Château de la Borde

Well, the heatwave is slowly making its way through Tennessee, and the only sensible place seems to be curled up on the front porch with all those unread magazines from the past six months. I finally worked my way down to the April Architectual Digest and despite some quick scanning my eye snagged a caption about Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen and their new home in the Loire Valley. Having made two incredibly brief trips to the Loire — okay, somewhere during those trips, I remember the mayor — of Bois perhaps? #&151; making me an honorary citoyen de la Solonge — or perhaps I was drunk — or perhaps my inability to understand French caused me to misinterpret what was being said — but in any event I immediately embraced them as neighbors, and read on to see whose house they had bought. Le Château de la Borde. I sped through the article. Nowhere was there any mention of the Château's past life.

I knew the Château back in the early 80s, when my friend Nancy lived and worked there. In fact, for both my brief trips to the Loire, I stayed in an apartment in the Château's tower. Back then, it was the Clinique de la Borde, a progressive psychiatric institution in the manner of R. D. Lang, under the supervision of Félix Guattari, who with Gilles Deleuze wrote such seminal works are Anti-Oedipus and Mille Plateaux. Wikipedia writes: "Concepts such as 'micropolitics', 'schizoanalysis', and 'becoming-woman' open up new horizons for political and creative resistance in the 'postmedia era'. Guattari's energetic analyses of art, cinema, youth culture, economics, and power formations introduce a radically inventive thought process engaged in liberating subjectivity from the standardizing and homogenizing processes of global capitalism." La Borde had the reputation back then as an asylum for Americans who were finding their own country less than hospitable.

I can remember walking through the well-marked fields. Having a lunch with the staff in a cottage on the grounds. The Cavaillon melons. The eco-friendly sewage system, ending in a pond of koi. Being pulled into some afternoon activity with the other patients. And bathing in a large claw-footed tub in the attic. And now the lawn is scattered with Oldenburgs. Nice, but I think Architectual Digest missed the best parts.