Race

“…I never saw so many roguish Egyptians together in one place in all my life as in Nevers, where there was a multitude of men, women and children of them, that disguise their faces, a our counterfet western Egyptians in England. For both their haire and their faces looked so black, as if they were raked out of hel, and sent into the world by great Beelzebub, to terrifie and astonish mortall men: their men are very Ruffians & Swashbucklers, having exceeding long black haire curled, and swords or other weapons by their sides. Their women also suffer their haire to hang loosely about their shoulders, whereof some I saw dancing in the streets, and singing lascivious vaine songs; whereby they draw many flocks of foolish citizens about them.

In Nevers, and elsewhere, Tom commits the sin we’d now call racism; it is more accurate, I suspect, given where he eventually travelled, to call this the fear of the “other”. In Lyon over dinner “Elvis”, one of those traveling wheeler-dealer whatever you want, businessmen talked a little about the troubles in St. Dennis, the northern suburb of Paris where I stayed, and where Turkish, African, Tunisian and Moroccan “banlieu” youth has rioted, over the years. “Those places, there’s a lot of trouble there, people are lazy,” he says. I liked my time there: it was a healthy antidote to the judgments of Paris. Elvis hadn’t been there for a while, he’d been in Indonesia, India, Thailand…but it was bad there.

There are so many assumptions we make about race; the elections here brought in a President whose position is – or has been – hard-line about immigration. In Lyon I watch a policeman (with a van of policemen parked outside) ask for papers before buying his kebab. “Sarkozy has a quota system. Numbers. People are going to suffer more now,” John says. At Lyon station I watch two young Tunisians try and buy a ticket without their passports, in the 30 minutes I queued they made little progress, and met several officials.

Somewhere out there is a heavily-trafficked website called “FuckFrance”. It’s American, I think. Political in its way; but not the way we like it: thoughtful, nuanced, balanced. It represents “freedom of speech”; there are plenty of counter-balances, of course, but because views, about race, politics or national identity, are genuinely under threat from the good side of globalization, the economic and social nomadism of so many people, as well as the bad side (the racism, the targeting of specific groups, the fear of “terror”) then perhaps the “centre” breaks. And with this breakage, the balancing toleration that should be a by-product of the digital modern. It hasn’t shaped that way yet: just read the news blogs.

Watching the Champions’ League Final in Abbeville it is obvious that the men at the bar were firstly Pro-Anything-Not-English (that’s to say, Liverpool). Secondly that each time an African (or home-grown player that wasn’t clearly white) touched the ball they shouted: “The Black, The Black.”

A few days ago the Lithuanian Football Association was fined thirty thousand Euros because it its match against France the home crowd waved a flag of Africa painted in the French colours, because to the great black players who have graced the blue shirt over the past 30 years.

Behind my attempt to understand Tom Coryat, and his journey, is a desire to “see” as he did; not what he saw, but “how” he saw. For, in Abbeville, whilst kids are SMS-ing whoever, wherever; whilst in Amiens boys are battling in online worlds with players from Iceland, Nigeria and Peru; whilst Zinedine Zidane, despite the “head-butt” is close to God here in France, it’s still an unsettling sight to see how little we’ve moved towards being “betwixt” when it comes to race.

In La Chambre, high in the Alps, I sit down to lunch. A local with a medicine-ball head, and an “Ethnique: Francaise" logo, says to his wife: “Thank goodness the tourist is white. And this one is all white.”

And there I was thinking I had a healthy tan.

Late, Lost Lyon

The reason for the delay in writing about Lyon more fully is mostly about processing: Tom had three years; Tim Moore perhaps one. Here, with the imperative to post several times each day, a different kind of writing emerges, more hesitant – less prone to definitive judgment. The choices are too great.

