They Come Alive When We Sleep

Paris has always been one of the centers of European fashion. So I pay close attention to what Parisians are wearing in the streets, and to the clothes in small hand-made boutiques. I don't bother with the department stores. They'll never be ahead of the game.

That's why this shop window near my apartment in Paris has always intrigued me. If this is a harbinger of the bleeding edge in fashion, these guys are the only ones doing it...so to speak.

I walk by this shop all the time. The first few times, I thought I had caught them in the middle of the window-dressing process. Well, now that I've wandered by a few times, I realize that they change the mannequins often, but they never quite get around to finishing the job.

I think it's genius. I mean, it's much easier for me to know whether a pair of jeans or a top will suit me, when I see it almost on (or almost off, depending on your frame of mind). I can imagine how suave I will look when I find myself in tricky little everyday scenarios at the office, or the grocery store, or a shop window. Like just arriving to work, only to realize I forgot to put on a blouse, or a wig, for that matter. Or maybe I'm just minding my own business, and all of a sudden I look down and there's this bald guy looking up at me, asking me how to get to the Eiffel Tower. I have no idea what that poor soul behind me went through to lose his whole upper torso, but I'm....Ohhhhhh...that's the little bald guy's better half. Got it.

The pants down around the ankles used to be a favorite of mine. Until a proctologist told me to drop my pants, shuffle over to the examination table, climb up on a platform in front of the table, and bend over. He sort of took all the magic and romance out of it. I haven't been the same since.

But don't let me rain on your parade if walking or standing around with your pants wadded around your ankles is your thing. Especially since "they're doing it in Paris."

Now...the wearing of a Daniel Boone hat is something I never would have thought of on my own. It tends to distract from the fact that your zipper is down (oh please click, please), and all that cold winter wind is blasting through. This is something that I could recommend to several men I know.

And finally, wearing a Mickey Mouse Blouse while in the supplication position is très outré, n'est-ce pas? Too bad the ol' Mickster mannequin lost its head. Otherwise, ol' Danielle Boonette would have a nice shiny place to rest her beer.

And now, in the wee hours of the morning, as the rain falls on the empty streets of Paris, or Anycity Anycountry, the mannequins are stirring...

UPDATE: This video was produced by Junna. You can see the rest of Junna's videos at his/her (?) YouTube site.

A Farewell To Arms

During a recent stroll through the Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, I took a photo of this tomb that has what looks like a woman's arms sticking out of the top, with clasped hands.

Carved in stone at the end of the tomb is "Famille P. Legay," which implies that this is a family tomb and that there may be more than one person buried underneath it. However, if this is the case, individual names are usually added when they are interred, but no other names were on the tomb.

So, after hours of research, I found out that a French soldier named Pierre-Alexis-Victor Legay D'Arcy is buried there. He was born 3/13/1772 in Cote-d'or, Dijon. I don't know how, where or when he died. But I did find a reference that says he was a French officer of the main staff who appeared in early December in Warsaw in the year 1806 as chief of a squadron of the Warsaw Division of the French Army, during the Greater Poland Uprising.

But who, pray tell, is the woman? And why is she stuck for all eternity, with her arms up in the air? Won't they get a little tired?

Also, don't miss the video I took on the same day, of the skeleton that was talking to me through my camera lens.

Bare Naked Ladies

Our neighborhood is close to the Pigalle district of Paris, part of the famous Moulin Rouge. It's a wonderfully colorful area that defiantly skims the base of the hill at Montmartre, where the dire and sinister church of Sacré-Coeur looks down upon it. Or perhaps she looks the other way.

The church hasn't much of a choice. Sex was there before she was built, and will be there long after she's gone.

Across the main Boulevard Rochechouart, lies another seething and festering haunt frequented by my errant boyfriend and many of our visitors: musical equipment world. Guitars, drums, amps, and other sexual tools.

I accompanied some friends of ours, salivating over their first harmonica purchase. They had hopes of someday bending notes with aplomb. As they oooh'd and ahhh'd at things that have no meaning to me, I stumbled upon these lovely ladies. They adorned some glass entry doors to...I don't know where.

The art is not much to speak of, but the feeling is there. Definitely.

By the way, who's Nero?

Society of the Perforated Mexicans

I had an amazing experience recently, where I read two different parts in my friend Jayne's play, during its first public reading. It took place in the "cave" or basement of a former convent here in Paris called “Les Récollets," which has been completely restored and is used by the French government as a cultural reception center. In other words, if you are an artist, scientist or intellectual, studying or working on a project, you can apply for temporary housing in this building.

