| Friday, May 7, 2021

Dear Friend,

“La peur de la mort n’empêche de mourir, mais elle empêche de vivre, » said our gardien, morosely. 
 
“The fear of death does not prevent you from dying. It stops you from living.” 
 
He tramped heavily down the kitchen stairs into les caves, where he is taking advantage of a lull in good weather to change a circulating pump on the furnace.
 
I raised my eyebrows and looked at Madame Francine. Quelque chose à signaler? Something I should know?
 
“C’est la télé,” remarked his loyal spouse, shaking her head. She delicately flicked the hot iron with her index finger, and took up a large flat sheet. Madame Francine is a skilled repasseuse – an ironer. 
 
“Humm! Qu’est ce-que ça sent bon! »
 
« Délicieuse ! »  I agreed, inhaling. Linens become delightfully fragrant under a hot iron.
 
What about the telly, I insisted. Monsieur Xavier is our connection to the world of television news. It’s his faithful companion while dinner is being cooked, on those nights when his son – the only one of their three children whom they have seen since “le confinement” of March 2020 – is not sharing an apéro at the end of the work day.
 
“C’est la chanson, c’est partout!”
 
Ah! “Danser encore.” The song that is everywhere! 
 
Released on Youtube by the group HK and Les Saltimbanks just before Christmas, “Danser encore” is now “le hymne du déconfinement.» It’s a rallying cry for a return to life and liberty, a rebuke to “shelter at home” and “le confinement.” And it has gathered a spontaneous momentum in France and Europe, from Belgium to Poland.

“Nous, on veut danser encore
Voir nos pensées enlacer nos corps
Passer nos vies sur une grille d’accords…
 
Et quand le soir à la télé 
Monsieur le bon roi a parlé 
Venu annoncer la sentence 
Nous faisons preuve d'irrévérence…
 
…Auto attestation qu'on signe 
Absurdité sur ordonnance…
Vendeurs de peur en abondance,
Angoissants, jusqu’à l’indécence
Sachons les tenir à distance…
 
Et malheur à celui qui pense
Et malheur à celui qui danse ! »
 

* * *

"We want to dance again,
Bodies in rhythm with our thoughts,
To pass our lives in search of harmony…
 
And when in the evening on T.V.,
The good king speaks
Announcing our sentence
We are irreverent…
 
Vendors of fear in abundance,
Of anguish without limits,
Keep your distance!
 
Forms to fill out, in order to go out,
Absurd decrees!
 
A curse on he who thinks,
Misfortune on those who dance!"

The first “mobilization éclair” took place at the Gare de l’Est of Paris, in early April. Two trombone players walked through the crowded station, playing the opening bars of “Danser encore.”  From all directions, the performers coalesced. And for a few exhilarating moments, music and song illuminated the steely confines of the railway station. Passersby joined in, masks askew or hanging off one ear.

It seemed as joyous as snapshot from the Liberation of Paris in 1944. Or at least like a return to the days when buskers enlivened the soul-wearying “métro-boulot-dodo” routine of the working man and woman.

“Heartwarming!” exclaimed my husband. He has fond memories of being caught up in a street riot as a student at the Sorbonne in 1968. A gendarme even whacked him with a baton.

“La Retour: Danser encore” took place at the Gare du Nord last week, to even more public enthusiasm and better choreography. At the Odéon, where a group of unemployed actors occupies the theatre, there was another pop-up event. And last Saturday, the palace of the Senate in the Luxembourg Gardens, tulips waving in the spring breeze, was the background for the latest edition in France’s capital city.

That’s Paris, center of all that combines revolution and culture.

But joie de vivre is infectious! And Spring is in the air!

“Danser encore” flashmobs have popped up everywhere, even in our local capital of Alençon and in Caen. Spend a few minutes on the Internet, and you’ll see ponies tapping out the tune with their front legs in front of a French chateau, an Elmo in white-face rocking it on a roof top, Polish maidens in traditional dress swaying to the melody in a meadow. Portuguese hipsters sing it in a book-lined living room. Some wag even appropriated the exquisite Alain Delon, setting the song to scenes from an Italian movie of the 1960s.

All over France -- and in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Poland – the “mob’ éclair” springs up…in cities, in country lanes and meadows, in market places and forests, in empty tap dance studios and basements drearily set up for le télétravail. “Danser encore” happenings are taking place in Canada, on the beaches of the Caribbean, and in France Outremer, off the coast of Africa.