Bawdy, blasphemous, boisterous, bon vivanting, Lyon has the Rabelesian set. It is here that Tom stops for a few days and meets some people:

“…the other Turk was a notable companion and a great scholler in his kinde; for he spake six or seven languages besides the Latin, which he spake very well: he was borne in Constantinople. I had a long discourse with him in Latin of many things, and amongst other questions I asked him whether he were ever baptized, he tolde me, no, and said he never would be. After that wee fell into speeches of Christ, whom he acknowledged for a great Prophet, but not for the Sonne of God, affirming that neither he nor any of his countrey men would worship him, but the onely true God, creator of heaven and earth: and called us Christians Idolaters, because we worshipped images…

…At mine Inne there lay the Saturday night, being the fourth of June, a worthy young nobleman of France of two and twenty years olde, who was brother to the Duke of Guise and Knight of Malta. He had passing fine musicke at supper, and after supper he and his companions being gallant lustie Gentlemen, danced chorantoes and lavoltoes in the court. He went therehence the Sunday after dinner, being the fifth day of June.

…At the south side of the higher court of mine Inne which is hard by the hall (for there are two or three courts in that Inne) there is written this pretty French poesie: on ne loge ceans à credit: car il est mort, les mauvais paieurs l’ont tué. The English is this: Here is no lodging upon credit: for he is dead, ill payers have killed him. Also on the South side of the wal of another court, there was a very pretty and merry story painted, which was this: A certain Pedlar having a budget full of small wares, fell asleep as he was travelling on the way, to whom there came a great multitude of Apes and robbed him of all his wares while he was asleepe: some of those Apes were painted with pouches or budgets at their backs, which they stole out of the pedlars fardle [small pack], climbing up to trees, some with spectacles on their noses, some with beades about their neckes, some with touch-boxes and ink-hornes in their hands, some with crosses and censour boxes, some with cardes in their hands; al which things they stole out of the budget: and amongst the rest one putting down the Pedlers breeches, and kissing his naked, &c. This pretty conceit seemeth to import some merry matter, but truly I know not the morall of it.”





One senses he fell upon these conversations with a happy heart: just as I am pleased to have Connie and John and their friends when I arrive late. Connie is 31 and has seen a lot of the world, one way or another. She quit the corporate world at 23, having been instrumental in setting up “Yahoo” in Asia. She first left home at 13, adopted by a brother for a while. Connie is Canadian Chinese, with some Jamaican blood somewhere, she says. She’s been married to a Frenchman, lived in Dublin, knows her way around many places. “We were put up in Madonna’s suite, at the Home House, Porchester square – do you know it? [This is London]. We had the whole friggin’ floor – we just didn’t know it. The room service people kept knocking at the wrong door.”

This was the dot com world, a long time ago now. These days when girlfriends come around Connie is giving away her old designer executive clothes to any who are the right size. Connie is still a poster-girl for the betwixt world of the digital. She’s at home with the technology, and it forms a central focus: for learning, for writing (she blogs as LadyC), for communications and organisation. Because music is such a passion Lyon is a great place to be, much happens here – and Paris for one-off concerts is two hours away by train; festivals and raves happen a lot in the region.




“I have no home except here,” Connie says, “It’s this, my apartment for the next few months – then perhaps we’ll move outside, find somewhere in the country nearby.” Her friends are French, Moroccan, Irish, Indian, Trinidadian…from everywhere. When we are out people know her, thought the very Rabelasian greeting from one friend: “I want to eat your pussy,” did seem, ah, extravagant, even for libidinal Lyon.

Music is bought, ideas found, movies watched, via the computers (though there is a new small collection of vinyl growing in the corner – how funny the way these things come around). Connie and her partner John are time-shifted, start late and work and live through to the late small hours – then start again. They don’t have much money; but their needs are minimal: somewhere to work on their many projects, somewhere to sleep; life not too far away.



I’m always a little nervous-protective in the presence of the truly rootless, a product of always having had a family base in London – in the end. Yet here in their temporary home Connie combines the fluidity of the traveller and the solidity of the “at home.” Perhaps Lyon, its people and its presence – its sheer easy balance – takes the place of the family.

Connie met John at “Burning Man,” the yearly desert festival in Nevada, America. A courtship began – in time they were living together, first in Dublin, then here in Lyon.




