Thinking of Robert Levin/Every horror movie I've ever seen

Re: Robert Levin
He was my professor for the Swing Era class I took. He used to get really awkwardly emotional sometimes in lecture, like going down memory lane to explain how some song reminded him of some failed romance, and then get sad...but anyway, in one of these awks emotional moments, he said something to the extent, "Jazz is powerful. Jazz will be with you through thick and thin. when things are tough, and things get really really hard sometimes......(students feeling really awkward)....you'll always have jazz. you can always put on louis, or benny..."

anyway, where am i going with this? right. so i was in this pretty good lunch place in vezelay (a tiny town centered around a basilica on a hill...there are like 4 roads. see for you self on the map from this site:
http://www.vezelaytourisme.com/ )
and suddenly stardust comes on. freshman year i had to memorize a solo from it and i started humming along to it. and suddenly i felt really good (not that i felt all so bad in a town where all you can do is drink wine and see pretty vistas). then i thought about what robert levin said and i was happy about jazz.

anyway, that was sort of random. i had some good chats in french with both of my taxi drivers to and from the town. yay speaking french. i still haven't really had any exciting conversations with people because I am mainly just asking for information. i can really understand people now, though i have trouble processing numbers quickly (which i am getting better at too, since people tell me a lot of numbers: "what time is this train?" "what is your phone number?" what are your hours?"

i went to an absolutely breathtaking costume museum today. it was in an old mansion that used to belong to the governor of burgundy in the 17th century. a cute little old lady showed me around. manequins in haute couture dresses from the 18th century on stood in the rooms that were still decorated in their original manner with hundreds upon hundreds of paintings and maps and decorations. It seriously reminded me of a horror movie, in which these dolls would come alive and complain that their corsets were too tight. it was creepy but amazing. it is hard to explain how decorated it was, but it was ridiculous.

anyway, i am getting a bit faster at the let's go writing, which is good, since that means more sleep for me! i'm not sure whether i will become very skinny from all the walking i do all day, or very fat from the delicious food i eat (even if is just a lot of bread sometimes). hopefully, at the very least, these two things will balance each other out.