Photography : Montmartre, Paris, Light & Shadow

Photography : Montmartre, Paris, Light & Shadow

Lille. France. Today.

The Future of Transportation : Rent a louteuse!

I posted this article on https://brainsunite.wordpress.com/ – a collaboration based wordpress page I’m proud to work with…

 

Foresight is a risky field. Writing, in France, in my wobbly English, an article about the future of transportation is even more risky. Donc, well, you go girl! (or boy).

25 years ago I wrote a story where young people used what I called louteuses (could be “looters”) which were flying cameras you could hire for a certain amount of time (in my story it was used to spy people in their homes). Let’s say I invented self-service drones, parked everywhere at the top of buildings, computer piloted.

Drones! I’m proud! But I’m really today not able to imagine the future of transportation, though. Of course, I could watch some levers and pull them. Change of “nature” (teleportation?), or intensity (go “faster”), or go elsewhere (space?) etc. That’s boring, it’s just dial-watching.

I prefer to imagine an oblique way to move for the future : Not moving any more.

Virtuality and powerful computers will allow you to “travel” with 3D-glasses. You probably will be able to walk in every street of the Earth (or the Google Earth, hmm). Ahhh wandering in the suburbs of Yalta in autumn!!

But maybe you need real time?

There will be hundreds of ready-to-use self-services drones EVERYWHERE. They will be clever enough to navigate between your orders and security issues and laws. If you want to fly over Greenland NOW, let’s hire one sponsored-therefore-free drone, put your glasses on, and have fun!

My future of transportation : virtuality.

Of course it is baaaad. Nothing is better than to go “on site”, meet people, see the sky, and feel the air of Delhi. For this : read my colleagues’s articles, OK ?

Thanks for reading, and sorry for my Frenchenglish!

 

Instagram : featureshoot

 

 

 

 

Sleeping in the speed…

I know a friend who will, tomorrow, take a train to Paris. A TGV train (TGV means “Train à Grande Vitesse” : high-speed train – around 200 mph).

Departure at 7 AM, and she said to me : “That’s early, but I will probably sleep in the train”.

I thought about a psychoanalyst and philosopher I like, called D. Sibony. He wrote a chapter about this idea : it is strange to travel by plane or train, at high speed. As you’re not the driver (like in your car when you travel from Binkley to Madrone), you really have to let go : trust the guys who made the train (or the plane), and trust the guys who organize the mess of “all the planes/trains”, and trust the guys who pilot this crazy fast shit.

As in entertainment you have to Elbowing the Audience by killing the Suspension of Disbelief, I think like Sibony that in the world of powerful technology, you just have to… let go and trust the system, trust the guys.

And this is what we do, right? You HAVE to trust the pilot who will take you from Frisco to Paris (what for, after all?).

Then, at full speed, you can sleep!

Tool/Dial : What does this mean? Why, when you trust, are you SO surprised when something goes wrong?

Have a nice day!

Fixin’to #traveling (again without moving) in the #USA

Sweatin’ like a sinner in church…

I downloaded a bunch of Smithsonian TV episodes of Aerial America. I just watched the Michigan one, and, say, I’ll probably watch the whole pack!

It’s just one hour long, it’s “taken from helicopter” so I see the country from above, it’s… interesting. There’s a little of History and some funny stories (Kellog’s, Detroit, Eminem, General Motors, Ford, the German population, lakes, and the fact it’s divided in two pieces). The flaws are : there are not enough maps to explain things. It’s not linked enough to the neighbor states. And the narration is a little too much American-TV (so everything is “THE BEST OF THE WORLD” – or the biggest stadium of the country, the greatest factory of the fifties in America, or the longest bridge EVER, etc).

I also have a pack of movies about American History. It’ll help, this summer, I bet, to move forward.

You’ll find plenty of arrogant European people telling that people in USA are non traveling ignorants who don’t even know where Belgium or Italy are on a map. But ask a French what is the capital of Colorado, or to place Oklahoma on the US Map, and you’ll see.

I began to read the hilarious Bill Bryson book called The Lost Continent. This guy is from Iowa and decided one day to explore his country with two big loops (cf map). So my next episodes will be Iowa and maybe Missouri. It’s another way to visit without moving, right?

