Final nights in Paris

In the last week and a half or so, I did not keep up with my blog because I was trying to get the most out of my time in Paris.

One Wednesday evening while I was sitting in my bed back at Cite Universitaire, I was struck by a thought. I should try to do something new and interesting every night that I am in Paris.  For some reason, it had not occurred to me that I had not been taking advantage of the evenings to visit Paris. My adventurousness paid off- I had many exciting experiences during the last week and a half of my time in Paris.

My first adventure took me to the gaudy red light district of Paris. Among other things, the Montmartre district contains the iconic Moulin Rouge, more sex shops than anybody could every want, and what seemed to be strip clubs.  I wondered what these clubs were and I even had some people approach me and invite me in. However, I had different aspirations.  Under the title of "Offbeat Ways to See Paris," my tour guide suggested the Musee d'Eroticisme. As the name suggests, this museum is devoted to the artistic expression of sexuality.  I can understand that many people may be uncomfortable with such a place, but I wanted to push my boundaries.  While it was shocking at times, the museum had a lot to offer:  from ancient African sculptures depicting sex to the history of prostitution in France, Musee d'Eroticisme communicated a view of sexuality, dispirate from the reserved attitudes in the United States.   In many African tribes, sexuality and particularly sexual organs are an integral part of many of their traditions. For instance, the male penis is important in many rituals signifying the passage into manhood.  The history of prostitution in France was even more interesting.  I do not know what the laws are like now, but prostitution was a legal, thriving business in 19th century France.  Opulent brothels contained beautiful, ornate sculptures beds. However, the glamor of the Parisian brothel masked a sinister system. Many of the women in these brothels started out poor. They wanted to make money to live a normal life. However, the brothels often took a large percentage of the revenue so these women would be stuck in brothels for many years. Many women became depressed. Another fascinating aspect is that a substantial number of women turned to lesibianism. Surrounded by a sexual environment, these women turned to each other for support. It is a touchy subject, but the commentary suggested that the main factor in these relationships was a mutual hatred of men that resulted from their work. While the Musee d'Eroticisme would be shocking and appalling to many Americans, I was glad that I pushed my boundaries to go to such a place and see different views of sexuality.

My next adventure brought me to the Fleche d'Or, a vibrant and popular establishment that has alternative and rock concerts nightly. While I enjoyed the music, my conversations with people there was the most rewarding part of the evening. As I have discussed earlier, I am fascinated by stepping into other subcultures - if only for an evening - and learning about these people.  As far as I can see, the alternative scene tends to favor art, creativity and the humanities. One may think that in being an avid mathematician and scientist, I would have little to say to these people. I find such a view insulting.

The humanities and the sciences have much more in common than one might think. Lest I digress too much, I will briefly discuss my thoughts on the subject. First, both areas are concerned with the quality of expression. I am no expert, but in the Humanities, the method of expression is central to any piece of writing. From the language, to the structure, the writer carefully crafts their expression and meaning. In the same light, communcation is vital to the scientist as well.  While one can do great work, the goal of science is to create new knowledge and share it with the world. As such, most senior scientists spend most of their time finding ways to communicate their work to others while the graduate students actually carry out the experiments. As a more mundane example, when preparing for a presentation of this summer's work, I spent many hours thinking about how to convey my work in a way that was both complete and understandable.  It is a real challenge to look at a topic from someone else's perspective. Second, all important scientific work is an expression of creativity and novel thinking just as artistic masterpieces are as such due to their originality and questioning of established artistic practices. I think that part of the reason for the thought that mathematics is mechanical comes from a lack of inspired teachers. To put the typical mathematics education in context, I will give an analogy. Before you create a painting, you have to know your tools. You have a canvas, a brush, paints, and a place to mix the paints. You may have a variety of colors and brushes. After knowing your materials, you take to the canvas. There are many different strategies for putting paint on a canvas. You can use broad, wavy strokes or fine and precise ones. These technical aspects of painting to an artist are the high school mathematics coures to an engaged and lively mathematician. Such a researcher is not concerned with the routine aspects of calculus, but has a grander purpose. As the types of brush strokes to not make a masterpiece, algorithmic calculations do not make great mathematics. While the artist is trying to express emotion and capture the human condition, the mathematician aspires to grand goals. He or she seeks understanding in enigmatic problems, and eventually finds order in chaos. The people who end up pursuing theoretical math have a wildly different introduction to the subject. As a high school student, my best experiences with math involved making my own problems. While it is easy to solve problems when you are told the solution technique, it takes a much greater ability to create challenging questions. You need to not only understand the concepts, but be able to combine them in a new and interesting way.  For instance, one problem that I created used a 3d visualization of a cube in order to answer the question:  if three people arrive at some time between 12 and 1, and wait for 20 mins, will they see each other?  Regardless, with these type of experience, it is clear that math would be appealing to me whereas the people who are only exposed to boring, mechanical math never touch the subject after their classes end.

