The following is a collection of my Facebook posts from when I went to Paris, in July 2017. I’ll add photos later.
In prep for my trip, I got L to watch a Rick Steves show on Paris last night. So we’re watching it, and they show a small park where they’re playing petanque. “Look familiar” I said, and L replied, “They play that in Clark Park, right?”
So later on, they show a crowd of people roller-blading through town, and L notes that she’s seen lots of rollerbladers here, too. And the bikes. And they show the city’s loaner-bike program, just like out local bike share system. “So it’s like Philadelphia, but prettier,” she says.
Later on, they hit the museums– specifically, the Rodin Museum– and we start laughing because, yeah, we got that here in Philly, too. And a sojourn into Pere Lachaise prompts L to say, “Yeah, we got the Woodands for that,” and I say, “They got classier clients. But remind me why I’m going someplace _else_ for this?”
I’m packed. Carry-on bag and my over-the shoulder bag, plus a trick Kyle Cassidy learned me: wear a photographer’s vest to carry even more stuff in the copious pockets, which can be dropped into the TSA’s scanning bins at the airport.
Three changes of clothing. Bathroom stuff. Tablet, keyboard, USB cables. Power adaptors. GH4 camera, plus three lenses, and a tiny desktop tripod that folds into a nice handgrip. Rick Steves travel guidebook, plus a few other small touristy “neat shit in Paris” items. Novel for Readin’: _The Whites_, by Richard Price. Money belt. Glasses.
Not bringing my phone. I can do web stuff on the tablet, and I can get a burner phone at the airport.
I have three hours before I leave for the airport, so… recommendations?
It’s 11:15 in the morning, which is about six ayem in the U.S., which means that I’ve spent the last fifteen hours in transit.
My first adventure was when I came out of the Metro through a shopping mall. Saw a church that looked a lot like Notre Dame, so I figured, my hotel’s east. Started walking, and slammed into the Louvre, which was WEST.
Somehting for Harry Potter fans: one street I passed was Rue Nicholas Flamel.
Anyway, I’m in the room. It’s insanely nice, but the place was built in 1680 so it’s missing air conditioning. But they have a really sweet bath, which I’m going to use right now before concentrating on de-jet-lagging.
This is gonna be fun. Finding dinner where I cannot read the menus or chalkboard.
This morning, I am sitting at the cafe at Shakespeare and Company, with an espresso, glancing up at Notre Dame when I am not typing.
That’s the news, so far. Mainly to inspire envy among my loyal readers.
They don’t let you take photos, but I got this one from an upstairs window, with Chris Lombardi in mind.
(Photo: Shakespeare window with Allen Ginsberg photo)
I don’t really know what to report from Paris, probably because I feel like a rube– noticing little things like plumbing fixtures and curb heights, and fumbling around for everday things. For example, the hotel doesn’t provide washcloths, And since Paris is experiencing a heat wave this week, I get to spend a ot of time in the bath and pretend I’m Marat– or Eli Wallach in _The Good, the Bad and the Ugly_. So cool bathing’s a big thing for me this week.
Anyway, washcloths, because it’s hard to get that scrubbing feeling, y’know? So I discovered a department store named BHV and went a-shoppin’. They didn’t have them, but they sold a lot of these terrycloth pouches sround the same size. So, I figured, this was just a different version, made to use as a soapy glove. For all I know, this is like using combing my hair with a fork, but it works. (I’m just glad to be able to handle simple consumer transactions here, even though the lady counted out my change very carefully on the counter for me, which made me feel a little Rain Man-ish.)
So take it as read that, since I’m not here to live as an expat, or here on business, or hanging with Parisian friends to complain about American politics… well, I know I’m only going to see Paris’s surfaces.
Today was a wander across the island to the Left Bank, and Shakespeare and Company, the famous bookstore that gave us Ulysses. The staff there were all expats and English-speaking heathens, and I realized how much I rely on odd jokes because, well, the language barrier robs me of this. (So the French miss out on my legendary, Nixonian charm.) Physically, the place is a delight, one of those tightly-wrapped Nautilus-shell stores where the floor’s uneven and the shelves run at acute angles.
I brought a camera, and took a few pictures, but generally that doesn’t interest me: buildings like the City Hll and Notre Dame are wonderful, but I keep looking for small-scale things that I might be able to recreate in some way (like my back yard). So, while the City Hall looks like the cake from which Philly’s was cut, it’s not as interesting as a wrought-iron fountain in front of the bookstore.
One thing that Paris inspires is wonder– namely, wondering “why the FUCK didn’t WE make our cities this interesting, when we had the chance to do it?” So the brain goes into city planning mode, realizing that we didn’t want narrow streets: we wanted wide streets for carts and cars, and streets that were regular and not confusing at all. Granted, it makes a lot of things easier– like installing a sewer system, timing the traffic lights– but it gives up a lot of human-scale things. It’s not easy to sit at a sidewalk cafe if the sidewalk is next to Walnut Street.
A few other things. I came upon a Comics store on the left bank, so I went in: there’s a series of gorgeous Belgian comics with a title like Les Cities Invalides that I was hoping to find. Not only was the stock nearly entirely in English, but the first voice I hear was a honking, classic nerd-drone asking someone if they’d heard of DragonBallZ. Not exactly a Shakespeare and Co. expat hangout for a new generation, I guess.
Paris is surprisingly low on dogs. Maybe West Philly’s suburban space is conducive to dog owners, but I’ve seen very few in Paris. And the small parks have No Dogs Allowed signs at every gate. Between that, and the risks on food allergies, I’m afraid Paris is not a city for my friend L to visit.
Next on my agenda is buying a Museum Pass so I can get into the Louvre this week.
So okay, I’m at the Louvre.
Don’t envy me JUST yet. Paris has been experiencing a major heat wave this week, so venturing out of the hotel is kind of taxing. And since Parisians seem to think that air conditioning causes cancer, there’s a lot of reliance on fans (and in my case, cool baths). It really does make sitting in my room and Facebooking seem preferable to exposure to Paris’s humid atmosphere. So getting down here and waiting in line was kind of an endurance test.
I’d heard that the best way to get into the Louvre was to buy a museum pass. Where are they sold? Museums. So, I hiked over to the nearby Pompidou Center, which is not only as ugly and dispiriting as any stateside oil refinery, but it smells like pee. And no, Paris pee does NOT differ much from domestic L’Eau d’Homeless. Severely. Anyway, I get there, but they’re not open yet, so I figure, let’s get to the Louvre and buy the pass there. But there’s a fairly large line, and in the hot sun, it wasn’t fun. But I’m here, I bought a Museum Pass for the next two days and for next week, and I decided to cool off at the Louvre cafe and check in with you guys.
I haven’t gone into the museum just yet. I’m at the cafe in the I.M. Pei designed area, under the pyramid. It’s a lot like his wing of the National Gallery, i.e., 30- and 60-degree angles and smooth stone. Functional and, thankfully, air-conditioned.
All I can say about the Louvre at this point is that you really can’t quite imagine its size. Philadelphia’s Art Museum is a pretty large building. If you take it, duplicate it a few times, and arrange about ten of them in a rough plaza or two, then you’d have the Louvre. Well, okay, you’d have to cover the building with insanely detailed sculptures, statues, corinthian columns, mansard roofs, and whatever Louis felt would blast his glory to the peasantry way back when.
Two nice things to pass along before I head into the beast. One is that they put copies of some famous sculptures in the Metro station. The other is that the Metro station here is one of those classic Hector Guimard Art Nouveau stations, and I’d always wanted to see one of those up close and tactile. Sorry about the shitty lighting, but here are two pics I took with my tablet.
Now, I will go into the men’s room, wash my face and hands, and expose myself to tremendous art.
I would be really remiss if I didn’t publicly proclaim my gratitude to Heather Lea Linebaugh, who I met through Chris Lombardi, and who graciously offered to meet up and show me around and, well, tolerate my company. She’s extremely fun to talk to, and because she’s outgoing and fluent, she and I have had some wonderful chats (talks, not cats) with various strangers. For example, a waitperson with an equally outgoing personality we met last night may become a new friend of hers, and it was fascinating to talk about America to people who see it from the outside.
And I can say this because I cleared it with her to avoid creepiness. I was SEVERELY tempted to post, “My first night in Paree, and I had dinner in the Left Bank with a _beautiful woman_ where we talked of great things…” but I’m not Charles Boyer, who could get away with that guff.
