the train on the way back...well I should say "one of the trains" because it required four trains for me to get from Angers to Albi.....anyway, on one of the trains, for some reason my seat was in first class, which I didn't realize until I was about to get on the train (sometimes train booking is weird like that). It was great because first class train seats are way better for sleeping in. So I wake up when the controlleur comes through to check our tickets, and there are these people in my car speaking Spanish...I don't speak Spanish, but I've spent enough time in Spain to be able to tell that they were not Spanish. Anyway this one guy was acting as their translator, and he says excitedly to the controlleur, "do you know who this lady is? she's Che Guevara's daughter." At first I though maybe he was joking because the French are always joking. But he wasn't.

This is my last week of teaching, and my goodbyes to students already feel so nonchalant. I guess maybe it's because they're high schoolers. Or they are just too awkward to know what to do. Or I am. Or everyone is. Anyway in France no one says goodbye. They all say à bientôt...see you soon. Thank goodness for that. It's funny though because nearly all of the people I said à bientôt to the last time I lived in France, I did see again. It wasn't super bientôt or anything, but it was soon enough.

goin to carolina in my mind

Sometimes when I'm daydreaming I go to this one barn in the countryside outside Greensboro. It's one of those picturesque "farmland of America" type places. There are chickens and a couple of donkeys or whatever down the hill from the barn. Probably there are some goats also. To get there from the highway you drive down this looooonnng road through a gate that probably has a welcome sign on it. But....this is a special barn.
I have done much dancing in this barn. Every fall during my college years, the Quaker folks around the area would put on a barn dance, and we would all hop in the back of someone's truck and head out there to do some serious folk dancing. All of the Quaker mommas would make pies, so on the first floor of the barn there are like 20 pies and hot cider. The second floor is this huge high-ceiling'd room where all the dancing happens. You can hear it/feel it when you are on the first floor, and I always sort of had the impression that maybe people were going to stomp right through the floor.
The best part about the barn though, requires going up some stairs from the second floor into a loft where you can watch everyone dancing down below, and then climbing up a ladder from there to the roof of the barn, where you can see the most stars ever. That's where I go when I'm daydreaming.

I could look at the same stars here, and it would probably be even better because Albi has basically zero light pollution. But there's just something about North Carolina.

cathedrals in the hearts of the people that i know

J'apercois la fin qui arrive, et ça fait peur un peu. En fait, ce n'est pas la fin qui fait peur mais l'inconnu qui m'attend de l'autre côté de l'atlantique. La nostalgie pour ma vie en France existe déjà...je regarde autour de moi et je vois la beauté, ma famille bizarre et internationale, les habitudes que j'ai....un petit café l'après-midi, le matin sur la terrace sous le rosier, tout ce qui est vieux, plus vieux que mon pays entier...

Bon bref, tout ce qui m'attend est aussi beau. Mon coeur est plein de musique...une musique qui est venue avec moi en France et qui va repartir avec moi quand je partirai. Je peux espèrer que je ne perdrai la musique de la langue. Certes, il y a d'autres langues qui m'attendent....

Ce matin je suis allée à la messe pour la première fois depuis décembre ou janvier, et partout dans la cathédrale il y avait des enfants qui faisaient n'importe quoi, et ils avaient tous des feuilles de palmier puisque c'est le dimanche des rameaux....et moi je suis un enfant, feuille de palmier dans la main, admirant le mystère autour de moi...

D and L and I are calling this the "Mega-mystery Tour." Life is a mega-mystery. What else can I say? They arrived here late Monday night, and our first week together has been a joy. Singing with them again is like coming home. I'm amazed at how little difficulty we encountered piecing our voices together again for the first time in six months. People's response to the music so far has been interesting and really varied. We played our first show in Toulouse on Wednesday night at a "café culturel" that seems to have some pretty strange and intriguing regulars. I had been to a show there before, and that show was extraordinarily different from our own....at the one I went to before, the bar was really crowded and loud and all the lights were on, and some people were listening but most were just having their Friday night entre amis. At our show, they turned down the lights and it was completely silent the entire show. I was so surprised...not at all what I expected. It was really good though, especially for certain songs that are quieter and more subtle...our second show was nearly the opposite. We left out any quiet songs because there was so much noise that no one would have been able to hear them. The noise was caused mostly by a fountain though, not necessarily by people. It was a beautiful show, nonetheless. I don't think I've ever sung that loud in my whole life. Belting=not my strong point. Yet.

In other news, last weekend I went on a really wonderful day-road-trip with Pierre, Brent, and Neill to Carcassonne. We listened to some Ryan Adams with the windows down and ate some cassoulet (for the first and probably last time...I think that was the most fat I have ever consumed in a single sitting), got slightly lost in Castelnaudary, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I will tell you more about it with some pictures.