Two Inspiring Shows to Catch in Paris This Month

....preceded by a short tribute to LA's historic French community, and mourning my city of birth as it burns

Suzanne Valadon/”The Violin Box”, 1923. Valadon is the subject of a major retrospective at Paris’ Centre Pompidou this January— see more below.

As usual, I’m late to the table with this, but wishing everyone a happy, contemplative and inspiring New Year. I hope the winter holiday period afforded you some opportunity (however small) to rest and re-assess, especially as we enter what’s shaping up to be another year of profound and (at least for me) deeply unsettling global developments.

I’d love to be able to report that my year is kicking off on a note of high energy and optimism, but I find myself (like so many others) rattled by big fires seemingly erupting everywhere, or nearly— and whether literal or not.

Chief among the chaotic events that have thrown me off balance are the fires that have already destroyed swathes of Los Angeles: my birth city, and still home to many friends and family members I care deeply for. Since the county first came under what’s seemed like a (depersonalized) assault from the natural world, fueled by hurricane-force winds, brush-turned-easy-tinder from a lack of rain, and record winter heat, I’ve been waking up every morning to newsfeeds that make my gut slosh with dread and sadness.

Whole urban and suburban communities: suddenly gone, as if firebombed, leaving behind what could easily be mistaken for war-torn ruins in several historic stretches of LA County. For perhaps the first time, “legacy” media outlets like The New York Times are regularly citing climate change as a major factor in the catastrophe, no longer pretending any of this is up for scientific or ideological debate. At least, then, I no longer feel gaslit by news outlets, as I mourn the prospect of a Southern California made increasingly uninhabitable by a heating world.

As I write this, the fierce Santa Ana winds are dangerously picking up again, and the largest blaze, in Pacific Palisades, is only 11% contained. I have one close friend whose family home is in the Palisades, and since I haven’t heard from her, I have no idea whether they’ve been affected, nor whether they’re all ok. That ongoing silence burns, too.

There’s a particular kind of cognitive dissonance in watching (from afar) a disaster unfold in a place you hold deep personal connections with. There’s a mixture of guilt and relief at not being there to witness what friends and communities are going through; a sense of slight skepticism (are the news reports exaggerating? the calm reactions of certain friends and family seem to suggest so), and of course, helplessness at not being able to do much, besides perhaps donating to various crisis funds.

I don't really know where I’m going with all this. I just needed a place that might momentarily hold my grief and disbelief at what’s transpiring. Thanks for allowing that, however off-topic my ramblings may seem.

None of it is really that nonsequitor for me, anyway. I write about Paris (and France writ large) because I carved out a new home and identity there in my early 20s, while Los Angeles was my original home, and continues to figure in that identity. Both cities loom large in my subconscious and conscious mind, occupying my dreaming and waking life on a regular basis. So they’re intimately connected places for me, both as a person and a writer.

But to get to one of the things promised in the heading of this issue, the fires have made me significantly more curious about what I know to be a large and vibrant French community in Los Angeles— one that, according to this piece, was instrumental in building the city during the 19th century.