12th of August, the beginnings of Chalabre en Sérénade

Chalabre has begun to transform and yesterday marked that transition. It was to be no ordinary Monday. Around the hour to take tea, I was leaning out of the tall, shutter-opened window, sipping a bottle of beer; from there I could see the pantile roofs of the village and the crenelations of Chateau de Chalabre. The sky was overcast; it was cooler and less humid that day than that of previous days and in so feeling I thought of England and reminded myself that there is comfort and ease in mild days.

From in the room came a whizzing noise. Deirdre was tattooing the back of Sam’s leg as he lay uncomfortably on the short sofa. She was almost done, the tattoo was a man standing in boots wearing jeans and a t-shirt, with hands in pockets and with only half a head. Yes, intentionally half a head, it look as if someone had cut off with scissors the sketched head on the piece of paper, from the left ear to the horizon of the right cheek bone.

His choice of tattoo was good, I thought, it had sudden kick to it which made me question, where had the head gone? Where were his eyes and mind? Elsewhere up his leg I supposed. Or, were they lost in space, dreaming away?

Alex, Sam’s travelling companion, was busy cleaning up the flat; they were to leave in the evening. Alex too had had a tattoo from Deirdre which was sore beneath his shoulder. Alex dressed like James Dean and smoked like James Dean; he was a pensive chap who captured the wistful look quite beautifully. Sam had a mane of strawberry-blonde locks as if he had walked out of the sixties, but he had hardly the pensive touch as Alex for his thoughts streamed out from his mouth in the most forthcoming and funny fashion.

Both were jolly libertines, raring for talk and beer. They had been here for nearly two months, we had drunk together, camped together, caught crayfish and cooked them over open fires. Fondly I recall the dawn swim, after une nuit blanche, when Sam and I swam nude across Lac de Montbel and back. The water was calm and glacial, the larks stirred in the fir woods as a pale blue reentered the sky and the lake water turned like alchemy from its night abyss of blackness.

Alex and Sam left that evening and I hoped it was a farewell for now and not an adieu.

There was no time to dwell upon their parting at that time, for the great man Remi had arrived a few days earlier from America. We strolled from the flat where we had just witnessed the tattooing, to the Abattoir where the musicians of the coming week’s festivities were gathering to eat together in the village hall. On the way we visited the gallery adorned with works of LaVon Eugene Calhoun – the man himself was there smoking a cigarette under his little tash. Others were sat on seats that hung from a beam. We were kindly given cushions for the floor and partook in an aperitif of rouge.

Hummingbird Prayer by the man himself, LaVon. An example from the internet.

We chit-chatted for a while, absorbing the strangely cryptic and colourfully metamorphic works of LaVon that were all around. There was Charlotte and her friend James. A chap called Bobby in his kilt from the village who tried to get me to do a Cockney accent, too hopeful I suspect that I could, or probably more hopeful I couldn’t.

Remi and I moved on and went to assist Barbara, the restaurant-extraordinaire of LA, at the Abattoir. We went down the Chalabriel, past fig trees and under the haunt of the church spire. We didn’t do much, moved a few things and cleaned a little towards the end. In between these tasks, whilst loitering by the plane trees under the shelter of the outside cook-house, we poured more wine from a box into plastic cazal cups and rolled cigarettes. The rush of the river Hers sounded the air, rain pattered on the ground and our nostrils soon savoured that enchanting scent of rain which only arises at its first conjunction with the earth.

Faisal turned up to spot a hello and then proceeded to shock me with an extraordinary story of incarceration. This fascinating episode was probably the reason why we missed the bulk of our chores.

Everyone descended on Hotel de France; there the entire establishment was booked and filled with the artists who are to play during the rest of the week. Vinx and Jen, who are Chalabre en Sérénade’s creators, had designs to turn the bar of the little hotel and restaurant into a thronging nook of jamming instruments and vocal cords, or a not so speak-easy late night babble of intoxication and good fun. It was the first evening and it was somewhat gentler than that vision.

