aMMusing

If you grew up as I did as a francophone in the 1970s, you would remember Michel Fugain et le Big Bazar. I certainly remember songs like “Une Belle Histoire,” as it would often play on the morning show on CBAF radio as we’d be getting up and ready for school or work.

For increased laugh factor, I just HAD to pick the cheesiest possible video of this song on YouTube. I mean, today, I doubt even a gay man would be caught wearing shorts as short as those the guy on this video was wearing. Oye!

Fugain still deserves praise and respect in francophone pop culture in that he had a style and sound of his own. Is it pop? Is it rock? No, it’s Michel Fugain et le Big Bazar. Period. And although highly sentimental for the most part, the catchy melodies served as a vehicle for poetic lyrics. Too bad the English translation on this video is so poor.

Meanwhile, one Sunday in mid-September of last year, I drove to Hudson, just off the western tip of the Island of Montréal, to take advantage of one of the last warm days of summer. And here in Montréal, while I drive around in Junior, I alternate between two radio stations: CJPX — Radio-Classique Montréal and CFZZ — BoomFM (St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu).

The former station is remarkably good. I remember that initially, when I would come to Montréal and listen to it, it often had B-class recordings of major works, but it has improved a great deal since then. And I have to say that the morning show on CJPX is far more becoming than its counterpart on the Toronto classical station, which nearly drove me to pull my hair out when I was listening to it while in TO last October. Imagine the pump-pump-pump tone of morning DJs on a rock station combined with the most inappropriate classical music for the morning: that was my experience of the Toronto classical station. But that’s not surprising to me, though; compared to Montréal, Toronto has no class.***

The latter station is a delightful morsel of cheese ideally suited for driving. Dubbing itself “The Radio of Legends” (in reference to the fact it plays “classic hits”), BoomFM features songs mostly in French from the ’60s to the ’80s and even names its evening show “Amour Libre” (“Free Love”), which ought to give you a good indication of its high cheese factor.

Anyway, when I was driving back from Hudson that beautiful September afternoon, they played this one song that I remembered hearing from Moncton on some Montréal station — either the now-defunct CKLM or the now-all-sports CKAC — one night while falling asleep at age …oh …maybe 10 or 11. It wouldn’t play that often but, for some reason, it got me all excited and I just LOVED that melody. Now? Not so much, but the nostalgia brought on by hearing it again drew a huge smile on my face.

So, I got home and I found it on YouTube. I also looked up the singer in Wikipedia: his stage name was C. Jérôme (his real name being Claude Dhotel) and he died of cancer in 2000. But he had been a madly successful French singer, especially in the 1970s.

Then I continued poking around YouTube and Wikipedia for the next hour or so — you know how you can get lost for hours following link after link on such sites — until I stumbled upon the most bizarre and hilarious videos by Colette and Odette, a couple of European drag queens. I can’t decide on just one video, so I’m linking to the three that nearly made me piss myself laughing.

For those of you who understand French and perhaps remember this 1975 hit by Michèle Torr, brace yourselves! For those of you who don’t understand French, you’re bound to have at least a good chuckle.

As for the following medley, well, I just hope Jeff is reading this post, because I think it’s totally up his alley of twisted humour.

And then there’s this one! What to say, what to say, what to say? Well, I’m certainly impressed with the production value. And I’m choosing to call this one “drag queens’ design (miss)adventures.”

So, there you have it: From the Bazar to the bizarre. I hope you enjoyed.

*** I’m sure I’m going to get lambasted for that remark!

The last time I posted in this blog, it was still Daylight Saving Time for 2009. Today, we started DST for 2010. Granted, we spend more of each year in DST than standard time, but that still means that I have gone more than four months without touching this blog. And that makes me sad.

It makes me sad because I really do miss blogging. When I started this thing in late 2002, there were no such things as Facebook or Twitter. In fact, back then, there were very few blogs by people in Atlantic Canada where I lived at the time. Now, many are quite satisfied with those easy and instantaneous messages on social networks, reducing a person’s thoughts to 140-character chunks.

I miss blogging because it allowed me to delve more deeply into what was (or is) on my mind. Some postings were merely diary-like updates, which definitely have a place on a personal blog, but others gave me an opportunity to reflect on sundry topics without placing myself in the centre. For instance, I still remember my posts after Hurricane Juan in 2003, a storm which, while no Katrina, left a lasting impression on those of us who lived through it. Or how this blog helped me through grieving the loss of my father — already six years ago this past Friday. While an intensely personal event, my father’s death is something that I diarized in a manner that was more than a mere recounting of my feelings of grief.

I miss blogging because, first, I like to write and, second, I like to be read. Yes, I admit it: I like to be read. Is there anything wrong with that? Does that make me narcissistic?

No, I don’t think so. At least not totally. Not in the pejorative sense of the word.

I also miss real blogging as it used to be at the beginning of the Aughts (i.e., the ’00s or 2000s), before it became mainstream. Back then, the blogosphere — a term coined supposedly as a joke in 1999 by the late Brad Graham of BradLands fame, which eerily is still online, untouched, seemingly with no one having found a way of updating it to warn of his death — was a social network in its own right. Some members of this network were simply “lurkers” — again, not in the pejorative sense of the word — who had their “blogroll,” while others were producers. This social network led to real connections and, yes, sometimes real discorde. Many eventually met in person at improvised “blog conventions,” while in one case that’s very close to my heart, one blogger’s online reflections led one “lurker” to e-mail the blogger her reflections on that post, which led to a string of back and forth e-mails which, over time, finally led to the blogger moving to Canada and marrying the lurker! (Okay, I’m skipping a few steps, but you get my point.)

By the same token, the flip side of blogging has always been risk — not just of exposing your thoughts to whomever would stumble upon them, but also of writing something that can lead to real trouble.