America feels a bit like that relative you don’t want to argue politics with– but if someone else says something disparaging, well, you don’t _defend_ the asshole relative, you try to provide a bit of context and from-his-perspective stuff. For example, you don’t want to defend our national gun fetish, but you can make it somewhat comprehensible. Or, if someone wonders why we don’t simply set up a single-player national health system, you have to explain why it’s not only politically difficult, but _psychologically_ difficult. And it sort of forces you into odd insights about the country– for example, how our individualist mythologies make social programs repugnant, even when capitalism promises to offer the same services, and screws us over.
Not that conversations have been all how-could-you-vote-for-Trump posturing. Over here, they’re just relieved that Macron won over le Pen, whose victory would have resulted in MASSIVE deportations of immigrants, ex-pats, and more. Trump is just part and parcel of an ugly trend that the French have managed to… well not exactly conquer, but redirect and make less threatening.
I think I finally understand Stendahl Syndrome.
Voltaire, with and without wig. (He preferred the one without.)
Moliere. For alla you theater guys out there.
Louvre restaurant/cafeteria, or a set from a 1960’s French SF movie. THX-Un-Un-Trois-Huit, perhaps.
I must apologize for the poor quality of the Louvre photos. My tablet compensates for exposure with longer shutter times, which introduces blur. Not sure if I’ll bring a better camera back, because, well, most items in the Louvre have been photographed under careful conditions, and I can always look those pics up rather than rely on my own. And I’m very tired.
I’ve managed to explore only one of the Louvre’s three wings– I chose the Richelieu wing to start with because, well, Richelieu was a really fascinating guy. Someone once told him that he had many enemies. “Enemies?” he replied, “_I_ have no enemies. _FRANCE_ has enemies.” Gotta admire that.
Oh, here’s another photo of some of Napoleon III’s apartments. This is what happens when you have both wealth and taste leagues beyond the fever dreams of a Trump.
One big downside to the Paris trip so far: jet lag. Imagine if you blink, and it’s suddenly six hours later, but you stil have the same amount of energy. At that point, you’d have to stay awake for another eighteen hours to get back “in sync.”
Throw in a natural tendency for insomnia, a crushing heat wave, and a lot of walking around, and you can go from Feelin’ Fine to Total Physical Devastation very quickly. For example, I spent two hours at the Louvre, came home, and conked out for another three hours. Not sure if it’s a good thing that my schedule doesn’t exist, which’d force me into waking and sleeping at designated hours.
And no, I have not been tracking the numbers to tell myself that my body thinks it’s such-and-such a time. I don’t think that even applies. I think that Brian’s Biological Understructure has decided that short naps are the way to go for now.
Friday night in Marais. As I said, jet jag’s fucked up my sleep, but it was seven p.m. and time to get dinner. I found a place called Les Philosophes, which was air conditioned and had an English menu and was pretty expensive. So I had steak tartare, which I hadn’t had in years.
The temperature’s dropped, so people were out and about. (It’s also a very gay area; lots of men wandering in handholding pairs, or sitting in groups at sidewalk tables.) The streets around here were all narrow, curved, and had enough activity and lighting to make photos possible. The area must have had a substantial Jewish population, because I came across this: a center named after a man tortured and murdered by the Gestapo, and right next door, kosher pizza.
The cafe Au Perdit Fer La Cheval looked great, with its antique bar and mosaic floor and classic brasserie signs. Their sound system was playing light jazz versions of “The Lady is a Tramp” and “Cheek to Cheek,” but if they’d played Django Reinhardt I’d have fuckin’ DIED. So I had to stop in and fuck up my sleep cycle by having un cafe. I mean, the temperature’s nice, the evening’s nice, the place is nice, and how often does that combo turn up? So I shall be awake a lot, the cost of digging this stuff.
And there was a nice grace note. When I got back to the hotel, the desk clerk was away, so I went wandering in a different direction. Where I encountered a man who was walking not two dogs– a beagle, Leo, and a tiny little white yapper dog namd Milo. Or vice versa. The point is, they were a mirror image of our own Olive and Li’l Bit.
In some of my photos, you may notice that the sidewalks are lined with this waist-high iron poles with knobbed heads. They’re a great safety feature, prevebnting people from spilling into the roads too soo, and keeping cars and motorbikes from jumping the curbs.
It just occurred to me: if one could make a camera mount that clips over the ball head of these, it’d realy help in doing long-exposure photos of the nightlife.
My first dinner out on my own. The temperature’s dropped a lot, so it’s really comfortable, and it’s Friday night, so people are out. I’m in a set of small streets in Marais. Had steak tartare at a place called Les Philosophes– expensive, probably, but it’s steak tartare. Went on a wander, and came across this little place with the neat brasserie signs, pre-war phone, and cracked but hardy bar top. I know the espresso’s going to play havoc with my sleeping, but a moment and place like this doesn’t come along every day. (Across the street is a cafe with a bookstore– I’d be more interested in the bookshelf trim, though.) And the chocolate is even more bitter than the coffee.
Happy to learn that the restaurant I ate at last night, Les Philosophes, was a hangout for Leon Trotsky a hundred years ago.
I am definitely doing breakfast there today.
(Not sure of my plans. Louvre is most tempting: it’ll be 88 today, and thunderstorms tomorrow, so it’d be nice to stay indoors. And the rest of the week will be in the 70’s making it better for outdoor stuff and wandering around.)
Louvre again today. No pictures to share, because I used my real camera this time, instead of the tablet-cam.
I am in the Louvre cafe– near the Colbert deck, but no way am I going to rest in 88-degree heat– and whaddya think I ordered? FANTA. It’s cold, crisp, refreshing, and won’t sugar-coma me like Coke would.
Between the painful foot blisters, and the sheer scale of this place, it’s all I can do to just walk through the Louvre and glance at each and every thing I see. So when I get home, I can buy myself a book of the museum’s holdings, and a standard History of Art textbook, and educate myself.
Overheard at the Louvre, in the section with the Italian paintings. Honest.
Woman: There was just so much torture and murder.
Man: That is how you get religion.
DID ancient astronauts visit Earth in the past? This Roman sculpture clearly represents a flying circular spacecraft…
This statue was really popular for some reason. (Venus de Milo)
Gotta admit that we Wops really know how to cut stone.
There is a McDonald’s at the Louvre. I am eating there now.
Do not hate me.
Really wiped out after the Louvre marathon. Won’t go for expensive dinner in historical bistro: maybe a quick run over the river to the latin quarter, where there are heaps of tiny food places. Nice chance to take some pics of narrow streets, with lots of lights.
Currently sitting for tarragon chicken at Jardin Notre Dame, Latin Quarter, using their Wi-Fi. Lots of people abou. HUGE concert nearby that Rodney Whittenberg attended. Imagine South Street without the obnoxious Philly kids. And it doesn’t get nighttime dark until 10:30 or so, and I suspect t they don’t do that daylight saving time shit. Another edge the French have on us.
Okay, between the jet lag, blister pain, and emotional inertia, it took work to get out. Glad I did it. Just being out around people feels good.
Saturday night in what I think is the Latin Quarter.
Brasserie near the Palace of Justice today, after visits to Saint-Chappelle and Place St. Michel– old school authority and the site of historic protests. (They paved the area so students can’t rip up the cobblestones and throw’em at the police like in 1968.)
I forgot the name of this place, but it’s across the street from the Palais du Justice, and their chicken sandwich is excellent.
Saint-Chappelle.
Note to people visiting Paris, especially Nikki Cohen. If you’re hitting the museums, get a Museum Pass rather than buy admission as you go in. Depending on how many museums you visit, it can save money, and It really does help you avoid long lines, BUT, there is a caveat.
_Where_ do you buy these? Don’t rely on the web page, because it doesn’t seem to give reliable info. And buying them in advance is just a huge hassle. So it seems best to me to buy them when you’re ready to start using them They’re sold at most museums, but you usualy have to wait in those same lines to buy the pass. After that, yeah, it cuts down your waiting time. So ideally, you want to buy a Museum Pass in a place that may be _adjacent_ to a Museum. Say, the Louvre.
Here’s what I discovered. When I went to the Louvre, I got off the Metro at the Louvre Rivoli station– made sense, right? I wound up walking a LONG time before reaching the Pyramid, waiting some high-temperature time to pass through security, before going into the underground atrium, and bought my museum pass there.
