Paris and I ~ 'I Don't Do Reality'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ I Don't Do Reality ~

I Don't Do Reality, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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In the hubbub of summer there are still moments of melancholy magic as you wait for trains, fight with the tourists and peer over the edge of the quays lining the Seine to see what people are getting up to on Paris Plage this year.

Ghost trains screech by carrying their disembodied load, much lighter in summer, with an eerie feel to them. And then there are the lonely people sitting opposite - they have always fascinated me, but then maybe I fascinate them, but I doubt it somehow.

You can't help wonder about their lives, but I certainly wouldn't have the patience to do what another Paris blogger does, she actually goes up to stranger and interviews them, with a pic. I read thse things sometimes but once the mystique has been peeled away I'm generally left feeling disappointed and somewhat hollow. I preferred the mystery. I realise that I don't actually want to know that 'Jean François is a law student but harbours a secret wish to tour the world'. Is that it? The results of your investigative journalism? And the photos are snaps. Oops, I'm getting bitchy and snobbish, but it's nothing, absolutely nothing against the person who does them, and certainly has nothing to do with the fact that she's just got a massive advertising contract with the manufacturer of the camera she uses (Samsung or somesuch, honestly, I ask you...).

Nope, I'm M. Discrêt, moi. Don't even want people to know I'm there, quiet as a Paris rat, and they must be quiet, considering there's one for every inhabitant of the city, although you'd never know so if you stay resolutely overground.

So I'll leave you with my little Mamma Mia, some little Asian girl whose story I don't want to know, whose voice I don't want to here and whose face-on portrait I don't want to see. I'm not the world's biggest fan of reality I'm afraid. I prefer my own world, although you're welcome to take a look around.

J è  GRAB MY 20 AMAZING PARIS CURIOSITIES FREE NOW!  ç J

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© 2011 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.

Paris and I ~ 'Sandcastles of my Brain'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Sandcastles Of My Brain ~

Sandcastles of my Brain, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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Happy days are here again... Or Paris Beach is back, at least, that much we can say.

And this year there is a rather special attraction: a fabulous sandcastle sculpted by, well, sandcastle sculpting experts I presume, from all over Europe so the blurb goes.

It is indeed a wondrous thing, and I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering also, why, for Thor's sake, doesn't it just blow away, or disintegrate into an inelegant heap with all this wind and rain we've been having lately.

This reminds me of a classic philosophical connundrum: when is a sandcastle not a sandcastle.

If that seems rather obscure, don't worry, it is. The reasoning goes like this...

We look at what we see here before us and see... a beautiful sandcastle. Most of us would agree with that.

But what if the wind blew, ever so gently, and one, just one tinsy-winsy little grain of sand sadly fell from this awe-inspiring structure. Would we still see a glorious kingly, fairytale structure? Probably.

But then you keep on doing this, again and again and again. Most people would also agree that the sandcastle is made from a finite number of grains of sand; you could count them, in other words, if you were that mad or that bored.

Therefore we could imagine, after a pretty long time, admittedly, that we would be down to the last few grains of sand of our erstwhile marvellous masterpiece. Let's face it, it would be pretty difficult to still call a handful of sand consisting of, say 500 grains of sand, a magnificent such as we see here.

And yet, at no time in the process of removing grains, one by one, could we honestly say, "Ah hah! Now, with that last grain that just blew away it's most definitely changed from being a beautiful castle to just a pile of sand." The chances are we won't notice the slightest bit of different between beautiful sandcastle and beautiful sandcastle minus one grain.

So what's going on? At what point, if any, does the castle become a crumple, and how can we be so sure of there being two distinct states (castle and no castle) and yet not be able to perceive the change even through extremely close observation?

It probably says a lot about the way we peceive the world and what it is necessary and just as importantly not necessary to be aware of. I guess if we needed, of some reason, to see things actually changing over a long period of time, we'd have been given the capacities to do so.

As it is we'd need a sort of timelapse brainography to register these changes, during which we'd be wasting our lives away, so don't. It's quite simple really. Kind of. Like getting old. Are you aware of it? Forget about it. Enough of building sandcastles in my brain. Think I'll go and build some in Spain instead.

J è  GRAB MY 20 AMAZING PARIS CURIOSITIES FREE NOW!  ç J

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© 2011 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.

