Collision 00030
I couldn’t make this collision up if I tried. Before I committed to bringing it to life this morning, I even questioned if I should hold it back for a few weeks to let it breathe.
I was worried I might inadvertently dilute the specialness of this new encounter if I laid it down too close to Collision 28: Just Getting Started. I didn’t want the inner workings of a content calendar to make Collision 30 feel too staged or redundant.
But then I realized I wouldn’t be doing proper justice to how and when its meaning had actually come to find me if I didn’t write straight into the uncanny and remarkable timing and coincidence of it all. I’d be resisting the very architecture around collision and travel that I had so deeply come to believe in.
I also knew that, for whatever reason, perhaps even this one, I had slotted my story about buying a young artist’s work in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, as Collision 28 because it had simply felt right to do so then. October 13 was its time to go live.
And then on October 21, I met copperplate engraver and printmaker David Mounier.
Life had stacked these two encounters up on me, and I was meant to take notice.
October 21 was a Wednesday, a special day in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence: Market Day. And an especially special day for me. I would be taking in my first Provençal market. So much had been said about these iconic markets, and I’d read so much about them in the months preceding my trip to Provence, that as I caught my first glimpse of their stalls, I felt a next-level surge of enthusiasm seize the already zealous shopper in me.
On the day I arrived in the South of France, the region was experiencing record-breaking, torrential – the weather app’s choice of descriptive language, not my own – downpours. For nearly 36 hours, the sky broke hard and heavy with rain. This was no drizzle, sprinkle or steady shower. This was a downright deluge. Roads closed, floods took lives, and my Airbnb host even reached out to caution me to stay nearby.
So, when I opened my eyes on Wednesday morning to a bedroom drenched with the warm glow of an early sun-streaked blue sky, vivid color I hadn’t laid eyes upon since landing in gloomy gray France days before? I felt bounce-out-of-bed awake and ready to finally get out and explore this marvelous little village.
When I got inside the Wednesday market, however, panic and disappointment washed over me. Was I missing something? It was all so mass-produced. Vendors selling cheap cell phone cases, junky find-it-almost-anywhere jewelry, dirty, definitely-not-vintage toys and wrinkled, fraying pashminas. Was this really it?
But I trusted the French. As it would turn out, for good reason.
I continued across the street. And the truly incredible happened, not just once that day but several more times and several more times still across every other market I visited that week in Provence.
The stalls kept going. And going. And going.
Suddenly, there were seafood trucks, cheese carts, tables of macarons, saucisson, foie gras, baguettes, honey. There were truffles, rotisserie chickens, marmalades and paella. There were artisan stalls selling bedding, pajamas, cutlery and baskets. More than once as I walked the aisles, I thought about the size of the extra, empty checked bag I had brought. I smiled inside, calling to mind one of my favorite movie quotes from Jaws.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Sprinkled happily about all of this Provençal pride was what I had come for: the art. There were ceramics, yards of tables adorned with olive woodwork, paintings and the bursting-at-the-seams white tent of artist David Mounier.
I was immediately drawn to the originality and simplicity of his engravings, which were all clearly inspired by the beauty of this region. I took my time going through each of the different stacks of his prints until two pieces held and kept my attention. It was obvious that one of them had to have been done by a different artist. Think abstract Joan Miró in a sea of meticulous, delicately detailed landscapes.
I wanted to know more about this rebellious little sketch.
I had a funny feeling.
When I approached David, he told me, “My son Tao did that one. When he was five years old, I took him to Brazil with me for a workshop and he sketched all of these.” With a father’s pride, he showed me his son’s other pieces displayed around the tent.
I don’t know what it ultimately says about my eye for art, but I had done it again. This time, though, I would buy works by both the father and the son. I wanted the family’s story.
I told David this was the second time I had bought a piece by an artist’s young son. I could tell he really liked that connection. Then, as he carefully packaged both prints, he told me that his son’s sketch had always reminded him of Miró.
At that, I felt just a little burst of pride. For him, for me and, of course, for young Tao.
