For my Musical Paris class, the homework last weekend was to watch Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 Moulin Rouge! and honestly it was a hysterical work of art. It fit perfectly into the lectures that week about nineteenth-century café-concerts and cabaret artistiques in Montmartre, a popular little neighborhood in Paris. At night, poverty-stricken writers would come to these cafés to smoke, drink, and forget their troubles by watching bawdy performances until dawn.
My paper for English class due next week will be about a poet called Countee Cullen who lived during the Harlem Renaissance, the golden age of African-American culture in Harlem, a small Manhattan neighborhood. It delights me to imagine the nightlife there, elegant parties where young writers must have found themselves talking to an distinguished editor of a literary magazine, and offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, there among satin-dressed folks and luxurious houses.
My own nightlife has consisted of a lot of studying and listening to music. I like to create daily moods with the songs I listen to; last night’s, for example, was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” I head to bed at 11:30 (12, if I’ve had coffee that day. I’ve slipped into tomorrow). I think there’s something about nights, especially in October, when the night is cold but inside my room lights twinkle! Friday nights are typically spent with friends, Sunday nights in solitude, and I love them all.
