Sufficiently disoriented, as the French once were

"With Michele, Debord lived only a stone's throw away from Les Halles, the old fruit and vegetable market halls, destined to be demolished in 1971 to make way for the rapid commuter train. (The Centre Pompidou, completed six years later, would seal the neighborhood's fate.) Before that, Les Halles had been a sprawling, delirious, humdrum world, intensely alive, bawdy and beautiful, an urban paradise for Debord. When Baudelaire wrote in Le Voyage 'To plunge into the abyss... And find in depths of the unknown the new', it might have been the old Les Halles he was describing." - Andy Merrifield, Guy Debord

Les Halles no longer exists. Probably not much like it in the "western world" still does. So I'll never have the opportunity to experience that "sprawling, delirious, humdrum world." But, I can do the best with what I've got, and find other ways to create other experiences.

On Halloween, I went to the SoWa Open Market, the last Sunday of the season, with Dan and Megan. It's an art, clothes, and farmer's market in the South End. We got hot dogs, which were expensive but marvelously satiating, and walked around. Lots of very cool local artisans' work... Diane Koss (Cutesy but not Cutesy) designs intricate and adorable stuffed monsters. Fuzzy Ink specializes in T-shirts celebrating the handlebar mustache, especially if accompanied by a monocle. Greg Stones's M.O. is "penguins, zombies, nudes," and let me say that until you've seen his work, you can't imagine the possibilities within that realm. So we walked and took it all in. Until we got too cold.

Then we went inside - to the SoWa Vintage Market - to a warehouse/barn-type building, with big, mostly wooden interiors, connected by a long hallway. The place was packed, with people (because of the cold) and things: all sorts of old ("vintage") and antique art, accessories, knick-knacks, trinkets, what-have-yous, and you-name-it. In other words, a ripe atmosphere for the sort of disorientation I seek in a place such as this... not exactly Les Halles, but, like a mild drug, enough to give me a buzz.

The first thing that struck my fancy was a rack of old men's magazines - like Man's Life and Adventure - the type with cover stories such as "My Gun is the Law," "Why Foreign Girls Make Better Wives and Lovers," and even, "I Battled a Giant Otter." If the Surrealists had lasted, they would've deemed this shit genius. But at $25 a pop, I'll move on. Save it for the museums.

Megan came across a very cool Steadman reprint, before we ended up at a stand selling antique prints, from old atlases and art books and that sort of thing. I was only vaguely interested, until I came across this, from La Brique Ordinaire 1878:


IMMEDIATELY transported, I was. To a time of 21 or 22 years ago, in New London, NH, perhaps a Saturday afternoon. There was something I used to play with my grandmother - I don't even know if it was blocks, or a puzzle, or a board game (Mom thinks it may be the puzzle) - but this image brought me instantly to an olive carpet past the dining room in New London, with my grandmother. Everything about this print... the brick facade, the symmetry, the lighting, the tree on one side and gate on the other, even the number of floors and windows... everything. The combination of an image, a memory, and the disorientation of my surroundings (all these people and things) produced the most vivid and (at the same time) transposed reality within my being. Inebriation by proxy, by receptiveness, by heart. It was remarkable.

The right combination... I was ready for it and I'll try to be ready again.