Rêverie du pauvre // Poor Man’s Daydream, travels around Normandy and between

By Quan | 14 December 2022 | 3 min read

These Were the Daydreams of My Youth When I Wasn’t Paying Attention in French Class

Rêverie du pauvre // Poor Man's Daydream

“The year 1900 was for Erik Satie a year of great misery." wrote Robert Caby, writer and friend of French composer Satie, who entitled Satie’s posthumously published piece, Rêverie du pauvre (poor man's daydream), in 1968, thought to have reflected Satie’s state when it was written in 1900.

At the time he arranged cabaret music for singers. They were parodies of other known works and current events. He felt like he was withering away his talents just for money with this work, but what seemed like wasted time became rigor for a precursor of concepts for original compositions to come.

The year 2020 was a great misery for many. For that tranche of time where everything stood still, nostalgia became a way to cope and planning to see more of Normandy was one of mine. Seeing Mont-Saint-Michel years ago left that impression on me. Before that trip it had been the wallpaper to my Packard Bell in 1994.

I thought to myself, how long will these places be here? How long will people care to keep it going?

Normandy is also where I chased down places Monet had captured. Places I had researched writing pubescent papers on Impressionism. Le Havre, Étretat, the cathedral at Rouen where, “James Fenimore Cooper said the common feeling among them was that it had been worth crossing the Atlantic if only to see this.” (McCullough, The Greater Journey). These were the daydreams of my youth when I wasn’t paying attention in French class.

The sites were beautiful, inspiring, and humbling at times. The people, kind and generous. Like the family who ran Le Vicomté, a restaurant in Fécamp, my WWII guide who dreamt of going to the US to pay his respects to veterans, and a sweet old Vietnamese woman in Rouen who made the worst pho I ever had.

I marveled at the gardeners in Giverny and the landscapers at the Normandy American Cemetery. Toiling away at the earth with honest work, there was a nobleness to it all. I thought to myself, how long will these places be here? How long will people care to keep it going? Could I be happy doing something like this (knowing full well my thumb is as green as the moon)?

I suspect as long as people still care to daydream it will still be here. Perhaps it will be recast as something new or remain the same. Only to change when the sun shifts its hue.

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Music: Rêverie du pauvre by Erik Satie
Performed by Satsuki Shibano
September & October 2021

Filmed in and around Giverny, Vernon, Lisieux, Le Bec-Hellouin, Bayeux, Longues-sur-Mer, Colleville-sur-Mer, Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Rouen, Mont Saint-Michel, Dinan, Saint-Malo, Beuvron-en-Auge, Vire, Cambremer, Cabourg, Trouville, Deauville, Honfleur, Le Havre, Fécamp, and Étretat.