The cave was full of Jayne's well-wishers, probably 30-40 people, and was only lit by candles. It was romantic, but a bit challenging for me and my fellow readers (about 10 other actors) to read a script that we had only seen and practiced once, 4 hours prior to the reading.

The reading was a great success, and everyone stayed for a long time afterward, discussing the nuances of the play and having some delicious cheese and wine by candlelight. I was chatting with one of my fellow actors as we looked down a long hallway off of the main cellar room. It intrigued me to peer down there and wonder how the nuns made use of those subterranean tunnels. (You can imagine what bubbled up in my filthy mind.) That's when the subject of the Paris catacombs came up and my friend told me the story about The Society of the Perforated Mexicans. There are many true stories and myths about the mysterious Paris tunnels, but this one is the best so far.

Evidently, in 2004, the Paris police stumbled upon a complete underground movie theater. First, they encountered an office, with a desk and a working telephone. Dogs barked upon their entry, but they figured out it was just a recording. Then they moved into a huge room with a complete movie theater, restaurant, and bar. The cops left the place for two days (what were they thinking?), and when they returned, everything was gone, the phone line cut and dangling, and one note was on the desk, signed by The Society of The Perforated Mexicans, which said, "Don't try to find us."

The group finally revealed itself in this Guardian UK article. Here are a few excerpts:

There are, at most, 15 of them. Their ages range from 19 to 42, their professions from nurse to window dresser, mason to film director. And in a cave beneath the streets of Paris, they built a subterranean cinema whose discovery this week sent the city's police into a frenzy.

"They freaked out completely," Lazar, their spokesman, said happily. "They called in the bomb squad, the sniffer dogs, army security, the anti-terrorist squad, the serious crimes unit. They said it was skinheads or subversives. They got it on to national TV news. They hadn't a clue."

...

With their long experience of such matters, the group's technicians had little difficulty piping in electricity and phone lines. "The biggest hassle was that everything - tables, chairs, bar, projector, screen, the lot - had to fit through a 30cm by 40cm hole on the surface," Lazar said. "When the police finally worked out where we were getting in, they couldn't believe it was the right place. It was so small."

What the article didn't cover, was the meaning behind the name, Perforated Mexicans. When I first heard the name, it reminded me of the perforated paper decorations so famous in Mexico during the Dia de los Muertos celebrations. It's the art of papel picado (perforated paper), which is used mostly for holidays in Mexico, with perforated paper panels hanging from a string. The most common images are skulls and skeletons doing real-life things like riding horses, dancing, and playing music.

If you are a skeleton, living underground in the Paris catacombs, then I imagine you would be perforated, just like the paper, because everyone can see right through you.

Here are some other online references to The Perforated Mexicans:

• Drew McWeeny of the film "Cigarette Burns" was interviewed here and said that he tried to incorporate the whole idea of the Perforated Mexicans into his script but in the end, his budget didn't support building an underground Paris catacomb set and he had to cut that out of the film
• The film Glitterati, a film directed by Roger Avery, was screened in Paris on New Years Eve 2006 only for The Perforated Mexicans. The film was referred to by Avery himself as "ethically questionable" since most of the characters in the film didn't know they were being filmed. Therefore, he did not plan to release it to theaters or on DVD.

Paris catacomb image: Viktor Hartmann, Paris Catacombs. People pictured are Hartmann, Vasily Kenel, and a guide holding the lantern. Watercolor 12.9 x 17 cm. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Papel picado image: Courtesy of Museum of International Folk Art

The Dark Underworld of Chocolate

I thought it might be time to post another Paris sidewalk stencil, so I surfed through my photos and found one that intrigued me. Then I began my usual research to solve the mystery behind the image. Text on the image says, "Where is Guy-Andre Kieffer?"

What I discovered wasn't all Easter baskets and soft, crushable pastel colored peeps. It was more like chocolate bunnies, with the ears bitten off.

I had no idea that the Ivory Coast was one of the world's largest producers of cocoa (43% of the world's cocoa is exported from here, 1.4 million tons). But there have been some troubling times, and a French-Canadian reporter named Guy-Andre Kieffer was kidnapped and is presumed dead, because he investigated and reported on corruption in the Ivory Coast cocoa industry, and unfortunately implicated the country's president.

From a 2004 Guardian article:

"Cocoa is a dark, confused world. You don't know where the money goes. And into it came Guy-André, obsessed about telling the truth."

A recent (August 23, 2007) France 3 television exclusive (YouTube, in French) interviews a witness who claims that Guy-Andre was held for two days in the basement of Ivory Coast's President Gbagbo, and then he was executed.