John is 25; he also quit a high-tech start up young. He was hired the day he completed his studies and within a couple of years was managing his own team of four. The work was punishing; not just the cutting-edge (literally) technology – lasers cutting silicon wafers to make chips, the cheapest being £2 million, Hewlett Packard bought 89 of them – but also the hours, and the travel. Promotion at 24 would have meant living in Asia training engineers on the project; instead he now makes hand-made musical instruments, guitars, “theramins”, a project that might be named “Fotosis”…he’s interested in “circuit bending”, the reprogramming of ancient chip-based forms, such as dolls or children’s games. He has a studio space in a local-government approved squat close to the Lumiere museum which houses installations that look like houses and houses that look like installations. Here he has vice and power tools. A home he can work on computer-based projects.

He knew the party life of Dublin, these days he thinks that perhaps it is too much. “It’s a great city, but its wild, really wild these days. A kind of madhouse.”




“We’re going to build a tandem, “ Connie says, as we climb the long stairs back up to the Croix Rousse area in which they live right now. “You saw off one wheel frame from each of the two bikes, there are these braces….” I’m lost very quickly in the conversation, admiring of the practicality, the physical understanding of material. “Most of the great parties and raves happen outside the city,” Connie says. “And there’s never a way to get home. Once we were trying to find a taxi and ended up on the grounds of Lyon airport in a bit of a messed up state. Better to have your own transport…




“We don’t go out so much, we don’t have tons of money,” Connie says. In their apartment there are piles of “National Geographic” magazines: so much more of the world to see. “We’re lucky, we know people from all over the world, we meet in queues at bus stations, people come and stay, we go back. One friend, an Indian actress, she came through, stayed three weeks, one day we’ll go and see her in India. One day soon.” Both are extremely clued up to what is happening in the world: they think the Guardian newspaper has gone off, the Independent got a little better. They know about the very latest music, and about Miles Davis’s 1970 phase. They put most music “fans” to shame with the scope of their knowledge.

“Everything is out there now. People can teach themselves, about technology, the very latest open source things, about anything at all. If you are online you can find it out. The only times I’m surprised is when it isn’t there. And then it’s usually because the article is badly tagged and doesn’t come up in the search. Of course we have to learn how to search, there are more things than Google,” John says.

Neither miss the start-up culture world: “One of my bosses, on his third start-up, he’d already made a lot of money, had a heart attack at 32, I don’t want that, but that’s how the pressure is.” The life they have chosen, abroad, rootless, nomadic and striving, has many pressures of its own, but these are people who make it seem quite delightful. They seem to get Tom’s trip straight away: one email and I am staying at their apartment.

Rabelais would approve – from his blasphemous heaven, wherever

Ways of Seeing

Reading Tim Moore at La Tour du Pin

All three of us, Tom, Tim Moore and I come into Lyon after days in the quiet of the Loire. I feel all three expect something here, after the rain and the solitude. We bring our mood, basically. And on the road that is a delicate, nuanced thing. Tim’s Lyon is a city of pimps, hookers, teenage thieves…he can’t appreciate the old part of the city: he calls “Hovis-advert hills in Pirelli-advert weather.” He’s staying on the outskirts in a thirteen Euro hotel, and most of his narrative is about its car park.

[Tom stays at the “Three Kings”]

“which is the fairest Inne in the whole citie, and most frequented of al the Innes in the Towne, and that by great persons. For the Earle of Essex lay there with all his traine before I came thither: he came thither the Saturday and went away the Thursday following, being the day immediately before I came in. At that time that I was there, a great nobleman of France one Monsieur de Breues (who had laien Lidger Ambassadoour many years in Constantinople) lay there with a great troupe of gallant Gentlemen, who was taking his journey to Rome to lie there Lidger [ledger?]. Amongst the rest of his company there were two Turkes that brought with him out of Turkey, whereof one was a blacke Moore, who was his jester; a mad conceited fellow, and very merry. He wore no hat at all eyther in his journey (for he overtooke us upon the way riding without a hat) or when he rested in any towne, because his naturall haire which was exceeding thicke and curled, was so prettily elevated in height that it served him always instead of a hat: the other Turk was a notable companion and a great scholler in his kinde; for he spake six or seven languages besides the Latin, which he spake very well: he was borne in Constantinople. I had a long discourse with him in Latin of many things, and amongst other questions I asked him whether he were ever baptized, he tolde me, no, and said he never would be. After that wee fell into speeches of Christ, whom he acknowledged for a great Prophet, but not for the Sonne of God, affirming that neither he nor any of his countrey men would worship him, but the onely true God, creator of heaven and earth: and called us Christians Idolaters, because we worshipped images…

