Montmartre

“The day of the first performance of Apollinaire’s Couleur du Temps at the Conservatoire Renée Maubel, while I was talking to Picasso in the balcony during the intermission, a young man approaches me, stammers a few words, and finally manages to explain that he had mistaken me for one of his friends supposedly killed in the war…A few days later, through a mutual friend, I begin corresponding with Paul Eluard, whom I did not know by sight.  On furlough, he comes to see me:  I am in the presence of the same person as at Couleur du Temps.”

“I am concerned with facts of quite unverifiable intrinsic value…which, by their absolutely unexpected, violently fortuitous character, and the kind of associations of suspect ideas they provoke—a way of transforming gossamer into spiderweb” ~ Breton, Nadja

I stopped at a mart to pick up an Orangina and headed across the bridge that transverses the cemetery towards Montmartre itself.  Asphalt soon gave way to cobblestone streets that wind up and around.  Ivy vegetated on the walls.

I saw a balcony with two cranes on either side, one with beak pointed upwards and the other with a neck bent backwards, pruning its body, both sculpted from a darkish metal. 

A plaque on the side stated that an Adolf Loos had built the apartment for the Romanian born writer Tristan Tzara, famous for being one of the founders of the Dada movement in Zurich and, after his move to Paris, an important member of the Surrealists.

I stopped at a corner café for a croissant and coffee, right across from a store selling Toulouse Lautrec prints of various sizes.  The croissant was stale, or at the very least, old.  I continued on past the Conservatoire Renée Maubel, and rounding a corner, I entered a square. Violinists and accordionists played with cases open next to caricaturists and live portrait painters, landscape painters, and mimes.  The perimeter of the square was one big terrace. 

After I exited the square, I came to a fork in the road, with a large pink building on the corner, La maison rose.  I walked by it at first, not seeing any room on the terrace, but when I ended up looping back around, I stopped and ending up sitting inside and having a cup of French onion soup at 4 in the afternoon.

As I was walking back through the square, I saw an older man selling prints which I immediately recognized.  I had been given the very same black and white print over a year ago in an apartment in Bloomington, Indiana, after a friend had visited Paris.  It shows a caricature of a bearded man with glasses and a largish nose, and the nose and the man’s hair contain the image of a naked woman reclining, her curves are his profile, her bush, his eyebrows.  The text “What’s really on a man’s mind” appears alongside a stylized Sigmund Freud signature. 

As I turned a corner, I heard a man playing “Hey Jude,” and I made my way down a staircase.  The birds were chirping, and I came out onto a lookout, the Eiffel Tower in the distance.  

Humming nah nah nah nananaha nananaha to myself, I spotted a mustache that could mean only one thing.  Dalí.  There was an exhibit at L’Espace Montmartre about Dalí and his influence on contemporary artists, composed of some of Dalí’s lesser known works, like his predictably hallucinatory watercolor illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, and the crustaceous come on, Le Téléphone aphrodisiaque.

On my way out of the exhibit, I bought a print of Dalí’s "Banlieu de la ville paranoia aprés-midi,” passing up plenty of melting clocks.  

As I walked out, I heard the bells of Le Sacre Coeur tolling the hour, and rounding the corner, I took in the cathedral, and the French servicemen holding automatic rifles by the doors, the first but certainly not the last time I'd seen heavily armed soldiers in Europe.  There was also a man doing football tricks at the top of the stairs.   

The view of the city from the stairs of the cathedral was panoramic, people watching the afternoon sun sink down in the west, a slight haze on the horizon. 

I headed down the stairs, down into the city, towards the Seine. 

Le cimetière du Père Lachaise

Le cimetière du Père Lachaise closes at 5:30, when it’s at its best, when the darkness of the crypts and tombstones rejoins the darkness of the night.  We had planned to go on Sunday, my last full day in Paris.  But Saturday night bled into Sunday morning, and at 7:30 AM, we were sitting on a terrace eating croque madames and French fries, washed down with pints of Heineken, as the sky moved from sable to pewter to honey, a couple of blocks away from the Bastille. 

We took a cab back to my friend’s apartment in the 18^th.  The cabbie was playing French rap, and we slid through the early morning streets, the only people out being those who hadn’t yet slept like us or those who wake up early on Sundays, the exact moment when the counterweight and the batten pass each other, one heading up and one heading down. 

We lay down at 9:30, and then woke up at 3:30 in the afternoon.  We showered and dressed and headed to Metro Ternes. We rode along line 2, a calm female voice stating the name of each station twice, a free pronunciation lesson.  Blanche. Anvers. La Chapelle. Belleville. Père Lachaise. 

We got off the metro at 5:05, walking along the 20 foot wall that surrounds the cemetery, a slight bite in the breeze that felt appropriate for November 2^nd, the sky a light slate, crinkled oranges and browns crunched and rustled on the concrete.  Scarves were ubiquitous.  We entered and headed straight for the map, intent on paying our respects to the Lizard King.  We scanned the names, familiar ones popping out, Apollinaire, Eluard, Pilaf, Proust, Wilde. 

