It is sometime past 1 a.m. outside of the Bataclan nightclub in Paris. The night is crisp and bustling with people, the promise of the coming winter delivered with each biting blow of wind that rattles down the age-old Boulevard Voltaire.
It’s one month to the day that terrorist gunmen stormed the fabled rock-and-roll venue, turning a well-attended Friday-night performance by Palm Desert’s Eagles of Death Metal into a bloodbath of worldwide proportions. Eighty-nine concertgoers were left dead that night; more than 200 were wounded.
And now, outside the club, with a bullet-riddled tour bus still parked front and center along the curb, an impressive impromptu open-air temple to the deceased and the destroyed has taken shape. Waist-deep drifts of floral arrangements, candles, photographs, letters, signs, and assorted other mementos of loss and remembrance paint a complex and very much living mosaic of love — a most messy and anguished and inspiring love.
