Liner Notes

DSC #6: Headlights “On April 2″

Les Bouquinistes. April, 2008

I’m back on the same street again. It’s one of the main tourist spots in Paris but other than the souvenir shops, life here next to the Seine looks pretty authentic. There are wooden stalls set up all along the river selling old books and posters, knick knacks and of course souvenirs. I look up to see a kindly old man smiling at me and I feel obliged to buy some of his stuff. He asks me where I’m from and in my broken French and his broken English, we begin a little pas des deux. It doesn’t last long of course but I’m grateful for the little human contact.

What a difference a day makes. You wouldn’t have recognised me just yesterday. I was light and full of joy, ecstatic even. I also wasn’t alone. We met up at Gare de Lyon and walked around Paris. He hadn’t been in Paris for years but he insisted on being the tour guide. He scorned my maps and guidebooks, calling me “la touriste”, but he was the one who got us lost the whole time. Actually, that’s not very fair. We didn’t actually have a destination to begin with. We simply stood in front of the massive “orientation maps” outside metro stations and I pointed somewhere and on y va! We talked about everything, anything and nothing. We stopped when we want and changed our minds so many times that I had no idea where in goddamn Paris I actually was yesterday.

Usually I love wandering around the streets of a foreign city, admiring the buildings and observing how people go about their daily lives but this time, I didn’t do any of that. I vaguely remember us walking past Notre Dame and laughing at the snaking queue of tourists and the Luxembourg Gardens but it was still a little chilly this time of the year so we didn’t stay long. He made me order food in my horrible French and laughed as the guy behind the counter tried not to spit in my face in disdain. It was the best 16 hours of my life.

I’m walking up from Notre Dame now on the way back to my hotel and as the sun sets behind the building it begins to feel a little surreal, especially when you are wearing new shoes that you’ve just randomly bought and the cobblestoned street you’re plodding on seems to stretch on forever. It’s starting to get late and as the little cafes and restaurants fill up with human warmth, the streets get increasingly deserted and I remember thinking: why in fuck’s name are accordions associated with Paris when all you see are boarded-up storefronts rampant with graffiti and people’s faces are hardened and closed up? Where is the charm? and where is the romance?

And then I remembered: all the charm and romance had just left in a train earlier that day.

DSC #5: Alexi Murdoch “Wait”

Pacing up and down is probably not the best way to appear casual. One should ideally be reading the paper or a book at some cafe sipping coffee and absentmindedly picking at a croissant. But the seats in the nearby cafe have all been taken up and it’s too cold to sit outside and still be able to project the image of an insouciant morning.

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DSC #4: Fake Empire

It’s almost 9pm and we are hungry. There doesn’t seem to be any eateries up or down the street. We turned off another corner and still nothing. That’s it, I thought, I’m just going to die from hunger in one of the world’s best known gastronomical cities. The cold is really coming in now and I pull my coat tighter around me and stuff my hands as far down my jeans pockets as they would go.

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Soundscape #126: “April Is The Cruelest Month”

For a couple of years now, April has always meant an introspective time for me. I’ve been taking my holidays around March and April is always spent ruing the harsh reality of life back home. Gone are the pleasant hours spent wandering about. Instead, April always seems to encompass the frantic catching up of emails and work.

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