Second-hand creativity

I've often denounced a parasitic offshoot of creativity that takes an existing instance of genuine inspiration and reworks it insipidly to produce a pale copy. The example I've always used when whining is that of blue jeans. Once upon a time, the first adolescents who were so emotionally attached to their battered old pants that they refused to throw them away, even when they had holes at the level of the knees and buttocks, were authentic creators, who had invented a new sartorial concept: that of clothes with worn threads... not only at the seams. A variation on this theme was the case of kids whose jeans were a shade too long, so that they tended to put their heels on the cuffs of their pants, which would soon become threadbare and scruffy, often muddy. Another example of the bond between youngsters and their jeans was the idea of using a needle and thread to attach some kind of personal emblem to this mass-produced clothing whose aspect had become standardized. Some kids sewed on a cloth badge of one kind or another, but the most brilliant invention consisted of devoting time and effort to embroider a colorful message to observers, maybe admirers: the wearer's nickname, or the name of his /her idol or loved one. Imagination was in power, as Parisian adolescents wrote on the walls of the city in May 1968, and there were no limits to the ways in which young people might express spontaneously their attachment to this second skin: their jeans.

Then the marketing men and the industrial product designers stepped into the picture... and that's where the annoying phenomenon of second-hand creativity took over. They invented nasty techniques to mass-produce artificially "used" jeans, to make them look discolored and threadbare, to "personalize" them with badges and embroidery...

The notorious Hillary 1984 video (whose author has just been unmasked) provides us with a typical case of second-hand creativity. [Click here to see it on YouTube.] The primordial Macintosh ad, which ran on TV 23 years ago, was an extraordinary and daring work of creation. No such praise can be attributed to the messy mashup that has nevertheless just scored over two million hits on YouTube. This pale copy carries no clear message, but it manages to make Hillary Clinton look good in her Big Sister role. Meanwhile, the anonymous author was frankly dishonest when suggesting that the video might have been produced by Obama's team.

The concept of second-hand humor is similar to that of second-hand creativity. What I mean is that somebody invents a great joke, and then other dim-witted folk believe they can be funny by constructing insipid variants of the initial story. Some kind of general principle seems to be at play, meaning that second-hand things are inevitably dull. In the village, the witty innkeeper once invented a disdainful description for the endless series of new girlfriends, often mature ladies, whom his buddy used to bring along to the bar on the back of his motorcycle. The innkeeper referred to them by a French expression that can be translated as second-hand women.

Missing word

There's an ordinary French word that nobody, apparently, has ever bothered to translate into English: francophonie, meaning the existence of French, in many societies throughout the world, as an everyday operational language. Let me fill in this gap. Since the use of telephones is referred to, in English, as telephony, there's no reason why the use of French should not be called Francophony. Yesterday, March 20, was Francophony Day for 200 million French-speaking people throughout the world: a celebration organized by OIF [Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie]. Among other things, Francophony Day reminds us that the next Tour de France and Bastille Day are less than four months away.

Vernal equinox

My house at Gamone looks eastwards onto a vast half-circle of cliffs, which means that, throughout the year, I'm particularly conscious of the changing spot on the horizon where the morning sun first pokes its nose up above a cliff. Today is the vernal equinox: the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This morning, the sun appeared over the distant cliffs at the far end of the valley of the Bourne, directly in front of my house, and it had more than enough room to rise in the sky without hiding behind the Cournouze. The only problem is that the weather has remained so overcast today that I didn't see much of the sun at all.

Since settling down at Gamone, I've realized retrospectively that the evolving itineraries of the sun, and even the existence of the seasons, were aspects of the environment of which I was totally unconscious during my adolescence in Australia. I believe that my only vague awareness of the points of the compass was due to the fact that I grew up in a town named South Grafton, so I concluded that the place called Grafton no doubt lay to the north.

Unfortunately, in the pre-Alpine region of the Vercors, the night sky is invariably cloudy, which means that it's not an ideal place for star-gazing. I'm not at all sure that Galileo, if he had lived here at Gamone, would have got around to inventing the telescope. Worse than that, in view of the massive nature of the cliffs around the Circus of Choranche, it's not at all unlikely that Galileo would have carried on believing that these gigantic walls of stone remain stationery, and that the sun actually does the moving, gliding over the top cliffs. That's how it looks to me.

War effort

This famous photo shows Princess Elizabeth changing a lorry wheel during World War II. The 19-year-old heiress to the throne had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Services with the same rank as a second lieutenant. By the end of the conflict, she had become a Junior Commander capable of driving military vehicles. And today, it's quite possible that Prince Harry will soon be serving in Iraq.

