Friday, December 20, 2024

Je suis un flâneur

or how I have come to love almost all things Parisian

A photograph of a section of the back cover of Bob Dylan's Another Side of Bob Dylan LP on which the following poem appears: for françoise hardy at the seine's edge a giant shadow of notre dame seeks t' grab my foot sorbonne students whirl by on thin bicycles swirlin' lifelike colors of leather spin the breeze yawns food far from the bellies or erhard meetin' johnson piles of lovers fishing kissing lay themselves on their books. boats. old men clothed in curly mustaches float on the benches blankets of tourist in bright red nylon shirts with straw hats of ambassadors (cannot hear nixon's dawg bark now) will sail away as the sun goes down the doors of the river are open i must remember that i too play the guitar it's easy t' stand here more lovers pass on motorcycles roped together from the walls of the water then i look across t' what they call the right bank an' envy your trumpet player Some Other Kinds Of Songs... ©2024 Patrick T. Power

NOTE: I've decided to abandon my Substack account because of that platform's decision to create a partnership with right-winger Bari Weiss's organziation. I will migrate what few posts I've published there to this site. This post was originally published on 13 June 2024.

Françoise Hardy died yesterday.

I first heard of her when I read the poem-liner notes that Bob Dylan included on the back of his LP Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was released sixty years ago (!!) this year.

I was not yet 9 at the time, so my awareness of Dylan wouldn’t really hit until the next year, when “Like A Rolling Stone” became a mainstay on the radio, and even then, it was just another Top 40 song I heard a lot. “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” also got a lot of airplay the following year (as had a number of his songs performed by other people that I wouldn’t have known at the time were his), but I wouldn’t fall under his spell for another six years, so I probably didn’t buy Another Side until 1971 or so. I recall that when I read this poem for the first time, I didn’t understand Hardy’s first name. At that time, I knew virtually zero French other than Comment allez-vous?1 which I’d seen in a book in my grade school’s library in 6th or 7th grade, so when I saw Françoise, the E at the end threw me because for whatever reason, I thought the reference was to a guy since I’d only heard or seen the male equivalent, François, up until that point. It didn’t occur to me then to look the person up, but then, there wasn’t an internet—where and how, exactly, would I have done this?

All that has little to do, I guess, with my love of Paris, but it was seeing the news that Hardy had died which got me to thinking again about my favorite city. You see, after my first visit to Paris in November of 2005, I kept up my efforts to learn French, and in addition to constantly listening to lessons so that I could speak it a little better on my next trip, I watched French films. One such film was actually a Québécois film, Les Invasions barbares, and it was as the credits rolled that I heard Françoise Hardy’s voice for probably the first time as she sang “L’amitié”.2

I realize this is a rather disjointed post but so many of my memories are intertwined and therefore connect only tangentially. I can’t help but think about Paris when I think about Françoise Hardy, and of course, Dylan comes to mind when I think of her.

So, anyway… Paris…

A black-and-white photograph of a crosswalk on Avenue de Clichy in Paris's 18th arrondissement. The photograph shows only the bottom halves of about eight pedestrians along with their shadows as they make their way across the avenue. The crosswalk is a series of one foot by probably ten foot white rectangles which run diagonally in the photo from the bottom left corner to the upper right corner.Piétons ©2024 Patrick T. Power

When I arrived in Paris that first time, I didn’t really know what to expect. I was nearly 50 and I hadn’t been much of a traveler up until that point in my life, but I had begun to get the bug a few years earlier as a perk, of sorts, that came with the duties of a volunteer position I’d taken with the local folk music and dance organization, The Ten Pound Fiddle Coffeehouse. I made trips to Albuquerque, Vancouver, Jacksonville, Nashville, Memphis, and Montréal to scout musicians for the concert series I was booking. During that time, September of 2004 to be precise, my affection for photography had been rekindled thanks to having discovered Flickr. One of my Flickr contacts3 at the time, Catherine, was a Parisian and sometime in early 2005, she extended an invitation to stay with her and her family (a story in itself), which I leapt at. I acquired my first passport that summer and bought airfare for early November.

