plutôt la vie

I've always felt that classical music's magic in moving people without words is sublime.

Sometimes the unique ensemble of words achieves the same effect. This is especially true with the language of Molière.

Andrés, my good friend from Valencia who is fluent in French, sent me a card with the French photographer Edouard Boubat's famous "Plutôt la VIE" photo. First impressions of this phrase probably include a political statement and the importance of life (vie). However, on a literary level, I find the word plutôt much more intriguing.

Plutôt means rather, instead. It signifies a choice. And if life is one choice, what is the other? Death, war, imprisonment, or something else? Additionally, it suggests a difficult choice. Under what sort of a difficult circumstance must one make the difficult choice of life? The answer must be different for each person.

"Des yeux qui font baisser les miens, un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche." These gentle words come from Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose." When I read French, I don't attempt to translate it into English or Mandarin - for me it's too difficult. Each languages possesses its own rhythm and life that simply cannot be mimicked by another. Rather, I simply fills these words with images.

I think of "des yeux qui font baisser les miens" as "eyes that make lower my own." Whose eyes have the power to make me lower my own eyes? I don't close them, I don't turn away, and I don't look back - I lower my eyes. Elegant, isn't it? But why? Am I shy, embarrassed, ashamed, or do I have something to hide? It conveys so much meaning that no translation (at least not mine) can do it justice. Word for word, the second phrase is "a laugh that loses itself on his/her mouth." My heart melts every time I read these words. Whose mouth is it? What does a laugh on a mouth look like? Why does it laugh? How does it get lost on the mouth? In what manner - mischievously, lovingly, coyly, playfully?

I don't have answers; so much more fun to imagine.