I understand both men: Tim Moore’s book is of its times, just as much as Tom’s. in 2000 the attention has turned from the very public: Tom’s churches, his nobles who don’t wear hats, and morphed into a more private narrative about the things one person witnesses subjectively:

“I’d just passed a breaker’s yard full of cars people had died in…”

“…the showcase three floor McDonalds on the Place Bellecour was being systematically sacked by bored French teenagers…”

“…There is a bad man in parking,” I told the receptionist as we settled up….Il est concierge she said, very sad that my life had been blighted by such malignant paranoia.”

Tim sees what he sees, feels what he feels, within his context: travel as performance, and a very particular English passion for suffering “abroad.” It is about misery in the end; and Tom’s tale is quite fitting for the mood, as we shall see.

“At mine Inne there lay the Saturday night, being the fourth of June, a worthy young nobleman of France of two and twenty years olde, who was brother to the Duke of Guise and Knight of Malta. He had passing fine musicke at supper, and after supper he and his companions being gallant lustie Gentlemen, danced chorantoes and lavoltoes in the court. He went therehence the Sunday after dinner, being the fifth day of June.

At the south side of the higher court of mine Inne which is hard by the hall (for there are two or three courts in that Inne) there is written this pretty French poesie: on ne loge ceans à credit: car il est mort, les mauvais paieurs l’ont tué. The English is this: Here is no lodging upon credit: for he is dead, ill payers have killed him. Also on the South side of the wal of another court, there was a very pretty and merry story painted, which was this: A certain Pedlar having a budget full of small wares, fell asleep as he was travelling on the way, to whom there came a great multitude of Apes and robbed him of all his wares while he was asleepe: some of those Apes were painted with pouches or budgets at their backs, which they stole out of the pedlars fardle [small pack], climbing up to trees, some with spectacles on their noses, some with beades about their neckes, some with touch-boxes and ink-hornes in their hands, some with crosses and censour boxes, some with cardes in their hands; al which things they stole out of the budget: and amongst the rest one putting down the Pedlers breeches, and kissing his naked, &c. This pretty conceit seemeth to import some merry matter, but truly I know not the morall of it.

I saw a fellow whipped openly in the streets of Lyons that day I departed therehence, being Munday the sixth day of June, who was so stout a fellow, that though he received many a bitter lash, he did not a jot relent at it.

My train is very late now: this could be the chance to write about the inconsistency of French rail, the strikes, par grave…or the pounding rap, but that isn’t the point of this journey – not really. Tom romped through here; so do I. Very soon the mountains will be visible. He managed to complain very infrequently, and that seems right. Let’s give place a chance, eh? Misery seems so selfish given the choice to travel. And for most of us travel is a seemingly limitless choice.

Lyon, which I will write about extensively is the city not just of Rabelais, Interpol, the Lumiere brothers, music, food and fun: it also demands out respect.

Betwixt Lifestyle

Tom made his big lifestyle choice at 32; these days decisions – forced or not – about lifestyle, travel and place, can happen at any time. Travel after finishing high school, parents changing country to find work, bringing their small children to grow up “betwixt” at any time. Later there are the social-cultural decisions: to leave corporate employment, to flee a war. Retirement to somewhere warmer; a new start.



In Lyon I am around people who are mobile; nomads in their way: led to a busy city – the city of “Interpol” and “Euronews” – that is, like those organisations, neither a NATO nor CNN of a city: small enough to be human without atomising, like London or Paris, into villages. Though Lyon has its share of moods and atmospheres. They might live in twenty places in their lives; travel to hundreds of countries: that isn’t the point. The point is finding a balance.