By this time, I’d been on Flickr for about a year, and had developed a number of online relationships with other Parisian Flickr people, so I practically had a built-in social network in place when I stepped off the plane. At that time, a lot of local Flickr groups were forming, and meet-ups and photowalks were being organized all around the world, so I fully expected to get together with people I’d communed with online, as well as meet a few new people along the way.

A couple of weeks or so before the trip, Catherine let me know she was having issues with a contractor, which meant having to make other arrangements for the first several days. I told this to another Flickr contact in Germany (Maja) via chat one day and she hooked me up with one of her Flickr contacts (Callixte), who blindly agreed to provide me a place to stay for a couple of nights; the next two would be spent with yet another contact, Phil, before I moved on to Catherine’s place. Things worked out, thanks to Flickr.

When I arrived at the Port-Royal train station from Charles-de-Gaulle, Callixte greeted me and we walked the five minutes or so to his place. He had to go back to work, so I got caught up on emails and posting a few pictures to Flickr. It rained that evening, but I still went out for a bit while Callixte was away, and I basically walked the perimeter of Jardin du Luxembourg. I recall walking along Rue de Vaugirard4 behind a gentleman who walked with his hands clasped together behind his back, a rosary dangling from his fingers, with light too dim to take a decent photograph with my camera.5 When I got back from the walk, Callixte and I went to dinner and then I wrote a blog post6 about the day before passing out on the futon.

Probably unlike most tourists, I don’t have much of a tourist-y mindset when traveling. In fact, I had spent a good part of my first full day in the 4th arrondissement, specifically at la Cathédrale Notre-Dame, not so much because it’s a must-see tourist destination, really, but because having grown up Catholic and spending a lot of time in one of Toledo’s oldest churches, I’ve long had a thing for religious iconography—despite my atheistic ways. Earlier in the year in Montréal, I’d spent some time away from my conference in la Basilique Notre-Dame, so I got a little bit of a taste of Gothic architecture + religious iconography + French history at that time. I recall thinking as I walked the streets of Old Montréal, that “as amazing as this place is, Paris must be really be amazing!” For years, I’ve had an illustrated book by architect David Macaulay, Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction—which while not specifically about Notre Dame7, it could be—and its drawings depict the grandness of such a church as well as its importance to the people in the community. There is a certain feeling, I guess, being in such a historic place, especially after spending so many years of my youth in and around an old Catholic church, of being somehow in touch with the people whose hands built it.

A black-and-white photographic diptych with Notre Dame Cathedral's statue of Saint Joan of Arc (Sainte Jeanne D'Arc) in the left frame and the ceiling of the cathedral in the right frame.Sainte-Jeanne D’Arc et la Cathédrale Notre-Dame ©2024 Patrick T. Power

From Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the Seine upon which Notre Dame sits, I walked north along the river into the 1st Arrondissement. Despite that the Eiffel Tower is hard to miss from just about any vantage point in the city, I chose not to photograph it right away. In fact, I intentionally obscured it for the most part in my first photograph of it, taken from Jardin des Tuileries—the tourist not wanting to be a tourist.

A black-and-white photograph taken in Jardin des Tuileries which shows the Eiffel Tower in the distance, barely visible amongst the mostly bare late autumn trees.Tour Eiffel depuis le Jardin des Tuileries ©2024 Patrick T. Power

I did eventually make my way to Parc Champ-de-Mars and Tour Eiffel that day, but I didn’t take that many photographs while I was there. I rested on a bench for a bit and watched some kids kick a soccer ball around, and I nodded off momentarily a few times. When I did get to Eiffel, I mostly just basked in the romance of the moment. It’s a bit odd to think that a structure of wrought-iron could engender such emotions. Or had I become in touch with something else entirely? I watched others as they waited to ascend the tower; I watched lovers kiss directly below the tower’s center point; I imagined sharing the moment with someone with whom I’d recently become smitten. Heading back to Callixte’s place, I stopped to get a few groceries and promptly got lost. But I came across a carousel where a father kept yelling at his daughter to sit down (I needn’t have understood French to know this), and I took a bunch of mostly blurry photographs.