Welcome To My World

Welcome To My World, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

For those of you who have just recently found my little corner of the web, resolutely devoted to the city of Paris in all its absurd glory, this image rather sums it up for me; quirky absurdity and sly curious in a classical setting.

The Paris I love is full of surprises, a smorgasbord of personalities and priorities, all thrown together, for better or for worse, to work this thing out between them.

Not for me shots of sweets, meats, boots and bags, wondrous as many of these creations most undoubtedly are. No, what I love is the unexpected, the unpredictable, that impossible to presuppose moment when city stirrings and underground insolence melds with pedestrian passings to become, if I've been lucky, a blurry instant for me to look back on and wonder about the wonder of it all.

I'd say I wonder if anyone feels the same, but I know that quite a few of you do, so I won't insult you by suggesting I'm the only one who feels this way. But then again, this particular world view isn't for everyone, which is fine. But that's what you'll get here: my world view, of the micro-cosmos known as the capital of France, the City of Light (and Darkness too); the place I call home.

That would be Paris, murky, mysterious, mesmerising Paris.

And The Winner Is...

And The Winner Is..., originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

'Beauty Comes In Batches' was the original title of this post, and I like it so much that I thought I'd include it here even though the course of the piece told me to replace it in the end.

Of course not everyone will agree with me that this is a beautiful image, and they're right. If it's not beautiful for them then it's not beautiful for them, and no-one has the right to argue I reckon.

However, for me there's a certain enjoyable harmony and coherence to the mish-mash of grimy graffiti and protruding tubes. I love the little alcove for the heavily tagged electricity and gas junction boxes. The scarred wall and the tired posters echoing the turquoisy-blue of the door-in-an-arch. It all goes to make up a pleasing if not an award-winning image.

Not that I run after awards. Indeed, the very idea seems slightly ludicrous to me. In the same way as you thinking this image is singularly unremarkable, which by definition makes it so - for you - I can't quite conceive of the logic in getting other people to somehow 'validate' my own, or anybody's, personal image of the city.

How on earth could anyone have the slightest idea what a given image means to a given image-creator? They weren't there, they didn't make the creative choices, given limitations we can't even begin to guess at by looking at the picture, and of course they haven't inhabited the photographer's skin, no, not even for one millisecond, so as you can see I'm pretty sceptical about 'photo competitions' and the like.

Which gives me a slight dilemma, because I make videos talking about other people's photographs. My response would be, though, that I comment on what I like and say why I like it, and often offer ideas for trying other approaches to see what would happen and for building the photographer's imaginative arsenal.

But never for one instant (ok, very very rarely) would I presume to be in a position to say that an image is good (although I do, but what I really mean is 'I like it'), or far more dangerously... bad (which would be both unnecessarily hurtful, and, of course, quite simply wrong for everyone in the entire clickin' universe except me).

Paris remains a rich personal hunting ground for just the reason that through an innocuous archway urban signals like these may catch our eye.

Can we draw conclusions from what we see here? Could we delve deeper into people's lives, both modern and olden, thanks to the evidence laid and plastered before us? Should we even dare pretend that we could possibly stab at realities and fundamental truths about archaic archway makers and energetic electricians and slippery street artists and felt marker manufacturers simply because they seem to have passed this way?

Perhaps no more than we can say what this image really means to the person, the life and experience which created it. Which is nothing at all.

Which is why I'm not keen on self-serving photo competitions but am a huge fan of anyone who goes out there and presses the shutter button because a fleeting emotion told them to. Now that really means something.

I Wanna Get Off

I Wanna Get Off, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

The French call it the 'train-train'. Or sometimes 'métro-boulot-dodo' (train-work-bed). We Brits refer to it as 'the daily grind'. Every language seems to have a term for it.

And sometimes, in my more reflective moments, I wonder about all those repetitive little motions we perform, and if we added them all up just how much of our lives we would end up having to admit we'd spent brushing our teeth, with our fingers in our nose, scratching our backsides or just pressing buttons of one sort or another.

I imagine the figures would be surprising.

Guys... between peeing and playing, fiddling and fornicating, washing and wanking, how much time do you reckon Mr. Happy has passed in your grubby little grip?