That Tom (who wasn’t quite “in” enough, perhaps not “creative” enough, at Court in London) chose mobility as his passport is, in retrospect, perhaps not such a surprise. He is an entrepreneur of “newness”, one of those “guru” figures that emerge at any “paradigm shift” – as we used to say in the 1990s. In fact when he returned from his trip the response was lukewarm: not that his famous and aristocratic friends and acquaintances had “done” what he had, far from it. It was precisely that they hadn’t; were not well-travelled – though Inigo Jones would later see much of Europe.



Because being well-travelled, having the foreign graffiti-stamp-full passport, isn’t a virtue, it’s a boast and threat. Like many “lifestyle” choices, it says a lot about vanity, or self confidence. And being easy around people, “getting by abroad” isn’t, in itself, a skill that – whatever one feels about salesmen and women – leads to the good, let alone the creatively good.

Because travel says a lot about who we are: and the more we do it, the more complex our “travelling” personalities become, the harder it is to be in one place only. Are we travelling to be somewhere else? To forget bad experience? To create a new sense of self? Do the passport stamps (if they exist these days) signify greater maturity and understanding of humanity? Very often I think, perhaps not.




As I sit at the station of La Tour du Pin, fretting that there are four Lyon pieces to write and post, I wonder did what Tom saw – radical, new things; mountainous Alps almost beyond description at that time, “offical” courtesans at Venice, orchestras and giant beer factories – make him happy; less discontented? Or did the “wiki-ing” of his knowledge – adding to the Classics, his education, stories from London, anecdotes from the famous – bring a frustration, a sense of smallness and head-shaking that he could not turn this knowledge into something? Is that why he wrote, later? Is Claude Magris correct when he says in “Danube”: “perhaps writing is just filling in the blank spaces in existence?”

And the blog a gentle voice in search of companionship, nothing more: a lifestyle choice, waiting to happen? I’m not sure: when I can finish the pieces about Lyon I hope to have a far clearer sense of the local digital community, and how it balances betwixt the visceral and the cerebral. How it can be a force for the good, even if it is part also of our rapid atomisation.




Hmm. So that is Sunday’s Task.

Where you going? Barcelona?

Singular game! Where the goal changes places;
The winning-post is nowhere, yet all around;
Where Man tires not of the mad hope he races
Thinking, some day, that respite will be found

The Voyage, Charles Baudelaire

“Baudelaire was a secret agent – an agent of the secret discontent of his class with its own rule…”

Walter Benjmain’s notes to his first essay on Baudelaire.


“If I was in – say – Peru I wouldn’t miss out on Machu Pichu. Yes, I’d be trying to make connections with the people, of course. But it is a balance.” Because she has travelled all over the world, often alone, she knows the shifting rhythms that the “journey” brings: “the achievement you feel if somebody really understands you, for instance in China, when it takes hours: that’s amazing.”

Her parents came to France from Morocco thirty years ago, separated now; she went to college in Dublin, has been to Mongolia and Bolivia and most places in between. This summer is Laos, Morocco, “Hungaria”.

In a Lyon apartment, or a café, a “political” meeting, the people change but the type of travel being discussed is always the same: backpacker, alternative, resourceful. It has few limitations of horizon, is of a budget, uses technology for routes, a bed, a hitch, a cheaper ticket. But is about the experience more than the “pleasure”.

There is the Swiss-French (with a bit of Irish) puppet maker, the French-African “Elvis” with his “deals”, the Chinese-Canadian, the Irishman, the Vietnamese chef…the sons of daughters of the first back-packer generations whose family backgrounds are as much about global movement to find work, gain citizenship, or simply change “lives” as about fun. These are people with a recognition that Lyon is a very cool “nodal” point for their travels. A balance of size, scope, culture and budget.

“Globalization isn’t the problem,” Connie says, “I’ve worked in big business [for Yahoo in Hong Kong]. The problem is when it loses, or never finds, its social responsibility.”

“People have done what you did,” the French-Moroccan woman says. “A lot of people.”

“I know, that’s part of the issue for me, what’s left? I want to leave a snapshot of a time, and that means making connections as well as visiting museums. It’s not always easy. Because I want to give back as well.”

“Yes,” says Connie, “I agree. You have to make choices. When we were last in Paris it was for music, three concerts in three nights. We saw one big thing: Jean Nouvel’s library, inside. It was fantastic. But you can’t see everything.”

