Monday 15 April, 2019. It’s a beautiful spring evening in France’s capital city and the soul of Paris is burning. As the trees lining the Champs-Élysées shimmer in the generous April heat, the crowds begin to gather. They raise their phones to the sky like a prayer. Flames tower over the monumental spire of Notre-Dame. The most famous building in the world is engulfed.
Within an hour and a half of the cathedral catching alight, Cher had tweeted. “Devastation & [heartbreak emoji]... French are strong, & [America] & [the world] Will Never Forget Those with The Spirit Of La Marseillaise,” she wrote, characteristically. Hamilton’s Lin Manuel Miranda also publicly acknowledged the spectacle, gushing to his 3.6 million twitter followers, “Standing here next to you, heartsick for Notre Dame…”. Beneath his tweet, which has since accumulated upwards of 4,000 retweets and 42.3k likes, a user wrote, “Thank you, man. I don’t know anyone else who appreciates the gravity of this at the moment.” It is not clear whether the user was being sarcastic.