Ladies... major risk of sexism rushing up behind me here, how much time will you have spent with a hair brush or mascara applicator in your hands, a phone to your ear or a macaron in your mouth ;~S

The time we spend on trains, well, those of us living an urban existence at least, never fails to petrify me if I think about it. So much of our lives just sitting, or standing, or mindlessly moving, to get from one place to another, and yet these moments aren't dead moments; we're theoretically as alive when doing nothing or something mindless like commuting as at any other time. And yet we have a tendency to treat them as lost.

It's funny, the last time I took a picture of a train door opening mechanism I wrote a very similarly themed piece.

There must be something about train doors, and waiting to open them, which does that to me.

Did you know that the French for 'spot', as in things on your face you squeeze is bouton (i.e. 'button')?

That's kind of funny, isn't it? And I think if I had to live all of my 'button' pressing or squeezing moments all in one go, I'd have a good few months of gory gratuitous fun in front of me.

But was it time well spent?

Oh Putain, C'est Pas Vrai! (bienvenue au RATP)

Oh Putain, C'est Pas Vrai! (bienvenue au RATP), originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

The staff of the Paris metro haven't always been synonymous with 'customer service with a sparkling smile', although to be fair these days they're usually exceedingly helpful and understanding, especially where tourists are concerned.

All those customer care workshops and English courses they get sent on must finally be paying off.

Customer care hasn't reached the 'Information' office at Trinité station on line 12 yet though.

I was passing just as the ogre, I'm sorry, I mean 'lady' you see in the photo here was leaving her booth and about to lock the door, at 1.30 in the afternoon, before heading off to a destination unknown.

I don't know why I took it into my head to ask for a new metro map at that moment, but I regretted it for the rest of the week.

"Excusez-moi?" I asked, in my best Expat tones.

"Oui?" came the blunt reply.

"Errr..." (I admit I hesitated, but certainly wasn't ready for what came next)

"Est-ce que je peux avoir un plan du métro, s'il vous plaît ?" (Could I have a map of the metro, if it pleases you?)

It didn't please her one little bit, apparently.

Without the slightest hesitation or hint of remorse she let rip a resounding

"Oh PUTAIN, c'est pas vrai!!!" (which translates quite accurately, I believe, as 'Oh FUCK, I don't believe it!!!')

before returning to her booth in the worst possible humour in order to fulfil my request.

I saw her a minute later on the opposite side of the rails carrying out some impenetrable mission, which seemed to involve walking to the other end of the platform and back, and for which I she was now, thanks to me, a good 7 seconds behind schedule. I hope she didn't get in trouble over that one.

I'm intending to complain just for the hell of it to see what happens and see if they actually do anything, but maybe this 'naming and shaming' will calm me down for the moment. But I can honestly say that this encounter of the absurd kind did leave me feeling destabilised for the rest of the week.

Now whenever I go down there (and it is currently my local working station after all) I get a twist of anxiety as to whether I'll cross the Terror of the Trinité and get another screaming hissy fit thrown at me for daring to ask an RATP employee to do her job. I'll keep you posted.

Paris and I ~ 'Walking Wounded'

iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Walking Wounded ~

Walking Wounded, originally uploaded by Paris Set Me Free.

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Oh how cute... :-D Someone's curved a lovably lop-sided little heart out of this old palm tree.

Except that it's probably not very green to go carving up nature these days, if you tried carving up these particular trees you'd probably end up spending a long time in an unfriendly police cell and paying a large fine, and, well, the story isn't at all as lovely as all that.

We're looking at the war wounded here folks. Collateral damage. If they weren't an inherent part of you-know-where (don't you?), they'd be at Invalides which was specially built for looking after those incapacitated in the call of duty.

Imagine schrapnel flying out from a thousand grenades or heavy gun fire tearing through these pour souls. That's what we're seeing here, and similar reminders of Paris' poignant past can be seen on a score of walls all around the central part of the city.

Of the eight brave survivors I counted three or four who had suffered similar gouging. They're only brought out in summer as they're not acclimatised to Paris winters, so you'll have to hurry if you want to see them, but the chances are you have done even without being aware of it as you walk around what is probably the capital's most legendary park.

So spare a thought for those who perished in the first and second world wars on your sunny Sunday stroll, and remember, the past is never very far behind you in this neck of the woods. Or Paris ain't always a beach, if you prefer...

J è  GRAB MY 20 AMAZING PARIS CURIOSITIES FREE NOW!  ç J

_________________________________________________________________________________
© 2011 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.