Glaswegians in Paris

Libby Cooklin

2008

I'm Glaswegian. I grew up here. I went to Uni here. I now travel around the city working in libraries all over the place. Nothing pretentious is allowed to pass without some kind've comment or joke. Irritatingly, I am also a completely pretentious prat myself, more than worthy of my own jokes. I frequently float away to questions on these miraculously higher planes only to come crashing down to earth as an empty cigarette packet hits me in the face, dislodged by some minor hurricane just outside Partick station. Generally I quite like the fact that my surroundings sometimes knock some common sense into me. But, my inner prat started going crazy; it was nostalgic for a world it'd never lived in, you see. It read books and watched films and saw a world where people who thought like it all knew each other and talked and argued. It, meanwhile, was being hit in the face with rubbish.

Time did me a favour. I was not only alive, but also old enough to book flights on the internet AND my favourite director, Godard, was doing an exhibition in Paris. Not only an exhibition, there was going to be a retrospective of his films as well. It felt like my entire life was focusing in on this moment

So I went to Paris with two poor non-French speaking non-Godardians and, on this particular day, got them up early so that we could be at the Pompidou centre the moment it opened. I was getting the chance to be in the same place at the same time as things I was interested in. This had never happened before. I was fit to burst. In a need to withhold this joy, we explored the rest of the centre first. We saw videos of plants attempting to teach a plant the alphabet and lights flashing in sequence and what looked like video game characters dancing on the walls. I really tried to understand it; but the point of this completely escaped me. I tried to avoid laughing in the face of the chin strokers who seemed to find meaning in nonsense. I was worried; I thought the innate need to deflate would ruin my entire trip and I tottered on the edge of the exhibition, afraid to go in.

Battered and bruised from their war with insurmountable boredom, my friends gave up and quickly retreated to the café. I stayed. For a long time. I needn't have worried: it was bliss. I ate up all the film references, laughed at the jokes and let myself think my ridiculous thoughts. I floated around in a world that was sympathetic. The fact that it was temporary made it all the better.

I joined my friends in the cinema downstairs. I was surrounded by people reading Proust, Genet and Kierkegaard. In a cinema. My awe at so many people reading things like that in one place was eclipsed by the realisation that it's impossible to read in a darkened room. I realised I was definitely not French. We watched my favourite film.

I could barely speak. I was so full. I have no idea what with, but I was full. I'd been in a room with people who felt something like the way I did (at the very least, they laughed in the right places). I looked at one of my friends. She admitted she'd fallen asleep and missed the whole thing. The other looked traumatised and irritated. It was like the fag packet in the face. I felt guilty. And stupid for caring about something that was apparently so dull and pointless. I was a chin stroker.

That evening we did what my friend wanted; went to a jazz club in the latin quarter. I've since been back there several times, and it's normally jumping with people dancing to a distincly average band. Tonight it was dead; a few musicians playing for the last night before they went out on tour. The three of us felt like we stuck out like swore thumbs, and were insanely awkward. We'd already been bawled out by the barman for our pathetic French pronunciation and I could see my friends were very disappointed thus far in their trip. Then the band started. We shuffled forward in our seats to hear a bit better; it sounded good. Then it got better. And better. The music dripped into our veins and washed away our awkwardness. Suddenly everyone in the room felt like friends. We all talked, to each other, to the musicians to the barman. Then we danced. Trained in the limited-space shuffle of clubs back home we had no idea how to dance to this kind've stuff. But we danced. And danced. And danced. We probably looked like complete and utter t****, but it was phenomenal. Transported by some magical glow, we smiled our way back to the hotel; not noticing how long the walk was.

All three of us agreed that we'd never experience anything quite like that again. None of the places are the same now. It was a fluke of time and people and places colliding. It had been exactly what I was looking for. I couldn't believe I could've enjoyed one day so much; but I did and I still haven't come up with a way to deflate the whole thing.