We found Jim’s area on the map and took to the curvy roads. Crows squawked and perched as if rented. We kept walking but couldn’t find his grave.  We spotted a cat that was slinking deeper into the graves off of the main path.  We thought maybe Jim was leading us to his resting place, but the cat ended up ensconcing itself in a bush.  We kept going and eventually we found Jim, his grave a bit tucked back, fenced off, and strewn with flowers, right next to a tree covered in wads of chewing gum.  I took a picture with my phone that needed editing and more exposure.  The fading light was perfect for ambiance, but deadly for photography. 

We noticed a man in his thirties or forties, right up against the fence, a guitar on his back and headphones in his ears, a pensive look.  I assumed he was listening to the Doors, and wondered what song…Light my Fire? Break on Through to the Other Side, The End? The Music’s Over? The Crystal Ship?  The man asked my friend in French if we’d stand guard for him while he hopped the fence to replace a picture of Jim that had fallen down in the leaves.  She agreed and asked him if she could take a picture of him.  He said D’accord.

He unslung his guitar from his back, took it out of the case, and hopped the fence with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.  He picked up the picture, and slid it under his guitar strings and posed, a French Johnny Cash.  My friend took the picture, and the man placed the picture of Jim back in its rightful place and whispered a few words.  The revving of a moto and a blue light broke through our mini wake, and we heard a loud and frustrated voice.  The man hopped right back over the fence, said an obligatory Pardon, and he walked away. 

I wondered whether this was the first time that he’d been shooed out of the cemetery.  It was now 5:45, and almost completely dark.  The bells were tolling a last call.  We exited the cemetery and walked back to the metro station, to head towards Belleville for dinner.  As we boarded the train, we saw the man one last time, headphones back in, guitar back in its case and on his back, bound northwestwards along line 2. 

My friend posted the picture on her instagram. It was in black and white and looked like a poster, so we thought it was going to be a big hit. Sometimes her selfies get over a hundred likes.  This picture only got twenty-seven. 

Paris 2

I met back up with my friend late that night, and we went to the apartment where she was cat sitting.  The apartment was very chic, located in one of the more well-to-do parts of Paris, and the cat was named Rothko and very affectionate. 

I got up the next morning, and with free reign over the kitchen, I made myself an omlette du fromage and ate it with a glass of white wine, while Rothko floated in and out of the kitchen.  I headed to Montmartre because it was close, and I had heard of it before.  It was Halloween, so I figured a visit to the cemetery would be appropriate, even during the day.  And it was a splendid day, in the 50s and sunny. 

I was interested to find out what exactly was Parisian about Paris.  That first night, I hadn’t seen much that was terribly unique.  When I got off the bus, when I got off the metro, I felt like it could have been Madrid.  A lot of streets in one European city look like a lot of streets in other European cities.  The pharmacies all have green crosses.  The buildings don’t go much higher than 5 or 6 stories.  Restaurants have canopies.  The key then is to get to those distinguishing elements, the ticks or idiosyncrasies of a city, what makes Paris Paris, Madrid Madrid, Berlin Berlin, etc. 

One thing I picked up on fairly quickly was the arrangement of the seating in the terraces.  A small thing to be sure, but these quirks are small things.  The monuments, the sites, don’t count.  Of course the Eiffel Tower is Parisian.  But that’s not the sort of thing I was concerned about.  I was interested in quirks. 

In Madrid, terraces are always arranged in such a way that seats are centered around a table, whether four, three, or two seats per table, facilitating conversation between a set amount of people all facing each other.  In Paris, tables and chairs tend to be arranged in lines, in what you could call stadium seating, making it difficult to talk to anyone that’s not right beside you.  Everyone is facing the street.  Presumably, that which goes on in the streets is worth your attention, a live air theater that goes on toujours.  If there is one place in particular where the line between art and life is hazily indeterminate, it’s Paris. 

This bleeding of art into life and vice versa continues into death.  There are three major cemeteries in Paris proper, and many more in the suburbs.  They are elaborate, consisting in many above ground graves, crypts, some of which are about the size of porta potties, others which are more on the mini-barn scale, all of stone, all impressively carved.  Gargoyles are pretty common, along with crows/ravens.  The main pathways are cobblestone, and there are small, mostly overgrown, spaces between the graves, mostly fit for cats and smaller animals. 

And popping out from the obscurity of the graves, the flowers. Bouquets, single stems, carnations, roses, lilies, left by family or admirers.  The plots in these cemeteries are a hot commodity, mostly reserved for the elite, whether military, government, or cultural.  In Père Lachaise, for example, one must have been born in Paris, lived in Paris for an extended period of time, or died in Paris.  With the last option, we should add that one should probably be decently well-known, with Jim Morrison being a case in point. 

Most of the names are French men and women who I’ve never heard of before.  It’s strange to visit a cemetery, without having any real connection with not only those buried but also to the culture and history itself.  You become a foreigner at least twice over.  A non-mourner in a place of mourning, and in my case, an American in a place of French history and memory.  I can appreciate this, but necessarily from a distance.  Such is the plight of the traveler, however…the one who traverses physical distance in a desire to traverse the distance of cultural and historical difference, to press his or her face against the glass that never quite seems to break. 

