The
sounds of Edith Piaf a flowing in from the dining room. "Non, je ne regrette rien" from 1960, has a bit of a
cornball marching mix beneath it, but her voice soars above as forever
plausible, uncompromising, wounded.
My wife, who like my daughters is studying French all of a sudden has
decided to listen to as much French music as she can get her hands on. No wonder then, she has found Piaf, the
French National Diva. My mind
turns to compare her now with Amelia Rodrigues who we encountered this summer in
Lisboa, the Portuguese National Diva . Piaf is older, as I would have guessed,
but she seems to have aged faster and died much younger. Piaf was born in 1915 and died a
year younger than me, at the age of 47 in 1963. Amelia was born in 1920 and nearly lived out the century
till 1999. No mean burden that,
“National Diva.”
Now we have accordions and shouts about Paris in the night
and forgotten numbers searching streets and avenues; glimpses I can otherwise make out beneath
my rusty French. I must go find
out what this is. She has on a
Youtube clip called “Great French Music for a Romantic Dinner.” I see. The musicians are not listed; rather we have a shuffle of
photos of Les Halles, and Notre Dame the Siene and areal photos of the
city. This, and food and
wine. I’ve suggested she should
check out some Serge Gainsbourg.
Perhaps she will. The last
time I’d tried to do this she’d commented on how unattractive he was. Ah, la
beauté est dans l'œil (ou l'oreille) du spectateur.
She was beating herself up about not making more progress
with this project. I suggested she
go live with a family in a French speaking country for a few weeks, and she’d
come back at another level. She
immediately dismissed the idea as ridiculous but I thought I could glimpse a
moment of consideration there.
Would that really be possible?
My daughters too have begun studying la
belle langue this year. It’s
one thing for these guys to leave me behind in Chinese. Now I dread that history will repeat
itself. Right now I have a tenuous
edge, but anyone with some modest dedication or regular homework, could go from
rien to plausible quickly and laissez-moi dans la poussière.
I rely on my news from back home largely from the New York
Times. I don’t tend to watch any
broadcasts, other than out of the corner of my mind. I find myself being pushed from my comfort zone on matters of the
presidency. I’ve set a
notion for a while that Obama is smart and doing the best he can. Roger Cohen whom I respect and who I
know, in kind, respects Obama, had an interesting editorial about “Obama the
Restrainer” being a logical counterpoint to “Bush the Decider” but that, in his
opinion, it has shifted out of balance.
American soft power is still dominant, but the pull-back on our hard
power has left the world confused and allowed for movement by a range of
opportunists who, to his mind, exploit American ambivalence.
And I wonder to what extent it is possible to have an
opinion about a public figure that isn’t weather-veined this way or that; by
the copy we read or the way reporting is framed. Yesterday there was an article suggesting that Congressional
Democrats like Harry Reid are all fed up with Obama, because of his aloofness
and his unwillingness to schmooze and engage. Is that really true? I see Ferguson Missouri resembling a war zone of racial
divide all of a sudden and I’m perplexed.
As it continues on, is it appropriate to look to the leader for a
solution? It was much easier to
suggest that G. Herbert Walker Bush was somehow “at fault” for the mood in the
country during the L. A. riots. Is
the same true now, if it ever was?
The underlying message in the paper would appear to be that
Obama has tuned out and is somehow stewarding a careful course, to the end of
his term. I don’t believe that is
the stuff he is made of, though perhaps time in that remarkable role, has ultimately changed him, taught him restraint. I do hope Obama is able to seize upon some meaningful initiatives
that speak to the possibility for American power, rather than simply its
limitations. China approached
America about a joint development initiative in the Congo recently. Where is it then, that we are
approaching people with a fresh sense of possibility? I want to feel some risk taking on the part of the
presidency so that he can leave the office with more than simply, "Non, je ne regrette rien." These two years are the time to find
ways to act boldly, and perhaps independently. The next inauguration will certainly be 后悔莫及.[1]
No comments:
Post a Comment