Puis il revint comme il était parti...

"Puis il revint comme il était parti :
Bon pied, bon œil, personne d'averti.
Aux dents, toujours la vive marguerite,
Aux yeux, toujours la flamme qui crépite.

Mit sur ta lèvre, Aline, un long baiser
Mit sur la table un peu d'or étranger
Chanta, chanta deux chansons de marine
S'alla dormir dans la chambre enfantine."

-Jehan l'advenu, paroles de Norge, musique d'un quelconque Jacques Yvart, interprétation de Georges Brassens (enfin d'habitude).

Vous pourrez trouver le reste des paroles ici, avec une explication sur l'origine de la chanson. ce Jehan l'advenu n'est pas comme moi, il est plus aventurier, il a pour femme ou fiancée ou amoureuse qui vit dans sa terre natale plutôt qu'une rencontrée dans un pays lointain, il est marin, il ne s'annonce pas quand il revient et il ramène chez lui de "l'or étranger", ce qui ne risque pas d'arriver ces temps-ci avec la carrière que j'ai et la valeur de la livre sterling. Cela dit, il me fait tout de même un peu penser à moi. Je suis devenu bohème par la force des choses, mais suis bohème quand même et donc éternel expatrié, je reviens dormir dans la chambre enfantine à chaque retour au pays (ou presque) et il m'arrive de chanter. Mais c'est l'atmosphère du retour et du départ qui m'est particulièrement familière. Je l'ai en tête depuis des semaines.

Absorbing cultures (and a sort of self-portrait)

I was thinking about writing a post on my particular fondness for some cultures since I blogged about tea. I have discovered tea recently, but I don't drink it like an Englishman: I don't put milk in it. And the addition of milk is probably the contribution of England to the tea drinking ceremony. In a way, I drink tea like a Chinese. As a tea drinker, I am therefore a cultural Chinese, or close to it. As a beer drinker, I am unambiguously Anglo-Saxon, as a reader too, although my love for crime fiction is definitely American. As a music lover, I am all around the map, or at least all around Europe. As a semi-competent linguist, I am an Italophile. As a man interested in mythology, I am an Ancient Greek and sometimes a Norse.

Allophilia is the term used to describe a love for a culture or group that is not your own. What makes one love another culture? My love for England predates my marriage with a British woman. But I say this and I love aspects of England: the beer, the tea, the writers, the food even. And this is true for all cultures: one takes the parts that he likes, and easily ignores the rest, or even show contempt for parts of said culture. Take Italy for example: I love the language, which through opera became the language of music (maybe undeservedly). I love its food, its architecture, I love spaghetti westerns, I am also fascinated by many aspects of Italian history. But I am appalled by its culture of political corruption and by the strong, oppressive influence of the Catholic Church. But that actually makes me very similar to many of my Italian friends, or indeed many Italians. I am relatively indifferent towards Germanic culture, although I absolutely love many of its composers.

I think I can understand why I have a particular attraction to Ireland and England: almost every Quebecker have Irish blood and they strongly influence our culture. England, the conquering nation, managed to influence us strongly too, in spite of ourselves so to speak. I find in those nations something akin to my own, yet with the charm of the exotic. Unlike many Quebeckers, I am not particularly attracted to French culture. I love some of its music, its poetry and especially its secularism and republicanism. My atheism is pretty much French existentialism.

This is mere rambling, but the topic raises many questions that would each require long reflections: do you belong more to the culture you come from, or to the culture(s) you adopt, even if you do so partially? Is allophilia always selective? Is it entirely consciously chosen? I am curious to have your thoughts on that.

Parlons de hockey, puisqu'il le faut

J'ai pu constater l'ampleur de la fièvre du hockey à Montréal lors de mon dernier séjour dans la ville. Je dis fièvre du hockey, mais il faudrait peut-être plutôt parler de fièvre du Canadien. Comme l'a déjà dit un commentateur sportif, je ne sais plus lequel (et je paraphrase): Montréal n'est pas une ville de sports, ce n'est pas non plus la ville d'un sport, c'est la ville d'une équipe. J'ai été partisan du Canadien toute mon enfance, je le suis toujours, malgré ma relative indifférence pour le hockey une fois venu à l'âge adulte. Je suis partisan, mais je ne suis plus un chaud partisan. Ca a un peu à voir avec les conneries récentes de l'équipe, de même que l'infantilisme des fans.