When Bryson crosses some cities like Des Moines, Hannibal or Palmyra, I often stop reading and I go on Instagram. I search Pella, Iowa, for example, and, well, I see the land, the sky, the church, the roads, what people do, what people like (cycling or all terrain vehicles?). Do I see vineyards or corn fields? I can’t wait for Wiscasset, Maine, right? I Google-mapped too, a little.

I wonder what you people “feel” when you see one of yours words written in the UK way. For example with realise/realize or colour/color.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time on YouTube exploring accents. What is really the Southern Accent? So I watched this :

 

Sorry for my English, it’s difficult some days. I’m French, after all!…

Thanks for reading!

JP

Instagram : la_fille_de_la_cote

“Oh Fabiola!” – Tremendous Love & Speechless Shock are two Stendhal’s Syndromes

Stendhal was a French writer (1783-1842 – let’s say it was the time of Napoleon). He wrote great novels, but I want to talk today about two stendhalian concepts : Cristallization and what we call the Stendhal Syndrome.

The Stendhal Syndrome happens when a human being becomes speechless in front of too much beauty : overcome, overwhelmed by emotion in front, for example, of Art.

Wikipedia : The staff at Florence’s Santa Maria Nuova hospital are accustomed to dealing with tourists suffering from dizzy spells and disorientation after admiring the statue of David, the masterpieces of the Uffizi Gallery and other treasures of the Tuscan city.

There is a Paris Syndrome too, of course, mostly happening to Japanese visitors, crushed by the City and its beauties (but also by the differences they find between their “idealized” vision of France and the reality). Yes, it’s like a “mega culture shock”. There’s a book (“Les Fous de l’Inde”) about a similar shock for India, felt by people from the whole Occident. A oceanic feeling leading to craziness. Embassies know this very well : they take care of people, and put them in planes to go back to normal life.

It’s interesting to study this and its source : Expectations? Tension between reason and feelings? Between brain and reality? What do you think? Have you been crushed by beauty one day? In front of a painting? A place? A light?

Cristallization has also been described by Stendhal. It is about love, of course! It’s when, in the beginning of a love story, the “marvellous” feeling cristallizes around every characteristic of the loved person, who is seen as perfect in every way, or as they say in wiki : a mental metamorphosis, in which unattractive characteristics of a new love are transformed into perceptual diamonds of shimmering beauty.

We have all probably been there : when we’re ready to love someone, when our “love” chooses a person, we open some gates and a big lake of sweet sugary love is poured, unleashed on the poor chosen “other”. Admiration, Acknowledgement, Hope and Delight are steps of the journey.

Of course, this is far from a balanced process of inventing a couple! You can watch out for disillusion. Cristallization often grows when the loved person is far (great for perfection, right?). This “love” generally explodes like a multicolor comet in front of reality.

Then remains possibilities : nothing, a friendship, a real love, an impetus to build something stronger, etc.

Thanks for reading!

“Consider other doors, gallivanter!”

Sometimes you’re less interested by the works than by the theories, discussions, struggles, articles and letters by those who invented it or studied it.

Imagine you’re interested in cubism, or new wave music. You can study the paintings and listen to OMD’s albums, but you could also dislike all of it, and at the same time discovering plenty of good ideas and concepts in the articles, books, letters around these subjects.

Go to France, but visit other cities than Paris. Read a poet, but not his poetry. Focus on trains when you study WWII.

So what? Well, nothing more than :

“Consider other doors, gallivanter!”.

I’d go further : choose a field you really don’t want to like (pick one : Street Art, Turkish Music, history of the Loire Castles in France, early movies of Brian de Palma, African food, or Nicolas de Stael’s paintings), and you go girl!

You could be surprised. Or find harmonic links with what you like, concepts you could apply to your discipline, or other doors to even more interesting territories.

Thanks for reading!

“Interstate 80” fantasy #traveling #USA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_80

I choose this road. 3000 miles. 60 days. Drive 50 miles a day every morning, then leave the Interstate to see what’s around. Drive. Park. Breathe. Watch things, nature, villages, cities, roads, people. Sit somewhere on a bench. Watch. Take pictures too. I could do it.

No, it’s NOT Route 66.

