Jean-Pierre Bazoux RIP

We were friends the moment we met. He couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak French.

I knew the first instant of our meeting that Jean-Pierre was the most absurd man I'd ever met. By absurd I mean the ability to immeditately spot the absurdity in everyday human situations without being absurd oneself. He was a great comic and an entirely serious man.

I'd moved into his village in the middle of France in 2003. When I say "his village" it's because he called himself "The King of the Street" and everyone in the village knew him and had at least one Jean-Pierre story.

In 2003 I rented a little house 3 doors down from Jean-Pierre and Francoise, his wife, in Montaigut le Blanc, a hilltop village in the Massif Central, France. They lived in the 17th century grange Francoise grew up in. They'd re-made the place and filled it with little treasures he collected, including the largest doll I'd ever seen which Jean-Pierre had propped up in an antique high-chair in the foyer. The house was really beautiful, both he and Francoise had that innate aesthethic sensibility able to reconcile the high and low values between belle epoque and IKEA. When I'd ask Jean-Pierre for a restaurant recommendation, he'd always base it on whether the restaurant was propere, whether or nor it did things correctly in the French manner.

He'd stand at the dutch door of his house in the evenings, smoking cigarettes he hand-rolled one after another and keep watch on the village, or hold court beside the fountain in the square on warm summer evenings, telling jokes. A gifted mime, I saw him do Chaplin, Aznavour, Joe Cocker, Johnny Cash as well as Tin-Tin and The Pope.

When we'd come to an impasse with my French and his English and could get no furthur, he'd grab his head and both hands and shake it and say, "George Bush." George Bush, an absurd man, was to blame for all our problems.

I returned to the village in 2006, 2008, and 2011. The first person I'd see when I arrived at the top, had parked the car near the square and begun walking down the narrow little lane, was always Jean-Pierre. We'd always start in where we last stopped, taking a drink, clowning around.

I remember being in his house late one night in early October. He'd gone to his cave and brought up a bottle of champagne as if out of nowhere. Champagne, I thought, it's close to midnight? Jean-Pierre opened the bottle with great ceremony, showing me how to stick a knife down the throat of the bottle immediately upon its opening to stop any over-effervesence, and poured out 4 glasses. He held up his glass and made a toast to everyone in the room.

Then he went to the  dutch door and opened the top half so we could all see the snow that was just beginning to fall.

Francoise called this morning and said Jean-Pierre died yesterday in the hospital in Issoire. I can't wait to ask him what's the last thing he saw. I'm sure he'll say something I would never have expected.