"Existence precedes essence."
-Jean Paul Sartre ...
(but maybe essence precedes existence?)


"It is inauthentic to refer to oneself through the eyes of others."
- Jean Paul Sartre


"One is not born a woman but becomes one."
- Simone de Beauvoir


"Man's greatness is his misery."
- Blaise Pascal


"One is never as happy nor as discontent as imagined."
- François de La Rouchefoucauld 


"Those who live without madness are not as wise as they believe."
- Francois de La Rouchefoucauld

These come across a little more powerful in French...

But an idea is an idea! 

-b

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

The French struggle to write freely in newspapers during and before the Revolution was actually pretty remarkable.  Having to write a whole paper on this stuff is a very eye opening experience because it's made me realize how much I take news for granted.  

 I like these images from an artistic standpoint.  Especially the first one because of the passionate expression on their faces.

-b

Surréalisme

Just read Andre Breton's Manifeste du Surréalisme which is totally awesome:

 One night, before falling asleep, I became aware of a most bizarre sentence, clearly articulated to the point where it was impossible to change a word of it, but still separate from the sound of any voice. It came to me bearing no trace of the events with which I was involved at that time, at least to my conscious knowledge. It seemed to me a highly insistent sentence - a sentence, I might say, which knocked at the window. I quickly took note of it and was prepared to disregard it when something about its whole character held me back. The sentence truly astounded me. Unfortunately I still cannot remember the exact words to this day, but it was something like: 'A man is cut in half by the window'; but it can only suffer from ambiguity, accompanied as it was by the feeble visual representation of a walking man cut in half by a window perpendicular to the axis of his body.

x,b

♫

Billie Holiday's I'll Be Seeing You is one of my absolute favorites... The combination between her voice and the sad music trailing is perfect.

Also, soundtrack music is great especially if the movie was great.  Listen to this exact section of this song because it's beautiful.  But it gets lame after a minute or so:
*CLICK HERE! The Notebook Soundtrack Selection*

The wonderful Shigeto came out with a new mix a few days ago: 

The painted Veil was on some channel the other day and I find the music of course, to be absolutely perfect!  Check it out, (Composed by Lang Lang)




Also, a soundtrack that MUST be noted is of course the ever loved Amelie:






Bonne nuit!
~B

Mon Dieu, Hookoo

Goodbye summer and that last fun night with Yas, it's 11:30am, on Tuesday.  French Business with a focus on Micro Economics.  Taught in French.  Maybe 9 other students, all of which are nearly fluent.  And then I'm thinking "Mon Dieu!" Like I am fluent myself... Even though repeating the phrase "mon dieu" over and over makes me no more fluent than my dog chilling on the couch at home.  Then they all start debating the idea of buying goods made by French companies or imported goods made by Vietnamese companies and or Chinese companies.  All in french remember and I'm catching phrases and words and for the most part I can understand but responding is out of the question.  Professor Daubigny divides us, right down the middle.  For and against French Producteurs or Other Producteurs.  Thank DIEU that I'm for French Goods made by French Enterprise.  We debate for a couple of minutes.  Surprisingly, I had actually some pretty good slowly stitched sentences that ended up getting a few nods here and there.

And I can't wait to go back on Tuesday.

Caits' post inspired me to share a few songs that I been listening to often. They are all pretty slow and relaxed so enjoy and relax!









-B

Je Suis Une Go-Go Girl

One of the reasons I love spotify is because it has this overwhelming power to connect you with all types of music.  It links from artist to artist, song to song, genre to genre.  It's like a never ending map that explains why the world is a sphere and not flat.  Click away from related artist to related artist and find a plethora of soon to be favorite artists.  But I'm not writing this post to convince you to download spotify, I'm here to share what I found tonight.  An album unlike any other.  The band: The Liminianas The Album: Crystal Anis (which is a type of bird)

Each song has a very different beat and rhythm to it so each song is incredibly distinct.  I'm a little tired of finding bands that have great music but each song is almost an exact replica of the other (Foster the People...)

And they are French which compelled me to post about them immediately!
This song is one of their most popular songs:
Bon nuit et vous vous amusez avec ces chansons!

c'est facile!

I Believe I can Fly ( flight of the frenchies). Trailer from sebastien montaz-rosset on Vimeo.

-B