Rocking Out in Paris

I can remember very clearly the first big mistake I made in Paris. Some Americans are boorish and overwhelming; most other Americans are aware of this and try to compensate by blending in. Early on, I was a member of the latter group. But I could not help but make mistakes, and so this was the first big one, on the first night.

I was in that diner, that I have not been to since. I had ordered a pizza and was waiting for it to finish. The Rolling Stones came on. Unfortunately, it was “Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” I say unfortunately because of its infectious riff. Had it been, say, “Paint It Black,” I could have avoided the following error. I made the mistake of rocking out, of bobbing my head along to the slithering guitar riff. To a certain extent, everyone watches himself (except when under the influence), and by my detached eye, I was not particularly obnoxious or demonstrative. But people nonetheless looked at me quite strangely, although it wasn’t as if they commented along. It was clear that it was a mistake, though.

I only just released the depth of my error when I emerged one night from the Metro. Paris always has street performers, one of its charms. This particular group was a marching band ensemble. They were good. They had swing, they had energy, they had verve. Their horns carried them. Unlike most American marching bands, in the time that I heard them (I ended up having dinner nearby), there was only one cover song that I could identify (“A Fifth of Beethoven” or “When I Get You Alone”; I’m not sure which). I could not help it; I rocked out.

But this time I was not alone. People danced. Like any concert, some people were shouting. There were more people in the audience than performers. The audience charged the air and the performers were powered by it, leading the audience to give more of their energy and so on and so forth…The circuit from audience to performer always electrifies the experience.

This was unusual. It’s rare to see the French respond to music. Lots of people listen to music on the metro, but no one turns their music up high and bounces around in their seat, like you see pretty often in the United State. I don’t mean this figuratively; I mean I have not seen any French person responding energetically to music, although I have seen plenty of opportunities to do so. I would assume that the reason that lots of French listen to music on mp3 players or in street performances is because they like it. Perhaps music doesn’t affect the French as viscerally as it does Americans.

But the difference in results is not because of different inputs. The French love pop music in English. Their commercials and TV shows are full of American music. Their radio are so saturated with English-language music that I believe there’s even a law mandating a certain percentage of French-language music per hour. In fact, the French enjoy English-language music so much that unlike other cultural developments, the French deeply care about what is on the cutting edge or not.

For example, I was in a store buying a shirt. It was a rugby uniform. Tous derriere les Bleus, you know? Anyway, their computing was taking its sweet time about processing my credit card when the owner started clicking in his music collection, trying to find some appropriate music.

It was an odd collection. There was Robin Thicke, Kanye West, 50 Cent, some rock, a mix of stuff I didn’t recognize. He clicked on the folder for 50 Cent. It was clear this guy was a fan; he had a lot of 50’s old, mixtape type stuff. He put on his latest album, the aggressively awful, “Curtis.”

The following conversation is as close to my memory as I can do:

“Ca, c’est cool.” (This is cool!) He said to his co-worker/friend. They were both young, perhaps just out of college. He actually began to pump his head for a while, in time with the corny pulsing beat.

I felt the need to interject. I was on familiar ground. “50, il n’est pas cool.” (50’s not cool.) It’s always weird to say an American word as a French one.

“Pas cool? Vraiment?” (Not cool? Really?) “Where are you from?”

“New York. Non. Pas encore.” (No. Not anymore.) Explaining Rochester takes way too long for an interesting conversation, so there’s that answer. Even if I did explain, they’d probably still think that I was from the City. Or if I said California, they’d think I surfed and hung out with Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt all the time (not at the same time, of course).

The friend, now: “Then who is cool?”

“Oh, Kanye West’s pretty cool. A lot of the Southern rappers. Timbaland.”

“Oh, Timbaland. It’s always the producers. P. Diddy.”

“What about Common?” asked the guy at the cashier, “He’s the best, I love Common.”

“Common’s great. He’s pretty cool, not that cool.”

