Everybody 39;s Here For Halloween Time

[Olivie Inoue]

Woofindeed. It\u2019s been a super stressful week for everyone, and next week isn\u2019t looking too much better. Obviously most people are aware that Americans are busy doomscrolling themselves into oblivion until our eyes are just two Fivey cartoons. But I want my French listeners to know that I\u2019m thinking of them too, as France reintroduces harsh lockdown measures and recovers from multiple terrorist attacks. It\u2019s just a horrible, hard time for most of my listeners. So this month\u2019s newsletter has one singleminded purpose: distraction.

First of all, I\u2019m writing all of my readers a prescription for (1) batch of soup. While I\u2019m saving some of my favorite heartier stews for later in the winter, this week I whipped up a batch of one of my favorite comfort foods, soupe \u00E0 la Vache qui rit, a.k.a. \u201CLaughing Cow\u201D soup. It\u2019s like the French equivalent of broccoli cheddar soup, but with zucchinis and the familiar supermarket favorite. The French say it\u2019s for children, but dang it, I\u2019m eating it with pride. The recipe is SUPER simple, very cheap to make, and perfect for days when your executive function is zero.

When I was living in Paris at age 19, my apartment was situated right on top of P\u00E9re- Lachaise cemetery, in the 20\u00E8me arrondissement. One of the loveliest nights of the year was Toussaint (\u201CAll Saints\u201D), November 1st, when the city comes out to pay tribute to the dead. Standing on the apartment balcony, I could look down and see an endless sea of candles stretching throughout the enormous cemetery, with crowds walking around, saying prayers, singing songs, and remembering ancestors and beloved cultural icons. Whether you\u2019ve had the chance to visit or not, here\u2019s a lovely, romantic, and slightly ghoulish short film (from the anthology Paris, Je T\u2019aime) filmed entirely within the cemetery grounds:

Can\u2019t get enough of the Hundred Years War after this week\u2019s episode? October 25th marked the 605th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. You could watch endless performances of Shakespeare\u2019s Henry V\u2026or you could watch the recent Netflix version, The King starring Le Timoth\u00E9e Chalamet and an absolutely giddy Robert Pattinson as Louis, Le Dauphin. There\u2019s a 30% chance that my brain is replaying this scene at any given moment:

How on earth did I miss this the first time around? This week I fell into a wormhole learning about the case of G\u00E9rard Lh\u00E9ritier, a.k.a. the French Bernie Madoff. Like Madoff, he created an enormous Ponzi scheme which defrauded thousands of investors and made him a rich, vaunted celebrities. Unlike Madoff, he reassured investors that their investments were safe and sound, and his collateral was a huge collection of - genuine - literary memorabilia. Letters from Voltaire, trips on the Orient Express, and a lottery ticket from the heavens - this story has it all. Since Lh\u00E9ritier\u2019s downfall, the enormous collection continues to enter European auction houses, putting all kinds of interesting treasures on the market for the first time in ages. My favorite so far? The only joint letter from Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, describing their recent trips to the brothels.

I know this one isn\u2019t technically related to France or French history in any way, but one of the most important things helping me keep it together in 2020 has been Yoga with Adriene. She\u2019s super beginner friendly (and kid friendly!) and it helps me a lot to hear someone with a kind voice telling me that I am doing a great job. It\u2019s very difficult to doomscroll while doing a handstand. Also, I miss getting to hang out with dogs, so the constant presence of her extremely good boy, Benji, cheers me up. I\u2019ve gotten a bunch of my friends hooked on her videos, so I thought I\u2019d share a few of my favorites here:

I got hooked by starting with her 30 day series Home. When I started, there were a bunch of positions and movements I couldn\u2019t do, but by the end of the series I had made a lot of progress. Stick with it!! Now I do yoga every single day. She releases a new playlist of free videos every month, and November has a lot of stress-relieving/calming routines. In the meantime, here\u2019s an appropriate one for Halloween:

Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot) - My favorite!!! I know I recommend it every year, but it\u2019s worth recommending every year. I just introduced my partner to this one a few weeks ago, and he loved it. Note: If you have a Criterion subscription, watch it on there instead - their subtitles are a bit better.

High Life (Claire Denis) - Oooh, this movie will NOT leave my brain, even when I wish it would. It\u2019s grotesque, contains every bodily fluid imaginable, and definitely R-rated (and those with triggers should research before viewing) but it\u2019s also thought-provoking and weirdly beautiful in its own way. (This is also the second arthouse movie starring Robert Pattinson that I\u2019ve referenced in a single newsletter. What a world.)

