[Being in Paris and relying on internet cafs is making these entries increasingly few and far between. Hence this one is particularly long and full of ungrateful whining. Bear with me, kids, I do cheer up towards the end!]
'Que cette ville est exquise dans son glissement.'
- Pierre Klossowski, Les Lois de l'hospitalit
The honeymoon period, I suppose, is over. I am beginning to realise with dismay that I am only getting about four hours work done a day and that I am living far beyond my means in a city whose intense and intoxicating beauty remains largely out of my reach, whilst my most tenacious vices - alcohol, cigarettes and pornography - the three wolves that have been snapping at my heels for the past decade and a half, and that I thought I was beginning to bring under control, have returned with a vengeance during my first two weeks in Paris.
There's no question that this city is full of beautiful people and brilliant possibilities - every 100 yards or so(every 5 or 10 yards in crowded streets and heures de pointe), I fall hopelessly in love with another perfect specimen - male or female, young or old, black or white - but ultimately this proliferation of beauty to which one has no realistic access, this multiplication of possibilities which are not really possibilities for me can prove rather depressing. I now recall that this was also my conclusion when I left Paris at the end of my previous stay.
'I went looking for a cause
Or a strong cat without claws
Any reason to resume
And I found this empty seat in this crowded waiting room'
- Joni Mitchell, 'Just like this train'
*********************
I was excited about seeing the latest Jean-Luc Godard film, this year's Notre musique, but confess to being a little disappointed. It's strange how, so soon after submitting the manuscript of my book on Godard, I feel a new sense of distance from the director and his work and, with it, a sense of relief and release. Obviously there are moments of astonishing beauty in Notre musique, but the whole thing strikes me as rather stale. Having lived and breathed Godard for the last six years, half of the images, and all of the ideas, in this film are profoundly familiar to me from Godard's career over the past two decades. To borrow a phrase from Tom Waits, Godard is clearly still obsessed with sweeping up the ghosts of the twentieth century. This is yet another film about the century of war and cinema, about the problems of forgiveness and reconciliation, about the destiny of the Jews. It may seem churlish to say so but, while some of us are trying to move on, Godard seems bent on proving that it isn't actually possible to move on. Still, there is one line in the film that, in itself, is enough to provide food for thought for six months, for a lifetime: 'La libert sera totale quand il sera indiffrent de vivre ou de mourir' (roughly: 'Freedom will be complete when living or dying makes no difference').
*********************
Christoph Hochhausler's Milchwald is better. This tale of two German children lost in a Polish wasteland after they are abandoned by their stepmother is eerily similar, in topic and in tone, to Andrei Zvyagintsev's recent Siberian chiller The Return. Here is another film about solitary children, untrustworthy parents and the softly shifting surfaces of our lives. But why is it that children in peril - or more precisely: the terror inspired by children, which Hochhausler evokes particularly well - has become a theme of predilection for cinemas of northern and eastern Europe (I'm thinking also of Lukas Moodyson's Lilja 4-Ever...)
Three women I didn't talk to on the Metro journey home: girl in bikini top at RER Luxembourg reading Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in English; wide-hipped girl with lower back tattoo and heavenly odour at Chatelet-les-Halles; auburn-haired girl on line 14 who returned my gaze about a dozen times. If, during this stay in Paris, I am to avoid the frustration and bitterness that ended up clouding my previous residence, I am going to have to throw caution to the wind, take the bull by the horns, mix a few more metaphors and start approaching people...
*****************
Wednesday night: Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963), cinma en plein air in the jardins du Trocadro with views over the Eiffel Tower. For the benefit of you yanks, cinma en plein air is a bit like a drive-in without the cars. People actually sit on the ground (imagine!) and drink beer out of cans and wine out of bottles and watch old movies. Having seen two Audrey Hepburn movies recently (I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's on video at my parents'), I am persuaded that the only way to truly enjoy Paris is actually to be Audrey Hepburn. Anyone with advice on how to become Audrey Hepburn, serait le bienvenu...
*******************
Thursday: sit in the front row with a bunch of other men crying at Jersey Girl, which appears to be a sort of chick flick for guys, a film about the value of spending time with friends and family over work. Ben Affleck plays a guy going through a seven-year dry spell after his wife dies in childbirth and he has to bring up his little girl alone. Uh-huh, so what's my excuse? Liv Tyler takes pity on him and offers him a 'mercy jump'. Uh-huh, so where's my Liv Tyler?
On the metro home, two consecutive failures to pick up men who were almost certainly straight and hence didn't even notice I was trying to pick them up.
'Ne pas aimer, et avoir perdu l'espoir de jamais l'etre, je sais ce que ca va dire.'
- Geraldine Chaplin in L'Amour par terre
*********************
Since, things have been looking up a little. Allow me to summarise in brief:
Friday: concert-picnic at Paris-Plage with maudlin Irish singer-songwriter Perry Blake.
Saturday: red wine from the fridge and Master and Commander on DVD chez K and Alicia.
Sunday: write 1500 words of The Novel and catch up on New German Cinema with Goodbye Lenin in the architecturally alien extremes of the 15th arrondissement.
The University of Adelaide wants to fly me to Australia in September for a job interview. What do you think of that, eh?
'Que cette ville est exquise dans son glissement.'
- Pierre Klossowski, Les Lois de l'hospitalit
The honeymoon period, I suppose, is over. I am beginning to realise with dismay that I am only getting about four hours work done a day and that I am living far beyond my means in a city whose intense and intoxicating beauty remains largely out of my reach, whilst my most tenacious vices - alcohol, cigarettes and pornography - the three wolves that have been snapping at my heels for the past decade and a half, and that I thought I was beginning to bring under control, have returned with a vengeance during my first two weeks in Paris.