Here’s the trick for a Museum Pass and the Louvre.
Step 1: Take the Metro to the Palais Royal Musee bu Louvre. THAT is the best station for this.
Step 2: Follow the signs that direct you into the massive underground mall.
Step 3: Follow the signs that direct you to the Museum Pass area. It’s an area of the mall where you can buy a Museum Pass without having to get into a museum. (It’s right below the McDonald’s, if that helps.)
Step 4: Now, follow the signs to get into the Louvre. You’ll emerge right into the Louvre’s underground atrium (after passing security, obviously).
Another benefit of this path is that it’s good to use when the weather sucks.
When I was a kid, my Aunt Marilyn was the traveller in the family. So she’d go off to other places, and return with lots of photos of her and her travelling group standing in front of various sites of interest– the Eiffel Tower, Tower of London, the Blarney Stone, and alla that. This was the late Sixties, and early Seventies, so the photos were Instamatic-blurry and Kodachrome-dull. But when she returned, it was kind of a ritual to sit next to her as she showed us the prints and narrated where she went.
When you’re a kid, this can be really boring. There’s other shit to do, right? And for years, watching the Vacation Slides was a byword for Interminable and Boring Family Rituals.
I hadn’t realized how social media’s changed this. Because I figured, I’ll post a picture or two, maybe write something… but you guys really seem to like this in a way that I’d never expected. For one thing, you aren’t a captive audience– you’re not sitting on the couch wishing you could go watch Batman or Star Trek. (Chances are, you’re watching those right now, while you’re reading this.) And we know we’re trading travel tips as well.
So, I’m trying a little harder to send back pics and videos. It’s easier to send stuff from the Tablet rather than my camera, so the quality isn’t great, but the response makes the effort really worthwhile.
Okay, now, on a more personal note. I came to Paris on my own, without much planning. I like to say that, if I’d waited until I knew the language, or to go with some significant other, I’d never get here. But there would be a struggle with my usual depression. Y’see, when you hear about Paris trips most of the time, it’s someone who’s set for an adventure– a student taking classes, someone who’s heading for an exotic club scene, maybe a business trip.
Let’s put it this way. Someone like Gil Cnaan or Patrick Rodgers would find some goth club within a few days, or know the local promoters. Kyle Cassidy would be in touch with writers and artists immediately. And there are people on my list who came here as students, and who have a connection that makes them expats in an interesting way. Me? Betwen my natural inability to socialize outside of conversations, and my usual dysthymia, the only thing that worried me about this trip was that I’d blow off tourist things and wind up arguing politics on Facebook because I couldn’t think of what to do. . And given that Paris is experiencing a serious frickin’ heat wave, the incentive to go a-wanderin’ is pushed down a bit. (Yeah, I know, I’m doing that _this instant_, but this is different. Anyway, I got to Saint Chappelle today, so I did my duty there.)
I’ve already mentioned how Heather Lea Linebaugh has been a great guide, but what’s really helped wasn’t the advice or the observations– it was being able to have a conversation with someone. I really do get more out of trading a joke with someone than I get from four hours at the Louvre. I can _function_ on my own, but it’s not as much fun; I can do that in Philadelphia.
So the responses on Facebook have been a HUGE help, friends. Makes me wanna go out and do something just to be able to report back and see what you think. I’m thinking of renting a bike and riding along the Seine this afternoon. I won’t be able to take any pictures, but hey, it’ll be something adventurous, and the air’ll be moving around me so the heat won’t feel so bad.
I didn’t bring shorts to Paris, for the usual body-conscious issues. But I wanted to take a bike ride down the Seine, and long pants, heat waves, and bikes don’t work real well. And there’s a small Gap-like store across the street.
Did you know they use inches for clothing measurements over here?
But the cafes and restaurants don’t open, officially, until 10 a.m., plus some time to arrange tables and stuff. I’d figure there’d be a big morning rush before work, but… Not so. Unless people get into work around 11 a.m.
Ah, Paris, City of Light…
Yeah, dig me, I’m Anthony fuckin’ Bourdain.
One thing Paris has done for me is help me make new friends. I’ve mentioned Heather Lea Linebaugh already, but last night earned two, maybe three more. (Someday I’ll collect the whole set, sell it on Ebay, and retire to Aruba. Assuing Marvel doesn’t kill the market for friends by issuing them in silver-lame covers for collectors.)
Rodney Whittenberg is an acquaintance from about twenty years ago; I met him once via David Twery, and the two things I remember were that he was a really sharp guy, and his mentor had been Camilla Paglia. So ever since, when I’d write something about something Paglia’d written that struck me as, well, wrong-headed, I’d always try to mention her passion for art in a respectful way, and that her students really got a lot from her.
It was surpriing to learn that Rodney was friends with Josh Olson, who’d I’d “met” Internet-style via the Harlan Ellison boards, and later on Facebook. So: Josh grows up in the neighborhood I live in, and we _may_ have met, but not knowingly. Josh is buddies with Rodney. I meet Rodney in an unconnected manner, so we know each other’s names. Turns out he’s in Paris with Sally Reeves, and met up with another friend over here who’s a singer in the Philly artea. (I wish I could recall her name, even after scrolling through Rodney’s friends list. Really nice person.) Anyway, I mention this long chain of tangential connection to establish that no _crazed internet stalker_ would rely on such a tenuous chain to ingratite himself with tourists and steal their passports.
Anyway, Rodney saw my note about loneliness, took pity upon my poor soul, and dropped a note about meeting at a cafe in Les Halles. So we did. And we had an excellent time. We kind of explained our lives to each other, where our experiences sort of mirrored each other’s (coming into the city to get exposed to art and music and crazy shit the suburbs kept from us), discussing music, and the like. Rodney asked me about Kubrick, and my friends know that subject is a big Do Not Feed the Brian, so he got a half-hour lecture on _2001_ and some kibitzing on _Eyes Wide Shut_. I picked up the tab. Least I could do, after inflicting that on the poor guy.
(Let me prove my point. You’ve been reading these long entires? THIS IS THE WAY I TALK IN REAL LIFE, people.)
Now, during all of this, we got to experience a _tremendous_ rainstorm that slammed into Paris and dropped Herman Meville-scale torrents over everything. You know those summer downpours we get? This one lasted more than an hour. Sally had the good sense to ask the bar owner if there was a Lost and Found with an umbrella, and that’s how I walked home without any drenching. And today, the temperatures have droppped into the seventies.
I’m actually starting to feel at _home_ here. Yeah, it’s just that I know the two-block radius from my hotel, and it’s very picturesque and human-scale and comfortable. I’ve managed to order a meal or two, and right now I’m running a small laundry, which is about as domestic as anything else. As you’ve seen from the photos, the Marais area is made up of narrow streets with lots of cafes and shops, so it’s pretty comfortable. Philadelphians, try to imagine an area where the streets are as narrow as Old City’s cobblestone relics, but curving more like Manyunk’s, and stocked with stores similar to Manyunk’s or smaller-scale versions of some of Walnut Street’s. Oh, yeah, the buildings are between four and six stories high, and faced mostly with that beige stonework that makes everything look like it’s been here since the Bourbons. (By contrast, the Rue de Montmarte felt kind of commercial; the cafes were more modern, and the one where I met Rodney W. felt pretty American.)
No, I don’t think I’ll be emigrating. Marais is extremely expensive. I’m really attached to the dogs in our house, and from what I can see, Parisian dogs are VERY well-behaved out in public, which ain’t the case for ours. (Most of the dogs tend to follow close by without leashes, and they’re allowed in stores. I wouldn’t risk that with Olive or Li’l Bit.)
Part of the comfort comes from language. Nearly everyone I’ve consulted says not to sweat the language, and by and large, they’re right. Most people here can deal with English, and frequently, the people dealing with the public are fluent. That doesn’t prevent me from being really polite and acknowledging my stupidity, and apologizing for mis-stating a question. But this morning, I came to this cafe to use the Wifi while waiting for my clothes to dry. I sat down, set up the computer, and told the waiter “Un cafe et un croissant,” and it felt reasonably casual. Now, in terms of fluency, this is like a cargo cult comparing itself to Thomas Aquinas. But it was nice to do that without it being a scary adventure in communication.
And a beagle just walked by.
My day today. Gotta rush, more later. (Sadly, could not locate Proust.)
Last night.
