Les Maisons Satie, in Honfleur

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Erik Satie, one of my favorite composers, was born in Honfleur, on the coast of Normandy, in 1866. His birthplace has been transformed into a –

 

 

 

A what?

 

 

 

Not really a museum. Not really a performance space.

 

 

 

A happening.

 

 

 

Satie was an oddball: a medievalist, a surrealist, an independent. He wrote his odd little pieces of music while working as a cabaret pianist. He wrote pieces called “Dessicated Embryos” and “Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear” and “Next-to-Last Thoughts.” He was probably at least a little mentally ill. He died of acute cirrhosis (too much bourbon and absinthe) in 1925.

 

 

 

The good people of Honfleur have transformed his place of birth into a kind of performance / representation of Satie’s music. In one of the first rooms, you encounter a six-foot-tall pear, slowly flapping gigantic albatross wings. There’s a room of shadow puppets and cutouts. There is – outrageously, unexpectedly – a carousel, which you are invited to ride. I mounted one of the bizarre-looking bicycle-creatures and began to pedal, and the mechanism activated itself, and a cabaret piece of Satie’s – “Le Picadilly” – began to play, and the carousel opened up, brandishing peculiar hybrid musical instruments: shoe-trumpets, umbrella-trombones. An inscription on the wall says (in part): “It won’t hurt you to be ridiculous. And remember: Satie is watching you.”

 

 

 

Then there’s the white room: white walls, white benches, and a white player piano. The piano, eerily, plays one Satie score after another:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, you enter a small movie theater. You’re greeted by Satie himself – a voice from an empty armchair. He narrates a film showing scenes from some of his late ballets – “Parade,” “Mercure,” “Relache.” I knew the music to all three, but I’d never seen the dancing; it was beautiful and odd and otherworldly. Picasso designed the costumes and sets for “Parade,” and it shows: the circus managers who open each scene wear bizarre cubist outfits that look completely alien.

 

 

 

I was idiotically happy through the whole museum.

 

 

 

Here’s a video that gives you a nice impression of the place, through the eyes of an excited child:

 

 

 

 

 

 

My dears, do yourselves the favor of a lifetime, and visit Normandy. Sample the cheese and the fish. See the churches, and the villages.

 

 

 

And visit the house of Monsieur Satie in Honfleur, and ride the carousel.

 

 

 

It won’t hurt you to be ridiculous once in a while.

 

 

 

And remember: Satie is watching you.

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Roger Williams Park Museum

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Providence, like New York City, has a large central urban park. It's hilly and full of greenery, marshy and irregular, with a network of ponds and canals running through it. There's a merry-go-round, and a “casino,” and a zoo (which is actually not bad), and a very nice exotic-species greenhouse, and a couple of bandstands. It's also full of lots of secluded spots ideal for drug-dealing (which explains a good deal of the automobile traffic running through the park).

 

 

In the middle of the park stands the Roger Williams Park Museum. It is a fanciful castle, decorated with elaborate stonework. Inside: rock collections. Antiquities. Native American beadwork. A small but cute planetarium.

 

But I am always most fascinated by their huge turn-of-the-century taxidermy collection. It is beautiful, and horribly sad. Have you ever seen a passenger pigeon? Of course you haven't; they're extinct. But I saw one the other day at the Roger Williams Park Museum, long-dead, stuffed and mounted. There is, in fact, a display of every bird found in turn-of-the-century Rhode Island – some of which, like the passenger pigeon, are gone from the earth altogether now (thanks at least in part to museum collectors), and many of which are no longer seen in Rhode Island (or at least I haven't see any Great Auks around lately). There's a lioness and lion cub, posed together, and they are beautiful, until you think about them a bit. And two big polar bears nuzzling one another. And a big grizzly bear rearing up on its hind legs. All dead, all stuffed. “I wonder,” Partner said quietly as we were looking at the polar bears, “if they had any idea they'd end up in a place like this?”

 

 

The Museum quite evidently runs on next to no money. The exhibits seldom change. I think Partner and I were the only people there that morning; I spent seven dollars, including admission, and I was thanked profusely three times by three different staff members.

 

All those odd beautiful things sitting in an odd building in south Providence, gathering dust. All those artifacts of science and culture.

 

If they announce the world is ending soon, probably a lot of people will go to church to pray.

 

Myself, I think I'll head over to the Roger Williams Park Museum and sit with the rock collections and fossils and stuffed passenger pigeons. It will be a good place to meditate on going extinct.

 

 

And I'll be in excellent company.

 

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