We spent some more time talking about that which is cool in music. If I might be so presumptuous, I believe they valued my opinion.

****

Also yesterday was my history class.

What’s notable about Paris is how authoritarian and conformist its beauty has been. Most of the notable architectural elements of France, from the glass pyramids to the grands boulevards, have been the result of central planners and top-down authority. There’s been some bottom-up action, but it seems the history of aesthetic Paris is a Great Man history.

One of the things our reading has made clear is that royal actions to impose uniform standards of height and façade have, by-and-large, worked. Combine that with the dependence of the lower classes and artisans on the aristocratic largesse, and it is easy to why such an architectural uniformity was achieved.

It’s a good thing, really, that the elites had such good taste. If they had been Baroque overbuilders, that would have set Paris back aesthetically for centuries. And considering that Paris’ economy depends on large part on its status as la plus belle, that’s a very good thing.

****

I’m sorry for the Franglish in my last sentence. It is unavoidable. Everyone does it. Words like “beaucoup” and “greve” bubble unbidden to my mind and seep out before I even have a chance to use the English word. I wish I could tame each side and grow them separately, almost like pruning entangled potted plants—it would be better for my speaking, with both languages. As it is, I’ll just be stuck with beaucoup de problemes with expressing myself coherently to the unilingual.

****

So today I worked for a radio show for my internship. Our boss is a host for a talk radio show. We actually wrote out a bunch of questions for it. Hopefully some will be used on air. The show is “Assoc a Vous,” or “Associations and You.” Associations is the French word for—and this is very squishy, one of those things I can’t quite translate well—a kind of volunteer NGO. For example, Salvation Army, that’d be an Association, (I think).

At any rate, the guest this week is the President of the “Jumeaux et Plus” (Twins and More) Association, one that describes itself as a “movement of 17,000 families” on its website. Apparently the large number of twins in France necessitates an Association political, charitable and scientific. They petition parliamentarians and hold conferences for gemologists (people who study twins).

There are a lot of issues that arise from having twins, as I found out. For example, daycare. Daycare is universal and free for French citizens. But apparently some are better than others and there’s some competition to get into the best ones. Once you’ve got twins, then it becomes an issue of getting two bodies in the same daycare, and that’s just a problem.

That was interesting, because otherwise, I’d never think about the legal issues of twins. Nor, I bet, would a lot of lawmakers, unless they too had twins. Representative democracy is supposed to have us, the people, be represented by people more competent than ourselves, with more expertise. But things multiply. Now there are too many issues. That’s the evolutionary niche for lobbies. I have a mostly negative view about lobbyists, especially the pharmaceutical lobbyists and the foreign policy lobbyists. But I think, with issues like twins, that they can serve a valuable educative purpose.

****

Worst dresser is back. He worse a pair of shorts so long and so loose that they simultaneously evoked a skirt and capris. They were longer, even, than the standard long jeans shorts. Tattoos snaked up his arms and neck. His red Astros hat sat at an approved, jaunty angle. I guess dressing like that was easier than just holding a sign saying, “American Here.”

However, to return to an earlier issue, about blending in versus obnoxious obviousness, both positions have their weaknesses. The latter is detestable and easily mocked, and I’ve done it often. But the former, the default for many, also contains a subtle weakness. It’s impossible to blend in. They can tell. I’ve had French approach me and speak English without my saying a word. One French guy said to one of my friends, when she asked how he could tell who was American and who wasn’t, replied (I paraphrase): “You stand differently. You’re more open. It’s obvious.” We can’t blend in, and if you think about it, why would you want to? There’s a difference between being an authentic American and being an obnoxious American. To be focused about, am I projecting Americanness or not?, is wasted energy. You always will be, and that’s a good thing. Efforts to speak French, to appreciate French manners and customs, are not efforts to become French, as some mistakenly assume, but are efforts to be accommodating, as any good guest should be.