About lines, art, and metro
I had my childhood in the days when you had to stand in lines in order to get anything: bread, milk, or any other vital things. As a rule, my mom was the one who stood in lines and sometimes they would send my older brother. They tried to spare me of such things because I was the youngest. Therefore, about Ukrainian lines from the early 1990s I know, let’s say, theoretically. Before not so long ago, I did not know a thing about French lines too.
I thought, if they do, in fact, exist it must be, perhaps, in Immigration office or other places where everyone has something that needs to be done and where the special French bureaucracy, known throughout Europe, thrives. After all, this turned out to be true.
However, despite the impressive look of the lines for the official papers, none of them can compare with lines for culture I saw in Paris. My friend (recently came from Kyiv) two days could not get over what she saw one Saturday in two central libraries at once. In one of them she had to stand for 20 minutes in line to get registered. In the other there was a queue that lined up through the half of the street only to get in. The movement of the people that wanted to get into the library was restrained by special rope limitation, the kind you find in an airport before examination of luggage. My friend kept saying: “So that is why they all are so smart, those Frenchmen! That is why they are all so smart!”
Another line is well-known to anyone who has ever visited Paris as a tourist – it is a line to the Louvre. If you are lucky (morning of a weekday or a pouring rain) you could stand in it for about 15 to 20 minutes. If you had no luck, you might stand there for a good hour. The tail of the line goes around the pyramid in a circle and ends in the other end of the square. If you are the lucky owner of the museum card ICON, student ID from art university or other suitably convincing pass, you can try to go through the “privileged” entrance. The same situation is at the Orsay Museum, especially, when a new exhibition opens there. I recently witnessed how even a pouring rain did not stop people at Orsay: none of the art fans move a bit, they all stood steadily to the glorious end.
The other day we were discussing plans for Monday with my friends. Someone suggested going to the Comedie-Francaise saying that on Mondays they have free tickets for plays. The only obstacle to the cherished tickets (there are only 50 free tickets) is only one thing – line! To get the access to art be ready to sacrifice two to two and a half hours of your time. This is the time you should have to get in the line before they start giving the free tickets away. However, this does not seem to intimidate many.
The situation is slightly less messy for fans of lectures at the Louvre Auditorium. You can attend lectures of well-known professors, researchers, and other first-rate scientist here. Tickets (three to six euros) can be ordered in advance by phone. If you got the inspiration to go to the lecture only on the day it is scheduled you’d have to stand in line to the ticket office for an hour or so. By the entrance to the lecture hall there is another line: the art students and architects are waiting for the doors to open and to go in there. There is no admission fee for them, but they can come in only after all the other people who bought the tickets. The young people have to stand for another half an hour and sometimes even an hour more than others. Anyway, lecture hall for 500 people is completely filled. Lectures are totally worth it – audience applauds to the lecturers for a long time and with great enthusiasm.
And here is what I thought looking at all of that. A person can stand, not sparing his feet, only for something he really needs or really wants. You can say that French people learn to “need” and “want” all of this at home or in a certain environment, that their universities really mean something and not a place to polish benches with your pants. There are certain things here that go beyond these small social communities. There is a wider space in which all are living day after day. Let’s say, metro. Metro is the blood and breathing of a large city. We can not ignore its cultural function, despite the apparent narrow utility.
Well, most advertising of cultural events is placed not on the streets and not on the bulletin boards near the institutions where they take place. Most of the advertising is placed in metro. Once you go down in the metro (you come across fungus on the walls or broken stairs more often than in Kyiv), tons of information about what is happening where and events you can not miss for sure is poured over you. Walls at the stations are often tightly covered with announcements of theatrical performances and concerts. Posters on the entire wall (the kind that advertise cosmetic products on the passage from Lva Tolstoho Station to Palats Sportu in Kyiv) tell about the exhibition of paintings by Raphael at the Louvre or the modern Spanish photographer Jo de Pom. In fact, I find out about most of the cultural events exactly in such a way. And every day when I go to the metro, my list of events that I need to go to doubles right away.
