Summer Bacchanals

This month again, I have the huge privilege to travel to my favorite Indigo planet: INDIBLOG. I tell there my two weeks spent through Aude’s vineyards alleys talking with grapes and leaves. This article was originally written for the French website aforementioned, and I have decided to share it with my English readers in exclusivity on my blog.

They called me Mousseigne like you would write a poem.
They called me Mousseigne but I was only bohemia.
They wanted me to believe I was leading the way through blossoming grapes ranges. They wanted me to believe I was the mistress of this tidy vine whose fruit filling up my balloon glass for unforgettable nights was the only thing I had ever known. They wanted me, and after all was it a crime, to dream of other times. When women worked the land, dressed with their heavy and long brown skirts covered with a dirty and tired apron. When they spoke another French, Occitan, too southern to fit Oïl Land.
I then became this apprentice of a Mousseigne, as time was frozen. Or more accurately movement. For the time kept slowly drawing our unchanging presents. It was quarantined time and my weekly getaway in vineyards was my ultimate freedom, it was my immobile journey, my tiny exploration. It was my respiration.

I now go back to vineyards more regularly, more demanding, as life has almost come back to “normal”, putting my steps into a modern Mousseigne‘s. The real one. She speaks French, but it sounds like Portuguese, she blends her two southern musical accents, her homeland’s and our Occitanie’s. Her name is Ludivine. Ludivine has traded the heavy and long brown skirt covered with a dirty and tired apron of yesteryear for nowadays blue and synthetic shorts. She’s got the same strength as those field workers of old though, she’s got the power of women working with the Earth blood. Ludivine is tanned, her hands are damaged by her work. Ludivine’s skin is so smooth and soft, made by solar elements. She might be any age so young she looks. She might be any age so wise she is. Ludivine knows vineyards, she doesn’t own any but she knows them all. There are grapes she prefers. Not for their taste. But for their touch.
Ludivine who refuses that name becomes our « Mousseigne » then.
I put my gardening gloves on to follow her knowing steps. I already regrets contacts with cool morning leaves on my skin but the wire I need to lift hurts me too much. I embrace the repetitive tressiling’s move. I break the hook maintaining wires around vines’ feet; I lift it taking care rebel branch follow my lead; I kiss some grapes on my way; I hook wires again, up this time. I break the hook maintaining wires around vines’ feet; etc. etc. I am counting hooks but not my steps. What a splendid repetition, leaving room for my soul to spread in thousands of thoughts.
Although my heart has switched my pole, I still praise the same God. From Dionysus, God of Theater to Bacchus, God of Wine; both born from Jove’s or Zeus’ leg depending if Romans or Greeks. Both furiously inebriate me. My theatrical Dionysia on stage has given so much madness to my dreams, it is true. Falling in love on my balcony, becoming politic in 1940, growing old under characters’ skin, living lives I was not allowed to live. For a fleeting moment, I was full on that fake reality, the only one that mattered for a luminescent while.
My summer bacchanals are my vertigo now.
I keep going on this strange return to the land, unconsciously started a year ago. I am following this literal and figured path to the roots. I am accomplishing my way back to my artistic being’s origin. I am raming this invisible journey from “culture” to “agri”, going backward from the rest of humanity who started to grow soils before souls. I am achieving my spiritual’s unconscious spiral: my ignorant life started in culture without knowing any culture etymologically came from agri-culture, and not the opposite; then, looking for more meanings but still ignorant of this fondamental root, I dug my hands in dirt which ultimately golden both my creativity and imagination. Now that I have learned this primal truth, I might fully understand my own personal culture can only grow with its agri-mother. Agriculture gives me this illumination, this burning necessity to intertwine my words as well as the vine untamedly embrace. Words has become my own private vineyard.

And I have deeply felt it growing through my heart, following each veins, as I have gazed at this Occitan vineyard thickening from spring to summer. How have those immobile feet changed! I first met such a small leaf and such a little blossom on the wrinkled and almost dead branch, as March was ending. Now, they are untouched forests taller than me, showering with morning dew. I glanced at tiny and almost invisible grapes, now they are pollinated, rare treasure among parasol leaves. I saw alleys drawn like boulevards to let humans walk through, now they grow everywhere hiding the path.
Vine doesn’t care of our hooks, wires, posts, it only wants to entangle with the neighbor, girl or boy. Their little filaments intertwine and embrace in between alleys. And I am the destroying angel that roughly forbids this love. I have to separate in order to fulfill my unholy human destiny and barbarically lift wires keeping them apart. I, for whom any separation tears my being, put this innocent plant whose longing looks like love through this sorrow.
And I know my repetitive gesture is only meant to make the machine’s job easier. That big machine which doesn’t know how to talk about love when it harvest grapes. Then, I try anyway, despite the rush in between ranges, to give to this mistreated vineyard a bit of that soon to miss love. But vines don’t care about my rough hands’ caress, they’d rather be snails’ dew. They’d rather swing trapeze gastropods. Because they know, despite my soft heart, I am only here to make them look like Champs Élysées.

I always surrender to Zenith. Highest sun breaks my heavy legs complex, I trade my pants for shorts – heavy and long brown skirts would have been too much of an anachronism – that won’t protect me from wild and aggressive nature anymore. Then life numbs my legs. Not only in my muscles, but on my skin with tiny red dots, memories of thorns and thistles. My arms get stronger as well, burnt, blistered, slapped. Then the well-known pain on my neck comes by. The usual, as soon as I do something. Eventually synonyme of great peace.
Vineyards has changed since time is no longer quarantined. Cars, trucks, construction machines fill up my sounds. I regret our unchanging present’s silence, responding to heavy and long brown skirts covered with a dirty and tired apron of my imagination.
And again, my mind rocks like a last piece of life. Despite unwelcome crowding sounds, vineyards still give this salvation feeling to my soul. As my legs scratch, as my neck breaks, I forget about daily unreality. I forget the world is a masked avenger. No need of social distancing in front of vines, they don’t understand the word “corona”. I forget about what I curse. I forget about the biggest injustice: everybody is out except live artists, amusement parks are reopening but not theater festivals. How Bacchus is unfair when he answers to Jove, but how free Dionysus is when he screws Zeus. We’ll need to invent new ways, say entertainers of my friends, they have this urgent need to share dreams with us, they have this passionate duty to be insolent and rebel. They will try new ways and I will lend some words for them ; those words this wine, this other Dionysus, has made so talkative today.
Although my heart has switched my pole, I still praise the same god. And what a God! The freest, the most courageous, the happiest. O Dionysus, where are you hiding during those troubled times as you are locked down for summer? I come to you, I try to praise you with this vineyard turning you into our other God, I try to rebirth you soul rotting under dead and abandoned stages, I try to bring you back to all amputated entertainers who won’t be able to praise you this summer.

And I go back to vineyards in the blue, wet and early morning. I follow vine branch’s swing, on one side and the other as I lift wires on side and the other. I love this tilting, it is like a dance. It is like a boat on the sea. And leaves’ noise as they rub, rise, whip, looks alike as well. And morning dew flying to my tongue tastes alike as well.
And I let wet vines slap me, and I let wild herbs scratch me… All this, to bring you back, o Bacchus, to all amputated entertainers who won’t be able to praise you this summer.