The chef and computer musician who wants to talk about his rock and roll “Manhattan”, Connie on “Hong Kong,” John about Ireland…”Elvis” who has those familiar, competitive, stories about Asia. He is a type:
“Where? Hampi?”
“Yes, even Hampi?”
“Really? Sure Goa, and Kerala, Mumbai. But Hampi?”
“Yes.”
“What did you see at Malibaripurim?...
…How did you get to Nepal, did you drive, or fly….
…Kashmir? Easy. I have friends there, they get me in and I have a house and a boat up on the lake. You have to know people…
…Burma? I get great stones there, nice pieces.”

Elvis is the other side of alternative travel: if the French-Moroccan seeks out the solitary and remote, he is about the new silk roads that lead to raves, to endless beach-summers, and nice profits for somebody. Elvis is the wheeler-dealer who always has a new angle. He can’t be impressed, it’s not in the job-description: he’s the man who “knows” travel.

It is a travel about cheap food, drink, drugs, pleasure; taking something home that says: exotic travel. Except that Elvis’s Asia destinations are the new Spain, commonplace, part of growing up. If part of good travel is connection then isn’t Modern Northern Europe more of a challenge than remote packed beaches in India or Lombok?

“Look, I know these boys, they just want fun, you’re too serious.” Elvis says. Connie and John first met at “Burning Man” in Nevada; there are no easy right and wrongs in all this.

Tom Coryat is always fêted is the first “Grand Tourist”, but he was also a kind of “alternative” traveller. Balancing high and low, sights and people; going to places that were remote from normal life, a little dangerous, Thomas is the archetype of the “old” alternative.

In the end Tommy “walked” to India, of course: I wonder what the seventeenth century “Elvis” would have sold him in Jaipur? A bootleg CD of Shakespeare Songs, remixed by Ben Jonson, perhaps?

Lyon: Tom and Me

Some of Tom's Lyon

"I went on Friday morning being the third day of June about sixe of the clocke from Tarare in my bootes, by reason of a certaine accident, to a place about six miles therehence, where I took post horse, and came to Lyons about one of the clocke in the afternoone."



“It rained most extremely without any ceasing, that I was drooping wet to my very skinne when I came to my Inne. I passed three gates before I entered the city. The second was a very faire gate, at one side thereof there is a very stately picture of a Lyon. When I came to the third gate I could not be suffered to passé into the city, before the porter having first examined me wherehence I came, and the occasion of my businesse, there gave me a little ticket under his hand as a kind of warrant for mine entertainment in mine Inne. For without that ticket I should not have beene admitted to lodge within the walles of the City.”




"…this city of Lyon, which is situate under very high rocks and hils on one side, and hath a very ample and spacious plaine on the other side. It is fortified with a strong wall, and hath seven gates, many faire streets, and goodly buildings, both publique and private. Very populous, and is esteemed the principall emporium or mart town of all France next to Paris. It is the seat of an Archbishop, who is the Primate and Metropolitan of France…Most of the buildings are of an exceeding height, sixe or seven stories high together with the vault under the ground."



“Many of the Kings Mules which are laden with merchandise come to Lyons, where they lay down their burdens, who have little things made of Osier like Baskets hanging under their mouths, wherein there is put hay for them to eate as they travel: over their forehead and eyes they have three peeces of plate, made eyther of brasse or latten, wherein the Kings arms are made: also they have pretty peeces of pretty coloured cloth, commonly redde hanging down from the middle of their forehead downe to their noses, fringed with long faire fringe, and many tassels bobbing about it."

The Drinking Spectrum

The First Documentary

In the seventh district of Lyon, close to Mon Plasir, is the Lumière Museum. Here we celebrate a technology that really changed the way we see the world. The Museum is a marvellous building, a castle-villa, filled with cameras and projectors, 360 degree panoramic photographs; and upstairs a research library. The real inspiration, however, is seeing how the Lumière brothers utterly reworked how we see cities - thanks to the "cinematograph".



Their work is about "real life"; they sit in symbiotic relationship to George Méliès fantasy: palying Stendhal to Méliès' Jules Verne. "Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon" (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory) is the first ever 46 seconds of "documentary".