Cela dit, je suis heureux qu'ils aient éliminé les Penguins hier. Même si ça m'agace que certains aient quand même fait des conneries, il semblerait que tout le monde ait pris les choses de manière plus responsable, les partisans comme la police (je ne m'ennuie pas trop du jovialiste Yvan Delorme). Quant à la victoire en elle-même, je partage le sentiment de Patrick Lagacé. Et je regrette un peu de n'avoir pas suivi ça d'un peu plus près quand j'étais là.

Not enough time

I don't know why, but these days I feel like, although I have plenty of free time, I never find enough time in a day to do everything that I want: not enough time to read all the books I want, not enough time to blog, not enough time for anything. I am not all that inspired to blog so I shouldn't complain, however I do find it frustrating sometimes at the end of the day. I feel like I haven't been productive. I just don't get the mathematics: how come I have free time and end up doing so little with it? Take Luther for instance: I have not watched the first episode and will not watch its sequel. When I find time to watch something, it is The Wire. Maybe I am too messy with my free time, maybe I am too lazy, or maybe I should just go with the flow and hope everything I end up doing something in the end.

Le petit détail qui déprime (un peu)

Il y a des petits détails que l'on remarque parfois dans une journée et qui lui donnent une couleur morne, nous font prendre conscience qu'il y a un truc qui cloche. Ca m'est arrivé ce soir: je faisais la vaisselle il y a une heure, et j'ai vu une femme marcher dans la rue, avec un foulard remonté jusqu'aux nez, visiblement frigorifiée comme si on était une froide soirée d'automne. Elle ne portait pas de manteau lourd, mais le foulard illustrait parfaitement ce qui cloche jusqu'ici lors de ce mois de mai: si ce n'était de la verdure, on se croirait effectivement dans une autre saison. J'aime l'automne, mais en son temps. J'aime quand mai a des airs de printemps qui se transforme en été. Ces temps-ci, même quand le soleil est là on gèle, ou du moins on n'a pas chaud.

Observations on tea

My wife bought me this teapot for my birthday, which you can see on the picture on your right, a nice little modern artifact to keep an old tradition alive and kicking.

The idea of England being a nation of tea drinkers has been a bit of a cliché, and in our modern time an inaccurate one. My wife, for instance, dislikes tea and only drinks coffee. Ian Fleming hated tea, and so did his iconic character. They both considered it mud. Maybe it is because I'm Anglophile and therefore more sensitive to old clichés, but I have been (re)discovering tea in recent years and am drinking more and more of it. I started drinking it during my first trip to the UK, then I stopped for years, until late in teenage when got into it again. I discovered Twinings, more particularly but not exclusively Russian Caravan which I drank in my first years Montreal. It is the variety that I used for my first cup from the teapot.

I am not a connoisseur, in fact I am pretty much of a philistine about tea, like for many other things. I know close to nothing about its history, here or elsewhere, I don't know at all how to infuse it perfectly, I know nothing about all the varieties and their differences, my drinking preferences (more on that below) would certainly be seen as barbarous for any long-time tea drinker. Still, I love it. I find tea far superior to coffee in any way: its taste is smoother, its colour is nicer, it is softer on the stomach, it is a drink that has been developed and refined by ancient civilisations.

Talking about those civilisations, there are other nations of tea lovers, and they are aficionados from much longer: China, Japan, Iran, among others, but one associates tea with England. Maybe because it is the Western nation where the drink became most successful. An unfair association in a way, typical of our Westerner attitude, but it illustrates how England integrated tea as part of its culture, even though it is seemingly so foreign: leaves in hot water, in a country that developed the culture of beer? There are reasons for its popularity here: tea cools you down on a hot summer (as a former housemate once told me), it also keeps you warm on a cold rainy day (and there are many of those here), it tastes lovely with a cake or a biscuit and like wine for a main meal, it enhances the taste of the food, it is as I said before soothing, it is also revigorating, etc. Tea has only virtues.

