Finding Solace in Henri Matisse’s Nice
Nice is a city smitten with the sea. If there were more sea, there would be more Nice. As well, there would be more ways to relax if more ways existed. Walking the esplanade becomes strolling, the rhythm of a general letting go. Anyone thinking about it may imagine the continuity of human presence, in the same place, going back four hundred millennia. But thought is a tool for use in disagreeable climes. In Nice, be. The other night, on Bastille Day, people crowded the esplanade to watch fireworks, which are about having so much happiness that some can be thrown away and not only not missed but oddly reimbursed, with interest.