Although worried and even panicked at times at the idea of seeing the National Rally come to power, when this predicted catastrophe suddenly came to nothing and finally collapsed on the evening of Sunday, July 7, I admit to having felt, for a fraction of a second, the infantile and amoral disappointment of the adventurer who missed the plane that was going to crash, of the war photographer who left Hiroshima an hour before the atomic bombing of Enola Gay. As if History was depriving me of one of those great moments that would make me a traitor or a hero. A collaborator or a resistance fighter.
It happened on the plane that was taking us back from Menorca, the pretty little island in the Balearic Islands where we had gone to attend the inauguration of Felice Varini’s latest work, presented by the Albarran Bourdais gallery. Dora made a wonderful video: https://www.instagram.com/lartcontent
Varini creates works that can only be seen by one person at a time. Which makes it very difficult to have cocktail openings where the crowd jostles to confuse the very principle of the work. So you have to come back the next day, in peace and quiet, alone, and enjoy this jubilant takeover of space by a pictorial structure that unfolds, recomposes itself, like a chameleon in search of its third dimension. In short, we have fun. And once again, we had fun.
Menorca is an island facing a phenomenon of great replacement that began about ten years ago. Today, 80% of the houses, apartments, farms, businesses that are bought are bought by French people. At least that’s what Ignacio told us, a local who would like to denounce this and who, however, runs a real estate agency, and therefore lives off the invasive manna of these wealthy French people who have found there a dream of sun, sea, a city not made of concrete, unpolluted land, and seasides not yet rotten by hyper-tourism.
Ignacio showed us the racecourse in Ciudadela, the second city on the island, the most beautiful. His grandfather founded it about fifty years ago. He owned trotters that he raced on his racecourse, and one day, after a race won by one of his champions, he died of a heart attack, overjoyed. Ignacio and I agreed that it was a perfect, ideal, happy death if ever there was one. Even Dora, who doesn’t like to think about my death, agreed.
The election result and the forgotten bag
On Sunday, July 7, around six o’clock in the evening, we were at the airport, in front of the Transavia counter, quite worried about the result of the vote. Dora was looking at her mobile phone, on which a high-ranking friend was supposed to send her the first estimates… Fortunately, the plane was half an hour late, so at a quarter to seven, when we were already on the plane fastening our seat belts, Dora received the good news. We could go home. In fact, the plane took off.
It was on line 14 that I realized that I had forgotten my pretty little bag on the plane. I wasn’t worried, I trusted Transavia, they would find it, and, since there was my driving license inside, I would have no trouble proving that it belonged to me. A similar mishap had happened to me on the train, and I had found it at the lost and found office at the Gare du Nord.
When I got home, I immediately filled out the lost bag form. No news of my bag after forty-eight hours. I called the Transavia press office, where I pretended to be a columnist from L’Express who had forgotten his bag on the plane and would like to know if… “Don’t tell me any more, we’ll take care of it!”
I’ve been waiting for a week now. I just want to know if there are real people in this Transavia lost and found service. If this service exists anywhere other than on the Internet.