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"Five years stuck on my eyes"
(Lustrum Non Publicum)

november 2, 2018

On the 18th of October it was precisely half a decade ago that in the confines of Marie Latrou's small Parisian pottery workshop and a little later that same evening back in the messy storage room of La Générale, we, serendipitously, kicked off unPublic. In that first edition Rébus & I teamed up with Jean Bordé in an improvised FreeMusonic meet with Yoko Miura, visiting from Japan, and Doanh Tri Minh, visiting from Vietnam.

That evening we performed and recorded and hadded tea in the midst of Marie's pots, plates and vases before heading over to La G. to shove one piano next to another and there continue to perform and record, witnessed by only the ear of a Zoom, the eyes of a cam and those of the racks and the handles and the cables and the lamps and the cloths and the boxes and the cans and the bottles and the wood, the tools and the tips and the stands and the brushes, the extensions, the cords and adapters that were stored in the Générale's back for who- or whatever in future dyas would have or find the need and use for it, to create, to instruct, to construct, to destruct...

Five years and fifty-five unPublic editions later, around 6:30 pm on Thursday October 18th 2018, Yungwei and I waited at the rue Kléber exit of the Croix de Chavaux metro station in Montreuil, for Yoko Miura to appear.
As every year Yoko had flewn over to Paris from Tokyo. But these were not the happiest of her Parisian days.
As a temporary base for her yearly series of performances and recordings in France and elsewhere in autumnal Europe she rented for the months of October and November a small fear not far from the place de la Bastille. But shortly after her arrival there, on September 30th, she began to be badly bitten by bed bugs every single night and the ensuing allergic reaction to the bugs' bites had her rushing over to the American hospital, for diagnosis and treatment. (La maladie d'airbnb, is what Rébus called it.)

She would be a bit late, she had warned.

It was not easy to fast communicate. There had been a last minute change of plans. On Rébus's special request we decided only that very morning to celebrate, unpublicly, the unPublic's five years in his home in Bures-sur-Yvette, to the south-west of Paris and some forty kilometers from Montreuil where we originally were to gather. We were to travel a bit that evening. In his Daicar FlexRex would have room for some. It's a spacey vehicle, but it could not take all of us in, given the fact that together with Jean Bordé there'd come a double bass. So we thought we'd put Yoko in Flex's Daicar, and drive to Bures — picking up Paula Velez on the way, in Vitry-sur-Seine. Yungwei and I would then join Jean at the Châtelet metro station and take the RER-B to La Hacquinière, the station nearest to Rébus's home.

That is the reason we stood there on the corner of the rue Kléber. Waiting, for Yoko to come out.
She would be a bit late, she had warned.

Jean, meanwhile, was underway with his double bass to Châtelet. We would go there and join him, as soon as Yoko arrived. For then we would call FlexRex, who was waiting in his car a few blocks away from the metro exit. For it was rush hour, and no real place to halt a car and wait for someone to arrive. It would have been too difficult to explain all this to Yoko ... better to wait, call Flex, and make sure that she sees and gets into the car.

But then just before Yoko indeed did surface, a message from Jean arrived. The human flesh ocean flooding at this hours the corridors of the Châtelet and the densely packed platforms and trains got the best of him. He decided not to embark on a southbound journey, but take a train back home instead.

I couldn't blame, him, really.

Minutes later we stepped into the Daicar and headed with FlexRex and Yoko on through the city in southward direction.

It was past eight already when the five of us arrived in Bures.

It was where we welded the 56th unPublic, precisely five years after the first one, while also being able to delve into the vast collection of instruments and other sound producing de-vices that Rébus has stowed in an upstairs room, that is near to impenetrable due to his collection's volume. (Another part of it is in La Générales's cellar.)

At 0:00 we were back in the Daicar and left Bures to regain the capital.

Yungwei shot a handful of short videoclips on her iPhone. They're gathered in this here short uTube --:

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tags: unPublic, Bures-sur-Yvette

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