To understand or not to understand...

...that is the other question.

Thanks to my roommate I’ve discovered a little magazine called “Pariscope” which lists, on a weekly basis, all the cultural events in the city of Paris and its surroundings. The magazine costs only 40 cents and it is available every Wednesday in all the kiosks spread throughout the city which sell magazines and newspapers. It lists everything from plays, concerts, art exhibitions, festivals and all other sort of cultural activities. It gives you the location, the time, the nearest metro station and the fee. Some of these activities are free (entrée libre) and of course those are the ones that I’ve been highlighting and attending. Being Paris one of the most cultural cities in the world I’m trying to make the most out of my time here and become more cultural. On Tuesday night for example I went to the Czech Cultural Center as they, together with the Paris conservatory, were offering a concert called “Young soloists”. The purpose of the concert was to promote young soloists (piano, guitar, a soprano and a mezzo soprano) who are currently studying at the conservatory in Paris but who do have experience performing in other cities in France. The first performance was by one of the pianists and the soprano singer. She sang beautifully. I love it when people can sing; as a matter of fact I admire anyone who can sing, at least decently. Especially because I’m a music lover and would love to be able to sing; but as many good things as God has given me a singing voice was definitely not one of them. Clémentine, the mezzo-soprano, sang pieces of the opera Carmen as well as other ancient songs in French and Italian. The 2 pianists would take turns in playing the songs and she would always sing. The second performance was the guitar player and the soprano: Céline. As soon as the guitarist started to play I got goose bumps. The sound of that sole guitar and the voice of the soprano singing were so beautiful and so moving that I swear I almost cried: my eyes became watery as did the eyes of the person sitting next to me. Céline sang a couple of very old English songs (I say very old because they were songs from the 19th century) as well as traditional and very old French songs. Since the English songs were sang with an accent and very opera-like the lyrics were not very clear to me. I caught a word here and there and more or less the meaning of the song: a man singing to his lovely and beautiful girlfriend who abandoned him. The French songs were much much harder to understand: I only caught some words here and there but did not really understand the meaning of the song as a whole. However, the mixture of the guitar and her voice were so beautiful I was just enjoying the whole thing for what it was (the beautiful sound of the guitar accompanied but an amazing voice) and did not care about the rest. But then came the songs in Spanish…and those I could understand. The song was also one from the 19th century and it went something like this: “Dime muchacha, a donde van las cucarachas?, vienen conmigo las cucarachas? Muchacha mientes porque las cucarachas no tienen dientes.” (Tell me girl, where do cockroaches go? Do the cockroaches come with me? Girl you are lying because cockroaches don’t have teeth”. No, no no no no!!! I couldn’t believe it. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with the lyrics, but just thinking that just as I did with the previous songs, the women sitting next to me could be all moved, getting goose bumps and about to cry about a song that talks about cockroaches not having teeth made me laugh, and made me stop and think if maybe I was also getting all emotional about a song that talked about cockroaches or any other kind of disgusting insect…but in French.