I don't put milk or sugar in my tea, as I think it gets in the way of the flavour (especially sugar). I have it strong, maybe too much (Marjane Satrapi thinks that too strong tea spoils the flavour). As I said, I am a philistine. I try to have one in the morning when I have time, I usually have one late in the afternoon and when I don't have to wake up early the next morning I have one in the evening, with or without dessert. My mum thinks I am turning into an Englishman. I doubt I could pass as a Chinese or an Iranian. But I think I am just carrying on an old tradition, that might become a fashion one day. I have seen signs of this: a growing number of tea rooms in Montreal, which have aseptised look selling tea while promoting healthy properties. There are also, in some independent cafés, more and more tea varieties. We might see the beginning of a drinking revolution. I would certainly welcome it, being a tea drinker.

Bon débarras...

Tony Tomassi, le plus prodigieux imbécile de la politique québécoise et l'un des plus intellectuellement tarés ministres d'un gouvernement qui en a pourtant pas mal, a donc été démis de ses fonctions. Bon débarras. Et c'est le temps de le redire: "Il pesce puzza dalla teste".

A great unknown line (from myself)

I am trying with this post to start a new series of posts based on one topic/theme (as I promised here). These posts will be about great lines that I have either heard or said and which I want to leave here to posterity, because I find them quite good (especially mines, as I am terribly vain). Granted, I am no Oscar Wilde, neither do I have his talent for aphorism, but I can sometimes be funny or witty.

So anyway, we were having a barbecue in Liverpool, in one of the few warm and sunny days we had that year. A friend of my housemate had brought a bottle of wine, which she dropped on the floor minutes after she arrived. It shattered, obviously. Then I said:

"I hope that was a cheap bottle."

It made people laugh.

Le retour du sinistre ensoutané

Une chronique récente de Richard Martineau a porté mon attention sur un discours récent du cardinal Marc Ouellet, sinistre ensoutané sur qui je blogue parfois, parce qu'il représente tout ce que je déteste et méprise sur le catholicisme en général et la version québécoise en particulier.

Étrange tout de même comment le jupon dépasse de la soutane lorsque Marc Ouellet se retrouve (ou croit se retrouver) en territoire allié, ici chez la Fédération canadienne des sociétés de médecins catholiques (comprenne qui pourra). Il ne se gêne plus alors, pour lâcher son venin, ici contre l'avortement, ce qui n'est pas surprenant, mais aussi contre l'émancipation des femmes, contre les homosexuels, les couples non mariés en ménage et, bien sûr, contre les progrès scientifiques qui nous ont sortis des Ténèbres. On aurait espéré que son Éminence se garde de faire la morale alors même que son Église est aux prises avec un scandale sans précédent. Ce qu'il cherchait à faire, c'est le procès de la modernité et de l'humanisme. Pas de chance pour lui, il n'a pas ni l'autorité morale ni l'autorité intellectuelle pour les juger. Marc Ouellet n'est qu'un vieux con qui ne perçoit la vie qu'à travers la phraséologie étriquée de son bréviaire.

Of time and old friendships

I was going through Facebook recently, seeing status of my friends, getting in touch with some long estranged ones too. I will probably spout thundering clichés, so be indulgent. I felt a weird feeling of self-alienation, as if my life and theirs had been taken by legions of doppelgängers. I met most of the friends I still have in late childhood or teenage. I now see them sporadically, or not at all, I only know about them from their Facebook status and their pictures. Most of them, I haven't seen in years. I remember them as teenagers and young adults, people with whom I spent many carefree years of my life. Now many are married, some are divorced, many have children, cats, dogs, what have you. And it just feels strange. I guess I must be just as alien to them, the boy growing up in Chicoutimi who ended up marrying an Englishwoman and living on the other side of the Atlantic.

Le lait cru

C'est peut-être une vieille nouvelle, mais j'ai lu récemment un article fascinant sur le lait cru au Québec, lequel est interdit de vente. Je me rappelle de la controverse de 1996, quand le gouvernement fédéral avait voulu interdire la vente de fromage au lait cru au Canada, idée profondément stupide qui avait provoqué une levée de boucliers, presque une révolte des producteurs comme des consommateurs. J'avais mangé du fromage au lait cru comme un goinfre tout le temps de la controverse, au cas où on nous en aurait privé à cause de ce projet de loi débile.

