Not far from Marseille, the “Jumping Festival” at Barjols, which we passed - not en fête, the village - heading to France’s Grand Canyon under heavy clouds, Friday, April 17, 2009, stopping after photos and cafés on the circuit for moules frites at St. Raphael, where they’ve built a condo building on the port, covering the church, and then David Bowie to bring us back to la Canebière. How to fit this smoothly and boozily with the Inman Park Festival? And the sitar there and Ravi Shankar in Charlotte tomorrow night and here in my record box? Searching for a namesake for this bonne in the oven, thoughts have been on Nina Simone, and it bothers me to no end this evening to find out she died on April 21, 2003 not 20 miles from Marseille, in Carry-le-Rouet, not four months after I played her for the first time off lent discs to myself overlooking Italy, the Winter Palace and Meditteranean from the fourth floor of the internat at Lycée Curie, Menton, and while I was only a short distance away alone; children of North Carolina oddly ex patriated at the same moment in the same place. Goddam - and this armagnac the most true element of old Pagan nighttime ritual, bouncing right along.
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