Rebecca (Ben Wheatley) - Do I think this is going to be the best adaptation? No. Will I buy Armie Hammer in the role? Also, no. Was there any possibility that I would not watch Kristen Scott Thomas as Mrs. Danvers? Not a chance. It\u2019s got lavish production values, a three-piece marigold suit, and my full attention.

Alright, lovelies, I hope that\u2019s enough distraction for you. I\u2019m going to do some text banking, finish a bottle of sauv blanc, and watch the new Rebecca. I\u2019ll see you all on the other side. Until then:

But, in our globally interdependent lives, harvest is a theoretical concept, winter is mostly held at bay by lighting and heating and these vestigial customs are socially damaging. Spare a thought for parents outside the 1%, already spread thin as the butter on matzoh, who have to put together a prom-dress of a costume in their three seconds of personal time.

The only spiritual need American Halloween (now celebrated in England too, I hear) seems to fulfill is the spiritual need to sell a whole bunch of polyester costumes and card decorations between Labor Day and Thanksgiving.

American Halloween is now purely a hollow carnival of consumption where we train our children to threaten neighbors for sweet poison. Where cheap stereotypes masquerade as costume. Where our teens learn that drinking and sexual objectification is an acceptable and effective way of celebrating life.

You might know the story behind Radiohead\u2019s \u201CLift.\u201D The group, surging to creative and commercial power in the mid-1990s, spent a portion of the winter of \u201896 capturing demos for ultimately what became their third album, OK Computer, at Chipping Norton Studios in Oxfordshire. One of these songs essentially amounts to the greatest Britpop song ever recorded. It\u2019s a wondrous and starry-eyed tune with a swelling chorus and frozen sugar-cube chords that seem to melt away as you hear them, leaving only sweetness. Naturally, the five Radiohead members unanimously agreed that it was great \u2014 and also that it didn\u2019t belong on the album. They left it on the cutting-room floor.

Why would they do this? How could they do this? Isn\u2019t it every songwriter\u2019s dream to create something so good and universal that it must be shared, affirming both their abilities and their chosen calling?

For Radiohead, the song simply didn\u2019t work they way they wanted it to when they aimed to translate it from a live banger to a studio version. \u201CWe played it too much in a certain way that didn\u2019t work in my opinion,\u201D band leader Thom Yorke said in 2001, as captured by fan sites since then. \u201CIt didn\u2019t feel right. So we need to approach it in a different way but at the time of OK Computer it was impossible to get into rearranging it because everyone had fixed ideas on what to play and we\u2019d all just got into a habit we couldn\u2019t break.\u201D

This is an understandable conundrum. There\u2019s no point in recording a studio take of a song that simply lacks of the juice of the live version. And you can\u2019t always slot live versions of songs into studio tracklists (well, Neil can) or risk messing with the feel of the whole album. So, per Thom\u2019s calculations, \u201CLift\u201D was left off OK Computer because they wanted to capture something special that fit the needs of the larger work, and it simply didn\u2019t happen.

That mundane answer might satisfy casual fans. But real (Radio)heads understand the power of \u201CLift.\u201D Listen to this. May 1996, Landgraaf, Netherlands. Pinkpop Festival. Thom rocks the Heisenberg lab drip, Jonny Greenwood brings in synthesized strings to sell the drama, Ed O\u2019Brien yells beautiful backup vowels and lead guitar lines, Colin Greenwood\u2019s plucky bass lines reach out and grab you, and Phil Selway transforms from gentle drumming to gale force so gradually you barely even realize he\u2019s controlling the emotionality of the entire performance.

Right, so, how does a band recreate that magic in the studio? They tried. It didn\u2019t work out. But there\u2019s also a fiendish element at play here: popularity. That is, Radiohead knew the song was good as hell and couldn\u2019t made them the biggest band on the radio and they didn\u2019t want that. How could they know such a thing? They found out from Alanis Morissette\u2019s fans.

Around the time of that Pinkpop show, the band opened for Alanis on her Jagged Little Pill tour and worked the newly written \u201CLift\u201D into their setlists. It was a huge hit with the crowd. So huge that it frightened them.

\u201CSuddenly you\u2019d see them get up and start grooving,\u201D O\u2019Brien recalled to BBC Radio 6 over a decade later. \u201CIt had this kind of infectiousness about it. It was a big, anthemic song. If that song had been on that album, it would have taken us to a different place, and we\u2019d have probably sold a lot more records, if we\u2019d done it right. Everyone was saying this.\u201D

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