Ca me revient à l'esprit, donc, mais je me rend compte d'une chose tout de même étonnante: si je bois beaucoup de lait pour un adulte, si j'ai mangé les produits du lait cru, je n'ai pourtant jamais, à ma connaissance, bu de lait cru. Et là, depuis la lecture de l'article, la curiosité me taraude, pour ainsi dire. (Parenthèse pour ceux qui se demandent d'où m'est venu cette dernière phrase: j'ai lu Achille Talon récemment, ce qui m'inspire un style verbeux. Selon l'article, le lait cru est de plus en plus populaire en France. La prochaine fois que j'y vais, je me promets d'essayer.

A black cat on the wall

My wife and I went to a French market yesterday. I love French markets, they allow me to stock myself with olives, pastries and other delicious things. We also found other things, such as this poster (which you can see above), to decorate the bare walls of this flat. This was an old advertisement poster from a once famous cabaret in Paris, now the poster is probably more famous than the place (which still exists).

Having this picture is probably a bit of cliché for cat lovers and therefore I am sure I utterly lack originality here. I guess getting was just a question of time. But Veggie Carrie and I both love this poster, the colours are gorgeous, the cat looks real, stylised and adequately mysterious (love the staring yellow eyes on the black fur)and it's just nice to have something nice on the wall. More importantly, since I cannot have a real cat here, I might as well have another image of one. With Ruby, it will felinise the place. Still, I wish I could get a real one. I spend some time on the Cats Protection Society website, daydreaming about those we could adopt. One day, I hope.

Question existentielle (6)

Il y a un marché français ici depuis hier, ce qui est fort intéressant quand on veut se stocker en olives (hé!) et autres déliciosités, mais ça m'a fait penser à ces deux billets. Et ça m'amène à me poser une question existentielle:

-Pourquoi tant de Français ne comprennent toujours rien au Québec?

Overture to the Sun

Strangely, everything seems to be getting right weather-wise here, this year. We had a lovely first day of Spring, we have now a perfect first May day. So far, it is sunny, warm and lovely, lovely, lovely. I thought I would put a piece of music to celebrate May. This piece of music is from A Clockwork Orange (anybody surprised?), or at least I first heard it in the movie, just like anybody else I guess. It is from a short-lived band named Sunforest, from their one and only record. I blogged about another song of theirs before. They now have their whole record on Youtube, so I appreciated this morning the rest of Sunforest's work. To say that it's not really my cup of tea would be an understatement. It's pretty much lame psychedelic stuff. No wonder the band was forgotten quickly.

That said, the two tunes that made it into Kubrick's movie are great in their own way. The Lighthouse Keeper song is pretty much silly entertainment, Overture to the Sun is a nice little pastiche of Renaissance (or baroque?) music, perfectly atmospheric for a sunny day of May. I say this maybe because the character of the Minister of the Interior say something similar about Alex when he is reformed, "as decent a lad as you would meet on a May morning"... Then he gets him beaten, in front of an audience, with Overture to the Sun in the background. And I think I just discovered why I thought spontaneously about this music for May. Anyway, for those who cannot stand violence, you can see the scene parodied here, with teddy bears instead of actors. I have to admit, it works perfectly, and there is something Alexian about the white bear.

I put here the original, then the rearranged movie version. You tell me which one you prefer. I think the movie one is superior.

La Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

J'ai oublié de le souligner hier, mais la Grande Bibliothèque nationale du Québec a eu cinq ans hier. J'ai déjà blogué sur les bibliothèques et j'y ai mentionné la Grande Bibliothèque. J,y suis allé quelquefois, mais je n'ai pas de carte de membre, ce qui m'agace un peu. Je ne vis plus au Québec, mais je devrais quand même corriger cet état de fait, quitte à payer quelques dollars. La Bibliothèque est l'un de nos grands succès collectifs, qui plus est un succès récent et les succès collectifs se font rares ces temps-ci.

Que je ne sois pas membre est d'autant plus aberrant que c'est sans doute, à bien des égards, ma bibliothèque préférée. C'est sans aucun doute la plus accueillante. De l'extérieur, l'édifice est au mieux quelconque, mais l'intérieur a des couleurs chaudes et accueillantes et la lumière emplit l'endroit sans être aveuglante. Je pourrais passer une journée là sans m'ennuyer. Enfin, je me devais de souligner son anniversaire.

