I´ve heard of these 24 hour hotlines that are set up to assist Japanese tourists who, believing Paris to be the world center of sophistication and class, are so traumatized by the reality of the place after visiting it that they require counseling to recover from the shock of what they call 'Paris Syndrome'. The streets are paved with shit and rubbish. The homeless, the addicts, amputees, vagrants, vagabonds, gypsies, geriatrics, and generally displaced swamp the train stations and construct beds over heating vents, grasping at you with the most pathetic, piteous expressions. There is SO MUCH that is so clearly, obviously wrong with this city that should be completely inexcusable, cracks and glaring holes in its facade without so much a strip of masking tape to conceal them. Though far from ruining its romantic image this effect just contributes to the feeling that Paris is a living city, one that is vibrant and visceral, dirty and bold, and has nothing to hide. It is able to bear its shit stains and scars without embarrassment or shame because it knows that it can pretty much do no wrong. When you put beggars into an ugly city it becomes derelict, but put them into a beautiful city and it gives it character. I feel like, had I grown up in Paris, I would be a much harder person. It seems I would have to be just to get by, either through overcoming my tendency to part with my money out of sheer politeness, or by becoming as callous and demanding as the rest of the homeless once I'd given it all away. People are wrong when they talk about the French as though they are a soft people. They have to deal with the difficult reality of the world's filthy refuse pleading and scavenging in the most vulgar fashion against a most wonderful backdrop of crushingly beautiful architecture, it's not something that’s easy to take lightly, or would at least take some time to become desensitized to.
I did not have a map for the whole of my first day in the city (which is the reason I ended up 30€ for a taxi to take me two blocks to my hotel) so I didn't have much of a sense of direction or purpose once I got there. But from a very early age Australians are taught that the words 'Champs Elysées' are synonymous with a visit to Paris, and so that, in a very round-about way, is where I went. It did take me quite a while to get there, given my poor sense of direction and the terrible difficulty I have staying on task. I got off the metro (blessed metro, it made my life so much easier during my time there) at the Gallerie La Fayette, for no reason other than that I really like the name- I had no intention of actually going inside. This lead me down the street to a Parthenon-style cathedral, from which I could see the Obelisque, from which I could see both the Arch de Triumphe and the Eiffel Tower... it's no wonder I had such difficulty walking in the same direction, I felt like a moth being drawn to a series of increasingly bright flames. I tried to walk from the Obelisque towards the Eiffel tower but that route took me past the Petit Palais which, since I had run out of batteries for my camera, I entered. I can't imagine that there is one gallery, palace, or museum in Paris that is not worth going into, I felt almost duty bound to enter every one I came past. The Petit Palais contained a collection which pretty much exemplified the Paris that we all love and think we know. That mingling of the excessively pretty, delicate and impeccable detailing that somehow makes everything seem much lighter than it actually is, and these curious, subtle variations on shape, composition and colour that only the French seem to be able to understand at that the rest of us call 'chic'. This was true of just about all of the works that the Palace contained, apart from the porcelain... I've never met a piece of porcelain that I've not disliked. No matter how expensive or well-made they are I think I will always think of them as tacky and boring wastes of time. Being an absolute sucker for impressionism though, I was pleased to see a few little Monets and Pissarros hanging on the walls. One rooms was full of these beautiful, almost impressionistic sketch paintings by this artist who was famous for his sculptures more than anything, and which were not exhibited or even publically known until after his death. I'm so angry with myself though, because I dont remember is name, and haven't been able to find it out yet.
I eventually did find my way to the Arch de Triumphe, once you spot from the Champs Elysées it's really not all that easy to lose your way. I've always had a real fondness for the Arch, It just stands there so proudly and defiantly in the middle of this enormous crowded intersection, it looks as though nothing in the world could ever shake it or detract from its grandeur. As I was standing there photographing it like the worst kind of tourist I noticed some break dancers busking behind me, so I stayed to watch. There’s something unbelievably sexy about people yelling in French, I find it so grating to hear people doing the same in Australian accents but the way the French enunciate and punch out their consonants just sounds so great, they weren't even particularly good dancers but I paid them happily. I'm so glad I stayed to watch too, because just as I was leaving I spotted a figure waving at me from across the road. It took me a few seconds to realize that there was actually somebody I knew and happened to bump into in this enormous city, it was Tim Collins. There’s no way to properly express how shocked, pleased and altogether fucking dumbfounded I was to find him there, for minutes I couldn't stop laughing at the good fortune which was all the more impressive for the fact that, while I had only been in Paris a few hours, it was his very last day in Europe before returning to Australia. It turns out he was only walking in my direction because he wanted to get away from the Eiffel tower, after losing an admirably large amount of money on a bet with a card shark on a street leading to it.
