Crescent+Star+Wing, Smoking Kritter (w/John Kole),Hubbar, Paris Bends (tragic comedy),Phil et Pat Ã¥ Hub, Chateau Margeaux, ITIN mostly ’98
So there I was in Paris right before the turn of the century walking up to random women asking them in mangled manic French: “Today the question is: should I live or die?”
Lucky for me the answer was always, “Vivre, vivre, vivre.”
It is amazing how a pretty face telling you to live can save your life. So then it was off to the Sancerre for coffee and a Pastis and then to the Papeterie for The Canson paper I couldn’t afford and then to the photo store for a few disposable cameras (kodak and agfa black and white) which I could afford even less and picking up double prints on the last five rolls (at least a hundred and fifty dollar a day silver habit). But I was convinced that if I stoped working (drawing, writing, shooting pictures) I would evaporate into a mist. With a full valise of toys I march around the corner to Le Bistrot 82 on the Rue des Martyrs for a coup de pinard and a long talk with the amazing Felliniesque prostitute named Joisette. She would tell me stories of Montmartre when she was young and beautiful and not a whore, but a cocktail waitress at one of the swank cabarets of the early sixties. She did this as she swept the pistachio shells off the floor for drinks. Sometimes a client would stop by and she’d return fifteen minutes later and buy me a drink and go right on talking from the exact spot she’d stopped pre-coitus. Machmuud was behind the bar and he would give me cash out of his pocket so that when the Patron stopped by I could appear to be paying for my Pastis. He would play Bruce Springsteen at top volume and I’d tell him about Brooklyn and New York.
“I love Le Boosss… ,” he’d tell me. “But I hate Le Patron!”
Then he’d fill my glass with Pastis and refresh the ice water caraf. When the yellow liquor had turned white in the ice water, he’d give me more francs for the theater with Le Patron. It was a fun game and if you seemed down… In a less than Machmuud mood, he would say, “What is the problem? I am the soulution: Tequilla.” And he would do a little dance and spin like a whirling dervish as he said “Tequilla”. It was improbably elegant and really charming. He did this for the ladies mostly, but he knew it made me laugh and by that point everyone in Montmartre knew I was on a Last Tango and going mad and suicidal in the late night streets. It was mostly the muslims who set about saving my life and I am eternally grateful (not dead) because of Machmuud and Fuad and Ali and M. Milk and on and on to the hash dealers who would seek me out to learn the words to their favorite Public Enemy Raps (hip hop being the international language of resistance to despair)
There is a story about the good samaritan… My so called friends had crossed to the other side of the street, but these strange Muslims picked me out of the gutter and fed me pistachios and wine and feta cheese and olives and coffee and lifted my heart to where we were dancing and chasing skirt through the beautiful Montmartre Cimetiere where Fuad worked as a guard and had the keys to palatial crypts that he claimed to use for late night love making above the dead. I didn’t believe a word of it, but the crypts were beautiful and we left flowers for Degas.
Tomb of Degas in the Montmartre Cememtary, digiphoto collage, ITIN ’05
Always I ended up at the HUB. It was a new bar with an aviation theme. The back room was made from the seats of a trashed Air France 707 circa ’64. It was the actual bar that was the interesting story. I got to know the Patron pretty well when he was on layover. He was a pilot for Air France – flying the big jets. Before that, he’d flown a Mirage in Africa – he’d killed a lot of people in Libya and Chad and it had sort of put the Zap on his head. After the war he took his Combat bonus and bought a silver single engine airplane. He flew this silver bird like St. Exupery all over Africa – falling in love with the continent and the people. When the money ran out, he flew it back to Paris where he disassembled it, got a job with Air France and turned the silver bird into Hub. The wing of her was the bar, the ailerons held the top shelf brandy, and the prop was behind the bar as a reminder of flight, or god, or murder, or love. He had his Mirage flight suit there and all sorts of hats he’d collected in his journeys. It was a great place to be drunk and play dress up. Some tourists came there… it was a good looking crowd… But mostly it was the regulars… a motley sort of Paris mixed races. It was like Cheers. I’d walk in the door to cires of “Monsiuer Alex!” and laughter and pats on the back and a beer waiting by the time I hit the runway.
At two we would pour into the street singing and dancing. Maybe we would hit the after hours joints, or maybe just sleep. I’d go back to the hotel and work on the screenplay for Arc Along The Watchtower – it was to be a feature then – and I wrote vast reams of hand srawled dialog talking to myslef in a closet sized room where I’d wash my blisterfeet in the bidet and chill white wine in the sink and try to save up money to take a bath.
The most improbable thing of all was that the bartender was sometimes called Phil and sometimes called Pat. This was the names of the characters in my screenplay. I thought they were having a rigole on the American… and I was game for a joke, untill one day I saw them both behind the bar. They were identical twins. Janus: Phil and Pat. I’m not making any of these stories up.
When I finsished my first draft of Arc, I bought a bottle of Veuve and drank it in my hotel and made a drawing with the label and then went to the Hub and bought all my friends a round. I gave them all drawings and a Muslim hash dealer told me to make sure and keep some gris gris for myself. He told me that someday the magic might run out (boy was he right).
Full circle …. coming around… arc along.
Always I was drawing… in all of these places like a maniac. I’d layer photographs and found paper and paint and blood red ink onto the good paper and then I’d try to buy food and drink with the images. I had a rap about how a bill is just a pictue on paper, but it is an addition of billions…. worhless as a collectable. Money, I explained, was like religion: a question of faith and belief in magic and lies. I had one picture and I asked people to have faith in that picture. I’d end up selling them for less than the price of raw materials, but MBNA was charging me ridiculous userous interest on my Brown Alumni Visa. I needed cash for cigarettes and I couldn’t breath without smoke. It was crazy and I’m still in debt from it and I have maybe ten of those hundreds of drawings. The rest are floating around in Paris somewhere. I was a graphomaniac and I wore sunglasses even at night because I was incognito, because the city of light was too bright, because I was a theif and I would steel your face right off your head, because my eyes were dancing around in my head, because I thought I was John Lennon on a lost weekend, because I thought I was James Joyce singing in Zurich during WWI and losing my sight, because I was Le Roi Orbison (the little prince of orbs)…. and maybe I was…. maybe I was all of those things, but the poet says: Those not busy being born are busy dying.
The inverse is also true: Those not busy dying are busy being born.
Paris is a nice place to get busy.
Joyceings,Veuve Orange, Ego Air