In the Los Angeles Times, the Bush family biographer Kitty Kelley has just written a scathing article whose provocative title is indeed an excellent rhetorical question: Why aren't the Bush daughters in Iraq? [Click here to read the article.] In other words, why aren't they setting a moral example of patriotic service by playing some kind of meaningful role in the allegedly "noble" war being conducted by their father?

Discovery Channel

During the night, a centimeter-thick veil of snow covered everything at Gamone, from flowering shrubs through to my automobile. Apparently most of France has been hit by this cold spell.

Only two days ago, the television showed us Alberto Contador riding along magnificent sun-drenched mountain roads to his victory in the Paris-Nice race. It's amusing to recall that Contador's US employer, Discovery Channel, was in the limelight a few weeks ago because of a happening that had nothing to do with cycling. They're the people who aired the controversial documentary, produced by James Cameron and directed by Simcha Jacobovici, about a tomb near Jerusalem that contained bone boxes labeled Jesus, Mary, etc.

I don't know what the Spaniard Alberto Contador thinks about Discovery Channel's version of the Jesus story. Three years ago, he had a terrible fall in the Tour of the Asturias. With his jaws shattered, and suddenly racked by convulsions, 21-year-old Contador was taken to hospital in a critical state, and many observers, including fellow cyclists, feared that he might not survive. So, in Christian terms, Contador's brilliant performance in Paris-Nice on Sunday might be thought of as a miracle, a resurrection.

Not strawberry weather

Over the sunny weekend, I started digging up the earth for my strawberry patch. This morning, the plants were sitting on the floor of my living room, waiting to be taken out and placed in the earth. And then the sun disappeared behind low clouds, the sky turned gray, and fine hail started to fall. Ten minutes later, the hail had changed into rain and then snow. Not exactly the kind of weather for planting strawberries.

Opposite my house, on the other side of Gamone Creek, a dense wood on a steeply-sloped section of the hillside is a haven for roe deer. Over the last week or so, I've been enthralled by the non-stop symphony of bird calls emanating from the somber trees, which will be transformed into a mass of greenery in spring. In the precociously warm weather (according to the calendar, it's still winter), I had the impression that the birds were singing for joy. This afternoon, under the snow, they're still singing, but the tones are subdued and the melodies less strident, as if the singers were a little alarmed, or at least confused. Like us all.

Fourth anniversary

On Friday, the French PM Dominique de Villepin visited Harvard University, invited by the political science professor Stanley Hoffmann. Four years ago, that same Frenchman spoke to the United Nations in New York about the dangers of a US invasion of Iraq. A major American newspaper said that, over recent years, everything has changed except Bush's conviction that he can win the war in Iraq. Something else that has not changed during the last four years is France's conviction that this terrible and costly fiasco is not a war that can be won. By terrorists, maybe, but certainly not by Bush.

In the realms of international diplomacy, no politically-correct head of state or his ministers would ever refer to their foreign counterparts by means of derogatory personal remarks or judgments. The representatives of the Republic express themselves with a quality known in French as réserve. Besides, they avoid any remarks that might be interpreted as interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. For those reasons, it would be unthinkable for Jacques Chirac or Dominique de Villepin to react in the way as Australian PM John Howard when he recently blasted the US presidential candidate Barack Obama. But the fact that no French leaders refer to Bush explicitly as an idiot doesn't prevent onlookers from reading between the lines and guessing that this is what they think. One has the impression that nobody in France is keen to talk to Bush any more, or even talk about him. He seems to have become a kind of international nonentity, and people are simply waiting for him to go away, or be chased away.

Getting back to Dominique de Villepin, it's hard to guess what he's going to do with himself after the departure of Chirac in a month or so, because this man has never been an elected politician, and it would be funny seeing a former PM striving to pick up votes in a provincial electorate. During his American visit, somebody asked him whether he felt like becoming an expatriate... maybe in the USA. "No, " replied de Villepin curtly, "I'm too French."

Rugby victory for France

For many French TV viewers, yesterday was a busy day. First, at the start of the afternoon, there was the second-last stage of the Paris-Nice cycling race. Then there was a grueling series of three major rugby matches. Personally, I decided to turn the TV off and drive to St Marcellin to buy some plants: a flowering shrub and strawberries.

So, it wasn't until much later in the day that I learned that France had thrashed Scotland, and that England had failed to beat Wales. It's encouraging that France, as host nation of the forthcoming World Cup, has at least emerged victorious from the European six-nations tournament.

Cheese and wine portrait

Whenever Natacha finds me eating cheese and drinking wine, she has an urge to take a posed photo. Unusual behavior, no? The cheese and wine must send out photographic waves, or something like that.

