On the night of September 14, 1927, one of the most famous dancers of that age got into a Amilcar CGSS, a low-riding model of a French sports car that won the Monte Carlo Rally the same year. The woman’s trademark was her beautiful flowing scarves, and it was her scarf that did her in that night, for these were the days of open-wheeled vehicles, and the scarf she was wearing caught in the passenger side rear wheel, pulling her from the vehicle and breaking her neck. While the accident happened in Nice, her cremains ended up in Père Lachaise, the Paris Cemetery that contains a who’s who of famous artists and thinkers, both French and international, for Paris has long attracted the creative, the brilliant, the dissolute, the mad, the city of lights and lovers and artists.
So there, along with that dancer, Isadore Duncan, you can find tombs that hold or once held the remains and cremains of Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein, Maria Callas, Édith Piaf, dozens of others. I was wandering in Père Lachaise one bright spring day, guidebook in hand, looking for the tomb of Oscar Wilde, when I was stopped by another tourist, one who was clearly having a very good time, maybe too good of a time to be strictly legal if you know what I mean. “Dude, you’re going the wrong way. It’s over there,†he informed me, gesturing off in exactly the opposite direction. He was directing me not toward the great Irish writer, but toward the grave of Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors, and a source of consternation for the families of others in the cemetery. Continue reading “Wait For It: Easter 2018”