A triptych of colour photographs taken while watching a little girl ride a carousel as her father looked on. The carousel has a sort-of space-age, Jetsons theme. In the far left photo, the father's knees and hands on knees are showing in the lower left corner while the ride spins; the center picture catches one of the empty spaceships in the center of the frame, blurred from movement; the far right photo is of the girl standing up at the end of the ride... she is blurry from her movement.Le carousel ©2024 Patrick T. Power

Well before the trip, I had watched Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, or as it’s most commonly known, Amélie, so on day two, when I met up with another friend who lived not far from Montmartre, where the film was set, she took me to Canal Saint-Martin, site of several of the film’s scenes, and I accompanied her in the rain on a couple of errands, to the market and a photolab. Along the way, we spoke by phone to another Flickr contact in Stockholm, Sandra, who had recently been to Paris herself. Then I headed to Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, where Catherine worked, to meet her at last.

ALT TEXTLa Géode à la Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie ©2024 Patrick T. Power

The next day, I got the chance to experience a big chunk of Paris on foot (à pied) as Callixte escorted me from his place on Rue Léopold Robert in Montparnasse to where Catherine lived in the 9th arrondissement, across Place Blanche from le Moulin Rouge. Our hike took us through Jardin du Luxembourg, past l’Institut de France, across the Seine by way of Pont des Arts (before the hideous “love locks” began to appear). Unlike my first full day in the city, the sun was out and I discovered how beautiful Paris is in the sunlight.

A colour photograph of a man holding a bouquet of flowers, waiting for someone on Pont des Arts in Paris. There is a street lamp to the left of him in the photo, and he is gazing to the right, towards Institut de France.Il Attend ©2024 Patrick T. Power

While a few people questioned why I would go to Paris in the late fall instead of in the spring, I can only say that the sun’s low southerly path across the sky illuminated the buildings and almost everything else with an especially beautiful light. I was lucky that contrary to what Catherine had warned me about, Paris was not “grey and rainy, [where] everybody’s depressed” the whole time. In fact, it was sunny for the preponderance of my stay.

A colour photograph of a striped awning at a café on the northeast corner of Rue de Buci Rue de Seine in Paris's 6th arrondissement. The awning takes up most of the bottom half of the photograph and the stripes recede from the front towards the middle of the photograph. There is a semicircular window above the awning with its own little awning which reads Bar du Marché, the name of the café. To the left of the window, on the corner of the building, and engraved in the surface is the street name, but Buci is spelled Bussy. There is a 16 engraved to the right of that.Bar du Marche ©2024 Patrick T. Power

My biggest regret about that first trip from a photographic standpoint was that as a newbie (read: idiot) in the digital world, I hadn’t taken much time to understand the technology, so I had set the camera to create smaller than full-size images in order to fit more photographs on the lone memory card that I’d brought with me. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me to buy a second or third or fourth card. Perhaps I felt they were too expensive at the time. Inexplicably, I hadn’t given it much—if any—thought, other than that I figured I’d only be sharing online anyway, that prints were a thing of the past. I was wrong as I eventually wanted to have prints made. I was lucky, at least, that the resolution turned out to be good enough for 11” x 14” enlargements.8

A black-and-white photograph of three benches in front of the very old Eglise de la Sainte Trinité (Church of the Holy Trinity). There are two women sitting together on one bench, and another person sleeping on the middle bench. The third is empty. There is a retaining barrier in front of the church with some graffiti scrawled on it. It is behind the benches during what was a renovation project and it is the lightest aspect of the photograph. The top of the barrier is just about at the mid-point from top to bottom, and the bottom is about one-sixth of the way from the bottom of the frame. The barrier extends all the way from left to right. The tops of three statues rise just above the top of the barrier. There are also bas-relief statues in each of the four pillars on the façade of the church.Trinité ©2024 Patrick T. Power

