Charlene humors me by speaking French with me on occasion. For a while I was nearly conversational at say a toddlers level. These days I'm good for either "hello" or "goodbye" and not much more. Anyhoo, Charlene also suggested that we write about someone as a foreign country for our song today. I liked this idea a lot. Lots of juicy possibilities and I assumed going in that the song would be a little bitter; hell I was looking forward to it. But as is often the case, the song had other ideas.
About four years ago I went to Paris and I loved it when I went there. It just felt very deep and old. Maybe rich, like in the sense of good chocolate, perhaps enjoyed with a bit of coffee. It was hard to be there in some ways as well. I didn't really know a lick of French when I got there. I was genuinely startled when they actually said 'voila.'
A lot.
We stayed for ten days and after about five I was tired of not understaning anything.
When I was there I stalked Montmartre pretty assiduously, after all it's where Amelie was filmed. They left both the Sacre Coeur at the top of Montmartre and all the sex shops at the bottom out of the movie. They also left out all the artist's who hang out and offer to sketch tourists. And the phalanx of people on the hillside who all seemed to be offering to do a trick with a peice of string. I didn't stop to find out what the trick was. I suspected it sometimes involved losing one's wallet, though usually one probably just loses a couple euros. The performer was bound to expect payment when the trick was done.
So in summary, I loved Paris. I can get serioulsy wistful about the whole thing seeing one of those 50's noir black and white photos of the city. So, in the end, the song wasn't going to be bitter after all.
