I Didn't Visit the Musee D'Orsay

April in France is magical. April in Paris is the best! I hum “April in Paris” just thinking about it. Don’t know that tune? Find a good rendition on YouTube. Then go to Amazon and listen to Sally Stevens’ song “The Paris Song” on her album “Things I Should Have Told You.”

I am writing this and smiling. I can’t help but smile with Paris songs in my head and memories in my heart.

It’s kind of like Hawaii, another magical place where getting there can be a challenge, but once there, it’s practically perfect. I do wish these favorite places weren’t everyone’s favorite. In Hawaii, haoles own, work in, and inhabit concrete lavish buildings and hotels. (Google defines haole as white Americans.) I can’t help but wish that Hawaii belonged more to the natives than the latecomers. In Paris the problem is not so much American tourists as all the tourists from the whole world. It’s too well loved. At least enough Americans think they don’t like the French so we aren’t the only ones overrunning Paris.

 I spent last Friday and Saturday with Sally and our friend Joan from UCLA days. Joan is widely traveled via Elderhostel, while I prefer to go independently with the necessity of talking to people.

Saturday the three of us went to the Getty Museum,  the perfect place to spend some a beautiful day. Sally is a photographer, so we first visited that exhibit and were awed by [I forget his name]’s work. Part of the exhibit included videos and commercials he’d done. Sally and Joan went in there, but I didn’t. One of the commercials was for Calvin Klein (I think). Completely unexpected, the sound track played Sally’s soprano obbligato (not really unexpected since she did record it, but unexpected in the context of a trip to the Getty)! “That’s me!” she whispered to Joan as a model dived into a pool. The model didn’t look at all like Sally, even given the years between. Noticing Joan’s blank stare, Sally explained, “The music!”

 Have you noticed how little you pay attention to background music? Yet it sets the scene. Without it, you wouldn’t know how to feel about what’s happening on screen. Sally has made an excellent career of such music, having a clear, high voice and a deep understanding and knowledge of music. When I hear the young people at the high school who “sing” and think that their next step is Hollywood, I don’t burst their bubble because they wouldn’t believe me. There’s always an exception – the hick from nowhere who becomes super popular via YouTube. But to have staying power, you have to have the depth and the work ethic. Sally has worked – “hard” is too easy a word for how she’s worked – since she was 20. She’s been honored by her peers with about all the awards possible.

I got off track, but it was a good side trip. What I wanted to share was that Joan was aghast that I hadn’t visit the d’Orsay Museum or the Orangerie when Mary and I went last year. Well, we didn’t want to. But there I was at the Getty in the gallery for Impressionist painters, looking at the Cezannes, the Monets, and a Van Gogh that I’d seen hundreds of times in prints. The reality of them in person overwhelmed me. While my books seemed to lie when they said Cezanne was such a vanguard leader, or that Monet’s haystacks were revolutionary, the real live paintings testified of the truth of their greatness. 

I cried, the experience was so powerful. Right there in the gallery with all kinds of people around, I stood crying with Sally’s arm around me, worried that something awful might be wrong. When I told her, she understood. She’d felt the same about seeing Van Gogh’s “Vincent” scrawled in the corner of his irises.

Joan, however, was puzzled, but made a wise comment: “It’s a good thing you didn’t go to the d’Orsay.” 

I’m still smiling. My next trip to Paris will be in deep winter when no-one is around. I’ll go to the Musée d’Orsay and drink it all in, day after day, and then go dancing down the Quai.