Paris: Night under the full moon: A unique gathering

 

The other night I was invited to a so-called Full Moon Party in the center of Paris.

The host was a guy Rita and I met a couple of years ago, when we stayed on his houseboat a bit up the Seine. Captain Bob. He arranges these gatherings on the Pont des Arts every month, apparently without exception, come rain or come moonshine, which is actually a better expression here than usual.

The bridge is mercifully free of love locks these days. In their place: about fifty people with wine glasses, speaking in what sounded like most of the languages of Europe simultaneously.

French people and expats from many corners of the globe were just standing around and talking, and the mood was actually quite infectious.

I accepted a glass from a Spanish astrophysics student who seemed extremely pleased with himself and with life in general, and I stood there for a while trying to work out what exactly was happening. 

The answer, as far as I could tell, was: nothing in particular. A completely random collection of people who happened to be in Paris, standing on a bridge, looking at the sky. No agenda. No programme. No one trying to make it mean something.

There were telescopes. I looked through one. The moon was, as advertised, there.

What stayed with me was not the lunar surface but the expression on the faces of the people around me when they looked through the eyepiece - this brief, slightly embarrassed look of genuine wonder, the kind you usually only see on children and people who have just heard a piece of music that really got to them.

An American and I had a small argument about whether looking at the moon is actually meaningful or just something people do when they run out of things to say. A young Portuguese artist told me the moon had influenced her latest work. I did not ask how. Some things are better left unexplored.

When I finally walked back, I will admit my legs felt lighter than they had going out.

I am not going to start a Copenhagen Lunar Appreciation Society. But it was a good evening, and the wine was fine, and for a couple of hours nobody was looking at their phone.

Above me, the moon continued across the sky, entirely indifferent to all of us.

Which seems right.