Our dogs

These lovely peaceful photos of Sophia and Jojo on the kitchen floor were taken by Natacha on Sunday 11 March. It was clear to me, from the first moments I saw the dear old hairy dog, that he was in a poor physical state, although he didn't appear to be suffering, and was apparently perfectly alert. At one stage, while I was preparing a salad, Jojo even pointed his long snout up towards me, indicating that he would like a slice of tomato. That amused me: a dog who likes tomatoes. At one point, outside on the lawn, Sophia pranced around her friend, trying to coax Jojo into racing around with her. But Jojo's racing days were over.

On Sunday, though, I would not have imagined that, within three days, Jojo's life on Earth would be over.

Gifts from Provence

Whenever Natacha and Alain drive up here to Gamone to see me, they always bring along gifts. In an earlier post, I mentioned the sexy religious biscuits. They also supply me regularly with fine Marseilles olive-oil soap from the famous Le Sérail manufacturer founded in 1949.

On Sunday, they also brought me a lovely bonsai fig tree, grown by Natacha, which I've placed on the kitchen window sill between a pair of tiny jacaranda trees (also grown from seeds from Provence).

Like Christine and my daughter, Natacha knows exactly the kind of reading material that is sure to interest me. In other words, I'm fortunate in that these close friends from Marseilles take care of me.

Mediterranean Bondi

There's an article in the Australian press about a pair of promoters who would like to transform Bondi into a Riviera-style place like Nice or St Tropez. I'm reminded of a joke. An American tourist is admiring the green lawns of Oxford University. He asks a gardener: "What's the secret for having lawns like that?" The gardener replies that there's no great secret. "You simply water the grass regularly, then you mow it from time to time and you run over it with a roller. You simply keep on doing that for a few centuries."

Antique Nice was founded by the Greeks half a millennium before Jesus Christ, and developed by the Romans. Today, it has become the fifth largest city in France. It's crazy to imagine that a couple of hotel-owners could magically transform Bondi into an ersatz Nice. Paraphrasing the words about a drink that's supposed to imitate whisky, you might say: It looks nice, it tastes nice, but it just ain't Nice.

As for St Tropez, that's a different kettle of fish. It used to be a quaint fishing village until celebrities such as Picasso, Françoise Sagan and Brigitte Bardot moved in there. Unfortunately, apart from the blue water, the physical setting of Bondi doesn't look anything like that of St Tropez. I really don't believe that people can suddenly decide to invest money with a view to making such-and-such a place look and feel like another famous place... unless, of course, we're talking of Disneyland creations. [On French TV, I recently saw a copy of an English village reconstructed in China, God only knows why.]

There's saying in French that probably exists too in English: "If my aunt had balls, she would be my uncle." If Bondi could suddenly acquire a Mediterranean look, charm and sophistication, it would indeed be a Riviera resort.

Terrorist Willy Brigitte

The trial in Paris of the 38-year-old French terrorist Willy Brigitte and his condemnation to a nine-year prison sentence were not treated by French media as front-page news. I have the impression that the French authorities have been a little irritated all along by the notion that they were dealing with an affair that should have normally been handled back in Australia, where the alleged misdeeds took place. Besides, there appears to be little solid evidence proving that Brigitte was really planning to attack various sites in Australia: for example, the Lucas Heights reactor and the Pine Ridge installations. At the most, there were several suggestions that he intended to do so—otherwise he would not have been condemned here—but no firm proofs. It was good though, retrospectively, that the professionalism of alert French anti-terrorist investigators forced drowsy Australian authorities to wake up to the risk of local terrorism. When I was in Sydney last year, though, I was never aware of the presence of armed police at strategic sites such as the Harbor Bridge, the Opera House, train stations and Kingsford Smith airport. In talking of armed police, I don't mean plain-clothed cops with concealed revolvers, who would never trouble a determined terrorist. I mean groups of uniformed officers, wearing bulletproof vests, who are openly toting combat weapons.

Symbols

Although I've placed these two objects side by side, they have nothing whatsoever in common. The thing on the left is a stone statuette about a foot high, which my cousin brought back from an African medical stint. It represents a man seated on the ground with his legs folded up against his abdomen, and his hands held up against his face: maybe a position of prayer or meditation. The second object is in fact a sweet-smelling biscuit, about six inches from tip to tip, with religious connotations. Made in Marseilles, this traditional delicacy is meant to symbolize the legendary boat that brought four saintly women, including Mary of Magdala, from the Holy Land to the southern coast of France. Last Sunday, Natacha gave me a box of these biscuits.

