Nuit Blanche

*Nick in Paris*

On Saturday night into Sunday morning Jane and I experienced Paris's Nuit Blanche (White Night), during which most of the museums and churches were open all night, all with modern art exhibits scattered throughout. It was really an amazing experience. There were hundreds of thousands of people strolling through the churches, crowding the streets, and staying up until dawn. (we didn't quite make it that late)

We started the night by meeting a friend, Andreas, we met on the train to Paris in front of a 16th century church, St. Eustache. Andreas is from Munich and is spending six months in Paris studying logic and computer science. He lived for a year in Pittsburgh and is English is excellent. The exhibit in this church (which we don't have a picture of) was a huge projected video of an airport terminal's international arrivals gate, run super slow. I think it was supposed to depict that we will all die and perhaps we will all arrive a little dazed and confused at an airport. Andreas thought perhaps the artist was trying to say that death will in fact be rather boring and mundane. I didn't think much of the exhibit, but it did have music playing by Tomas Luis de Victoria, who is one of my favorite 16th-century composers.

After leaving St. Eustache we walked over to Notre Dame (the outside of which is shown above). Notre Dame is probably one of the 5 most important buildings in the history of music, if not the most important. This is where polyphony began 1,000 years ago, which spurred on many other advancements in music. Polyphony is more than one voices performing separate lines at the same time, as opposed to performing the same part, or having one dominant melody with accompaniment. Think Bach, or maybe the end of "God only Knows" by the Beach Boys. Anyway, I was really quite excited to see the church and I was not disappointed. After waiting through an extremely frustrating line - meaning that in the end we found out that people had just been going in front of the line the whole time...something which greatly upset our American sensibilities - we made it in and saw an incredible exhibit. In many of the side chapels there were glowing, neon stalagmites. They made beautiful reflects off the already beautiful walls and paintings. These pictures don't quite do it justice.

After Notre Dame we mostly just walked around and enjoyed well-after-midnight Paris. It was really quite remarkable. Jane and I were both really glad that the churches take part in this event. There was all sorts of information about the churches, and at St. Eustache I'm pretty sure I shook hands with a priest that was greeting everyone at the door. Really, if you ever have a chance to be in Paris in early October, you really need to do it, and you really need to experience Nuit Blanche.