Without turning this post into a day-by-day travelogue of that trip, in which I would also have to post dozens of photographs, suffice it to say that I took many, many steps from day to day, and when I wanted to get someplace rather quickly, I took the métro, one of my favourite places to take photographs in Paris. It was especially nice at that time because the camera had a swivel viewer, which allowed me to sneak pictures of people without having to hold the camera up to my eye, thereby giving away what I was up to. Quality was often limited by the camera’s not-so-professional specs, but it was nonetheless a worthy device for developing the way I see and create photographs.

A black-and-white triptych of photographs taken in the Paris metro. The first is of a woman on a subway train wearing a beret. She is at the far left of the photo and only about half of her from the waist up is showing. She is gazing to someplace just above the camera. In the background is a window with rounded in the train's door, and my reflection is in the bottom corner. A woman is standing in front of me and the camera. She is wearing a dark coat and has her arm wrapped around a post. Her image takes up about a quarter of the frame (from right to left), and her reflection also appears in the window on the other side of the car. The second is of a woman walking from left to right in a Paris metro station, and is centered in a porthole in a wall which dives the two platforms. The third is of four pairs of legs, feet, and shoes in a quasi-circular pattern on a subway train. There is almost more floor showing than people. Starting clockwise from left to right, the woman immediately to the left is wearing jeans and has pointy shoes. The next woman, in the upper left corner, has less-expensive looking rounded-toe shoes and her purse is on the floor between them, then a man in the upper right corner has pretty common looking work shoes. He is reaching down to either adjust something or to scratch an itch at the top of his left shoe. The fourth person, in the bottom-right corner is also a man and his shoes are rather loafer-life, not formal looking. It also looks like his legs might be crossed based on the shape of the shoe.Dans le Metro ©2024 Patrick T. Power
It has been my tradition since that first trip to walk to Eiffel on the very last full day of the trip from wherever I’ve been staying in the city. I’ve yet to go to the top of the structure, or any part of it, for that matter, but its mystique draws me nonetheless.

A black-and-white photograph of Japanese tourists at Champ-de-Mars. There are a couple of people posing in front of the Eiffel Tower for pictures (one is mostly obscured by one of the photographers (there are two) who is crouched at the knees. One of the men being photographed is wearing a suit and tie. There are several more people to the right watching what is happening, and presumably waiting for their opportunity to be photographed. They all appear to be in the same tourist group. Eiffel Tower is in the back ground, slightly left of center in the photograph.Tour-istes ©2024 Patrick T. Power

I have been to Paris five or six times since 2005. I’ve not been there since 2011 when Callixte and his now-wife Cindy asked me to photograph their wedding in Sainte-Avé, near Vannes in Bretagne, and lately, I have been jonesing bad for a visit. Recently, I discovered the music of Zaho de Sagazan (ohmuhgawdsobrilliant!), which I have been listening to almost non-stop (which has done nothing to quell my desire for Paris) as I have been trying to learn her songs in order to sing along.

I wish, though, that I had something more to say about Françoise Hardy beyond that I listened to more of her music after “discovering” her. Over the years, I’d checked out the various versions of “L’amitié” on YouTube and was glad to see that she was still singing it. Recently, however, I noticed she’d retired a few years ago from singing—I hadn’t known that she was in ill health. When I discovered Zaho a few weeks ago (via the algorithm) on Instagram, I got the feeling that her song “La symphonie des éclairs” will be much loved for a long time in France. As I listened to “L’amitié” again today, I noticed that Zaho’s song had similar themes, and I wondered if one hadn’t helped to inspire the other.

