satori seeking in Paris

muses and crying in musées

before

It’s five chestnut spiral staircases up to the apartment I’m staying in. The rain has pelted my suitcase, but I managed to tuck my jeans into boots at the bus stop so I’m mostly dry. I’m expecting everything to be sodden, but only my pyjamas and my library copy of Giovanni’s Room have been hit through the plastic casing. I’m anticipating 72 hours of walking everywhere, or cheating metro barriers, and living off of baguettes to appease my financial situation. There’s a good chance I might run out of funds, but maybe for once I’ll let myself live like that. Living now instead of in a few months time. I try to remember how Patti Smith did it- 1969 with her sister, the start of something great. Somehow I don’t think half a bread roll, a bit of theft, busking, and the kindness of strangers is going to get me by like it did her. And besides, I’m only here for a few days. Maybe I can afford- spiritually, more than financially- to run myself into the ground.

Like Patti, I’m also armed with Kerouac, to see if I can imitate his satori, his sudden enlightenment. In the weeks preceding, back in London, I’ve felt myself starting to scratch at doors; to be let in or out, I don’t know yet. If anywhere can give me a new light, surely it’s here? Narrow streets in the shadow of cream, balconies buildings. Cafes on corners, cigarettes on riversides. Music. Art. I’m open to whatever the city deems me in need of, if it has the chance to see me.

“I’m a wretch. But I love, love.” - Kerouac, Satori in Paris

during

When the clouds dissipate,  I leave my Montmartre apartment and follow the helter-skelter roads around the Sacre Coeur and indulge myself in the obvious: I think about skittish Amélie, who I saw myself in from a much-too-young age. I think about her knowing that something shining and perfect is ripe for her to pluck as if the geometric Parisian streets were an orchard. But instead, wrapping herself instead in a maze, urging him to work to know her, and being unsure of herself when, unexpectedly, he’s willing. I think of the opening montage of her growing up amusing herself, with no one else to play with, and learning to bring furtive delight to those around her as a life source. Of the life she lead alone and how close she was to keeping it that way. When I solo travel I microdose that feeling of permanent, inevitable aloneness; it doesn’t take me half a day to return to it. I think it’s good for me, to remember my roots, and how I unentangled myself from them.

Outside the basilica, there on the steps overlooking Montparnasse and the Notre Dame, I read Jane Birkin’s diaries. Despite being something of the French socialite, her Englishness (her poshness) is brutally obvious, especially as a child. Everything is 'jolly dull' and 'rather good'. But as she matures, that honesty makes her effortlessly cool. The panacea to iconification is autobiographies, if you were wondering. You can’t pedestal anyone when you’re reading about their family pet’s burial or what the mean girls at school used to say to them. They were all friendless and somewhat stifled growing up, devoted to the art that came before them. No posturing about having always had a je ne sais quoi or pretending to have grown up working class, just an easily piqued interest that they followed, relentlessly.

I take her to a table for one outside Le Consulat, hoping the history of the café will imbue me with something larger than myself. Toulouse-Lautrec honed his art here, van Gogh and Monet too. Maybe I can do the same. An accordionist approaches playing classics, and the women at the table next to me sing along to La Vie en Rose. When he leaves, they play back the video immediately, as though they didn’t just live through it. I leave a kiss of rouge on the rim of my wine glass. It take me half a glass to think that surely this would be a fine place to break years of veganism and order a bowl of Moules. But instead I read. Jane was the butterfly in the hurricane. She was inspiration to Paco Rabanne, she told Diana to move to Paris ('to avoid the press…'), she planted the seeds of the soft and ‘sexy-voiced’ female singer, she designed her eponymous Hermès bag on the back of a plane sick bag. She was instrumental in so much culture. She was the muse.

Dans le Lit (Toulouse-Lautrec, 1882)

I order another glass of wine. Now the couple to my left are watching their own videos of the accordion man. It’s all very strange. In her diaries, in 1968, Jane is writing with lipstick on her mirror ‘Je T’aime Je T’aime Je T’aime Serge’. I feel hazily as though I’ve never understood anything more. The burning sun gives way to heavy rain for the third time since I arrived a few hours ago, pattering on the canopy above me. What is it to be a muse? To be a reflection, a vision, a portal? Paris is in the blood of so much art, culture, fashion. It surely couldn’t be that way without wide, adoring eyes to see it, to take it to heart?

The wine is good and I start to leave the abstract, no longer bothering myself about the chemical makeup of a muse. Right now I’m in Paris, swimming through the city, its waves washing over me. I’m struck by genius: I’m going to walk to the Eiffel Tower. Yes, down to the Seine. I remember seeing a short film in an art gallery, la Fond de la Seine, shots underwater in the river of debris, metal spokes, pages of books yet undisintegrated, blanketed in Age and algae. In the film, the river speaks her own monologue: 'je me souviens de tout.' / 'I remember everything.' Does she remember me?