Forgive my diversion, but I have been thinking a lot about how to communciate why I love math and science to others. Really, the long and short of it is that I talked to these people about art and what they liked about it. The first woman that I talked to was a freelance artist that had her work featured internationally. Having just finished an exhibition in Paris, she was soon to fly off to New York and then Portland to be present at two showings of her work. It was fun to hear about her art and we also discussed France-America cultural differences. Additionally, she explained to me that the impact of most art is inseparable from an understanding of the contemporary thought about art. Thus, she argued, many modern art pieces have more merit than a dilitante could observe.  Did I mention that we spoke only in French! Such a conversation is why I am happy that I know French! I regret that I did not have this perspective when I was learning the language in high school. My bad attitude towards languages back then led me to not get nearly as much out of my classes as I could have.   The next woman that I talked to was a student whow as a around my age.  The most notable part of our conversation is that she explained that the modern art that she liked evoked a certain emotion in her. She would be impressed by the creativity and departure from reality that her favorite artists evoked. Anyways, the music was generally good. The first band was an energetic, intense rock/alternative band. The second band was somewhat boring, but I enjoyed it as a relaxing conclusion to my great night of conversations-entirely in French-with the artsy people who are a part of the rock-alt. subculture.

During my next night, I found myself biking across Paris with the most American Americans that I had seen during the trip. It seemed as if the people who embodied negative stereotypes that Europeans have of Americans. The boisterious, aggressive and culturally unaware lot of us visited "touristy" Paris with the FatTire Bike Tours.  Right off the bat, our negative tendancies were encouraged by the guides. "Domination" shouted the guide. "We must dominate the road when we bike."  A couple from New York, a group of 10 students who came to Paris to drink and party, and another family took to this midset right away. As we left, excited exclimations of the word "Domination" echoed through the Parisian streets. The most extreme example of the our outrageous attitudes was that on the streets, we were near a taxi. Since he wanted to get through us, he revved his engine and produced black smoke. He was immediately met with jeers from our group and one guy went so far as to stick his head into the taxi and swear the guy out. "What the hell is your f-ing problem?"

I should say that I am being a tad bit melodramatic. While the Americans annoyed me a bit, I still had a good time on the trip. I enjoyed tasty, yet over-priced ice cream. I got to bike through Paris and I saw many of the large attractions. We ended the trip with a beautiful boat ride down the Seine, while indulging in some nice French wine.  I could write a few more paragraphs about why I didn't like these people and why I distanced myself from them on the tour, but suffice it to say our conversations were characterized by a stark lack of things in common and superficial discussions about the places that we are from and that we knew people shared the same hometowns.

Over the weekend, I visited my uncle Harold, aunt Meg, and younger cousin Hannah in Grenoble. My uncle is a Physics professor at Duke University but he spends a few months in Paris collaborating with French collegues. It is unfortunate that I have not gotten to see my cousins much, but, by the end of the summer, I will have seen then three times. After getting picked up at the train station, we had a delicious 'french' lunch.  We had a large collection of french cheeses, two types of pate and some fruit. Next, we explored Grenoble. I enjoyed taking in the atmosphere of another French town.  As Grenoble is in a valley, there are beautiful, awe-inspiring mountains in all directions. Later in the day, we took the gondola to the top of one of the mountains. I enjoyed looking over the city and seeing all the other mountains that surrounded the valley. In general, I loved the company of my cousins and they are welcoming, accomodating and thoughtful people. One amusing nugget of information is that the defensive structures that we explored atop the mountains, while they were well preserved, the reason for that was because they never saw any fighting. Thus while it was great to see these old fortifications, the only reason that they were so well-perserved was that the tumultuous French history had not touched this area. Later in the evening, we had a nice dinner at a lebanese restaurant. While it seemed that we did not get good service due to being American, the food was delicious and filling.

The next day, my uncle had to had to leave early to go to a conference so I spent the day with the gals. We decided to go a French revolution museum in a nearby town. Despite a car ride that seemed very stressful for the two of them, we eventually got to a small town that had been taken over by a French Revolution weekend. Many of the locals dressed in historical clothing while others enacted historical scenes. We briefly walked through a carnival-like area where you could take a picture of yourself with your head in a guillotine and throw balls at the nasty and oppressive French kings.  I remaked to myself that while it seemd that many French people were proud of the historical overthrow of the monarchy, the French revolution was nasty, violent and epitomized the horrors that people can commit. For instance, there was a murder where somebody had their skin lascerated, lead and acid were poured into the crevices, and four ropes tied to each of his limbs were tugged by horses until he was split into four pieces. I don't know what to say about that to express how crazy it was to hear about such practices. Anyways the museum was fun and we got to learn a fair amount of history. Overall, I had a lot of fun on my trip with my cousins and I will be glad to see them again in a few weeks at a family reunion!