There's no question that this city is full of beautiful people and brilliant possibilities - every 100 yards or so(every 5 or 10 yards in crowded streets and heures de pointe), I fall hopelessly in love with another perfect specimen - male or female, young or old, black or white - but ultimately this proliferation of beauty to which one has no realistic access, this multiplication of possibilities which are not really possibilities for me can prove rather depressing. I now recall that this was also my conclusion when I left Paris at the end of my previous stay.
'I went looking for a cause
Or a strong cat without claws
Any reason to resume
And I found this empty seat in this crowded waiting room'
- Joni Mitchell, 'Just like this train'
*********************
I was excited about seeing the latest Jean-Luc Godard film, this year's Notre musique, but confess to being a little disappointed. It's strange how, so soon after submitting the manuscript of my book on Godard, I feel a new sense of distance from the director and his work and, with it, a sense of relief and release. Obviously there are moments of astonishing beauty in Notre musique, but the whole thing strikes me as rather stale. Having lived and breathed Godard for the last six years, half of the images, and all of the ideas, in this film are profoundly familiar to me from Godard's career over the past two decades. To borrow a phrase from Tom Waits, Godard is clearly still obsessed with sweeping up the ghosts of the twentieth century. This is yet another film about the century of war and cinema, about the problems of forgiveness and reconciliation, about the destiny of the Jews. It may seem churlish to say so but, while some of us are trying to move on, Godard seems bent on proving that it isn't actually possible to move on. Still, there is one line in the film that, in itself, is enough to provide food for thought for six months, for a lifetime: 'La libert sera totale quand il sera indiffrent de vivre ou de mourir' (roughly: 'Freedom will be complete when living or dying makes no difference').
*********************
Christoph Hochhausler's Milchwald is better. This tale of two German children lost in a Polish wasteland after they are abandoned by their stepmother is eerily similar, in topic and in tone, to Andrei Zvyagintsev's recent Siberian chiller The Return. Here is another film about solitary children, untrustworthy parents and the softly shifting surfaces of our lives. But why is it that children in peril - or more precisely: the terror inspired by children, which Hochhausler evokes particularly well - has become a theme of predilection for cinemas of northern and eastern Europe (I'm thinking also of Lukas Moodyson's Lilja 4-Ever...)
Three women I didn't talk to on the Metro journey home: girl in bikini top at RER Luxembourg reading Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in English; wide-hipped girl with lower back tattoo and heavenly odour at Chatelet-les-Halles; auburn-haired girl on line 14 who returned my gaze about a dozen times. If, during this stay in Paris, I am to avoid the frustration and bitterness that ended up clouding my previous residence, I am going to have to throw caution to the wind, take the bull by the horns, mix a few more metaphors and start approaching people...
*****************
Wednesday night: Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963), cinma en plein air in the jardins du Trocadro with views over the Eiffel Tower. For the benefit of you yanks, cinma en plein air is a bit like a drive-in without the cars. People actually sit on the ground (imagine!) and drink beer out of cans and wine out of bottles and watch old movies. Having seen two Audrey Hepburn movies recently (I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's on video at my parents'), I am persuaded that the only way to truly enjoy Paris is actually to be Audrey Hepburn. Anyone with advice on how to become Audrey Hepburn, serait le bienvenu...
*******************
Thursday: sit in the front row with a bunch of other men crying at Jersey Girl, which appears to be a sort of chick flick for guys, a film about the value of spending time with friends and family over work. Ben Affleck plays a guy going through a seven-year dry spell after his wife dies in childbirth and he has to bring up his little girl alone. Uh-huh, so what's my excuse? Liv Tyler takes pity on him and offers him a 'mercy jump'. Uh-huh, so where's my Liv Tyler?
On the metro home, two consecutive failures to pick up men who were almost certainly straight and hence didn't even notice I was trying to pick them up.
'Ne pas aimer, et avoir perdu l'espoir de jamais l'etre, je sais ce que ca va dire.'
- Geraldine Chaplin in L'Amour par terre
*********************
Since, things have been looking up a little. Allow me to summarise in brief:
Friday: concert-picnic at Paris-Plage with maudlin Irish singer-songwriter Perry Blake.
Saturday: red wine from the fridge and Master and Commander on DVD chez K and Alicia.
Sunday: write 1500 words of The Novel and catch up on New German Cinema with Goodbye Lenin in the architecturally alien extremes of the 15th arrondissement.
The University of Adelaide wants to fly me to Australia in September for a job interview. What do you think of that, eh?
On the metro home, two consecutive failures to pick up men who were almost certainly straight and hence didn't even notice I was trying to pick them up.
I have been known to be that dense... I think, 'Boy, that cad's really got his banter down.' Two minutes later I realize & blush.
You certainly get credit in my book for approaching people! I'm solumnly content to fall in love every 50 ft. Today after lunch, I peeked around bookstalls try figure out to whom a fetching-figure was making eyes at. The object of attention was my girlfriend.
Interview in Australia sounds like an entry I look forward to, my friend!
i've approved you to the SGAU group, come by and introduce yourself when you get the chance.. as far as members in adelaide go, there's tonia and thats about it.. there's been an influx of australian members to the site recently but they're usually quiet, and generally speaking, not interested in the community aspect of SG..
anyways, good luck with everything, and remember melbourne isnt that far from adelaide......