Take, for instance, when I was working freelance. I had to hold back whenever the thought that preoccupied my mind involved one of my clients. Now, employed and no longer a freelancer, I really have to watch out. After all, people have lost their job over what they wrote in their blog! I have made some references to my work, but I’ve steered clear from bitching about it. And believe me, these days, I’d really want to bitch about it!

Meanwhile, most people who know me in person also know all about that “other story” I haven’t blogged about, at least not directly …until now: the fact that my spouse and I have split. I’m reticient to get into it for a whole bunch of reasons: not wanting to turn this blog into a de facto kangaroo court against someone whom I did marry, after all; feeling it would not make for compelling reading; not wishing to publish something that could lead to the same kind of trouble as can bitching about an employer, and believing that it’s not such a good idea to turn this blog into an alternate therapist.

So, confronted by these fears and countless hours of (self-imposed) overtime at work, what I have done?

Nothing. I abandoned this blog I loved so much.

I’m thinking of changing that, though. I miss it too much. I’ll have to think a little about how to come back, but I will. Promise!

I ended my previous post wondering HOW the participants of the original Éloge du chiac “still identify themselves as French first and foremost.” It turns out that Part 2, which is more than three times the length of the original Éloge, doesn’t totally answer that question. Granted, there is a shocker in finding out that the proudest self-proclaimed Acadian Chiac 40 years ago, who went on to become very militant in his early adulthood, has basically given up the cause today. But as I think about it, I realize that my question was largely irrelevant and revealed more about my preconceived notions of what this documentary would be about. In fact, Part 2 goes much further in that it examines what the state of chiac is today, namely how it has morphed, how it’s perceived, and how it ties into the notion of identity.

I think it’s fair to say that, although it still has a distinct sound and still contains many so-called archaic words — like harde instead of “linge” (clothes) or éloize instead of “éclair” (lightening) — it has sadly (at least to me) become more “franglais.” But as one of today’s teenagers in Part 2 muses, perhaps the fact that a form of “chiac” still exists is enough to resist a complete abdication to English. It’s still a resistence of sorts.

A shortened version of Part 2 airs on Radio Canada in the Atlantic region on Sunday, October 18 at 7:30 pm.

My sister was not quite 14 in May 1968. She, along with other teenagers from Moncton, participated in a short NFB documentary called L’éloge du chiac about the virtues and demerits of chiac, the particular way French is spoken among Acadians in southeastern New Brunswick. Forty years later, those same participants, including the young (at the time) teacher, were brought back together for L’éloge du chiac Part 2 whose premiere is happening tonight at the NFB in Montréal and to which I’m heading in a few moments.

Just so you understand, chiac is fundamentally French, peppered with archaic French words and contemporary English words, as well as hybrids verbs from English made to sound French (as in j’ai crossé la rue for I crossed the street). No one in my immediate family ever spoke hardcore chiac, although my cousins just a few yards down the street certainly did. But, I must admit, in the original Éloge, my sister definitely had a chiac lilt that I don’t hear anymore.

I found it interesting viewing L’éloge again after so many years, in particular the way my sister at that age already affirmed herself as being Acadian, whereas it took me moving to Montréal in my 40s to finally fully assume my Acadian identity rather than thinking of myself as a French Canadian cultural mutt. But also fascinating to me was to learn that my sister, who now principally lives in French, recognized that, at 13, she spoke French only at home and in school. She declared:

My family is French; we’re from Québec. Me, though, I’m Acadian, so I’m not going to start speaking English with my parents! My mother hardly knows any English; I pretty well have to speak my French. But with others, I can admit that I always speak English.

That’s the thin edge of the wedge: trying to live in French in a town that’s predominently English-speaking, where two of the three TV stations were English and the only French radio station was Radio-Canada. It’s easy to see how assimilation could take hold back then. Moreover, back in 1968, Moncton was far from hospitable towards French. This was the era of the anti-French/anti-bilingual Mayor Jones. It was the era when French-speaking cashiers at the Eaton’s department store were strictly forbidden to speak French at work, even with customers whom they knew spoke only French (like my mother). It’s very clear in the original film that there was a sense of inferiority among these teens about the French they spoke. But without hesitation, I can say that today, whatever shred of vibrancy Moncton has is in large part because Acadians stood up and took pride in their culture and their language, thus throwing a splash of colour in an otherwise drab cultural landscape.

Is chiac “good French”? I’d have to say No in the strict sense of what that phrase implies. But it is a sign of a people’s determination to survive and to preserve much more than a symbolic link with who and where they come from. And what I look forward to seeing in Part 2 of Éloge is how, 40 years later, these Moncton teenagers of the late ’60s still identify themselves as French first and foremost despite having had to struggle to keep hold of that language and culture.

Why do things like this happen? This 1972 song by the late Joe Dassin was playing on the radio on the way to the airport yesterday morning…

Et l’on sait trop bien que tôt ou tard
Demain peut-être ou même ce soir
On va se dire que tout n’est pas perdu
De ce roman inachevé, on va se faire un conte de fées
Mais on a passé l’âge, on n’y croirait plus
………
On va descendre ensemble si tu veux
Et quand elle va nous voir passer
La patronne du café
Va encore nous dire “Salut les amoureux”

And we well know that sooner or later
Tomorrow perhaps or even tonight
We’ll tell each other that all’s not lost
Of this unfinished novel, we’ll make for ourselves a fairy tale
But we’ve passed that age, we wouldn’t believe it.
………
We’re going to go down together if you want
And when she’ll see us go by
The café owner
will again say to us, “Hi there, love birds”

This Argentine commercial was enough to make me break my blog silence, if ever so briefly.