Renouvelle Vague

Forgive the slowness. Tuesday, the mac's screen ceased to function. Am now on a PC with a French keyboard...

Here I was wondering where to find the soul of Paris, the one of Boris Vian, Serge Gainsbourg and l'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. Paris when it be-bopped.

I started reading "l'Ecume des jours" in order to find it. It's a bit non-sensical but he prefaces it with (I paraphrase): the only thing that matters is jazz, or the music of Duke Ellington, and falling in love with pretty girls. Nothing outside of that matters or makes sense and nothing within that makes much sense either. Delighted to discover that Vian had an obsession with Wodehouse. Not delighted to discover that he wrote his best work while living miserably off translations in a chambre de bonne near Place de Clichy. Grim.

I went to see Gainsbourg's house; had to after seeing the movie. One doesn't really get to see the house as much as the dense grafitti all over the front wall which remind one how people are lauded once they're gone and criticized while they're alive. Again, a downfall of celebrity.

I think I finally found its real remains at Shakespeare and Company. (see photo above).

It was like putting your fingers through the ash of yesterday's bonfire. You can tell how great the fire was and the warmth it gave but all that's left is a fine monochrome silt to prove that it was.

What I'd like is a Re-nouvelle Vague. 

I'd like another Bardot, please, to make me believe that femininity is appreciated for its own sake and not because it possesses some special talent. 

I'd like a Godard who projects himself and does what he wants and doesn't care. An intellectual who wishes he were a cowboy, who becomes transparent through his characters.

I'd like a new Gainsbourg, unattractive but irresistible, full of talent but absurdly shy. Rather like a voyeur.

Furthermore, I'd like all these things because they are irrevocably French and because there was an innocence in all this expression that is no longer.

Last night, I had drinks with a guy who just started his production company & I of course asked him, why is there no longer anything that feels like Nouvelle Vague? Freshness. French freshness.

He said that if there is any freshness it is killed along the way, by all the people who are part of getting a film made. But wasn't that always a potential danger?

Innoncence, Jemenfoutisme, Légèrté...

I wonder where my nose will take me next to find it...