Thankfully Tim conceded that it would be a good idea to go back to the Tower, as the sun was just about to set and I wanted to see a night time view of Paris from above. The way these extraordinary icons affect you is sort of odd, it’s hard to say whether or not I would have been so charged up by the sight of the building had I not been aware of its status. I did find it to be a really beautiful building, its size in relation to its surroundings lends it a rather dominating quality but its construction, this highly organized chaos of spindly, wiry iron bars causes it to appear almost delicate. It is a perfect construction of both negative and positive space. However, the fact that it was so widely and ostentatiously criticized when it was first erected does make me wonder whether I, along with so many other tourists, are moved to slobber and gasp at its beauty alone rather than simply being impressed by the renown that has grown around it, it exists as a concept as much as a physical building. Or am I simply the result of an age that is more easily able to appreciate its beauty than the one it was built in? In order to arrive at any of the bases of the tour we had to make our way through the throngs of impressively persistent street venders selling Eiffel Tower statuettes, which was actually just about as entertaining as it was tedious... the way they tried to convince Tim that, although he had bought two of them prior to meeting me, it would be an excellent idea to buy a third. There is not a great deal I can say about the view from the top of the tower except that it was impressive enough to keep us there for quite some time even though I may well have contracted frostbite, and my body was shaking so uncontrollably that i could barely hold my camera without dropping it. If you ever feel like going to the top of the Eiffel tower at night for God's sake rug the fuck up.
The whole time I was in France I did my very best to fool people into thinking that I spoke the language, using my very limited knowledge of it. I was able to fool other tourists in this way, as they would ask me in very awkward and stilted French if they were headed in the right direction to various locations, and I would reply very confidently 'oui, il est là' however this barely ever worked when I was talking to locals. It’s the most disappointing thing when you speak to somebody in what you believe to be reasonably good French and they reply in English. Tim had barely any idea of how to speak French but his methods of communication were frustratingly more effective than mine were, he would just say what he wanted to say in a sort of pan-European accent, accentuating in particular the vowel sounds Australians tend to neutralize when speaking to each other. This was not only quicker and much more efficient than my disjointed sentences which switched awkwardly between English and French, but actually hit on quite a few words which were pronounced pretty accurately in French. This tactic wasn't completely free of flaws, though. When asking for directions to a train station, for example, he would ask for the gare- pronounced as in 'where', rather than like 'scar', so what he was actually saying sounded more like guerre... he walked around Paris like a dotty old general asking for directions to the war.
I woke up early the next day completely exhausted, after having spent my whole night with Tim catching up in very hushed voices, as we were rather rudely informed that we were not allowed to both be in my hotel room, and there were people asleep in the dorm of his hostel. Nevertheless I was determined to spend my entire day at Versailles, and not being entirely sure how long it would take me to get there, that morning I forced myself against every fatigued fibre of my being towards Gare du Nord, where I knew there would at least be coffee. This was also my chance to say goodbye to Tim, whose flight home was departing that afternoon. That was rather horrible for me, we had spent less than a day together but it seems that’s all that was needed to get me used to his company, and I missed him instantly. Though if there is any cure for home-sickness in Europe, Versailles is it. Simply being there, being witness to its incomparable magnificence, made me feel so incredibly happy in a way I really hadn't expected it to. I know I've probably said or at least implied this of quite a number of places, and so it may be beginning to lose its weight, but I almost can't imagine a more perfect place in the entire world. Never mind the sheer size and value of the place, or the enormous historical value, the sheer imaginative spirit which dictated the design inspires such joy, this overwhelming feeling of tranquillity. Having the political and financial means to create such an extraordinary palace and gardens is one thing, but the creative power to realise its potential is much more impressive. It felt almost relieving, a break from the real world of peasants, and cold weather, thoroughly unenthusiastic and unhappy waitresses, hotel rooms with tiled bedroom floors and avocado coloured bathroom fixtures, subway sandwiches for dinner... avenues that double as public urinals... Le Chateau de Versailles is the end of the world of the mediocre. A place where, almost ironically given the actual facts of its history, it seems like nothing could possibly go wrong. It is strange the way beautiful buildings will inspire horrific events, but what Louis XIV did was recreate the Garden of Eden, and then constantly and greedily snack on forbidden fruits... anybody could have guessed what would happen next.