The best article, with the most up-to-date facts, comes from the US Embassy in Abidjan, via this post on allAfrica.com.

Here are some startling facts from the same 2004 CBC radio report mentioned above:

The world's cocoa is grown within ten degrees north and south of the equator -- in some of the poorest countries in the world and child slaves often work in the fields. Ninety per cent of the world's cocoa production is grown on farms five hectares or less -- allowing much of this slavery to go unnoticed. In Cote d'Ivoire, it's believed that up to 15-thousand child slaves work on the country's 600-thousand cocoa farms.

The United States is the top cocoa importer. Corruption? Murder? Child Slavery? I doubt I will be consuming chocolate any time in the foreseeable future.

Vive La Résistance Française!

A friend and her twin daughters visited us recently from Dublin, all three in love with Paris, all three wanting to move here immediately. We walked and talked (women can multi-task...and chew gum), discovering vintage clothing stores and drinking most of last year's supply of Vin Blanc. We strummed guitars, participated in accordion porn, sang loudly, learned to bend notes on a harmonica and told tall stories (well, you know, they are Irish).

But all was not folderol. We talked with sadness about the mallification of America and the unfortunate Americanization of the rest of the world. The "American Way" (whatever that means in this unhappy time in America) is envied and copied by the rest of the world. Our friends told us that Dublin has already been corporatized and is stuffed with gas-guzzling SUVs that roar around the quickly disappearing country roads. Everybody's yuppified with expensive shoes and watches, designer Scotch and Cuban cigars.

Thank God for the French Resistance.

The French recently noticed, avec l'horreur, that the Champs-Élysées had become a bit too slick for the locals. Too much glitz and shiny expensive things, not enough character and depth. So they denied a British department store's bid to place one of their stores on the venerable avenue. A classic example of the French Resistance.

Here's another: The city of Paris is surrounded by the Périphérique freeway, outside of which the French have relegated all the big-box stores. It's still sad that the stores are in France at all.

Meanwhile, take a wild 12-minute motorcycle ride around the Périphérique (don't try this at home).
The existence of the Périphérique, as some sort of dividing line between the old and the new, means you can still walk around central Paris on cobblestone streets and get to know your butcher, baker, pharmacist, fishmonger, bistro owner and the vegetable man personally. Anyone who knows the owner of their local Wal*Mart, raise your hand. How about at least one of the check-out people? Do you get the local gossip from the pharmacist at Walgreens? Does he/she lean on the counter conspiratorially to discuss the pros and cons of suppositories versus pills for the efficacious delivery of medicine? (A common French obsession) Do you and a little old lady wearing a fur hat and wool coat in summer, stand together and sniff the mussels at the fish market, and nod to the fishmonger that they pass muster, and oui monsieur, you'll have a kilo? Oh, I forgot, you can't dig your hands into the mussel basket at Safeway, and even if you could, you'd have to ring the bell to get the butcher to come out from the back to wait on you. Do you slip into Starbucks on your way to work (walking, of course) and order a quick espresso and lean on the counter and discuss with the "barista" the questionable funding of your recently-elected President's vacation or the rheumatism of the resident dog? On your way out the door, do you tip your hat and say "Bonjour Monsieur!" to the dusty old wool-capped gentleman with whiskers and no teeth that sits at the same table by the window nursing one Café Crème (charitably given to him by the owner) every morning? I don't see many hands waving. I think we believe somehow that life is about commerce and consumption and continuously having more stuff and putting up with jobs we hate in order to fund our retirement. What if life was about relationships? Not just with a select few; but everybody with whom we come in contact - good, bad or indifferent. Human beings need each other. Freeways, monolithic buildings, malls, restaurant chains, planned communities, fast-food chains, cookie-cutter prefab homes, home furnishing chains, corporate cubicles, clothing chains... All these things that are sold to us to make our lives better are actually sucking the very life out of us all. And people wonder why I feel so alive in Paris.

Paris Street Art: Grafitti Mystérieux

I am fascinated by the anonymous, and not-so-anonymous art on the streets of Paris. Some might call it graffiti, but to me, it's art. There are sprayed-on stencils all over the sidewalks as well as on the walls of buildings.

This one was on the wall of an old building right off of the Place des Abbesses in Paris, also home of The Love Wall. I have no idea who this guy with the goatee is or what the stencil means.

Most of the stencils have a purpose and meaning. The mystery and fun are in figuring out exactly what that meaning actually is. There are some that I have been unable to figure out, nor have any of my Parisian friends shed any light on them. So they remain a mystery. If you can take a look at this one and have any ideas, do let us all know.