After I came back to Paris, I was tired and took a night off from doing cool things. However, I soon returned to experience the excited of the Parisian evenings. I went to an immaculate performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons at La Sainte Chapelle. The church was unbelievible. Stained glass windows adorned for one's entire field of vision and everything else was golden and ornate. I was exteremely impressed by the precision and skill of the violinists. I felt strong emotions when hearing the sounds of the harmonious and energetic violinists reverberate around me. I have so much more respect for these artists than the popular musicians of today. In total, I felt like I was able to appreciate a performance of classical music and I hope that I will find time to attend more masterful performances.

The next evening, I decided to do some exploring. I started by walking next to the Seine. For a month during the summer, they bring in sand so there is a sort of beach on the side of the water. Spanned by beautiful bridges and surrounded by monumental buildings, the Seine passes through the heart of Paris. From the grotesque faces adorning Pont Neuf to the small plaque marking the execution of the last of the knights templar, the area was a treasure trove of French history. After wandering around a while, the sun set and I stumbled upon a fantastic street performance in front of Notre Dame. To begin, a man with a torch came and put some liquid in his mouth. Then after a few moments of waiting for dramatic effect, he blew a fantastic fire from his mouth!  After a few smaller acts, a man came out with balls that were in fire and he held them by strings. He twirled the balls of fire with finesse. (See here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av8g8NNkKbk  ).  In the finale, he took firecrackers attached to strings and twirled them around. While similar, there was an incredible effect where he was surrounded by sparks. I enjoyed this night a lot because I just explored and I stumbled upon something fantastic! In the subsequent evenings, I did not do a whole lot more than explore and take it easy. I was preparing my final presentation. However, the last day, I had a moving experience at a number of French Museums.

Per the suggestion of my father, I went to Musee d'Orsay to see the impressionism paintings. More than any of my other museum experience, I felt emotions when I saw the paintings.  As somewhat of a surprise, my favorite paintings were the realist and naturalist paintings. In particular, I found the following painting of Jesus at the cross moving (see http://iconsandimagery.blogspot.com/2011/03/calvary.html).  As described by the audio tour that I used throughout my visit, the jesus was depicted more like a human that was feeling intense pain. From his facial expression, his body dangling from his arms and his gaunt legs, everything about the painting is screaming out pain and anguish. Apparently this depiction of christ was so controversial that it was removed from the exhibition that had originally commissioned the work.  I also enjoyed the impressionist paintings. The most enjoyable part for me is that I recognized most of the impressionist artists and their styles. As always, I liked the Van Gogh paintings and in particular, I find his self-portrait to be fantastic! I could spend a long time examining his facial expression.  One other point was that I decided to pay for an audio tour and that certainly made the experience better for me.  It was a lot of fun to hear the descriptions of the paintings. Most of them were reasonable in pointing out the main features of the art without going too over the top with flowery descriptions. Afterwards, I headed to the Musee de l'Orangerie to see the Monet waterlilies.  At this point, I was pretty tired from having walked around Musee d'Orsay for about two hours so I was glad to be able to sit. Specially designed for the waterlilies, two oval rooms light by soft rays from the sun were specialy designed to display the Monet paintings.  It was enjoyable to sit and just appreciate the paintings. For me, I felt like the colors were pleasing for some of the paintings but not others. Somewhat surprisingly, the museum had a great collection of art in addition to the Monet paintings. One of my favorite paintings was a Renoir painting of a girl learning how to play piano. I liked the soft curves of their faces and their gentle expressions that I bought a copy of this painting for my dorm room. There was also a surprisingly large collection of Picasso paintings. While he painted many nudes, a type of art that would seem to be intimate, the expressions of the women were very distant. I spent a long time deciding which poster I wanted to buy. They did not have the specific waterlilies that I liked the most and the colors seemed off in the prints that they had. So I finally decided on the Renior painting that I described earlier.   In total, I enjoyed my trip a lot. In addition to liking the audio guide, I experienced more emotion that these museums that I have at any other art exhibit.

This post is already ridiculously long. So I am going to write later about some more general conclusions about my trip. Suffice it to say, I had a great time in Paris, so much so, that I did not feel the need to do anything crazy or special the last night that I was there. I had a relaxed evening where I packed and watched some youtube videos.