Back in Paris, a rough girlfriend once saw the statuette and asked me what it was. I told her I thought it was some kind of African phallic symbol. I don't think my mate understood what I was talking about: "If you want my opinion," she replied, "it reminds me of a prick." The slit biscuit reminds me of something of the same kind. Don't you think the two objects look nice together?

In a field of olive trees

An old dog in a field of olive trees
walking away from his mistress Natacha,
seeking a wall to contemplate
in silence and solitude, like a monk.

Jojo has finally found his wall.

Juliette, gracious philosopher

In The English Patient, alongside Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche was simply sublime: the quintessence of joyous and profound femininity. The prestigious French weekly Télérama has just made Juliette their cover girl. The journalist asked Juliette what she thought retrospectively about playing the role of Mary of Magdala in the recent film of Abel Ferrara.

Inspired thoughts do me good. I'm thinking of Taoism, Suffism, poetry or Biblical texts. This calms an inner suffering. Without it, I would be suffocated. I don't believe in materialism. I don't believe that the body and spirit are separated. We are incarnate beings, but also possible beings, and this is proved by our dreams. When I played in Abel's film, it was important for me to say that Mary Magdalene had another role with Jesus than those prescribed by the Church. The fact that we've discovered, hidden under the sand, a gospel by Mary Magdalene is, for me, a total revolution. The vision of the teachings of Jesus through the eyes of a woman is fabulous... but nobody talks about it.

Yes, Saint Juliette, we should talk about such essential things.

Pirated software

Friends of mine are often intrigued (in an admiring sense, I think) by my fundamental opposition to pirated software, for profound political, moral and religious reasons. They know that Saint William—if I can be allowed to speak of myself in the third person—makes a point of paying for every bit he uses (that last phrase sounds better in French than in English) and will only stoop to using unauthorized software products if they happen to drop off the rear end of a truck winding its way up along the Gamone track. Which is perfectly legitimate. As the saying goes, we shouldn't look at gift horses in the mouth while trying to lead them to drink.

For years, I've advanced the theory that the greatest element of Bill Gates's business sense—which enabled him to become the richest man on the planet—was the fact that, in the beginning, hordes of i-peasants like me were frankly invited to rip off Microsoft products. I used Word and Excel for years, but I don't recollect having ever sent off a check to their manufacturer. For the time being, all this great stuff was free. We became addicted. And the name of our dealer was Microsoft.

Today, it's quaintly funny to hear the top Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes saying explicitly that, if people are going to pirate software, then it's best that they pirate Microsoft software. Personally, I would agree entirely if only there were any Microsoft software that's worth pirating. Today, on my Macintosh, I've got a copy of Word, to be used on the rare occasions that antipodean friends might send me stuff created with this ugly antiquated software gargantua. As for the rest, I sincerely admire Bill Gates for his great philanthropic initiatives, but I wish he'd stop thinking of himself as a computer guy. To my humble mind, today, Microsoft is definitively out, while Linux and the Macintosh are in.

Rambo caught with his pants down

I belong to a generation of Australians who've known for ages that our customs and police authorities are bloody good at dealing with pommie pervs, wog poofters, alien riffraff, etc, and the nasty stuff they might attempt to bring into our sunburnt country. I recall the case of my friend Geoff who returned home from France with a small bag of canned foie gras given to him as a departure gift from his friends in Paris. Fortunately, alert customs officers at Mascot intervened in the nick of time and confiscated all that dangerous stuff before it poisoned any innocent Aussies.

Eugene Goossens was a world-famous conductor in charge of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In 1956, when Goossens was returning from a European tour, alert customs officers at Mascot found obnoxious pornographic material in the musician's luggage: photographs, prints, books, a spool of film, some rubber masks and sticks of incense. Nasty stuff! Just imagine the kind of places where a guy with a rubber mask could stick a stick of incense! Fortunately, the authorities collared this uncouth culprit before he could corrupt Australian youth.

Two years later, a diligent Sydney cop detected a wink in the eye of the celebrated pianist Claudio Arrau, pissing in a Hyde Park urinal. The musician was promptly arrested. Enlightened young Australians must find it hard to imagine that such a travesty of ordinary moral justice could have occurred, half a century ago, in the city that now sports the world-famous Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Today, the world learns that alert customs officers at Mascot have just caught Sylvester Stallone with his pants down. The facts are ugly. Aussie mothers and fathers are advised to make sure that their kids don't hear about this affair through the Internet. Rambo's luggage contained 48 vials of the human growth hormone product Jintropin, made by a Chinese pharmaceutical firm. Internet publicity informs us that this miraculous product enhances sexual performance, reduces body fat, increases energy, removes wrinkles, boosts muscle mass and "regenerates major organs that shrink with age". That last reference is surely an allusion to Stallone's nose, which got severely battered in countless Rocky films.

