the empty chair

chair on stage I, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

I have been sitting here for an hour now, on my bed, looking out the window. The day is slowly, oh how very slowly, departing; it is almost ten pm and the clouds are dark blue, pink and white all at once. It will only really be night at around eleven.

The weekend is ending, though it was a beautiful one. Friday night, while having a picnic beside the canal with a few friends, we found out that a new festival was being held throughout the city: "Paris, in words." Poets, authors, singers, musicians, all interpreting texts, mixing and melting words and making them into something new.

So today we managed to chose an event held in the 'Bouffes du Nord", an amazing theatre I have been wanting to visit for a while now. The theatre is frighteningly tall, though rather small, giving a startling intimacy where everyone can see everyone else. It feels like an religious space, elegant in volume though lovably decrepit with age.

Arriving half an hour early, we found our seat and looked out onto the stage; empty except for a chair. An empty chair, though banal in many ways, is such a powerful object. The chairs of the Tuileries and Luxembourg seem have personalities of their own, scattered around the park, while this chair said simply "I will be filled, shortly. I take importance from the person who will be sitting on me."

Finally, the chair was filled and the subsequent show was wonderful. It is so unlike what I would normally go and do, or see, and it was refreshing for something that could have felt rather academic and stale.