Songs For Your Day

I am on my last trip to Paris with my parents living there and it being officially home.  Therefore I am trying to embrace everything I love here, and focusing on how I can bring those things back into my United States life.  There are many things I associate with Paris, and many images/sounds/stereotypes that pop into my head when I think of Paris/France/the french.  Georges Brassens perfectly fits one of those stereotypes.

Les Amoureux des Bancs Publics was one of the staple songs of my childhood.  My father, having lived in France for eight years in the 80s and being bilingual, has always admired Brassens’s impeccable enunciation of every part of every word in this song.  I grew to love it more after I moved away from Paris to begin university because of what it represented.  The song itself, its lyrics, the way he sings in general is just utterly French: the Parisian lovers PDA-ing in le parc, the older French women who give those lovers judmental looks.  You can almost hear him smoking a cigarette (truth be told he always used a pipe) with his magnifique mustache.  He has the most typical but beautiful way of pronouncing his words, and listening to this always puts me back in the smoky cafés, the glasses of red wine, cigarettes, snobby waiters, the chairs and tables outside of restaurants, and the beauty of our city.  This is the rich part of French culture: the richness of food (two hours and plus for lunch), of art, of music, of life.  Paris was the place I discovered how to live richly, with feeling and effort into everything.  Being here, one cannot help but transform simple acts into indulgences. I have taken many things for granted by calling Paris my home (such as riding the metro, croissants, museums).  However, living richly prevents aimless walks, coffee after dinner, wine at every meal, and countless other daily activities from ever becoming mundane.

Be French for a night: put on a striped shirt, pour a glass of wine, spread some cheese on a slice of bread, brew coffee, and listen to Georges Brassens.  Be this stereotype for a few minutes and discover how wonderful it is.

An equally amazing song you can play for this:

Rebecca P.

P.S. Look out for more Paris posts in the next 1 1/2 weeks.