Paris, je t’aime

Yesterday I wandered through the streets of Paris. The sun illuminated the golden statues on the roof of Opera Garnier, a familiar sight I’ve walked past many times, but this time I saw them differently. I thought about how a city changes between visits.

During the nineties I got lost in the gritty northeastern arrondissements. During the 00s I sang (badly) on the stage of Moulin Rouge and flung myself into the capacity of Quasimodo in the Place des Vosges.

Somehow they let me back in the country, despite all that. Here I am.

Street spirit.

Paris changes. Its streets wear new faces, new languages, new anxieties. Yet the bigger shift happens inside us. The person who falls headfirst into a city is never the same one who leaves it. The real transformation happens inside the traveler. I am not the same person I was on my first visit to Paris. That’s the hook, as I travel to see familiar places warped by unfamiliar eyes.

“Paris is the beautiful jewel in France’s crown, unshamedly snobbish and outrageously rude. Parisians are renowned for their rudeness. Once they hear a foreign accent or French rural dialect they react like you are infectious.”
— Marc Almond, In Search of the Pleasure Palace (2004)

Chasing ghosts is the cruelest trick we play. One returns with an expectation that the old magic is still gonna be there, unchanged like a postcard. But it’s changed into another shape. The difference? It’s rarely about cathedrals or cafés or cobbled alleys. It’s more about the company we keep, and who we’ve become along the way. The city is just a frame, the real picture lives in us.

Paris, I’ll be back.