Luther?

I was blogging two days ago about British actors who make it in the US in great TV dramas. And I learned straight afterwards that BBC is producing one big cop drama, Luther, with none other than Idris Elba, the Stringer Bell from The Wire, in the lead role. I have to admit, after lamenting of the poor productions here, this seems to be a good move, at least casting-wise. Let's see if they get more than the casting right and if the series got inspired by American dramas also in the quality of the writing.

Un pot de confiture

"J'ai une idée: confiture". C'était ce que disait un ami lorsque l'on ne savait pas quoi faire et qu'on s'ennuyait un jour de congé. Ca faisait rire cinq secondes.

J'écris ce billet un peu parce que je ne sais pas trop sur quoi bloguer. Alors bon, je me suis dit "confiture" et l'idée m'est venue automatiquement. Enfin donc, bref, vous connaissez les petites fraises des champs? Ce sont des fraises qui sont petites et enfin bref, on les retrouve dans les champs, à l'état sauvage surtout. Voilà pour l'arrière-plan culturel. J'ai essayé de trouver de l'information sur le fruit sur google, mais à part des recettes sur des blogues québécois, il ne semble y avoir tristement rien. On semble en faire surtout de la confiture, d'où l'idée de mon blogue. Depuis l'enfance, la "confiture de petites fraises des champs" est pour moi la confiture. Les autres n'ont simplement pas le même goût.

J'ai eu un accès de nostalgie lors de mon dernier voyage au Québec et j'en ai pris au déjeuner, une fois que j'en ai eu assez du beurre d'érable. C'est un bonheur toujours renouvelé. J'ai décidé de prendre une photo du pot histoire d'immortaliser la confiture.

British actors and American screens

My wife found on BBC News an interesting article about British actors making it big on US TV. It is something I have noticed before, as most of my favourite TV dramas recently discovered (say The Wire or Rome) are produced by US money and US scriptwriters, but the casts are often heavy on British actors. The article mentions many reasons for this: British actors are competent but cheap, they can easily pass as American, they are also unknown in the American market, which is an asset when one wants viewers to see the character and not the actor, the US have of course more money, a bigger market, etc.

All of this is true, but there is also another element that is not mentioned in this article, but which Dominic West hinted at in another interview: US dramas are sadly now more creative than British ones, or at least they encourage more creativity. I deeply love a number of British dramas, but they go from fairly old to very old. The last British TV drama that I genuinly loved to bits was Sorted (I mentioned it here and you can find here its imdb page), which got stupidly axed by the BBC after its first season. The worst thing is that Americans have probably in proportions just as many poor and unimaginative shows as here, but they do get it right more often and there are people ready to back up good projects. Of course, they have the money to do it, but surely a good drama is no more expensive than a bad one. What I am worried about is that now that it has absorbed many British talents, and not only for the roles of badguys, one day they might also take British writers. It would be more difficult of course, as there is a cultural gap that cannot be filled as easily when writing about a different nation, but I can see a slippery slope. In any case, it is frustrating that British actors triumph in The Wire, while nothing of this caliber and of this particular genre has been made here in recent television history.

Serais-je revenu au bon moment?

Je ne crois pas que ça vaille la peine d'en faire une question existentielle, mais je me le demande néanmoins. Je trouve souvent les vacances trop courtes, comme bien du monde, surtout quand je dois quitter le Québec. Cela dit, maintenant je me demande si je n'ai pas quitté au bon moment. Il fait très chaud ici et il a neigé au Québec. Et j'aime moins la neige en avril...

Springtime anxieties

Spring, especially when it is such a nice one like this one (so far anyway), makes people all happy like they had never seen one. I feel like this too, on a good day. However, as I work in the domain of education and said work is often, like now, temporary and contractual, there is a sword of Damocles that prevents me for appreciating it fully. My contract will end soonish and I am already looking for a new job. Being unemployed is no holiday, even during summertime: you work just as much as if you were employed, it is just as stressful, but you don't get paid for all your pain and suffering. So I can't help but feeling anxious these days.