A distinguished Australian professor of linguistics commented [private communication] upon the Stallone affair:

It wasn't so much the confiscation as the way it was done that bothered me, particularly the body search plus the Warm Aussie Welcome:... "Woi doncha jus tell us where it is mate and save yourself a lotta trouble" snarled the Delightful Young Customs Officer who then proceeded to go through my address book looking for the "names of known supploiers".

Political beast

In French, the expression "political beast", applied to an individual with inborn talents for pursuing a political career, often in spite of huge obstacles, is not at all derogatory. On the contrary, it underlines the existence of rare skills, stubborn determination and natural gifts in the art of being a politician.

Ever since 1967, when Georges Pompidou invited 34-year-old Jacques Chirac—whom the prime minister nicknamed "my bulldozer"—to become a member of his government, this dynamic individual has been recognized by everybody, whether they like him or hate him, as a pure specimen of a political beast. Just as a dairy farmer can generally identify each of his cows, it has been said that, in his native Corrèze region, Chirac knew the names and backgrounds of countless rural folk. For example, if a farmer happened to tell Chirac that his aging mother was not in good form, then the next time they met up, maybe months later, Chirac would inquire: "Tell me, Gaston, how's your mother getting along these days?"

When my daughter was a little girl in Paris, she was offered a trivial but striking demonstration of Chirac's power of identifying people. Campaigning for the prestigious job of mayor of Paris, Chirac spent half-an-hour in the Rue Rambuteau, in the heart of Paris, which had been our home address since the end of the '60s. The candidate was shaking hands with every person he encountered, and nine-year-old Emmanuelle stepped into the line to await her turn. The giggling little girl was then proud to inform her schoolfriends in the street that she had just shaken hands with Chirac. A few minutes later, noticing that the candidate had crossed over onto the opposite side of the street, where his hand-shaking contacts concerned shopkeepers, Emmanuelle decided that it would be fun to see if she could succeed in obtaining a second hand-shake from Chirac. This time, to my daughter's amazement, Chirac made a smiling remark, proving that he had remembered her : "Ah, my little girl, I see you're a keen supporter!"

Last night, watching Jacques Chirac informing the nation on TV that he would not be running for a third presidential term, most viewers surely had the impression that they were witnessing a historic moment: the end of the reign of a prince of politics.

Older than America?

For isolated hillbillies such as Sophia and me, the daily arrival of the postwoman in her little yellow automobile is a major event. Often, she's the only human being I see during the entire day. The individuals who carry out this job in small townships such as Pont-en-Royans end up playing a vital role at the level of social cohesion, because they know everything that's happening in the community, and they concretize the bush telegraph system (referred to, in France, as the "Arab telegraph"). Many rural residents call upon the postperson to mail their letters and parcels, and they pay for the postage the following day.

A few years ago, I happened to say offhandedly to Martine—who's been our postwoman in Choranche for ages—that I was thinking of killing my old chooks [hens, for non-Australian readers], which had stopped laying eggs, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. Now, it so happens that Martine is a pure country girl from down in the south-west corner of France, and she can kill a chook just as easily as delivering a letter. After finishing her postal work, at midday, she came back up to Gamone and gave me a marvelous hands-on demonstration of slaughtering a chook, plucking it and preparing it for the oven.

Talking about our postal service, I've always been intrigued by a stone carving in the façade of their post office in the main street of Pont-en-Royans. 1490, that's a hell of a long time ago. Does this really mean that the two-story building that houses the post office of Pont-en-Royans was erected two years before Columbus discovered America? Probably yes, but we can't verify this hypothesis since the crazed revolutionaries of 1793 burned all the ancient archives of Pont-en-Royans.

All the archives? Well, not quite all the archives. Sitting here on my computer, there's a digitized ten-page parchment that describes in detail the medieval real estate of Pont-en-Royans. In this tiny fragment, you can clearly distinguish the word Pontis in the upper left-hand corner. Sure, it's not easy to plow through fuzzy medieval Latin. Personally, I have a lot of trouble in deciphering this stuff. As far as I know, no scholar has ever yet attempted to analyze and translate this parchment.

If ever I were to put together funds, find specialists and succeed in organizing a serious deciphering effort for these priceless Royans parchments [as I've been trying to do for the last two years], would they finally tell me whether the post office building was really two years older than the America of Columbus? No, not at all. The parchments were written around 1350. So, America and Martine's post office at Pont-en-Royans were still well over a century away in the future.