In Arlington Cemetery, for example, those buried, although I never knew any of them, they gave their lives as part of a national narrative of which I am a part.  In France, not so, unless we generalize to the common foes that our countries have had over the years.  Instead of feeling ghostly amongst the ghosts, I feel heavy, the weight of my difference in my veins. 

And then I ask myself, “Why flowers?”  Of all the things to leave at graves, why flowers?  Are they the beauty that dies, just like us?  Egyptians would leave most of the dead’s positions with them in the crypt for enjoyment in the afterlife.  Flowers don’t take up as much space as, say, your favorite chair or your books.  Shriveled flowers are also easier to clean up.  And yes, there must be groundskeepers and crypt sweepers, for without the efforts of the living, the dead are nothing.  Perhaps more interesting to consider is whether the inverse is true as well.

Paris 1

Paris is hallowed ground.  It is a lodestone towards which a metal needle inside of me has been pointed for many years, a place that has been built up in my mind, shaped, added on to, remodeled with new wings, towers, wall-length windows, a castle made of words, and all that accompany words…fantasy, half-truths, the seeing through others’ eyes.

Paris was the place I was most intent on visiting in Europe, and it was the first trip I took outside of Spain.  As one of the most hyped and romanticized cities in the world, my particular fantasy began early in college, as I began studying philosophy my sophomore year.  Sartre was my introduction, my first taste of French thinking and style, its independence, its liberties, and its convolutions. 

Around this same time, after finishing the requirements for my minor in Spanish, I started taking French, and continued for 5 semesters or so, concluding with a literature class that focused primarily on the 19^th and early 20^th century.  At the same time, as I delved further into philosophy and especially “critical theory” writ large, I became further enamored with the French modus operandi, the panache that surged through all the author’s work.  And then of course, there are the others, the non-French, who called Paris home for whatever length of time and whose enthrallment with the city is infectious. 

Among those who I came into contact with:  Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Hugo, Zola, Flaubert, Voltaire, Jarry, Apollinaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Proust, Artaud, Breton, Tzara, Dalí, Picasso, Miller, Hemingway, Stein, dos Passos, Fitzgerald, Godard, Eluard, Man Ray, Duchamp, Bataille, hell even Owen Wilson. 

I wanted to be the flâneur, to wander the streets, absorb the buildings, drink wine, eat cheese, sit on a terrace and watch the people go by. I flew from Madrid to Beauvais on a Ryanair flight, landing at the airport around 7:30 and boarding the bus for an hour or so ride into the city proper.  It was dark, and I got the impression that the scenery wasn’t that impressive anyway.  Once we got into the city however, things picked up speed, took shape.  My heart jumped a little bit as I got the first glimpse of the illuminated Eiffel Tower in the distance. 

I was staying with a friend, who is and has been an au pair for a French family for the last year or so, and who had recently started working at a tiki bar in the former red light district of Paris, right by the Moulin Rouge.  By the time I got off the bus, she was already on her way to work, so I had to make my way there from Porte Maillot, in the western part of the city.  Finding the metro proved difficult, and then my data ran out on my phone, leaving me mapless and disoriented.  I took shelter in a large shopping center/hotel near by, where I was able to get wi-fi, and contact my friend and recharge the credit on my pay as you go phone plan. 

The tiki bar, called Dirty Dick, a name which was kept from the previous tenants, was right next to Metro Pigalle, and once I found the metro stop at Porte Maillot, was easy to find.  Once I got to the bar, I greeted my friend, who I hadn’t seen for over a year, and talked a bit, but since she was working we couldn’t catch up that much.  All the employees wear Hawaiian shirts. Bottles are thrown from the length of the bar from one barkeep to another.  Drinks are lit on fire (evidently cinnamon is flammable) and served in giant conch shells. 

I got discounted drinks, so I hung out and talked with a friend of my friend’s, an LA native who has lived in France for the last 10 years, doing various things over that time and now has just opened up an English language school.   We hung out at the bar, and covered a pretty broad swath of topics, ranging from living in Paris, to parallels between the structure of the electron cloud model and the structure of the universe (or universes) to Tinder, which I’ve found is ubiquitous in Europe. 

Near closing time, we left, grabbed a couple of beers (Kronenbourg 1664) from a quicky mart (I know they don’t call them chinos in Paris…but I don’t know what they do call them), and walked back to his apartment, where we hung out until my friend got off work.  The biggest takeaway I got is that Paris isn’t an easy place to live.  It’s not the fairy tale it’s made out to be, which is obvious and makes sense, but it is still always more affecting to hear from someone who has lived there and been through the various trials and tribulations that are concomitant with living in a city, especially as a foreigner.  Paris has its issues, as do all places, but it seems to be a less safe city than Madrid for example.  Both this guy and my friend had been mugged at some point in the city.  It’s also just expensive, and Parisians are notoriously cold to non-Parisians, whether French or foreign. 

At the same time, in the end, he was very clear about the things he loved about the city, that despite the various issues, it is still a unique and beautiful place to live. Little things, streets, views, restaurants, cafés are what impress themselves into your mind.