Meet Pascal

Bonjour bonjour. A Frenchman has entered the Midwest. The name is Pascal. I grew up in Grenoble, France (the Alps). I settled down in Toulouse, France seven years ago (south of France, but not Provence-south). I’m here for the summer. I’ll be writing songs honoring local realities. Maybe trees. Maybe sunsets. I may have to get to know the local realities a bit more. It’s all very new for me. Kroger’s. CVS. Numbered Streets. Wide roads. Northern Cardinals. Insinkerators. Same sun, though. 

My sister, Anastasia, did an internship at the Harrison Center six years ago. She has a fond memory of her time over here.

I have a ukulele near me most often. I like pianos. I appreciate guitars. I enjoy deciphering psalters. I may have submitted to the American pop cultural hegemony in my musical taste. Nina Simone is nice. Jeff Buckley singing Lilac Wine too. But you should know Jacques Brel! Ne me quitte pas… Miss Simone had a go at that. Sweet it was, sweet it is. 

I write personal songs and songs based on different texts that I care for. I also set poems to music, in French and in English. Baudelaire. Cowper. Vian. Dickinson. Shakespeare! I also try to write song cycles. I like the idea of multiple songs giving varied light on a story or topic.

For recording, I’ll be using the Harrison Center’s very own sound cave. I’ll also have a nomad kit to try to record some music on the go while scouring Indianapolis’s streets on a bike. I have a helmet.

The rate of production is one song a week. I’ll be here for ten weeks. Better keep the pace.

One thing I like about songwriting is that sung words often hit us at a deeper emotional level than if the same words were simply read. The conversations one has after a song has been sung also seem to often shift from where they were before the song. Relationships can deepen. Things hard to say can be said through music. Songs seem to capture and crystallize the mood or the impression of a situation, a place, an encounter or a time.

I’m looking forward to the Harrison Center experience. Artists, peers, patrons, neighbors and neighborhoods. I see it also as a challenge to write on demand, for an institution, and on topics I could not have gone for on my own. I am hoping for the stretching experience, the learning of song craftsmanship and for some memorable moments. À bientôt !