Aw, SHIT. I just spent an hour writing up Pere Lachaise. And it was a GOOD entry. AND DESPITE MY HITTING THE POST BUTTON IT’S NOT ON MY FUCKING FEED.
I’ll do a rewrite, but damn, I’m angry.
Thinking about doing the Catacombs today.
I met a girl today. She’s twelve.
Only today did I discover that the hotel has a dog. Meet Pepette, who loves American-style head scratches. She’s slow-moving but very sweet.
Now, sightseeing is nice, but when I arrived at Pere Lachaise I headed directly for the subject of a personal pilgrimage. The first hardcover book I ever bought for myself was a history of special effects in cinema, and that was where I learned the legend of George Melies. Today, you can watch Martin Scorsese’s film _Hugo_ and get more details, but here’s the mixture of myth and truth I absorbed more than forty years ago.
George Melies was a stage magician and theater owner in the late 19th century. He saw a demonstration of the Lumiere brothers’ technique for making pictures move, and kn e it would have a terrific attraction at his own theater. When the Lumieres refused to sell it to him. Melies– an inveterate tinkerer and, clearly, technical genius– reverse-engineered it, building his own camera and projector.
Here’s the legend part. While filming a typical Parisian street scene, Melies’s camera jammed briefly. When he processed the film, he was astonished to see that stopping and starting the camera made strange things happen: a bus turned into a hearse, pedestrians vanished or reversed direction or turned into other people. (This is the legend: in truth, this trick was invented by others.) But Melies, a magician, realized that a whole new world of illusion was now available to him.
So he began to make short films of astonishing fantasy, developing techniques of stop-motion, model work, double-exposure, and more, marrying them to his considerable skills of stagecraft and set design. In the years before World War I, he made over four hundred short films, many of which are still astonishing today. For example, one film has Melies standing under a set of telegraph lines that look like music staffs. Melies then _pulls off his own head_, and tosses it into the lines, where it hangs there like a music note, merrily singing. And he continues to do this four or five more times, each head landing at a different note. I know _how_ he could do this, but to realize that he had to track their movements, time the pulling-off-the-heads part, and more, all with equipment he built himself… well, that’s genius.
Melies was pretty successful, but then Europe decided to murder itself, and most of his films were dissolved and recycled. But a few have survived– most notable _La Voyage Dans la Lune_, the source of that shot of a spaceship bullet striking the eye of the Man in the Moon. He was reduced to poverty for many years, selling toys in a rail station booth. But he was rediscovered, and enjoyed his last few years with respect and honors and the understanding that his work was loved and respected.
H.G. Wells thought _A Trip to the Moon_ was crap. But Melies wasn’t trying to ground his work in the real world. His films are about devils with horns and pointy tails and pitchforks, mermaid who looked like showgirls, and scientists who looked more like wizards in strange hats and bizarre beards. Terry Gilliam may be his closest relative, not James Cameron. He was a 19th century fantasist who happened to preserve his style for the 20th.
And forty years after learning about him, I wanted to pay my respects.
Yesterday I got myself out to Pere Lachaise Cemetery, which is probably a must-stop for most of my friends who may come to Paris. And in some cases, it may be the main reason you’re coming here. Pere Lachaise is a massive, centuries old cemetery, full of graves and markers and mausoleums and family crypts that are frequently spectaclular showcases for the stonemason’s art. Or, where the markers are topped with verdigris’d sculptures, the metalworker’s art.
If you go to Pere Lachaise, understand that it’ll be a day of severe hiking. The cemetery’s roads are cobblestones, and the place is very hilly, so you’re going to get a real workout. Also, the sections are densely packed with graves, so if you stroll off the main paths to find a particular grave, you’re going to find a new kind of jungle to lose yourself in.
It’s still a working cemetery– there was a funeral service at the crematorium when I was there, and it wasn’t hard to find a modern grave with a laser-etched likeness right next to something from the sixteenth century. The names and dates on _those_ are incredibly thin and detailed, and look more like filigreed print than letters carved into marble.
(Some of the graves were these wonderful Art Deco black slabs that must have been sold as a standard, mass-market offering. They all use the same Airstream Moderne print, which is highlighted with gold leaf to make it look as though the letters were glowing.)
Now, the reason most people visit Pere Lachaise is to visit the graves of famous people. The cemetery doesn’t make this easy. Sure, they offer a map on a sign at the entrances, but it’s very out of date, and there are no indicators in the cemetery to direct you to someplace deep in the piles. This is NOT a place that tries to attract tourists; it’s a place to honor the dead. I didn’t have wifi, so I took pictures of that map, and used that to navigate, and that’s how I know it’s out of date. So print a map from a modern website (I did this for Montparnasse Cemetery the next day), and see if someone’s made an app that ties into your GPS. Also, budget time to walk.
So whose graves do you visit? Well, there’s Abelard and Heloise, of course. Frederic Chopin is here, his profile in white stone on the family grave, his name abbreviated to “Fred.” Baron Hausmann is in a family crypt. Gertrude Stein’s at one end, her gravestone topped with dozens of small stones from well-wishers. Colette’s grave is low, and wide, and you can’t help but think of a double-wide bed. Honore de Balzac’s grave is topped with a massive green bust. Gericault’s is topped with a beautiful sculpture of him lounging with his palette. Below, there’s a bas-relief of _The Wreck of the Medusa_.
I was unable to find several people: Marcel Proust eluded me, as did Modigliani and Delacroix, and time grew short so I had to skip Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Max Ernst and Isadora Duncan were marked as being in a corner near the 1871 Communard Memorial, but that whole area has been revised– thus, the place’s maps are waaay out of date.
So what replaced them? Well, a series of graves for French Communist Party members… and then a sequence of astonishing memorials for the French victims of the Holocaust. A memorial to those who perish in Auschwitz. Then Mauthausen. Then Dachau. With numbers and dates. And many of these were deeply horrifying; human beings starved and stretched so their bodies resembled the Art Nouveau plantstalks of Metro stations, their faces drawn into gasping screams. There are Holocaust memorials here in the States that depict horror, but over here, where people were rounded up and delivered into Hell, the art makes no attempt to disguise, evade, or force uplift. I took a few pictures, but…
But the big three “attractions” are Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. You can usually see that visitors are hovering near those locations. Piaf is buried near the Holocaust region, in a family grave in the midst of other graves, among fellow Parisians. One nice feature is a small stone that someone’s left there, painted with the words “La Vie et Rose 1997.” And I like to believe that that people have left that stone undisturbed for the past twenty years.
Oscar Wilde isn’t far from Piaf. Until Jim Morrison came here, Oscar was the main draw. The genitals of the statue were vandalized decades ago, and it’s probably fitting that they haven’t tried to restore them. Pere Lachaise may have the resting places for famous politicians, and history buffs stop by pay respects. The artists have visitors who wish to thank them, or touch them in some way. Oscar Wilde was a martyr; for decades, visitors to his grave understood that they, too, could wind up butterflies broken on a wheel, and outsiders of all kinds recognized a kind of pagan sainthood in him. As with classical saints, devotees have been coming here for decades and kissing the stone. So the cemetery’s put up a clear perspex barrier, which keeps the stone clean, but people kiss the barrier anyway.
And now we have Jim Morrison, the Lizard King. His grave is a stone-lined pit, nestled behind a tree among other graves. The first thing you see are the metal police barricades. As you get closer, you notice the little votive gifts from posthumous enablers: a bottle of whiskey in the tree roots, and empty airline-sized bottle of Jack Daniels, and a bamboo screen wrapped aeround the tree, covered with wabs of chewing gum. When I was there, a guy listened to Doors music through his iBuds, and the faint sound of “Whiskey Bar” could be heard. That’s actually a pretty appropriate song, for the place, given that it’s by Brecht and Weill.
On the way back from Pere Lachaise, I discovered that the Arts and Metiers Metro station has been redone in a wonderful Steampunk design. I only had time for two photos before my train got here.
Well, the Catacombs were a washout, because there was a MASSIVE line to get in. I’ll try again later this week, to get there at 7 ayem to get im, but I’m afraid I won’t meet my skull-photo quota this week.
But I’m continuing my “Tale of Two Cities of the Dead” chain, and writing about my visit to Montparnasse Cemetery. Unlike Pere Lachaise, Montparnasse is a flat, regular space where the paths meet at right angles, mostly. It’s a lot smaller, too. There are some notables buried here, but it’s not as much of an advanture as Pere Lachaise.
