Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Everybody saw this coming.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

This really is a full service blog.

You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road After Dark – slipz – Paris: Dame de Cœur

On The Road After Dark – slipz – Paris: Dame de Cœur

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A memory, in pictures, of a once in a lifetime experience.  ~WaterGirl

slipz

In October of 2018 (remarkable timing as I look back), my wife and I were fortunate enough to get tickets (free!) to ‘Dame de Cœur’ (Queen of Hearts) sound-and-light show at Notre Dame Cathedral.

Standing in front of the cathedral at dusk, we had very little idea what to expect. With a story about a downed pilot in WW1 being cared for booming out in french from enormous speakers, the front of Notre Dame became a projection screen. The next hour was amazing.

On The Road - slipz - Paris: Dame de Cœur 3
Paris, FranceOctober 20, 2018

Arrival at dusk.

On The Road - slipz - Paris: Dame de Cœur 2
Paris, FranceOctober 20, 2018

A couple of images, all animated and in service of the story (which I barely understood – extremely limited French on my part).

On The Road - slipz - Paris: Dame de Cœur 1
Paris, FranceOctober 20, 2018

Another pic. (The videos are better).

On The Road - slipz - Paris: Dame de Cœur
Paris, FranceOctober 20, 2018

At the end of the show, the doors were thrown open and everyone had to exit the area through the cathedral itself. Smoke billowing, the organ in full throat, and really spooky lighting. An incredible experience, even more so given the future to be…

Reader Interactions

38Comments

  4. 4.

    J R in WV

    Well, I’m nearly speechless on this!

    They lit that whole front of the cathedral up, didn’t they!??~??! Looks like for the whole hour or more.

    When we visited Firenze, Italy (aka Florence for the English) we wandered into a building that once was a church, now a combination museum / art center, with a show projected on the whole interior of the church about Leonardo de Vinci, ran about an hour, 3-D laser projectors. We were awed by the work. Leonardo was a big deal in Firenze.

    This must have far exceeded that show, a much larger facility to show the light show. Amazing, thanks for sharing. If there’s a link to the show on line, someone please share it with it.

    ETA:  Great photos for after dark — thanks so much for sharing this with all the Jackals like me!! Wonderful both coming and going~!!~

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    Except for shuffling through the church, this projection of content onto a wall outside would be good in these times. That is really beautiful.

  17. 17.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Notre Dame is such an amazing place. We went there one Sunday morning and ended up staying much of the day. They were having a procession outside (Feast of the Assumption, I think), we stayed for the service and then saw they had an incredible concert in the afternoon.

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @WaterGirl: Gargoyles are waterspouts and part of the drainage system.  Grotesques are purely decorative.  Even among Gothic statuary there was a class system.

  19. 19.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: In a different country at a different church, I had a chance to see a candlelight performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and other period works at St Martin-in-the-Fields.  I was offered a seats at a number of West End shows or tickets to that.  Similar price.  Easy choice.  Fucking Les Mis or Vivaldi by candlelight?  Come on, man.

  20. 20.

    BigJimSlade

    Notre Dame may be my favorite building… I have loved my couple of visits and thought that I wouldn’t be jealous of anybody else’s visit. After seeing these pictures, I’m a little jealous.

  21. 21.

    Chetan Murthy

    There’s something special about Paris, for many, many of the commenters and FPers on this blog.  I share that special feeling.  I just thought ….. it was worth noting this, b/c it’s something that (somehow, inadvertently) a lot of people here have in common.

    And b/c it would be bad to not at least leave a little cookie: does else anybody here read Alan Furst’s espionage novels?  They all seem to end in Paris, eh?  He really loves Paris, and it shows.  It shows.

  24. 24.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chetan Murthy: I visited Paris back in 1991 (It was right when the coup attempt happened in Moscow–I learned about it from the papers when I was waiting for my friend’s TGV to come in at the Gare de Lyon) and I would very much like to go back there someday. I could spend a month just going to different art museums every day.

  25. 25.

    Origuy

    Years ago, I was in Uppsala, Sweden for work. The Gothic cathedral there is the largest in Scandinavia, started in 1252.  I went to a performance of Handel’s Messiah there.

  26. 26.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Matt McIrvin: I was there for 3yr (1991-94), workin’ for INRIA (Rocquencourt, outside Versailles) (french govt computer science org).  So busy workin’, I didn’t get much touristing done, and for sure didn’t take many pictures.  Sigh.  Just worked my ass off ah, well.

    The first year (before I learned that I could use SparcStations at the Ecole Normale Superieure to remote-login to INRIA from downtown Paris (the network was no great shakes, but with Emacs and ange-ftp it was *enough*)) I would go in every day, including weekends.  The guards at the gate would inspect my badge, put my name down on a list.  I joked that they were compiling a list of those first up against the wall, come the revolution.  *grin

  29. 29.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I did 3 days in Paris, but other than late dinners and breakfasts, never really got to see the town.

    Paris was a hub to see family graves from WWI and WWII.

    Then back to Aberdeen and Invercauld to see family.

    Got to see London for a week. The British Museum of Looted Antiquities, and of course, the punk clubs. Got to see Spirit of the West, before I had ever heard of them in Vancouver.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=crIk87-mPzY

    Got to see the 2 room stone croft my Grandfather was raised in, back in the early ‘80’s, it was used as a sheep shed.

  30. 30.

    Jay

    This is my great-aunt, Alice Isaac, who survived the Holocaust. This portrait was made in Amsterdam after she was liberated from Bergen Belsen. She was 20 years old.Alice was never able to have children because of what the Nazis did to her in the camp. pic.twitter.com/AvUoow2MXG— Ming Lauren Holden, PhD (@minglishmuffin) September 17, 2020

  32. 32.

    There go two miscreants

    @Omnes Omnibus: Gargoyles are waterspouts and part of the drainage system.

    I wonder if this is where “gargle” comes from (or both from the same root).

    On the OP: Really nice pix, must have been a cool show!

  33. 33.

    slipz

    Thanks for the comments on the photos.The video is pretty good too but you can get the idea from the Youtube link mentioned by Auntie Anne above. We rented an apartment off St Germaine for a month and wandered. Keeping to the theme of light, we also stumbled across this one afternoon (no idea what to expect) :  – https://www.atelier-lumieres.com/en – The Light Workshop. The converted warehouse space was covered with moving images – every square inch and no idea where the projections were coming from – no shadows were cast and the place was full of people. That, fortunately, is still ongoing.

  34. 34.

    slipz

    Errata – as my wife points out, it was October 2018, not 2017. Neither clocks nor calendars mean anything to me since I retired four years ago. Timelessness even worse now.

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