July 23rd – Mougins, the hills above Cannes, where Picasso lived his last twelve years; all I want to do is listen to Tom Petty. I’m ashamed to have not known Petty’s music during the long years of his career. From what I’ve heard so far (Damn the Torpedoes, Hard Promises, Wildflowers, Into the Great Wide Open, Echo), I’ve noted an unwavering commitment to the songs’ integrity; exceptional musicianship in service to the song. It’s sacrilegious, I know, listening to quintessentially American songs in Europe.

I’m watching Ken Burns’ series on the war in Vietnam; the one during which we systematically decimate the homes of hundreds of thousands of innocents, exterminate anything alive, count lifeless bodies to track the war’s progress long after we know the effort’s doomed.

We went to Cannes yesterday, where I heard more Arabic in the first ten minutes walking along the waterfront than I’d heard during the previous three weeks, the first of which we’d spent in Paris. Monaco is stultified by the self-importance of its denizens and Cannes is self-conscious.

As if you too might sit at the beach club one day, linen shirt sleeves rolled above the wrist, dashing dice onto the backgammon board with family looking on.