The first graves I found were those of Lt. Col. Albert Dreyfus and Guy de Maupassant. As I returned to the path, I saw some people consulting a map, so I said– approximating an accent– “Dreyfus?” They were Canadians looking for that very grave, so I pointed them to it because funding it was a bit tricky. That must have awarded me some karma for when I headed on to find Camille Saint-Saens and Eric Rohmer, and that took a while: I saw an older gentleman wandering in the same area, and figured we were hunting the same grave. We greeted each other with mutually broken languages, and I asked “Saint-Saens?” He points to a family mausaleum right next to him. So we spent about five minutes hunting Rohmer’s which, although nearby on the map, eluded us. Eventually we looked at each other across graves, mutually shrugd, and separated, and I moved on to find Eugene Ionesco.
Samuel Beckett was easy to find, and it was disappointing that Brancusi’s wasn’t more striking. Jean Seberg got a visit, too. I made a small pilgrimage on the behalf of Chris Lombardi, and found that her heroine Susan Sontag had managed to be among the Parisian elites at last. (On Chris’s behalf, I put a stone on her marker.) Did another path to find Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Demy: an elderly woman sat nearby talking into a cell phone, but no, it wasn’t Agnes Varda, and if it were I wouldn’t have approached. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir share a grave, of course. Charles Baudelaire is nearby, and people leave poems there.
I tried to find Man Ray’s spot, and saw a huge grave topped with this onyx block carved or glued into a bunch of flat triangular rectangles. It wasn’t his grave; it had no name. But this woman was talking to two men nearby. Turned out she was the artist who’d created the stone for someone, and I suspected that she was using the site to pitch a project to the others, so I was happy to reply that I thought it was a wonderful piece of work, and its contrast with the classical appearance of the rest of the place was vivid and tasteful.
Earlier today, fighter jets were flying very low sorties over Paris. No idea why. First those delta-winged, pointy jets, then one with a big radar dish on its midsection, then these, then…
Two Holocaust memorials from Pere Lachaise.
Random sights.
Today is the big relocation, to Montmarte, and a different hotel there. It’s similar to Marais in that there are lots of stores and cafes. But It’s different, in that It’s extremely hilly– like, Manyunk hilly. I have never seen cobblestone streets laid alongside of _sheer cliffs_ before.
Another difference is that, around the Pigalle station, there were several sex shops and posters of strip clubs. (Apparently, “Pig Alley” was a big receation spot among American GIs after they got rid of Hitler.) Doesn’t bother me much, being a het male who doesn’t do that stuff, and It’s not like East Market Street was in the late 1970s, so meh. But golly geezum-crow, wasn’t _Amelie_ filmed around here?
The hotel room won’t be ready until 2, so I have about three hours to kill. Right now, a lemonade purchase gets me Wi-Fi at Le Sancerre, along with the cool after-rain breeze.
I wandered up to Sacre Coeur, the Montmarte and Dali Museums, and came back to check into my hotel. And so far, Montmarte has already earned the “great place to visit, but…” review.
First of all, it’s even hillier than Manyunk, and the walks are really, really exhausting. And if you can imagine Manyunk’s main line spreading up those hills, you’d have a great idea of what Montmarte is like. Now, I’ve always liked places with a lot of variety in the layout, and if I were twenty or thirty I’d think this place was amazingly neat. I mean, there are some spots where you look down and see a great jumble of roofs, and you look up and see towers and homes, and it’s like visiting the mid-points of Rivendell or Minas Tirith.
But I’m past fifty, and I’ve been doing a LOT of walking here in Paris, and hiking the hills doesn’t have the same appeal to me. It also feels more touristy, in that it doesn’t feel like the people who live here like being surrounded by tourists 24-7. I figure the next few days will be my time to really exploit the Metro.
As far as I can tell, the main attraction is Sacre Coeur, and the history of artists like Renoir and Dali and Toulouse-Lautrec living here when it was pretty much a rough, twisty, cheap place to live. Well, now it’s a place for tourists to check out their digs. The Dali museum was small, but excellent, with some of his amazing sculptures (and decent quality knockoffs for sale). The Montmarte museum was only okay, showcasing works by lesser-known artists. But they preserved the grounds a little, and the views, and hey, it was Renoir’s home, so that’s important.
So it’s like I said. Come up here for a day or two. Visit the cathedral. Enjoy the spectacular vista of Paris seen from a comanding height. Dig the artistic history of the place. Visit the place where they shot _Amelie_. If there’s a good restaurant here, check it out. But after that, I can’t say much.
(Also, my hotel room up here is very small: a bed, a bathroom with a tiny shower stall, and decor straight outta the Ikea catalog. But, it is _air conditioned_, and costs half of what I paid per day in Marais.)
Look, this is based on roughly four hours of exposure, and I may be letting a mood turn me a little harsh. You _know_ I’ll let y’all know if the situation changes.
I was going to visit the Paris Opera House with Heather and her friend Bria, but the place was shut for a society function. So we wandered throughthe Tuilleries before settling on a restaurant. I had chicken, Bria went for the beef tartare, and Healther decided to go full Parisian and order something described as chitterling-like, called “andoiliette.” Waiter brings a sausage to the table.
One bite, and Heather gets a truly horrified expression. Bria tries a bite, and yep, same thing. I put some on my fork, bring it to my nose, and…
Oh, sweet Jesus.
The smell alone was like rimming Chris Christie. Imagine making a sausage from the limbs found behind a war hospital at Bull Run.
Heather posted that she’d “Just ate a pile of assholes stuffed inside a natural condom. It’s called andouillette and I’m going to drink bleach now to get the taste out of my mouth. Fuck me. 
?” I think it’s going to require a tongue scrape with a belt sander. But her description is technically accurate: the smell, for me, was instantly recognizable as robust human shit.
We sent it back, to keep it away from the food, but Heather couldn’t eat anything afterward. She said she thought she’d have to give up her Parisian card, for a) not really knowing what the stuff was, and probably b) not enjoying it like native Parisians apparently did.
The other food was decent, and the conversation was fun, and Bria’s pretty spectacular in conversation.
I don’t remember where I saw this, but: someone suggested that the reason Americans are suspicious of national health care is that they think paying thousands of dollars for simple procedures and drugs is _normal_, and that their taxes will go into $6000 to set a broken wrist or $2000 for a single pill.
I’ve been hearing health care stories here in Paris. Main theme: “I thought it’d cost me thousands. They handed me a bill for a hundred Euros.”
Big scare this morning: the ticket machine at the Metro rejected my credit card. Happily, I had some cash, so I got tix to get to the Musee d’Orsay. I figured I’d wait to fix the card until American banks were open, in case it needed a phone call. I did note that this happened before I entered my PIN, so maybe the chip was damaged.
Did the museum, hit a bank machine and withdrew money with no problems. End of emergency. So, Travel Tip: Although you can get by a LOT on a credit card, make sure you’re carrying some Euros just in case. I’d suggest twenty, which’d be enough for a meal at a cafe and a return-trip on the Metro.
I’m staying at a place called the Hotel Basss– with three esses– and it’s tiny, modern, and fairly clean. Funny thing, though. One of the decorations on my wall is this spare illustration of a woman, fronted with three balloons, labelled “One, Two, Three” in woodcut letters. It reminded me of the Billy Wilder film of the same name.
Then, in the VERY tiny elevator, I noticed a small sign– explaining why the hotel was named after the great graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass. And when I got in today, I noticed thi picture above my bed.
I didn’t pick the hotel for this, but it was a nice surprise.
Today’s expedition: the Musee D’Orsay, a former train station turned into a MAGNIFICENT art museum, specializing in the art movements that happened after all the stuff in the Louvre. All the late 19th and early 20th century greats: Renoir, Seurat, Whistler, Degas, and more. Great sculpture collection, too. And to my unbelievable delight, they have a special exhibit on Art Nouveau, including furniture and jewelry and lamps. And the museum itself was a 19th century railroad station, and there’s lots of iron work to delight you Steampunkers.
So where are the photos? Well, I used my other camera for those: I did these on the tablet for Facebook.
Okay, the Metro. I’m going to offer some advice here.
First of all, find a picture of the Metro map on the Web. I’m going to explain something, and the map helps. Keep one on you, too. it will be your best friend. You can get close to nearly anywhere via the Metro, and nearly all the stations offer free interchanges between lines. The trains run very frequently, too: I don’t recall waiting for more than three minutes for one. AS a working subway for a major city, it’s incredibly effective.
