Little Edie: You can't have your cake and eat it, too in life.
Big Edie: Oh, yes, I did. I did, I had my cake, loved it, masticated it, chewed it and had everything I wanted.
"Grey Gardens" is a 1975 documentary made by Albert and David Maysles. It has become a cult classic, and, incredibly, a new musical on Broadway. In a way that I hope might please its subjects, "Grey Gardens" is responsible for the journey Gary and I will take in a month plus 4 days.
The pretext for this trip is the International Gothic Association's annual conference in Aix-en-Provence, at which a colleague and I will be speaking about the Maysles' film. So there's a direct link between the Edies and our trip: they got us over there.
More indirectly, since we moved into our big old house across the road from the levee, I have referred to it as "Grey Gardens" only half-joking, and lately have felt myself becoming, well, Edie-esque. Our house, despite needing lots of work when we took possession (and for the next couple of decades no doubt, continual labor), is in considerably better shape than the real Grey Gardens, but it seems all we do is work on it, and when we're not working on it, we're discussing it. So I aim to escape for awhile, and what better place to do that than France and Italy? Where we shall have our cake, love it, chew it, masticate it, and reclaim some of that joie de vivre that makes Little Edie put on costumes and dance for the Maysles.
Big Edie: France fell; Edie didn't.