It’s over an hour, more with my blisters, but I float giddily in the sun; time passes me rather than me passing her. The plan: down the Rue de Clichy to un tabac, then the Champs-Élysées. A river path until as much of my field of vision is full of the landmark as possible, then rest. When I find myself sat on the river bank, it’s dreamlike. Not the Eiffel Tower itself, that’s a constant spectre in the city, always visible somehow. But below me squeak a family of ducklings, learning to swim. I blow them kisses and silently praise their efforts, water dripping from their impenetrable fluff of feathers. Ahead of me, a rainbow; the weather has finally settled. Overkill as symbols go, maybe, but welcomed.

'Excuse me,' the man sat next to me says for the millionth time. Naturally I’m disgruntled, because I’m trying to watch the ducklings. But I realise he’s not going to go away.

'Yes?'

'You’re very beautiful. I love…’ he gestures his hand at me. ‘I love you.’ 

This is a new one. There must be something in the air, in the water perhaps. I thank him, politely, and try to shoot him down. He won’t take no for an answer.

‘Can I take a picture with you? You’re very beautiful.’ One of the most famous sights in the world is ahead of him and he wants me to look away? For a second I wonder whether I’m safer saying yes. But the wine emboldens me.

‘No,’ I say, toying with whether or not to throw in a sorry. I don’t. 

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I am.’

He leaves looking dismayed. I’m baffled by this. It’s now a warm day and I can feel my fringe sticking to my forehead; I had a long day of travel, of being intermittently pelted by rain. I’m hunched over to accommodate the part of me that feels the pain in my heels from so much walking in boots that aren’t built for it. There are stains on my white skirt from sitting on the ground. I’m not the picture of appeal. Is it because I’m alone? Is it because I reflect?

The next day, I take myself to the Jardin de Tuileries and eat a croissant by the fountain, watching the koi. A life lesson I seem unable to ingrain is that croissants are one of the best foods created by man and should be consumed frequently. Later, I’ll scavenge for flakes of pastry at the bottom of the paper bag I forget to throw away. 

The Musée D’Orsay, a longstanding target of mine, is bigger than I had expected. Converted train station full of light, and the light full of sculpture. I’m not looking for movement, but I find it. The first piece I see is a wooden relief, L’Amour, two lovers three-dimensional enough only to hold each other, arms around shoulders and legs entwined. I can feel it reverberating inside of me. It sets the tone of the visit. I waver on the verge of tears at every painting of a couple in an embrace, or a woman on her own in the moonlight, a figure curled around themselves in bed. Fibreglass ribs quivering, heart aching; it’s hard to breathe all the way in, like my chest sits within a cage. I can’t help but feel shaken by having such a visceral reaction to tenderness, even when it’s just a painting. Just a painting. 

After I sweep by the back of the clock, just another silhouette in its arms, I open my phone and search 'tarot pull' which is, admittedly, a level of desperation I hadn’t expected of myself. I just want to know what direction to be desperate in. My connection is slow and the screen loads strip by strip from the top, but I recognise the helmet of the armour from the first section, and my eyes widen. DEATH. I must look quite unwell, skirting around groups of other tourists, wanting nothing more than to drop to my knees before the Manets. It’s incredibly melodramatic of me, but, you see, all I have is the internal of it all. All I have is that card shredding itself inside of me, grating against my lungs. I don’t misunderstand, I know the skeleton and his steed represent new beginnings, not a real death of any sort. But I’m feeling the pull between sinews as I sit in the states of being unwilling to acknowledge a fresh page, and having felt this coming for a while, both at once.

Gauguin and Van Gogh are palate cleansers. To start again, to let in a new truth, you have to go back to what you know, back to simplicity. Somewhat faded brushstrokes I’ve traced since childhood; I find comfort in the way the stars glow and the street lamps swirl, the way the flowers droop and fabric drapes, lifeless. I can breathe deeply. I gravitate towards marbles of angels. They make sense somehow, complete; of course that’s what’s missing from all that empty space. They dissipate the hotbox stomach and look like something to hold onto. And I’ve always loved Rodin. He greets me at the top of the stairs. I feel as though he spent his whole artistic career trying to say what he said with The Kiss. They’re pieces I can access without a heart-fluttering, eye-stinging reaction- now, at least. I can steady my breathing enough not to sink to the floor, take in what’s left of the 19th century, and get out, walk aimlessly around the streets until I can feel my own hands again.