The Metro isn’t all beautiful. Some stations have been rebuilt, some in central Paris have been remade gorgeous, and I posted some photos of one that was given a Steampunk treatment. But most are a little dingy. Also, some lines have trains whose doors are not automatic– passengers flip a latch to open the doors when the train stops. It’s a little odd, but nothing horrible. It also shuts down at midnight, I think.
But the stations are going to give you problems when you hit Paris. The bigger ones, where three or four train lines intersect, like Chatelet, are incredibly complex rabbit warrens, comprising seversal levels, long tunnels between lines, and in _all_ cases, lots and lots of staircases. There are no escalators or elevators to make this easy on people with disabilities. One of thw rost stations in this regard is Abbesses, which is the station for Montmarte and Sacre-Coeur. It requires going up, or down, a long spiral staircase that by my estimation is a good five or six storeys deep. Ye,s it’s right by a carousel like in _Amelie_, but it’s a huge chore to use. It’s almost worth walking down a hill into the dodgy area of Pigalle. (Another travel tip: wear shoes that are REALLY comfortable, and which you can remove for frequent massages.)
Now, let’s look at that Metro map. (MORE COMING: I’m just posting this to make sure this much is saved.)
Okay, Metro advice. If you’re in a station, and you need to find a particular route, and make sure you’re heading the right way, here’s a wuick rule of thumb.
For the most part, you will see signs directing you to the line. They list the route, and the terminal/end stations. The first photo shows the signs for the #5 route, which runs between Bobigny and Place D’italie. These signs will get you to the track.
When you get to the track, you need to get on the correct _side_ of the track– you don ‘t want to head north when you want to go south. So, when you get to the track, you’ll see signs like the third photo, the green 12 route. This sign shows the side of the track that goes to Maire D’issy. The top buton shows the station you’re in– in this case, Concorde– and the rest of the route to that terminus. So, if you were in the Concorde station, and wanted to go to Pasteur, follow this sign. (If you wanted to go to the other direction, look around: you’ll find a similar sign showing the other half of the route.)
So: Follow the signs to the track, and when you reach the track, look for the more detailed signs showing the stations on that track. Find your destination and take that side.
Came back to my hotel room this afternoon, and decided I could probably squeeze in a visit to the Basilica de Sacre-Coeur, which is a short walk away.
I’ve been complaining a bit about walking, and stairs, and maybe this was not a great idea. Because I decided to up into the dome for the Big Look-See, and getting up there requires a lot of climbing in tight circular staircases. But after some straining and fantasies over coronary thrombosis, I made it, and shot a few things.
Maybe it’s age, or the fatigue over the climb, but I think I’ve grown acrophobic with time. I got really nervous getting close to the dome’s outlook– not so much a fear of falling as it was a fear of dropping my camera.
The Eiffel Tower photo– sorry, but I don’t want to rotate it until later– was shot with a long zoom and as fast a shutter as I could do. It’s still a little blurry.
Then a quick pass-through the actual church part of the place. They had signs begging people to not take photos, so I lowered mine and followed the rules. Didn’t stop every _other_ tourist from clicking away, tho. (I figure, if I wanted excellent photos, I could buy a book where they used careful lighting and better talent.)
Now, a quick break, and dinnertime.
Killing time before I go out, so… Travel Tips I’ll have to keep in mind.
CAMERAS: I brought along my GH4, with three lenses. I got that camera for video work. But this is a pain in the neck for snaps; lugging them even in a photographer’s vest is irritating. So, next time, acquire a single-lens camera with one wide-range zoom lens and strong manual controls.
SMARTPHONES: I left mine at home because it wouldn’t work in Europe. And its wifi and camera capabilities were also in my tablet. And my tablet works great as a “laptop” with a Bluetooth keyboard. So my communication is limited to finding a Wifi spot and using Facebook Messenger. So, if I don’t get a phone, I need to have Wifi to stay in touch. SOLUTIONS: Rent a Smartphone, pref. one that can work as a Wifi node. Or, buy a portable Wifi node for my destination country, if available. But no real decision between the smartphone (small) and tablet (comfortable for typing).
BOOKS: Maybe Kindles have their uses.
ELECTRICITY: Turned out everything I brought that needed power was USB-chargeable.
Well, this was a nice surprise. I went wandering on Montmarte after eating, and found a dance party going on at the Abbesses Metro station. The music had a number of American-British dance music, likeBowie’s “Let’s Dance” and Rick James’ “Super Freak,” but Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” and lots of French stuff that was happy and enjoyable– including a French cover of the Four Seasons’ “Oh, What a Night.”
The party was presented by the PCF, the Parti Communiste Francais, and there were lots of posters for an upcoming Semaine du Feminisme– one had a photo of Angela Davis– plus many posters about domestic violence. Another poster read “l’ete ce n’est pas fait, pour Casser le code du travail!” which Google translates to “The summer is not done, to break the code of work!” along with a pic of Macron with the slogan “Non Aux Ordonnances,” and Google translate or not, I can’t grasp what’s being said here. Could be supporting the guy, or urging us to not compromise with a neoliberal. So if I’m dragged in front of a tribunal, just assume I was duped by the hypnotic strains of French Frankie Valli.
So yeah, I sat on a bench, copying these slogans for later posting, and just absorbing the atmosphere. To my left was a Hector Guimard Metro station. To my right was a Communist Dance Party, complete with a Table of Information. A lot like West Philly was thirty years ago, only we have anarchists, and their taste in industrial thrash kind of alienated anyone who wanted to dance happily. (And a lot more cigarette smoke. I wish I’d brought my camera, if only to capture the cloud trapped under the beer-and-blintzes tents.) Granted, I’m even more of a wallflower here– I wouldnt understand people even if I could hear them– but a city where Communists can dance for the revolution is all right by me.
Found a really popular underground goth dance club. The line is forming more than an hour before opening. On my way here, I found an uncharacteristically empty Metro station.
Guess where I went today!
Currently at the Rue Cler, a nice little farmers market-like area, because Rick Steves kept hyping it. Very pleasant. I will write up the catacombs later, when I have a keyboard and the photos on my other camera.
But if you go… buy tickets in advance, or wait in a line. I got there 90 minutes before it opened, and it was worth the wait.
Napoleon’s Tomb, and the most beautiful altar I have ever seen.
I think I’ve figured out a big reason why Paris is so liveable, as compared to other cities. My apologies if this is common knowledge, but hey, when you have an insight, you want to share it.
You’ll notice that a LOT of buildings in Paris look kinda similar. They’re between four and six stories tall, beige, with two-foot-high balcony railings at each window, mansard roofs. Although many have room for shops on their first floors, they’re nearly all apartment buiildings, Hausman projects originally I’d heard. The funny thing is, they’re all fairly similar. Older ones have lots of great details. Newer ones built in this century look a little dingy, like the ones near the catacombs exit.
I was walking past these ugly versions to get to the Metro, and realizing how many of these Haussman projects might be in Paris. And then you remember that Paris does have areas full of high-rise office buildings, and they’re all waay out away from the central city. And I was also thinking of how the catacombs, created from vast underground quarries, used to collapse undre the weights of buildings.
So here’s the theory. They threw up a LOT of small-scale apartment buildings for a while, establishing most of Paris as a residential zone. And the businesses that could operate here were small scale: restaurants, shops, brasseries, etc. And between the apartment buildings taking up the real estate, the problems of building high-rises on top of the quarries, and probably a lot of suspicion… well, the kind of corporate capitalism that builds huge office buildings just couldn’t establish a beachhead in Paris. So most of the city remains close to human scale.
This is pretty much the opposite of many American cities. The central areas eventually turned into gigantic office skyscraper farms, maybe with other big projects like stadiums and performance centers and maybe a ball park. Housing spread outward, in the form of balloon-frame suburb houses that could be easily bulldozed when the time came. To make this real simple: In most cities, people like around the periphery and commute inward: in Paris, people live in the center area and commute outward.
Heather and Bria brought me along to the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower last night. It’s probably the greatest fireworks show I’ll ever see. Next week, I’ll post video I shot of the whole half-hour show.
Now, you have to remember, Bastille Day celebrations are far more centralized than our 4th of Julie bashes. For one thing, we have fireworks _everywhere_, so we don’t have to assemble with our countrymen as much. Healther pointed out that a lot of people in the crowd had southern French accents, so many of them travelled to Paris just to see this show.