Quite a lot of what you see in the city of Paris seems to be a direct result of a great self-awareness of its status as a tourist destination. The performers, artists and musicians that line the streets either side of the Seine seem to be there almost ironically, to humour us. Men with easels and filthy hands painting impressionistic sunset scenes, accordionists going through Edith Piaf's entire repertoire, Marcel Marceau impersonators, that rather nostalgic fin de siecle francophilic sort of kitsch. This is especially true of Montmartre, around Sacre Coeur. Though this is the sort of shameless tourist exploitation that I really don’t mind at all, as the premise of it is nothing less than the enthusiastic and completely open performance of music and art. The trickling, locomotive melodies of Amelie's waltz fell carelessly from a piano in a restaurant and mingled playfully with the exotic fragrances emanating from its kitchen as I, tinkering with a music box playing 'Sous le Ciel de Paris', overlooked a paunchy, grubby, white bearded artist painting the portraits of a grinning gaggle of Spanish ladies. Of course they all had ulterior motives, every artist was expecting or hoping for an extortionate amount of money in return for their services but it was hard to care about that when the feeling of festivity and joy was almost tangible.
Another very charming aspect of the Parisian landscape lines the Seine in the form of the miniature stalls selling 'livres anciens', editions of books that were so old and attractive in their current setting that I felt like it would almost be a shame to purchase one and remove it from its environment. Dozens and dozens of these little stalls interrupted the walk along the river to my intended destination, the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It is easy to see how Victor Hugo would have been inspired to write his famous novel 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' by this building, especially as, at the time that it was written, it had fallen to neglect and dilapidation (it was the novel itself that prompted its revival), it is the perfect cathedral in the perfect city for the business of romanticism. It has nothing of the illustrious, extravagant, transcendent beauty of St Paul's in London. Paris' Lady is a fine, somber one. Dimly lit from the inside, the only light one is offered comes from the massive rose windows, elegant, richly coloured masterpieces of masonry which seem to have burst from the center of their position on the walls and shattered into them a celebration of symmetry and colour. St. Paul's and Notre Dame exemplify a lot about the character of their respective cities, London's tireless hunger for properness and perfection against the bold Parisian acceptance of the world's evils, the darkness of humanity, Notre Dame's architecture almost feels as though it was informed as much by evil as by divinity. I think if i grew up attending St. Paul’s it would have driven me to Catholicism, while Notre Dame would have driven me towards poetry.
The last place I visited in Paris was the Louvre. I had tried every day to arrive there early enough to avoid the masses of tourists that I had assumed and that I had been informed would be flooding the place at around lunch time, but unfortunately, after the bleary-eyed morning I spent heading to Versailles, I had not since mustered the will power to leave my hotel before 10am. Thankfully the rumors about the fullness of the place aren’t strictly true, though there were an extraordinary number of people around the place when I arrived the gallery is big enough to accommodate all of us without causing too much animosity between visitors vying to see the some of the world’s greatest works of art. I mentioned before that I thought that the British Museum is among the greatest of mankind’s achievements, and the Louvre is another. Even the just building, free of the artworks, would be an extraordinary place to be in. It is so large, so detailed and luxurious, it is quite possibly the best and easiest buildings the world to get lost in (which I happened to do). I'm sure I could have sat in front of a huge number of works for hours, and not feel like I had wasted a second of my time, but it’s almost ironic that, in the museum which contains probably more of humanity’s greatest artworks than any other in the world, the importance of the individual works almost decreases, relative to the impact of the place as a whole. The impact of simply walking around the grand halls whose walls vibrated and blared with beauty, or swiveling round and round on one heel in the garden of statues with its grand, fantastical mythological inhabitants of superhuman perfection, completely disregarding any particular work, is just about as good as you can get.