People are dancing it to the macarena, that old stalwart of sport stadiums and wedding parties. Or you can try something more custom.

A maestro demonstrates the moves from his improvised home studio, leaping across the tiled floor:

“Danser encore,” he instructs, is a three-two tempo : « un, je clique, et deux, trois, quatre, cinq ! »

You can dance by yourself, he adds, but it’s nicer to dance “en communion” with others.

And that’s the message of “Danser encore.” La communion. Perhaps music and dance predate language in human beings. They seem to bind every human community, no matter its level of what we commonly call civilization.

“Non, non, non, non, non, non!” goes the refrain of « Danser encore. » Culture and companionship are not “non-essentiel.”

What spark set off this musical protest?

On September 29, a decree went forth in the bay of Morbihan in nearby Brittany, forbidding the transport of musical instruments in a car. All concerts, private or public, were to be cancelled as well.

“Well, that gets the Palm d’Or for the most Orwellian law of the year!” tweeted one reader of the local paper.

It’s not just rave parties that have been forbidden since March of 2020, of course. Also forbidden is every musical gathering from amateur church choirs to professional engagements that require a lifetime’s commitment to training and practice.

It’s not just school, workplaces, retirement homes, and theaters that are shut down, in France as elsewhere. Families are separated. Places of worship are closed. Lost are those gestures so vital to human happiness – a chuck of a child’s tender chin or a kiss on the leathery old cheek of a grandfather, a brother’s handshake, a priest’s blessing, the glance that shares a joke or comforts a tear, the touch and the scent of places and of people dear to our hearts. That’s not to mention, of course, all those new experiences and new encounters that don’t take place, and for which untold lives are the poorer.

“Danser encore” is more than the “hymne du déconfinement.» It has captured a deeper theme and a deeper anxiety.

« Un peuple prêt à sacrifier un peu de liberté pour un peu de sécurité, ne mérite ni l’une ni l’autre, et finit par perdre les deux” drifts across the title page of the Youtube video showcasing Saturday’s flashmob in the Luxembourg Gardens. Often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the proverb warns against trading freedom for security: “A people ready to sacrifice a little liberty for a little safety, deserve neither one nor the other, and ends by losing both.”

« Liberté !” shouts the crowd in the Luxembourg Gardens, drifting away as the music ends. The gendarmes are approaching.

“Come dance with us,” enjoins a grandmotherly type.

“We can’t right now, we’re paid to work,” replies one of the masked members of les forces de l’ordre.

“Ah, voyons,” exclaims the venerable matron. “He really wants to! They realize!”

“But your children will not be free!” she admonishes, addressing the gendarme.

“Danser encore” is that curious cultural phenomenon, a song that unites disparate communities around central values. The woke and the ringard, bobo performers and starchy intellectuals, les baba cool, young people, grandmothers and pram-pushing parents, members of #masquesblancs and the Gilets Jaunes, libertarians, “liberales,” communists and “altermondialistes,” adepts of open-air fantasy games…they can all be seen dancing and singing together on the screen.

Kaddour Hadadi, who wrote the song and its music, is the 44-year-old son of Algerian immigrants. Like Monsieur Xavier and Francine, he is a ch’ti from the industrial north of France. He’s also the author of a song that became the rallying cry of the Gilets Jaunes, “On Lâche Rien.” The realm of protest is his element.

Our gardien and his wife harbor rather more reserved views of the aims of the Gilets Jaunes and bohemian artists. But on some essentials, one can agree.

Without cafés, le foot, and theatres, where’s the fun in life?

Is being with family and friends really “non-essentiel”?

And, says “Danser encore,” without music and dance, without joining together, where is laughter, happiness, the joy and meaning of being alive?

“What trifles constitute happiness! The sound of a bagpipe. Without music, life would be a mistake,” wrote Nietzsche, the German philosopher who otherwise held rather gloomy views.

And with that thought, let us look forward to brighter times!

Dansons encore!

A bientôt, mes amis !

P.S. Let us welcome you to the Chateau or to our newly renovated Farmhouse. Please write to Heather or Béatrice (both are bilingual in English and French), or, of course to me, at info@chateaudecourtomer.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

P.P.S. A smalll selection of HK & Les Saltimbanks' Danser Encore...

HK et Les Saltimbanks do their first Youtube video in December...

Flashmob at le Gare du Nord in April...

Hors-Série does it with horses in a very original way...

And just the song Danser encore itself.