“Goodbye for now, I am sorry I have bored you for writing how I feel. It’s the only way I can get it out.” - Jane Birkin to her diary, aged 13

Recently, until I came here maybe, everything’s felt slick with oil, clothes heavy with tar. Smoke-tinged where I want sun-bleached. I think I need to stop reading books where twenty-something infinites live in drugged hazes and laugh off encounters with dangerous men, need to stop listening to music about people who hate each other. Everything cuts deep these days, even the good things. It’s like I’ve taken the filter out and am experiencing everything a little too intensely. I can’t risk the colours getting too bright.

So on my final day I keep things simple. Rue Cremieux, the Bastille, Jardin du Luxembourg. I sit by the Medici Fountain with a sculptural patisserie find: vanilla mousse, crème noisette, praline adornments. Light through the trees, too much sweetness, Cookie Mueller’s autobiography. I read about her toppling through New York with ragtag friends, negotiating evil forces between club visits, traipsing to Italy to fix her broken heart, alternating downtown fixes and ODs. I take a moment to live in that life I could never want, via her. I look up from my book, lost, after an hour, maybe two. I know immediately that I need to ground myself in my final moments alone with the city before it slips away. 

‘I am in Paris.’ I think. ‘This is Paris.’ 

I don’t much feel like walking to the Eiffel Tower again to prove the point, but the French chattering around me isn’t working to plant my feet. I feel like a Mueller-esque adventure but I have a big day of work in the morning. Maybe the most excitement I’ll have is my phone dying. It’s definitely been a couple of hours, my legs are stiff when I stand, and the cold has crept in. I take the long route and walk myself to the Louvre.

It’s my final stop, and the final thing to complete to feel as though I’ve done Paris. I’ve been waiting for years to delve beneath the glass pyramids and see if they’re worth their salt. At this point, I’m saturated with art, and I’m worried I won’t be able to appreciate the wonder of one of the most famous museums in the world. I guess that just means it’ll take something a little stronger to cut through the veil. 

It’s a maze of a place, and I take a while to get my head around it. Everything is marble and vast; it almost feels a shame to let the works drown one another out. One of these pieces in an unassuming place would be enough to make one consider the existence of a god, all in one room they become easy to ignore. I can’t quite find my place. I think some lost and desperate thoughts before of a relief of Saint Jude. Maybe it works, maybe the hope I can feel creeping in is a gift from him. Maybe it’s the harsh lighting.

Every corner hosts a sign pointing to the Mona Lisa, and eventually I decide that maybe the best path through is to her. I’ve never been particularly interested, not in the way that I think I’m supposed to be. But once I make my way through the crowd and get a complete view, albeit from the side, I think I get it. She’s another reflection. Another muse. Not the woman herself, maybe, but the painting. Her wry smile, her seeing eyes. You can see where you’re supposed to stand in her gaze. Once I’m in I don’t seem to want to leave her. But I make my way past anyhow.

It’s on my way out, parched, feet aching, that I’m finally struck by something. I admire The Winged Victory of Samothrace, the wings splayed out, shadow spilling down the steps, and into the hall of European sculpture. I’m ready to leave. At the back, in the corner, unbeknownst to me, is the piece that’s been waiting for me. Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss. I’d forgotten. I’m always magnetised to them, whatever painting or sculpture they take the form of, but this one is different. I’ve been sketching from photos of it for years, gazing into the marble through a screen. Up close it’s breath-taking. The softness of the embrace, the look of adoration you can draw between them like a line, the form of the bodies- separate, but together. The shadows they swap. I didn’t know they were here. I gasp a little, despite myself, and plant my feet in front of them. Their love was about the visual in a way that I’ve always felt held by. Cupid’s refusal to let her see him, Psyche’s hubris in sampling divine beauty for herself, too human to grasp it. Intensely connective, absorbing. His wings against her slumber, a fated match; their love regardless, visually deific. In front of every painting, I always wanted to crawl into bed beside her, silent spectator to his whisperings, and feel the anticipation, catch the stray sparks of their all-consuming love. It seems too poetic, too narratively perfect to end my trip like this. But my feet carry me back out into the streets of Paris, and the chapter closes itself.

after

On the train home, the sky outside us is going the way of a storm. I tend to think you can tell the difference between the green of the fields on either side of the Channel, which is the only thing you have to differentiate at first, but I might be seeing things. I’m tapping out the past few days in words that feel mistier, dreamier than things were in reality. Not by choice, but because that’s the fate of a feeling when you have to convey it. And inevitably I’m always writing about home, too much maybe. As the train pulls into St Pancras, a French voice speaks over the intercom.

'Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to London, and if London is home, welcome home .’

It feels like a test.