2 September 2008

arrête


Well I made it to Paris. After a hectic year marked by dreams of escape I’ve finally come, jet-lagged and over-tired, to a full stop. Is there such a thing as Mental Momentum? If so, it would explain why it seems loose bits of my brain were thrown about the place when I crashed. I am puttering about and settling in, too fried to go explore the city yet too excited to sit still. I’m distracted and unsure of myself. My tongue stumbles in a mouth full of French marbles… I’m going to enjoy being l‘étranger.

This is the week I promised to do nothing. I’m here long enough to get away with it, but it may be a hard promise to keep. I’m reading Peter Schjeldahl’s Let’s See (hate that title) to stay connected to contemporary art, while I dream of the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay. Later, I will wander through 19th-century streets looking for the ghost of Hippolyte Bayard.*

I’m suddenly wondering what I’m doing here, which, I’ve been reminded, is the whole point.

*I really should plan a visit to La Société Française de Photographie, where my old friend Tania Passafiume did some work on Bayard… We had once worked on his Direct Positive process in my studio, where I learned more in a couple hours than I had in years. I remember she later went to Bayard’s birthplace north of Paris and brought back slate from his garden, after I wondered whether it could have affected his exposures. Another loose historical end to tie someday.