And remember, Paris is the heart of France, the capital, and the Eiffel Tower is a national symbol with a gigantic field that can hold a million people nearby. So while there are other fireworks shows (we saw a few on the far horizons), this is The One.
And the icing on the cake is that the fireworks are happening around a thousand-foot-tall iron structure, _upon which you can mount fireworks launchers_. Yeah. Now you know why I didn’t say this was the greatest I’ve seen– I said this was probably the greatest fireworks show I’ll _ever_ see.
Oh, one thing to take note of. Before the show, they played a lot of music over loudspeakers. A lot of classical, including that famous aria from _Pagliacci_, that Shostakovitch waltz used in _Eyes Wide Shut_, and more. The fireworks show used a mix of ballads, some French hits, even Frank Sinatra’s song about loving Paris, and closed with Ravel’s _Bolero_.
And in the States, we’d be forced to listen to shit like “Rock You like a Hurricane” because we’d have to make the yokels feel at home. This may just be the notion of a wanna-be ex-pat, a snobby American suddenly in a legendary city, but it seems as though Paris is continually exhorting people to be _better_ in lots of ways, and it still works: in the States, we’d think that egalite and fraternite stuff was bullshit that got in the way of the liberte of not having to put up with other people.
When I see _The Big Bang Theory_ dubbed into French, I like to think that they’re arguing over the conflict with capitalism in a post-Brexit Europe.
You know, instead of Spider-man.
I few minutes ago, I werote up a long entry about the huge security presence in Paris– you regularly see police, soldiers, and Legionnaires walking about carrying AR rifles. Which can be deeply shocking, considering what American law enforcement is like: I mean, our cops are worse, but they’re not carrying this kind of firepower in city streets. (There was a moment on the Metro when some of them got on, one of them turned to grab the safety bar, and his rifle barrel swung in my direction for a moment. Yikes.)
I didn’t post that long entry, because I know I’ll get a lot of stuff severely _wrong_. I’m told that Parisians resent this, but they’re grateful, because terrorist attacks have been pretty horrible. And there seems to be a higher degree of _trust_ here– unlike in the States, where cops have cultivated a lot of legitimate mistrust. (The Legionnaires are unique, too. They’re an army of mercenaries, men who really _desired_ that kind of life… but they’re apparently very well-trained, with a very narrow mandate for their Paris security work. Not like the Rambo-porn fuckheads who subscribe to _Soldier of Fortune_ garbage.)
I don’t know if this is one of those profound differences between French solidarity and American separatism. I don’t know if the Paris police are better-regarded than our happy crew of racist fuckups. (One really chilling thought is, what would these guys be doing if Le Pen had won the election?)
I mean, I have lots of theories, because you may have noticed that my brain’s one of those theory-generating machines without an off-switch. But I need to really research this.
Gonny try and visit the Pantheon today. I’ll be incommuncado, because my tablet’s charging’s been flukey and I have to leave it in my room.
Earlier, I wrote:
“This may just be the notion of a wanna-be ex-pat, a snobby American suddenly in a legendary city, but it seems as though Paris is continually exhorting people to be _better_ in lots of ways, and it still works: in the States, we’d think that egalite and fraternite stuff was bullshit that got in the way of the liberte of not having to put up with other people.”
I wonder if people visit Philadelphia, travel to Independence Hall, the Constitution Center, and the big three art galleries (the big one, the Rodin, and the Barnes), and think that Philadelphians must strive to be as noble as Franklin and Jefferson and Adams and the rest.
Today’s agenda involkved the Pantheon, the massive former cathedral that the French revolutionaries turned into a temple for humanism. Voltaire and Rousseau are entombed there, as are a lot of other honorees: Marie Curie, Resistance leader Jean Moulin, Andre Malraux, and in one shared crypt, Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas.
Not really knowing what to do next, I recalled hearing that the Petit Palais had a nice Art Nouveau exhibit. So I _walked_ there– which is a huge distance. My path took me along the book dealers along the Seine, the Tuilleries (where a carnival with carny rides has been running all summer long), and more. The Petit Palais is a museum, and its Art Nouveau was limited to a room of Hector Guimard designs (YAY) and a lot of glasswork (s’okay). And its artwork, while lovely, doesn’t have many Big Names or famous holdings. But the building itself is a huge Beaux Arts hall, mostly empty, so that was pretty cool. (Across the street is the Grand Palais, another museum. I’d like to see it _solely_ because its roof is a mssive ironwork glass roof that dwarfs Philly’s Please Touch Museum. No idea what they have _in_ there.
I’m thinking of hitting Montmarte Cemetery tomorrow morning, because it’s a few blocks from my hotel, and there are a few notable graves to visit. (One name that might strike some interest: Renee Falconetti.) The Eiffel Tower is on the agenda for tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday, and I have to see if there’s a museum for French film stuff.
When I reached the Petit Palais today, I saw some guys shooting a rap-dance video out front with a DSLR on a small stabilizer mount. I had to walk with them to stay out of the shot, and then I notice dthey were using a Panasonic GH4. After the shot, I said I had the same camera with me, and did some video work inthe States. We talked a little bit, but they were shooting, so I vamoosed.
All this time, all I’ve seen were people using Canons and Nikons. The one video shoot I see, and it’s with my style of camera. Nice.
At dinner with my Paris tour guides, and I mention that I’d done a video for a punk band called the Dead Milkmen.
“I LOVE the Dead Milkmen!” Heather Lea Linebaugh exclaims. “Loved Bitchin’ Camaro!'”
SO: Rodney Linderman and Vienna Linderman, if you are ever in Paris, look up Heather. Fandom aside, you guys will get on like a house on fire.
Mont’ Martre Blues.
I am actually feeling a little burned out in Paris. Just a little. So doing my laundry this fine Sunday morning feels like a nice little break. Especially since I hate wearing dirty clothes.
It’s a little like a language membrane. I feel as though I’m familiar enough to navigate my way around the place. The Metro’s not a challenge (well, it’s still a physical challenge, but I can avoid losing my way). I check both ways when crossing the street. I’m used to the fact that many streets are basically galleries of cafes and shops. I know enough small phrases to get by during the day– well, I can say Bonjour as a greeting, Merci is really handy, and yes, Parlez-vous Anglais is usually helpful.
But that’s the membrane. Can’t do conversations, the bookstores I’d usually hit are not comprehensible, and movies would be a bit difficult. So when I don’t have a plan, I’m walking around. I have some places to go to for pictures and such, but if those are exhausted, well… So I figure that a two-week stay in Paris was about right _because I don’t know the language_. That’s when you have probably exhausted the tourist things, and need to find other, everyday things to do.
The third big cemetery in Par is is Montmartre. It’s sort of like the other two: not as flat and regular as Montparnassem not as hilly or chaotic as Pere Lachaise. Not as many “big names,” but they had Hector Berlioz, Henry Degas, and film directors Francois Truffault and Henri Georges Clouzot.
There was one grave that’s not on any of the official maps, and I tried to find it, but failed. It’s Renee Falconetti, whose nearly-only film role is one for the ages. She was the lead in Carl Dreyer’s _The Passion of Joan of Arc_, and it’s an astonishing performance. Not on the maps. I couldn’t find anything more specific than the name of the cemetery when I hit Google.
When I got home, I did a really detailed search… and found the area where the grave is. I just may head back out there, but damn, I’m tired, and I really want to cross the Paris Graves thing off my list.
ADDENDUM: I went back. See photo. She’s in Section 16, just to the left when you walk into the place. Gotta hunt for the site, though.
Tomorrow, the Cinematecque Francais, and the Eiffel Tower. Tuesday, I return to the States, all aesthetic’d up and shit.
Also from Montmartre:
While visiting, tried to whistle the solo from “Jungleland.” I wonder if Clarence ever visited here.
Went to a cafe, where the guy really seems to like R&B, because the playlist is full of it. One neat thing bout the cafes and music: if they play a lot of American music, it’s still stuff that doesn’t get a lot of repeats, as though they went for everything but the hits.
Still, the Temptations’ “My Girl” is so perfect right now.
Tomorrow’s my last day in Paris, and it seems right to do the Eiffel Tower then. BUT… today’s sky was filled with wonderful cumulus clouds, and my Sunday afternoon was free, so…
I also shot a lot of sections with my long lens, with the hopes of making a HUGE mosaic when I get home.