As I arrived in the Hotel, I found a space to lean on the bar next to the local banjo-extraordinaire Jean-Baptiste, who I hadn’t seen for the best part of a year. (We, before Christmas, had attempted a duet or perhaps better justly described a duel between a Frenchman and an Englishman, where he strummed and we wittily, or vainly, sung rebuttals. I pretended to be Winston Churchill and he General de Gaulle – it was a scream.)

I do no know the name of the band who played yesterday night at the Hotel de France, but they captured a fascination amongst all us folk who listened to them and watched them. They were a four-piece assemblage: drums, guitar, bass and vocals, a standard I suppose. But there was nothing standard about them whatsoever, they were of a quality far removed from mortal hands, in which each player of each instrument raised themselves to sudden brilliances with their solos, and just as well in their accompaniment of each other.

I particularly appreciated the bass solo. Why? I can’t quite fully remember, I was two sheets to the wind you see and all that remains are the emotions I felt rather than any semblance of musical memory that a musician might have – I am not a musician.

The band relieved themselves from their instruments. Some people left, some people stayed. Those who stayed struggled to leave much later, since chatting and alcohol has a staying effect to those who imbibe them.

It was delightful pleasure to chew the cud with Cassie Spittmann. She made me remarkably jealous with all her languages and inspired pursuit of Hindi (or was it Hindustani? surely can’t have been). So when she asked me what I looked like, I describe myself to be quite the beastly looking chap. I pretty sure she got the joke, I hope she doesn’t imagine me now as being so demonic.

Then the crowd thinned. Outside a chap coming from Val’s bar down the road hit the deck with a loud thud. Angus ran, then we ran and then we hoisted him up from the firm bed he had descended onto. Angus ran to Val’s, returned with Val and then Val shouldered the bibulous gentleman home. Job done.

Liz Blair rocked up – she had served in last year’s tour of Chalabre en Sérénade – we bought drinks, chinked glasses and chattered away. The music, in reprieve for an hour or so, was reinstalled. An ominous black case was opened and out popped a vertiginous double bass. Then appeared, as if floating from out of a cloud, a large mythical lyre, soft and pale in wood; it was a harp.

Trepidation fixated me to the commencement of this duet. Suddenly it began. Damien, who held the double bass, conceived a rhythm and the undertone melody. Soon after, the harpist Sarah, with angelic hands each side of the strings, enjoined the double bass and raised upwards, with sweet notes by her plucking and strumming, the music to a firmament beforehand ill-conceived by mortal men.

But they summoned no mythical charm, nor fabulist ditty. No, instead it was in the realms of funk and blues that their music went forth. I had never heard such music by such picked instruments before. I was immediately captivated.

But Liz, having been constrained in a plane of long passage, unable to let loose her vocal cords, now let them loose with the majesty and might of her lungs and adjoined duet’s harmony with that very human instrument of vocal words.

Applause was everywhere. The duet, called Keryda I believe, were worshipped. An American fellow with a handsomely styled beard, salt and peppered, brought out a very delicious and deeply noted bottle of the old rouge. Everyone was smitten by all the wonderful things that had passed.

Friends left that day, but old ones were returning and new ones were being made. The prospect of a very good and lively week to come in Chalabre was undoubtably assured.

We drank onwards, until Liz, Johnny and myself found Viviane and Samuel outside a closed Val’s. I spurred my French into good heights with V and S. Then Johnny, a chap from South America with majestically voluminous hair, played us a song from his band, NeverTax, on his phone. I made a cheap joke calling his band a bunch of anarchists, we laughed – they wore suits, so perhaps they could have been…

Alas the final ebbing of the night ensued, with a light precipitation to accompany me back to the chateau. Street lamps, rain, dappling plane trees. A gloom with a glow and shadows falling under old houses with colombage.