Of course there are a huge number of particular works on the gallery that it feels rather important to see, to overlook the Mona Lisa would be almost criminal and an enormous shame, and I have literally had dreams about the Venus de Milo, but these works have a permanent fan base which doesn't seem to move from in front of them, I would be surprised if there is a single minute of the day when the Mona Lisa doesn’t have somebody looking enigmatically back at her. However I was lucky to have some relatively uninterrupted time in front of a few other staggering masterpieces. Since the Van Gough Museum in Amsterdam I have been compiling a list of names of artists and art works that have really touched me. As I have tried to be very selective in my choice I generally don’t add more than four or five new names to the list at any given museum, but there is now over a pages worth of names crammed into my art folio dedicated to the Louvre’s collection. Unsurprisingly this included one work by Caravaggio, 'Death of the Virgin', which is not only a supremely beautiful but extremely interesting work. After commissioning the painting from him it was then rejected by the parish for which it was intended for several reasons, firstly it appeared to be rather irreverent, as the virgin mother is splayed on her death bed, without any indication of her divine status or ascent into heaven, and she is quite simply a dead woman. She is also clothed in the contemporary street wear of the time, as are the crowd of people who surround her. Most controversially, though, it was rumored that her figure was modeled on the drowned body of a hooker that had been found on the banks of a river. The other work I was really struck by was Da Vinci's 'St John the Baptist'. Da Vinci's paintings are technically so perfect that it would be reasonable to think of the emotion and expression contained within their subjects as something of a technical trick, something crafted and calculated perfectly in the colours and contours, almost like a photograph. There’s something uncomfortable about this thought, it suggests that one of the greatest masters of the translation of emotion and life into paint and the scholars of humanity would not necessarily have had to have felt or understood emotion at all, merely the physical appearance of it. To me it’s more obvious in Da Vinci’s work that in any other artists' that art's power is entirely determined by the viewer's perception of it. The restrained, refined, realistic quality of his subjects gives so much scope for the viewer to imbue them with life and feeling. That, to me, is the key to his genius.
After a very long day at the Louvre it was time for me to, very reluctantly, say goodbye to Paris (for the time being) and say hello to Mulhouse, a tiny town on the outskirts of France, near the Swiss and German borders. The concept of a French bogan town was pretty unfamiliar to me but this is what I was met by. There are a few very lovely parks dotted around the city, but unfortunately the architecture and behavior of the citizens rather spoils the fantasy image of the infallible French chic. That being said, though, the language alone did somewhat help its image... after all a car full of drunkards hurtling down the street at night does not have nearly the same effect when they are blasting French pop from the windows. Indeed the difference between small Australian, German and French towns seems to be a matter of English semantics, the Australian ones are trashy, German ones are squalid messes, and the French are 'provincial'. After having dinner at a bar close by my hotel one night I did get to talking to some quite friendly local bar flies, they had picked up on the fact that I spoke barely any French and couldn't resist the opportunity to try out their bi-lingual friend on me. His entire night from that point was spent translating our conversations, which I’m sure he wasn't entirely thrilled about. That night I developed a little bi-lingual party trick of my own, I communicated in very jaunty French to one of the women there that she looked like Liza Minnelli, and after a period of howling laughter they rewarded me with a shot. The game continued when I told successive bar flies their English-speaking celebrity lookalikes (having to use increasingly more imaginative comparisons and stretches of the truth), from Kirsten Dunst to Orlando Bloom to Jamie Oliver... it became difficult after I was asked to produce a comparison for the English speaking man, who happened to be spectacularly average looking... my solution was to tell him that he looked like an Australian rugby player. Not knowing the name of a single rugby player, Australian or otherwise, I relied on the assumption that he wouldn't have much of a clue of the names of Australian celebrities either, so the name I gave him was Bert Newton.
Having come from Berlin straight to London and then Paris finding myself in such a small and remote town was actually quite a shock to the system but after my first day of looking at the dismal, comparatively pathetic landmarks and souvenir shops I actually started to really enjoy it. Spending so much time walking around these enormous cities with their historical weight and marvelous landmarks is really overwhelming, some days you leave you hotel room in the morning and feel as though it’s just impossible to come to terms with. Mulhouse provided none of that daunting grandiosity and allowed me to take in it’s the simplistic beauty of its parks and the gorgeous weather I was lucky enough to enjoy during my stay. I was also surprised by the Musée des Beaux Arts, which contained a couple of truly fantastically beautiful work, particularly that of Jean-Jacques Henner, whose sumptuous nudes gracefully skirt a line somewhere between the realms of fantastical idealism and a realism which is strangely relatable. Finding this collection of work in such a small gallery in such a small town was like happening upon a fleck of gold at the bottom of a creek, a gratifying sort of reward for those who are interested or stubborn enough to find it.
Since I would be visiting Paris immediately after London I knew that I would inevitably have to make comparisons between the two cities, as if I should be adjudicating some sort of competition between them. Though tiresome and ineffective as the phrase may seem, the marvelous cities of London and Paris are literally and sincerely too different to each other to pick a favorite. London was comfortable; I felt it was the city I was always supposed to be in. Paris is still very much a city of dreams, even after having seen it in the flesh. While I can, and hope always to, remember London in great clarity and detail Paris was always a daze, a haze of bright lights, beggars, remarkable palaces and squalid dumps, gardens of the sweetest perfumes and alleys reeking of piss, a sensual overload. Filthy, grand, delicious, disgusting, depressing, dazzling, transcendent, uplifting, fine and brutal... anything, EVERYTHING but mediocre.