No, I didn’t go up the Tower. That’s for tomorrow.
When I was on Montmartre Cemetary today, seeing the graves with sculptures and statues, I thought of George Romero– and how, when he passed, his grave should have lots of zombie statues writhing around it.
Now I hear this.
Yeah, Romero invented a whole genre we all enjoy. But he did make other fine films: _Martin_ is a modern take on vampires, _Knightriders_ is a counterculture epic. and _Creepshow_ anticipated “comic book movies.” He had a sharp, politically-informed sensibility that came through in his films; even when the zombie genre shifted into gun fantasies, his own works stayed on the leftish end of things. And I wish that he’d had more opportunity to make films that he wanted to make, instead of retreading the zombies over and over: he was going to do Stephen King’s _The Stand_, and that has to be one of the great unmade films.
Probably my last dinner on Montmartre, so I got a pisatchio ice cream and wandered around the place a little more afield than usual. This is a very busy part of the city at night, probably due to the tourist trade, but there are a lot of kids just hanging out. Turns out you can still get up to Sacre Coeur, so I did, and here’s the City of Lights seen from a high vantage point. Sorry I didn’t use my good camera.
The mission: visit the Cinemathecque Francais.
The fun part: forget to bring a map showing the route from the Metro station.
The result: Get espresso to use cafe’s Wi-Fi to hit Google. At least I knew my North-South sense works.
Somehow, James Bond would’ve found a really cool way to do it.
Half an hour before opening. This is one of the first, and greatest, temples to cinema, and I truly hope it’s good for a day trip. Usually, its benefit is from screenings from its archives (today, Mary Poppins, Robert Stevenson, 1964). Back in the day, this was how Truffault, Godard, Bresson and more educated themselves. And yes, the Nazis did want to destroy it, but they smuggled stuff out of their cold, Reifenstahl-fingering hands.
Not keen on all the Gehry, but it’s not my house. I’d be really happy if its museum is half as good as I expect. (If they have one Lumiere camera, it will be worth the pilgrimage.) I hope they sell some magnificent coffee table book, too.
Bags are packed, boarding pass printed, alarm set. See all of you soon.
The upcoming movie _Valerian and the Empire of a Thousand Cities_ reminded me of something I’d seen in the American magazine Heavy Metal, roughly thirty-plus years ago. Anyway, I stopped in a Paris comics store– one which had French comics, not American imports– and saw a stack of Valerian anthologies. Picked one up, browsed… and yep, there it was, the story that had appeared in Heavy Metal. (Not the one used for the movie, however.)
So I can honestly say that I’ve known about this story for _decades_, _long_ before all of these newbie posers jumping on the bandwagon…
(I don’t remember much about it, but it wasn’t bad. Heavy Metal ran a lot of translated French comics, and introduced Moebius, Crepax, and Druillet to US audiences. When it wasn’t running American comics about women with big tits, that is.)
They said get to DeGaulle early. Three hour wait times. Horrors upon horrors.
Well, I decided to turn my 5-a.m. wakeup insomnia into a virtue. Got up. Showered. Trundled on out to the Metro. Took that to the Gare du Nord, where a train whisked me to DeGaulle. Just passed through customs, and now I sit in the Starbucks at 8 a.m.
For a flight that departs at 1 p.m.
Hey, Nikki Cohen, a few words of advice:
1. I know you’re not handicapped, but the Metro has almost no provision for the differently abled. That means there are LOTS of stairs, and that can be tough on all of us. So wear comfortable shoes and be prepped to exercise. The buses are also an option.
2. If you go to Montmarte to see Sacre Coeur– which is really worth it– and you take the Metro, there are two stops to use: Pigalle and Abbesses. If you take Abbesses, there’s a seven-story circular staircase you need to climb before emerging. If you take Pigalle, then you have to walk north up a hill. Pigalle’s actualy preferable, IMHO.
3. There are two places I know of with an Art Nouveau exhibit: the Musee d’Orsay and the Peitit Palais. D’orsay’s is wonderful. You’ll love it. The Petit Palais has some glaswork and a room of Gumard furniture, but the building itself is a spectacular and very empty Beaux Arts masterpiece.
4. There is a hotel designed by Guimard that’s to the west of the Eiffel Tower. I didn’t know about it until my last day, so I didn’t see it, can’t speak for it. I’ll probably look it up on the Web.
5. I didn’t get the Metrocard– I basically just kept buying tickets– but if you’re okay with the Metro, it’s worth getting for a week.
6. The best areas for that core Paris feel, of narrow streets and cafes and such, are all on the Left Bank, in the general area between Notre Dame and Luxembourg Garden. Evenings are amazing even if you’re just walking around.
7. Don’t bother with the Moulin Rouge. Pigalle is pretty much a men’s dump.
8. In the Tuilleries, they’ve set up a semipermanent carnival with rides and such.
9. Get to the Catacombs about an hour before it opens. The line forms quickly. But see them.
10. Same thing for Pere Lachaise. You will adore that place. French Gothic designs, several awe-inspiring Holocaust memorials, and Oscar Wilde. Wear good shoes and be prepped for a hike. (If you visit any cemetery, print out maps from the Web before going.)
So I’m back in Philly. Jetlag’s easier to deal with, because it’s basically extending a day by about six hours, so I woke up at 6 a.m. all rested’n’stuff. As long as this scratchy throat doesn’t turn into something awful. I’m feelin’ fine.
I also have to trawl through the videos and photos I shot. Some of the early photos aren’t great, because I hadn’t set the thing to autofocus properly. There are also video snippets that got recorded because I’d meant to take a still, but the camera was set on video.
Then there’s the mosaics– where I took pictures that overlap, with the goal of assembling them into high-res pics. (And yes, Kyle Cassidy, I did do one spherical set, from the center of the Pantheon– probably the only place where I could do this.)
So I’ll be busy.
Had a funny moment when I was paying a cashier in Paris. A few days before, I’d acquired an umbrella, and was carrying it because it had looked like rain. I was wearing a photographer’s vest, which isn’t a raincoat, but it’s khaki and odd.And I was holding my eyeglasses in my mouth, so they were dangling like a pipe. And of course, I’m bumbling my way through the language while paying.
And I suddenly realized that I’m one alpine hat from being this guy.
Back in high school, I actually attended a weekend with the Catholic Youth Organization. (Had a hopeless crush on the girl running it.) It was pretty strange for me. For one thing, they gave us a slide show that went from Charming Images to Tirade Against Abortion, which made me pro-choice for life.
For another, it was a time when I was socializing with people who weren’t from my own high school– they weren’t people who’d been ganging up and namecalling me for the previous eleven or twelve years. And I was actually _getting along_ with them. So the weekend gave me a two-day look at a world that actually _liked_ me. While I’d been telling myself that I just had to get out of Cherry Hill to build a life for myself, that weekend showed me that I might have been right about that.
Two days after it, I was back in school, and I hit rock bottom. Now I was back in my regular, shitty environment, and suddenly that great weekend felt like a _lie_, some elaborate trick to raise my spirits just to crush’em again. Probably the widest mood swing I’d ever experienced.
This week, the morning after I got back from Paris, I stepped out of my house, and felt something a little like that high-school depression. I live in a nice neighborhood, with trees and Victorian twins and more. Now, my street looked as wide and barren and inviting as a freeway. No pedestrians– ninety degree heat has that effect– and nothing enticing around, not even the cafe at the end of the block.
This post-Paris collapse is NOT severe, and nowhere near as dispiriting as my high school CYO story. My life’s good these days, I’m an adult with agency and freedom to move, and I have a house that I can turn into an appealing little mini-Paris if I figure out how. Believe me, I’m fine, and I know that the next six months are going to play some games with my head. (And I’ll be socking cash away for a return trip. I feel a little like Ronald Colman at the end of _Lost Horizon_, crawling up the Himalayas to find the gateway back into Shangri-La.)
My own Paris experience wasn’t quite real, either. I was there at complete leisure, with money and time. It’s not like I had to find a job and maintain an apartment and run a regular life. But you get a taste of living in a place that’s much better for human beings. There’s an everyday appreciation for variety, history, food, art, and just about everything else. And it’s liberating to not have to accommodate the stupid parts of American culture, too. It was just a great place to be, and I guess I’ll be thinking of ways to recapture some of it over here.