Joyeuse Fete de la Musique!

If you are in Paris today, you are celebrating the Equinox with live music on every corner of the city.

If you are me, you are remembering La Fete, smiling. One corner it's classic blues, next corner a U2 cover band, next be-bop, next a string quartet, down the hill a Celtic-Arabic fusion band that cracked my soul open. And that was just a sample of the action in a six-block range of the Latin Quarter, my cousin Jean-F rushing me about, "Allons, il faut ecouter ____" and he would dash off, his wife S and I and 5-yr-old T in tow. T completely mesmerized by the sounds. Me teaching him to keep the beat. Jean-F in a tiz lest I miss hearing some favorite of his. Some professional, mostly local ammature bands, all of them. Imagine, the Whole of Paris! A fine use to which to put those wide, and sometimes very narrow, sidewalks.

Me, clearly the American in the crowds, the only one dancing (rather demurely so as not to wreck the scene for the Parisians). MAN, get me on a plane.