{"id":2460,"date":"2013-08-11T13:12:50","date_gmt":"2013-08-11T21:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/?p=2460"},"modified":"2018-09-10T22:16:34","modified_gmt":"2018-09-11T06:16:34","slug":"simplicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/simplicity\/","title":{"rendered":"Simplicity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Les<\/a>
Les Tr\u00e8s Riches Heures du Duc du Berry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I spent the month of July this year in Paris. In summer, Paris is very exciting with the F\u00eate de la Bastille<\/em> parade, the Bal des Pompiers,<\/em>\u00a0the Tour de France<\/em>, and many other festivals all\u00a0happening\u00a0simultaneously. The city\u00a0crackles with excitement. Yet with two thousand years of history, what is a little missing in the summer sun are\u00a0Paris\u2019s subtler sides.<\/p>\n

I have a deep love for the quietude and timelessness of Medieval thought. I’ve always admired the multi-panel manuscript Les Tr\u00e8s Riches Heures du Duc du Berry<\/i><\/a> for its depiction of simple life\u2026and that blue, blue sky that seems to bear witness to a timelessness now so rare. Part of the book depicts everyday life throughout the year (it’s a book of hours afterall). What I never knew was that in the October panel, the castle is a real one and that it still exists\u2014in part. It is the original Louvre.<\/p>\n

Over the centuries this old castle, with its many ardoise turrets, was gradually erased and replaced by\u00a0successive regimes bent on modernizing it and putting their stamp on it. But in 1989 when excavations were made to build the Carrousel du Louvre<\/a> (the pyramid), the original Louvre was rediscovered.<\/p>\n

One bright and hot day, I followed the\u00a0self-guided tour<\/a>\u00a0that takes you down to the foundations and\u00a0origins of the Louvre. On the walking tour, you can now walk through the original moat and the substructure\u00a0of the walls and donjon (keep). There\u2019s nothing much else remaining, just\u00a0simple stonework, yet my eyes set these stones high\u00a0against that azure Medieval sky. And stared.<\/p>\n

Upstairs, the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and a thousand other art treasures awaited, and yet I stood mesmerized<\/em>\u00a0by these unadorned stones. It\u2019s not what you’re looking at so much as what it evokes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent the month of July this year in Paris. In summer, Paris is very exciting with the F\u00eate de la Bastille parade, the Bal des Pompiers,\u00a0the Tour de France, and many other festivals all\u00a0happening\u00a0simultaneously. The city\u00a0crackles with excitement. Yet with two thousand years of history, what is a little missing in the summer sun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[84,85,86],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29795,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions\/29795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonhall.ca\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}