Connie and John don't watch television: they download what they want, and watch on their computer. The last two "documentaries" they've seen are "The Corporation", and the PBS programme, "The New Heroes: Social Entrepreneurship".

The Lumière brothers led on to the "realism" of film makers such as Robert Bresson, Jean Renoir, Maurice Pialat and - in a way - Bernard Tavernier, a fellow Lyonaise.




The museum is on the site of the Lumière's factories. Next door in what was once the warehouse is the Lumière Institute cinema: it is showing a season of Woody Allen films.

I guess he changed the way we see quirky relationships and self-centred angst-ridden issues of self-identity, so he gets his slot.




On the Gilles Peterson show he reminds listeners to send in their "Video Diaries" of the concert he played last week. Everyone is a Lumière now. I wondered what Tom would have caught on his digital camera?

Of course the Lumière Brothers are on You Tube.

River

Blue

Love

Wet, again

Escape from Court

Last night a long discussion in Croix Rousse about why we travel, and what that means, with a cast from Ireland, England, Canada via Hong Kong, France and Morocco…the pathways and digressions of the conversation later. Now, waking up in the house of a man from Dublin and a woman Regina, Canada, I’m struck with renewed thought that Tom left England to escape “Englishness” – is it true? Was he, as a man betwixt classes, and working (at Court) in an environment as competitive as a McKinsey corporate away-day, just feeling squeezed; believed that travel would arm him with stories and visions that provided cultural currency? Perhaps he was daunted by the sheer volume and industry of his friends, of Ben Jonson or Shakespeare, the sophistications of Inigo Jones. Or King James, himself - that most unusual phenomenon among crowned heads - an active and practicing writer.

All his life he wrote, imagine the Queen doing the same: there were occasional variations in subject matter, such as probably the first anti-smoking leaflet in history, the "Counterblast to Tobacco", but mostly James wrote about what he knew best: the business of being a King, in books such as “Basilikon” and “The Trew Law of Free Monarchies” of 1598…

In 1610 James called the House of Commons, “This rotten seed of Eygpt…[where] these seven years past…our fame and actions have been daily tossed like tennis balls amongst them, and all that spite and malice might do to disgrace and inflame us hath been used…”

Corruption, Peerages being bought (a James invention, there was even a price list – I’ll try and find it: £1000 for a Dukedom…that kind of thing), sexual licence, “Ruff” culture, the precursor of “Bling”. Did anyone enjoy being at court? Apparently not, Sir Walter Raleigh’s famous phrase: “it shone like rotten wood”, is sometimes dismissed as evidence of the disappointed in preferment. After all, the King wasn’t a smoker. But the party for James' Brother in Law, Christian IV of Denmark in 1606, and John Harrington’s vivid account of its drunkenness, sex and debauchery, is described in the "Dictionary of National Biography" as “the stock quotation for the intemperance of the court of James I…Gambling and feasting and lavish weddings became the commonplace…”

Sometimes 400 years ago seems so… “contemporary.” Was Tom, going to see a brand new world and criticising Popery and “Ethinicke” religions from beyond “Christendom”, actually seeking the solace of the “pure”?

The illusory "unique" experience of being in far away places, lonely, but resilient? Many can do this now, "getting away from it all". This is why New Europe is the challenge: what do we not know about it? Apart from almost everything?

You Tell Me

1751: Voltaire in the Le Siecle de Louis XIV described Europe as “a kind of great republic divided into several states, some monarchical, the others mixed…but all corresponding with one another. They all have the same religious foundation, even if divided into several confessions. They all have the same principle of public law and politics, unknown in other parts of the world…”

1771: “There are no longer Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, or even English, but only Europeans.” Rousseau.

1796: Edmund Burke: “No European can be a complete exile in any part of Europe.” Letters on a Regicide Peace.


In a Moulins thunderstorm on Monday I sit and read news stories and blog entries from “Google Alerts”. I have a group set on topics such as Paris, France, Lyon, “Shame” and “William Shakespeare.” Under Lyon, my next destination I come across a review of CocoRosie, who played a concert in Lyon on Saturday night. The review was by “Lady C” on the MOG music site. I signed up, posted…a day later I am having dinner with Connie (aka Lady C) a Chinese Canadian, and John, her Irish (alternative instrument-making) boyfriend, in their Croix Rousse apartment in Lyon. The day bed is waiting for me, and puppet-making friends on the way over.

