The School of Cool

Or of the french language. Or of both. Hmmm, here's a question for yalls: when one writes of french as in the language, one uses a lower case "f." When one speaks of French as in something from or of France, one uses a upper case "F." Now, when one uses the phrase "french language," does one use an upper case or a lower case "f'?" Because one is speaking of the language, so the lower case seems appropriate. And yet, and yet, when one says the "French language" is not one saying the language of or from France? A conundrum, or so it would seem. Feel free to comment, or as I believe the button at the bottom of this post will read, feel free to "Comments." So, where were we before this breif diversion? Yes, we were about to discuss my french classes. I was somehow placed into an intermediate french class. I think I either tried a lot harder on my placement test that anyone else, or, and this is my theory, I just had sheer dumb luck on multiple choice sections of the exam. Whether that dumb luck turns out to be of the good or of the bad kind only time will tell. At any rate, I often find myself a little confused about what is happening in my class, I often don't know the vocabulary being used, and I seem to be behind most of my classmates in my french comprehension. Either I will learn a lot through my accelerated program, or I will be left utterly in the proverbial dust. I've just finished my first week of the program, and I can't quite tell where I stand yet. I think some of the concepts we are covering are beginning to clear up a bit. I don't know what I would do without the internet, though. I think I'd be in trouble. My new favourite site is the French Verb Encycleopedia http://french.about.com/library/verb/bl-verbencyclopedia.htm Here I can find the conjugations for irregualr verbs that I should supposedly already know. Here I can also find things like the "present participle" and "subjonctif" forms of verbs, both of which in my entire 5 weeks of french courses I had never encountered. So, I've spent most of this night (yes, that's right, Friday night) brushing up on my verb conjugations while taking occasional breaks to dance around my appartment to some good old-fashion (North) American indie rock. Thanks Malkmus. The internet also helped when I needed to figure out when to use "qui" or "que." Thanks to the message boards at Word Reference www.wordreference.com some kindly french-english bilingual folks were able to clear that up for me with a very simple answer. Besides the "practical" courses that I have for 2 hours every day, I also have a phonetics lab for an hour each day, as well as hour long courses on French literature, French history, and French art history (note the use of an upper case "F" here) each once a week. So far I've learned that Marguerite Duras is relatively easy to read for french-language beginners (and thanks to Dan's extensive literary collection, I have a couple of her books at my disposal and have started upon one), that the French-German dispute over the Alsace region dates back to the 9th Century when the 3 grandsons of Charlemagne (now, I could have said the sons of Louis le Pieux, but I wanted an excuse to write Charlemagne because it's a way cooler name) divided their father's (and grandfather's) territory into 3 parts that corresponded more or less to present day France, present day Germany, and, of course, the Alsace region, and that my art history prof talks really quickly. As far as getting to know people in my classes goes, I'm starting to make some progress. Big groups of people are always a bit overwhelming for me so I often don't get to know people immediately. My best school friend at the moment is a guy named Christian who comes from Cologne, Germany, and like so many Europeans, speaks impecable english. He wears khaki pants and a dress shirts to school every day, and is really... German. Like me, he has just completed his undergrad and is taking the french course for his own interest. He's pretty awesome. Other than that I've spoken with a few other people in my classes, including a few Americans who thought it was hilarious when I called my coil notebook a "scribbler."

I've gone to a few record stores since coming here. Bimbo Tower (which to me sounds like a bizare interpretation of Virgin Megastore) specializes in... weird music http://bimbo.tower.free.fr/. They have a lot of stuff that I like, but they're a bit much even for me. I don't need every Acid Mothers' side project ever recorded, thank-you. Wave Records is another local shop that is more to my liking http://www.dsa-shop.com/. In fact, if I chose all the music that was going to be put into a recored store, it would be Wave Records. I was happy to see that they seem to specialize in electronic stuff on lables such as Touch, Mille Plateaux, Sub Rosa, Raster-Noton, etc. Allia, I think you would really like Wave. They also share my huge crush on Constellation Records. I have bought a couple of CDs from Wave already, even though I am severly limiting my music purchasing habits. I was happy to find many copies of the Fifths of Seven record at Wave, which, despite being a Canadain group, are nearly impossible to get your hands on in Canada (believe me, I've tried) due to some distribution problems. Of course, I bought the record. I was in Wave for the second time today and purchased a Sylvain Chauveaux record and listened to a few others. The guy in there was kind enought to suggest a soundtrack that had artists such as Fennesz, Francisco Lopes, and Tim Hecker on it. A good suggestion. Our communication was pretty awesome since I spoke very little french, and he very little english.
My last music-related comment for this post has to do with a place called FNAC. They are a chain store that seem to have pretty much monopolized the Parisian music/electronics market. There seem to be few independent record stores for such a large city in part, I think, because one can find almost anything at FNAC. For example, they had a whole large section for the No Neck Blues Band. You don't find that at a whole lot of chain stores in Edmonton. FNAC also sells concert tickets. So far I've purchased Hot Chip and Cat Power tickets from them. I'll be back to pick up Sufjan Stevens, Yo La Tengo, and Denison Witmer tickets. Yippee! Next weekend both Sunburned Hand and Tanakh are playing. I think I'll catch both shows.

I've bored you long enough with that bit on my french musical experiences. Lets just say, I think there are a few of you who would have asked anyway, so that was for you.

I returned last Sunday to the flea market at the Port de Clingnancourt just outside of Paris in the suburb of St. Denis. This time I discovered that I hadn't even scratched the surface on my first visit. The market literally stretched for blocks. One can find an utterly confounding amount of junk there. There's new stuff such as clothing, shoes, scarves, jewelery, CDs, rip-off designer hand-bags, and souvenirs. There's second hand clothing. There's utterly useless junk such as old VCRs and other outdated electronics, only some of which actually works, mis-matched cuttlery, unwanted house-hold items. There are old books of the merely second hand type, right on down to the first edition antique type. And there are shelves upon shelves upon shelves of them. There was an entire warehouse of them. And that was only one of the places one could find books in the flea market. There's old military "stuff," old post cards, old fabric, antique clothing, entire statues, stands dedicated to various types of lighting fixture, and the list goes on. Olya would have never left. Ever. She would be lost to the world if she ever found this place. After spening an entire afternoon wandering the flea market I ended up at a tiny shack of a bar in the flea market. There were pictures of Django Reinhardt all over the walls and, sure enough, there were a couple of dudes playing "gypsy" jazz on electric-acoustic guitars. Not usually my thing, but these guys were really good, and it was the perfect ending to my flea market day.

A couple of observations:
1) It's nearly impossoble to find lined paper here. All of the paper, sold in packs or bound in notebooks, is graph paper! Weird.
2) The French haven't yet realized the magic of the hole-punch. Anywhere you can find school supplies you can find these books that are full of transparent sleeves. Instead of punching 3 holes in their paper and throwing the sheets into a binder, the French seem to put ALL of their paper into pockets. Although one can buy binders, one can also buy packs of these sleeves to put into the binders, presumably so that one's paper, which, by the way, is not sold with pre-made binder holes as it is in Canada, can be put into the binder VIA the sleeves. Also weird.

Ok, I'm done. It's 2 in the morning here and I'd still like to read before bed. I'm going to publish a few posts worth of pictures before that, though...

Until next time you goonies,
I've been Erin