If you have seen the film Paris je t’aime9, you might be able to understand my appreciation for the city. The last vignette, 14e arrondissement, in particular, which follows an American woman around town as she narrates with a not-so-fluent French, resonates probably the most with me. My affection for the place is more about the life there than it is about the tourist attractions. It’s the open-air cafés, the architecture, the parks, the cemeteries that are almost park-like, the value that is placed on culture and the arts, its history, and even its grittiness. And my friends.

And while, yes, I have taken rides on a bateau-mouche and La Grande Roue de Paris, and have visited le Louvre, I’m more interested in what I discover in the city’s less-congested narrow streets, even if it means being propositioned by an elderly dame of the night opening her trench coat to me.

A panoramic photograph of Paris looking southeast from Basilique du Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre. I used the Little Planet projection for the panorama, so the ground, instead of looking flat is rounded and looks like a small section of a globe. The clouds bend with it.
Paris depuis Montmartre ©2024 Patrick T. Power

As I’ve gone through photographs to dress up this little reminiscence, I’ve done new edits to replace those I did with Picasa way back then. While it was a nice, basic editing software, my skills and Photoshop have improved vastly since then. I’ve also looked at the panoramas I created (there were many!) with a new eye and better software. Hence the Little Planet projection of a three-frame panorama of the city taken from in front of Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (above), and another of Sacré-Cœur—just a little on the distorted side.

A colour panoramic photograph of La Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, atop Butte Montmartre in Paris. It was stitched using Autopano Giga's Little Planet projection, which distorts the shape of the church and makes is appear to be sitting on a, well... Little Planet.
La Basilique du Sacré-Cœur ©2024 Patrick T. Power

The trip, for all that it did to open my eyes to a world outside the rather limited one I had experienced for almost fifty years, had its trials. Maybe I’ll get into that some other time.

Of course, I cannot thank enough the people who so generously, graciously opened their homes to me and who guided me—whether physically or spiritually or emotionally—around a city that they love as well, who accommodated my non-French conversation, and in so many ways warmed my heart.

A triptych of colour photographs of the people who so generously helped me during my first trip to Paris in 2005. The first is of Catherine Meyer and Callixte Cauchois posing for a photo; the second is a candid photo of Phil Hilfiker taking a photograph along the Seine; the third is a casual portrait of Sumei Lee, taken at Parc de Belleville.
Ils m’ont réchauffé le cœur ©2024 Patrick T. Power

*      *      *

1 I recall distinctly, too, that the suggested answer to “Comment allez-vous ?” (How are you?) was “Je suis bien, merci, et vous?”, the literal translation for which is “I am good, thank you, and you?” But it is incorrect French. Literally, “Comment allez-vous ?” translates to “How do you go?”, which would be akin to our “How’s it going?” So, the correct answer to the query is “I go well, thank you, and you?” or “Je vais bien, merci, et vous?” [back]

2 The more I hear “Tous les filles et les garçons” in tribute videos, I wonder if the song might have been played on our local radio stations back in the day. [back]

3 At that time, you did not "follow" someone on Flickr, you were contacts with them. In my mind, there is a vast difference between the two terms and the dynamics which come with the distinction. [back]

4 From Wikipedia: “Rue de Vaugirard…is the longest street inside Paris's former city walls, at 4.3 km (2.7 mi). It spans the 6th and 15th arrondissements.” I discovered on this trip that as streets cross from one arrondissement into another that the names change, Rue de Vaugirard being a rare exception. [back]

5 Nikon CoolPix 8800 [back]

6 My intent was to write about my experiences day by day, but I had some problems with Blogger that I can’t recall now, and stopped writing after only two days. I regret not following through with that plan. [back]

7 Macauley created an imaginary town, Chutreaux, as the site for his imaginary cathedral. [back]

8 If memory serves (pardon the unintentional pun), I was able to move images to CDs in order to make room for more photographs. I could really kick myself for how naïve I was. [back]

9 In reality, a collection of eighteen short films (twenty were originally planned)—each of which takes place in a different arrondissement in Paris—created by twenty-two directors. [back]

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