Drawn and Quartered in France

Oct 17

Walking-eyeball tourism: staring long and hard at the completely obvious.

I’VE ADDED A NEW AND POTENT WEAPON to my travel arsenal: a pencil.

OK, maybe not so new, but plenty potent.

My buddy Vincent (Van Gogh) said it all, during his own walking-eyeball moment in Provence: “I’ll pick up my pencil that I put down in my great discouragement and I’ll get back to drawing, and from then on, it seems to me, everything has changed for me, everything has changed for me, and now I’m on my way and my pencil has become somewhat obedient and seems to become more so by the day.”

Cheer up, Vincent! You’ll get the hang of it!

I first encountered walking-eyeball tourism in San Antonio, when I came around a corner and discovered my sister-in-law Polly sitting in a picturesque little square, working from an adorable watercolor set and capturing the scene at that moment. Her head was cocked, her face contemplative, her hand active — she was claiming the scene by paying close attention to it. None of that take-a-quick-snap-and-forget-it stuff. She caressed the landscape onto the page.

And I thought: Damn, I want to do that!

A decade and lots of art classes later, I’m following in Polly’s brush strokes. I’ve travelled to many places, and brought home all kinds of souvenirs, but none of them matches the way I can capture a place or a landscape with pencil, ink, and watercolor. I’ve always been in a great rush to experience everything; I realize that I needed to slow down to actually see it.

Pencils up, Peter!

For instance, to record the windows of our AirBnb in Paris, looking out to the east, where the sun eventually streaked through the window.

Also rising, shining, and streaking was our neighbor across the street, who stood contemplatively naked in her window, by dawn’s early light. You can barely discern her in the shadows; she was as discreet as you can be, unclothed, standing in the window.

Other visual memories:

It reframes a city to see it from the water, which we did on Paris’ famous Bateaux Mouches. That translates to “water bugs” in French…so, we tourists are the fleas on a bug? Even so, the bateau was a great excuse to take a load off, after hoofing it around the Musee d’Orsay for three hours. Along the river route, I observed this cascade of citizens on a grand staircase heading down to the Seine.

They were sitting just a spark’s flight away from Notre Dame Cathedral, which is now covered in scaffolding — a vast renovation project. The blessing in all this: There was still something to renovate.

I love the street signs. Typiquement français.

And the cafe chairs.

Every little thing in France seems designed for maximum style and appeal. Oh, to wrap my hand around a café crème, and dose it with one of those skinny sugar packets.

After we conquered jet lag, we were off on the TGV, hurtling toward Bordeaux at 200 mph. At that speed it was hard to process the countryside, but I was able to make a comparison with a familiar landscape back home.

And then we arrived in Bordeaux, in our little apartment in the Old Town. Cool window here, too.

No naked lady, tant pis.

Off to St. Remy, next. That’s where Vincent Van Gogh was a) committed to an asylum, and b) completed 150 of the most arresting images in western art.

I’m hoping to go a little insane there myself, in fact.

Peter Moore

PETER MOORE Writer/Editor/Illustrator/Wiseguy

3x NYT bestselling author...multiple National Magazine Award winner as writer and editor...2x interviewer of Barack Obama...chilled with Matt Damon in India for a week, for a Men’s Health cover story...NPR animator and commentator…cartoonist/columnist for the Colorado Sun

Peter Moore is an editor, writer, illustrator, animator, co-author, radio host, TV and podcast guest, speaker, editorial consultant, and journalism lecturer. He currently works as a columnist/cartoonist for The Colorado Sun and a commentator/animator for NPR. Peter recently completed gigs as interim editor of BACKPACKER magazine; launch editor for NatuRX, a cannabis/health magazine; and a two-decade run at Men’s Health magazine, where he topped out as VP/Editor. He has written or ghosted three New York Times bestsellers. He publishes twice weekly at petermoore.substack.com; his 8,000 subscribers open his emails to the tune of 20,000 reads per month.

In August 2008, Peter joined then-Senator Barack Obama on his

campaign plane for a cover story for the November issue of Men’s Health; the issue was on newsstands when Senator Obama became President-elect Obama. Almost exactly a year later, he interviewed President Obama in the Oval Office for a cover story in the October 2009 issue of Men’s Health. The following week he interviewed Michelle Obama for Women's Health.

Peter has written major features for Men’s Health, Prevention, Parade, and Backpacker, and AARP: The Magazine; between them they boast about 30 million readers. Following his own heart-health scare, Peter wrote “A Tale of Three Hearts,” which garnered Men’s Health’s first National Magazine Award. In April 2010, after his first year as editor of Men’s Health, the magazine won the NMA for General Excellence, in competition with The New Yorker, among other magazines. The January 2014 issue contained his account of a trip to India with Matt Damon, to visit villages impacted by Damon’s activist group water.org.

Moore has made 1000+ appearances on television, podcasts, and radio programs, discussing travel, career development, cartooning and drawing, second careers, humor as stress relief, relationships, and other stuff he makes up as he goes along. He has been interviewed on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and CBS This Morning, as well as NPR, CNN, and MSNBC. He was the co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show Men’s Health Live, heard in 52 markets; it had a million listeners per week. He now works as a commentator/animator for Front Range NPR and a columnist/cartoonist for the Colorado Sun.

Prior to joining Men’s Health, Peter served as articles editor for Playboy. A graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, he lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife. He is an avid mountain climber, backpacker, skier, basketball player, bicyclist, yogi, international traveler, illustrator, and cook. And he can juggle.

https://petermoore.substack.com

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