I can’t do it for real, because I’m shy, lazy and broke. Maybe on Google Maps?

It’s traveling without traveling. Maybe when I’ll be stuck in my bed when I’ll be 80 years old. By the way, I found the list of big cities I’d cross over.

I publish this. I have to go, dear readers : I want to visit Joliet, Illinois, now.

“Quad Cities”? Really?

San Francisco, Californie
Oakland, Californie
Sacramento, Californie
Reno, Nevada
Salt Lake City, Utah
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Sidney, Nebraska
North Platte, Nebraska
Kearney, Nebraska
Grand Island, Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Council Bluffs, Iowa
Des Moines
Iowa City
Quad Cities, Iowa et Illinois (Davenport)
Joliet, Illinois
Chicago, Illinois
Toledo, Ohio
Cleveland Ohio
Youngstown, Ohio
Sharon, Pennsylvanie
Clarion, Pennsylvanie
Du Bois, Pennsylvanie
Clearfield, Pennsylvanie
Bellefonte, Pennsylvanie
Williamsport, Pennsylvanie (par l’Interstate 180)
Bloomsburg, Pennsylvanie
Hazleton, Pennsylvanie
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvanie
Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvanie
New York (par l’Interstate 95)

About ze #French accent

OK I’m French, and my English is complètement full of erreurs.

It’s not that I don’t give a frog’s fat ass (an elegant idiom I learned about yesterday) : when I began this blog, I asked a friend to fix my mistakes, and she said that she could almost HEAR mon accent Français in the text!

But yesterday I had un choc. I watched un documentaire HBO about Vogue (ze magazine). One of the French fashion lady was from France…

I’m pretty sûr that she lives in America since years, but she visiblement had pleasure to “spik like ZAT”, like with a level 7 French casualness.

However, it’s really not hard to say “a dress” instead of “a drrress”, like we “R” the “Rs” in Frrrance, as you know. No effort here…

Yes it’s like… charming, right? Yet I wonder : what should I do if I one day come to the USA? Do I try to speak like American people, or do I lower my tonguework to casually stay “morrre French”?

Thanks for reading! Bonne journée !

 

An American Z Traveling Fantasy

I’m French, and I’d like to visit the USA – noooo not the Route 66, come on : everybody goes there, thus I don’t and won’t.

Then I had the idea to cross is from San Francisco to New York : Interstate 80, but a friend of mine told me that I will miss the South (oh Faulkner) so much that it would be stupid.

So I’d like to make a Z.

1 From New York to Houston, Richmond, Atlanta and Nouvelle-Orléans.

2 From Houston Texas to North, crossing this “pile” of States : Oklahoma Kansas then, well, Iowa & Minnesota.

3 North Dakota to Salt Lake City and San Francisco

Maybe I’d like to add a SLC to Seattle then South to Frisco?…

What do you think?

 

Instagram : viaurelia

 

 

#Bowbells Blues (traveling in the USA without moving)

I pinned a map of the United States in my bathroom. I’ve never been there, and I have no money to go. But I’m not the tourist type, after all. I could go to New York, see the Rocky Mountains, the fluttering streets of San Francisco and ride the Route 66. Naaahhh. I just watch my map, and I wonder…

How is Cleveland? How are the houses near the border between North Dakota and Canada? Do people have an accent in Bothell, Washington, or Topeka, Kansas? Etc…

I would love to rent a car and explore this country randomly – personally I immediately want to try the Route 65, not the 66, which goes Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota. Or the 70. Not the 66. No way.

I can wander on Google Maps (I’m currently visiting Bowbells, North Dakota – from there I’d take the 8th to see Four Bears Village; should I go to Bismark?).

I can choose to stay in a state this way : finding movies or documentaries filmed in Minneapolis, for example, on IMDB (there are 1148 movies) and watch the most movies possible during a month.

I could explore Flickr (1179 photos for Bowbells). YouTube? Facebook? What else?

So, well, choosing Route 70 and imagining I ride along on a bike. Slowly. I can imagine picking a little town and “staying” there for a month. Trying to “meet” people, trying to make friends, talking, Skyping with them… Then move North. Or West.

Traveling without moving.

Or Japan? Italy? Estonia? Nope. Topeka. I wanna see Topeka.