“I went on Friday morning being the third day of June about sixe of the clocke from Tarare in my bootes, by reason of a certaine accident, to a place about six miles therehence, where I took post horse, and came to Lyons about one of the clocke in the afternoone.

It rained most extremely without any ceasing, that I was drooping wet to my very skinne when I came to my Inne. I passed three gates before I entered the city. The second was a very faire gate, at one side thereof there is a very stately picture of a Lyon. When I came to the third gate I could not be suffered to passe into the city, before the porter having first examined me wherehence I came, and the occasion of my businesse, there gave me a little ticket under his hand as a kind of warrant for mine entertainment in mine Inne. For without that ticket I should not have beene admitted to lodge within the walles of the City.

It rained in a similar way coming into Lyon, but thanks to technology – and human kindness – I have my “warrant for entertainment.”

Terrible Kids: the other side of the Loire

Sophie is 22, her grandmother – who she has never met, she left her French husband and moved to Australia in the 1950s – is English. “How did you manage in these places,” she says, “they are dead, terrible.”

Briare, Nevers and Moulins have had their family-centred moments for me, but the reality is “depression, economic decline, kids leaving to find work in the cities,” she says. In Moulins for a Mother’s Day reunion, she is keen to get away; a snap strike par grave, greve has flattened the rail system. The two hours to Lyon becomes an eight hour odyssey of coaches, towns smaller than Moulins, and Lyon reached (in electrical storm, of course, “Ha, welcome to France, snow on the Alps, lightning everywhere.”

But these towns, what is it about them? “A boy I knew at high school, he lives there now. I saw him this weekend, he has a baby on the way. Says he is pleased, he wanted it. But he and his wife can’t afford a house, will live on with his parents. Kids, I don’t understand why people have kids. Everyone tells me at 30 I will change my mind, but at least 30 you have experienced things, seen different ways. In these towns it is the only option.”

Sophie chose Lyon rather than Paris for her adult education because it is a lively city without the snobberies of Paris; she admits she has few friends in her school, “because they all want to be lawyers and buy Mercedes cars and ‘settle down’ as fast as they can. They buy the car, the house, the wife, the clothes. Then they realize that actually they have nothing. They are too young – and old at the same time.”



Travel (and jazz) is Sophie’s thing: tomorrow wind-surfing in the South, next week Morocco for a month. She spent a year at Cambridge, and has seen Las Vegas, LA, Africa – much of Europe. “Travel is just an addiction, I can’t feel settled,” she says.

Her father is a busy successful rural doctor in the south, her mother “has all the clothes she wants, holidays – she just went on a group hiking trip to Martinique – but she isn’t happy. I don’t want to marry for money, for the life, I just want to be.”

Worried by the election of Nicolas Sarkozy, though not convinced by Royale either, she says her generation thinks politics is just another branch of business. She includes journalism in this. “I’d thought that’s what I wanted to be, but now I see my idea – that it is about telling the truth – is just wrong. They want the power too. And they’ll say whatever it takes to get that power.”

She was born in a community of 200. As a teenager: “We did nothing. There was nothing to do but drink, meet boys, smoke some weed. I had to get away. When I go back to the house my parents live in now I feel displaced, uncomfortable. I think my father is very clever, very simple, but for him work is just everything. It is hard for my mother, what can she do?”

Perhaps this is a new Renaissance, technology empowering us, huge changes in the way we choose to live for her generation - in the future. "Yes, I think so too, but not so creative, it's not about great art but about the body, how you look, it is a Renaissance but turned in on ourselves as works of art."

Sophie plays jazz piano; her I-Pod is full of Django Rheinhart, Miles Davis, Chet Baker – “the old stuff is so great.” The last book was about “mothers, in Africa”, and she says she’d like to travel more in Africa soon. “Lyon is great, beautiful, but I have to leave even it, often.”


Wind surfing in the morning then.