Things Are Just Fine

I usually reserve my “WTF” template for things I find oddly – and sometimes, sadly – funny that I pass on to a select group of people who I know can handle – and who appreciate – the “WTF” concept.  I am making an exception today and sharing it with those who read The Vitruvian Man website.  I have no intent to offend.

I was inspired to create this after I came across a song popularized by French jazz pianist Ray Ventura in 1935, “Tout va tres bien, Madame la Marquise,” “Everything is fine, Madame la Marquise.”

As the song goes, Madame’s friend James tells her, “Everything is fine, and all is well,” but then mentions that her old grey mare is dead.  She confronts her coachman who echoes James, “Everything is fine, and all is well,” and adds that the mare died in a fire that burned the stables to the ground.  The chef tells her the stables burned from the fire in the chateau.  The chateau burned because her husband had a stroke and knocked burning candles from the shelf, but the song concludes that “Things are just fine, and all is well.”

The song was referenced in an editorial in Le Nouvelliste this morning in which the author suggests that the Haitian government and Haiti’s friends in the international community believe that everything in Haiti is well despite the gang wars that are brutally ripping the country apart.

“Everything is going very well,” he writes, “whereas yesterday like today the country is cooking in its own juice. Loses its last drops of energy, sweats blood and water for nothing.”  I was taken by his conclusion…

“We want to reinvent the wheel by proposing that it be square.”

As I read the editorial, I couldn’t help but reflect on the state of our own union.  Inflation is rampant, the world is at war, COVID still intimidates, grocery shelves are empty, people can’t get along, churches are empty, we are destroying the planet… but “Things are just fine, and all is well.”

WTF