No baguettes on bicycle baskets here. And absolutely no storybook romance set in the city of lights. And from me, you’ll absolutely never get marinière anyway…No.
I mean truly, I accidentally went near the Eiffel Tower but never ventured up it. I managed to get a private tour of the Louvre at midnight once and attended a Louis Vuitton fashion show there, but for the rest of the year avoided it vehemently. Oh, and the Notre Dame was never what tickled my fancy anyway, so easy to bilk. My Paris was blitzing, and scathing and deeply creative, none of the more touristy stuff ever appealed. In fact I once wrote a little review for VINGT Paris about my favorite restaurant in the city, and it’s Italian.
If you know me at all, you’ll know that Paris and I have a complicated relationship. I had visited many times before I had this terrible idea that yes I should absolutely move there. I speak fluent French, I’m a big city person who loves a chaotic urban environment with people from every corner of the planet, and I was still enjoying all kinds of potations at this point of my 20s.
So, I packed up my whole world (there was a heartbreak right before that may have clouded me, just a touch) and arrived at the jardin de luxembourg - yes, the left bank was my second mistake. I remember when I arrived, the moment I got out of that taxi as I was holding a cigarette in between my fingers, with a drapery of Lacroix covering my knees, and a croissant just casually falling out of my pocket - I looked at the dog shit everywhere, and I knew I had made a mistake. Now sure sure, there are no mistakes, yes yes I get it, it’s true, I believe that and I know that it all leads you to where you need to be. But just go with me for the sake of my story please.
In my head the intellectuals came to Paris to write, to debate, to fuck and get fucked…and fucked up…so Gertrude Stein, Voltaire (who drank up to 50 cups of coffee per day, just saying) this was all for you. Just don’t call it bohemian please. I mean the cafés were also the favorites of the “grisettes”, pretty girls from the countryside, who came to Paris looking for amour and Francs – with names like Mimi or Musette. Everyone made a Paris stop. And you should too. And not in the tourist way, please.
I wrote a few ditties on napkins about Paris, and here they are.
Jim Morrison died for me, and for Paris apparently.
As the evening wanted to commence my Metro slowly found its way underneath the dirty streets of the city of love to the ‘tourist’s cemetery’. So famed, so profound that it had become a reason for millions of people all over the world to squash themselves into airplanes, tidy themselves onto boats and cars and line themselves up into trains to get to Paris. Some of the other methods of getting to Paris are as ridiculous as the crowds of onlookers and gawkers that come to the cemetery - I later discover - so will therefore remain unmentioned. People are strange.
Père Lachaise, the cemetery of all cemeteries hosts for me the most important musician to ever live. But apparently I am not alone in my love for the great ‘lizard king’. For most fans the music will never be over. And for me those black leather pants will live on, for eternity.
My determined stride through the crowded cemetery is completely forgotten as my sole focus is on finding my Jim. Paris was given Jim Morrison whether they wanted him or not and I, the little Paris virgin, proudly stayed in his ex-hotel room on the left bank. That was when I arrived in Paris for the first time so it may have been a hotel manager’s version of tourist trapping.
Finding the grave is easy; I follow the smell of Jack Daniels and cigarettes. Jim is of course waiting for me, as he always will be. The stone on his grave screams at me: “ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ”. Google translate tells me, with no questions asked, that it means “true to his own spirit”. Unsatisfied I text a Greek friend who says it’s more like “according to his own daemon”. I laugh, my non-Paris laugh that makes the residents stare at me.
Ah Paris, of course you found Jim in your belly. Of course it involves demons, don’t I know this already? And then the sky opens and pees all over me like Jim would have done. Paris Paris, you are always according to your own rakshasa.
That Tower
On the StairMaster after say 20 minutes the machine, with a mind of its own, congratulates me on climbing the Eiffel Tower. It really does, just yesterday I climbed La Tour Eiffel and I can easily do it again today. So why in reality have I wanted to avoid the actual site of the iron lattice Paris tower at all costs – could it perhaps be the flurry of Baguette-fed, burnt coffee smelling tourists that swarm around it as it was the lighthouse of culture. Perhaps yes.
The tower held the tallest man-made structure in the world title for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building had tumescence, and requires an easy to apply 60 tons of paint every seven years to maintain its shine. So what about all this engineered steel, vulgar stature and upkeep sweat makes the tower the dernier cri of a city so obsessed with haute culture. Ah perhaps it is the iconic nature of the edifice that has given Paris an arresting stardom. Unaffected by fame and fortune, seemingly that is, the city has clutched their ownership of all things culturally acceptable or culturally permitted that is. And somehow that gave the city of lights its notoriety. But Paris, the sufferer of middle child syndrome, did secretly want to appear to the world to be greater than, more chic than…
Voila I say! The Eiffel tower worked its prestidigitation.
Undeniably it peers at you from every corner of the city, when you come out of the dirty Metro, when you pop your head out of the tiny top window of your atelier and even when you wake from a sleep in one of the many manicured gardens around the city. It doesn’t smile down at the visitors queuing in snake-like formations below. It would probably spit on them if it could. But all the same visitors come and marvel at the engineering and Paris loves, oh really loves, all the attention. But of course my darling Paris will never admit to that.
Naturally I did a whole episode about fuck Paris, which you can listen to here.
More special Paris jottings below…