Clippings from Paris show |
Christo was also in Paris at the same time wrapping the Pont Neuf on the Seine. It was during la
rentrée (the two weeks a year when the Parisians are still in a good mood,
having just returned from their August vacances).
Kip interviewed on Pont Neuf |
I went to see the wrapped bridge. Everyone seemed to be there,
and it was quite a public event. Several radio journalists spotted me somehow
and interviewed me on the bridge. I had arrived. I just say this to establish
what that time was like for me in Paris. Frankly, the fuss made me quite uncomfortable.
I don’t recall if it was that same visit or on a later one when I crossed the Pont Alma one night to Avenue Marceau. I was on my own and don’t remember where I was headed. In front of me on the corner was 5 Avenue Marceau. It’s where Saint Laurent’s haute couture house stood, where he designed made-to-measure clothes for a clientele composed of the world’s wealthiest and most discerning women.
Pont Neuf wrapped by Christo 1985 |
I don’t recall if it was that same visit or on a later one when I crossed the Pont Alma one night to Avenue Marceau. I was on my own and don’t remember where I was headed. In front of me on the corner was 5 Avenue Marceau. It’s where Saint Laurent’s haute couture house stood, where he designed made-to-measure clothes for a clientele composed of the world’s wealthiest and most discerning women.
YSL, 5 Avenue Marceau, Paris |
It was a birthday cake of a building lit up like a Christmas tree. From across the street I could see St. Laurent himself fliting like a firefly from one chandelier-lit salon to the next. There he was, like a character in an elaborate 19th Century dollhouse or puppet proscenium. He was breath-taking to observe, almost unbelievable as an actual live human being. A moment remembered that stays forever because of its power.
I know not what brought me to Pont Alma that evening or what
was awaiting me on Avenue Marceau. We used to visit a ritzy hotel’s coffee shop
on Avenue Marceau, convinced that it was the best coffee in Paris. We would
order a café at the bar, because buying it there it was cheaper, as opposed to
sitting at a table or the even perching on the pricier terrace in front of the
hotel. Probably not that night, though.
We usually would go there in the morning, not at night.
Sometimes I would go to one of the Seine’s bridges like the Pont Neuf, Pont Alma or Pont Alexandre III when I was depressed. I always said that Paris was the perfect city in which to be depressed. It is too beautiful to actually get too caught up in despair and so it generally passes quickly. Petit morceaux, like the time I gave a stranger, a young salesclerk whom I admired, a card that I had made for him, and yet he blew me off. You know, tragedy.
Sometimes I would go to one of the Seine’s bridges like the Pont Neuf, Pont Alma or Pont Alexandre III when I was depressed. I always said that Paris was the perfect city in which to be depressed. It is too beautiful to actually get too caught up in despair and so it generally passes quickly. Petit morceaux, like the time I gave a stranger, a young salesclerk whom I admired, a card that I had made for him, and yet he blew me off. You know, tragedy.
Once, when I was moving (yet again) to sleep on someone else’s sofa for a while, two bin bags of possessions in hand, I stopped mid Pont Alexandre III and let my dire situation sink in. Then I thought, “It’s rough, but look where you are; you’re in Paris” and moved on.
One night in the Marais, tiny snowflakes tumbling, like the
opening scene of an opera, I spotted someone’s belongings strewn on a walkway. I
imagined a huge row and one or the other being expelled from the apartment,
possessions to follow, tossed from a Juliet balcony.
I dug through the pile of what I assumed were discarded
belongs and found a beautiful white wool rug from Morocco. I rolled it up and
took it to the apartment where I was staying. Returning to America later, I
left all my clothes behind, and flew back to the USA with the rug in my
suitcase instead.
My clothes were still in the apartment in Paris, the last I
heard.
Nostalgia is the veil that we drape over the memories of our
past.
"Proustifications on Paris"
ReplyDeletehttps://kipworldblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/proustifications-on-paris.html
Listening to radio in France: Early 80s, maid's room in the 19th, listening to Radio France on my Walkman. They played Stockhausen followed by Einstürzende Neubauten. I knew that I had arrived in a special place in my life.
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