Faire des vagues

I caught the wind making waves in this field and the sky above it yesterday. Usually I am the one making waves around here…it is nice to have company.

‘Faire des vagues’ is one of those rare expressions that works as well in French as it does in English. To make waves, to rock the boat.

The wind also makes waves in water, and we get our share of those on Lac Léman, aka Lake Geneva (although don’t call it that to certain purists for whom ‘le Léman’ is much more than the international city!) This area is known as the Arc Lémanique and includes the entire ‘arc’ on the Swiss side from Geneva to Lausanne all the way to Montreux.

From whence the group Deep Purple wrote the song that defined a certain period of my youth…

The wind has died down today and with it the waves. I can almost see the smoke on the water across the lake. And am waiting with baited breath for a new season to begin.

Bonne fin de semaine!

9 thoughts on “Faire des vagues

  1. I had the same experience yesterday – seeing the wind making waves on a cereal field. I could have watched it for hours, but couldn’t stop as I was in the car on my way to collect friends from the airport… Such a beautiful sight!!

  2. Ha ha ! When I read Montreux I immediately thought of Pourpre Profond and their iconic “Smoke on the water” (Fire in the ska-y !) . Me too I was marked by the legendary riff of guitars …

    Speaking of vague, I find practical that in French the adjective “vague” is a namesake of wave, this allowed many poetic word plays . We also have an expression I find beautiful, “avoir du vague à l’âme”, which means being blue, melancholic, gloomy .

      1. Yes they come from the same root . Beware, the border is thin between vaguer and divaguer ( in French the latter eventually means sailing away from the Reason shores) .
        Pourpre Profond was one kind of the jokes we shared with my musician mates, in one time, together with Jean-Jacques Cale . .

  3. Deep Purple and Smoke on the Water were a huge part of my life too. 45 years on and I can see where the song[s] came from! Merci. A toi aussie. 🙂

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