This one turned out to be a really smart advertisement for a new DVD from End of the Weak, a US hip-hop record label who has franchises all over the world. (Official US site, French franchise MySpace, US MySpace) As you walk along, if you see that logo enough, especially if you live near Chateau Rouge and La Goutte D'Or (drop of gold, also a song by Aristide Bruant), the Little Africa of Paris, you will start recognizing it and start asking about it. Then you'll want to buy a T-Shirt and DVD. Brilliant free advertising.

Here's another great one that I took on a recent rainy day. It looks like there's a pink person crying out for help. "I'm in the Paris sewers and I can't get out!"

The Paris sewers are an interesting story in themselves and have been since the 13th century. You can tour parts of them. But there's also a group of anarchistic people who like to sneak in and hold meetings, even to this day...probably figuring out how to overthrow King Philippe Auguste. (They haven't been upstairs in a long time.) They are in good company with Victor Hugo who said about the Paris Sewers, "Crime, intelligence, social protest, liberty of conscience, thought, theft, all that human laws pursue or have pursued, have hidden in this hole..." (Les Miserables; Jean Valjean, Book II, chapter 2).

I have tons of photos of Paris Street Art and take new photos every time we go out for a walk. So I'll be uploading them for your viewing pleasure. Some mysteries will be easily solved. Others will remain unknown.

Omyword! Am I in Paris?

I've been honored by an invitation to join the Bonez Crew and write some little ditties for your pleasure and illumination. The problem is, I may not be able to adhere to the little part. Ditties I can do. Little ones, je n'sais pas.

Currently I find myself in Paris, with my boyfriend and a female communist operative named Mao. We are staying in a 4th-floor apartment somewhere between the sex shops and peep shows of Pigalle and the Moulin Rouge, the tourist mecca of Montmartre, the church at Sacré-Coeur and the Little Africa of Château Rouge. The church was built as a symbol of the defeat of the Anarchist revolutionary Comunards. I haven't told Chairwoman Mao about this. She would hiss and spit and no one would win.

Our building is unstable, as is our life, and is sinking slowly down the hill, moving away from the Church (a process I also started at age 12) and bringing us to an inevitable collision with a huge bank building. I hope, in a Jungian sort of way, that this is symbolic. Not the downhill slide, but the falling-into-a-bank bit. Meanwhile, my ability to climb or slide from one room to the other is directly related to how much cheap French wine or pastis I have consumed. At regular intervals, we must push the bed back up the hill as it interferes with our frequent trips to the toilet.

I love this neighborhood. It's rich and vibrant and full of color. Statuesque as well as broad-beamed Senegalese women traverse the streets, wearing the most amazing outfits: long skirts that flare out at the bottom and bell-sleeved tops with a matching high-rise chignon. Their babies are tied to their backs with another long piece of contrasting fabric. All is fashioned from the Tissues Africains that I had never seen before I came here. There are no ready-made outfits to be found, but plenty of Tissues stores with their windows and walls stacked floor to ceiling with fabric. Nearby, there are couturiers who will sew for you. Tiny little holes in the wall with one sewing machine and fabric detritus all over the floor. I want one of those outfits. Badly. But I am too afraid of looking like these white girls.

On a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, we walk over to the outdoor market full of fruits, vegetables, fish and Halal meats. It smells like blood and melons (with a little urine on the side). The crowds are thick and noisy, with illegal hawkers of sunglasses, handbags, and belts with temporary cardboard-box shops on the sidewalks, ready to swoop everything up and disappear at a moment's notice. There are African restaurants with strolling musicians in long robes playing the Kora. After shopping we sit outside at Bar L'Omadis (translation of the painting on the outside wall: Live together with our differences) and drink the local rocket fuel and aphrodisiac cocktail called Rhum Gingembre - Caribbean rum and fresh ginger juice, with a wedge of lime. We usually end up at our favorite Algerian place for couscous and chicken tajine with lemon and green olives.

My boyfriend is an encyclopedia of music, and so we've found the underground music scene here, from local sensation and hot-chick rocker Mademoiselle K (website, MySpace) to the humorous banter and contemporary French chansons of Sepia, the jazz piano of Philippe Baden Powell, son of famous Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell, and the hidden bar L'Attirail, a college hangout with live music every night - Berber, Manouche Gypsy and traditional French music - with students and musicians all crammed into a tiny, smoky corner.

So, along with a few links to take you on a little ride with me in Paris, I leave you a video of the gazelle-like Mademoiselle K as she sings my favorite song: Ça Me Vexe, which can be loosely translated as, That Pisses Me Off, a feeling she and I often share.