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Summer socialising

Published on July 18, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Spaces

Parc Floral, during the weekly weekend jazz concert.

One of my first blog posts in the autumn was on Le Square and the after-school socialisation among children and parents. Then came the grey and cold winter and street-life almost disappeared. Since then, I’ve returned several times to the seasonal changes and how social and communicative Parisians become as the temperature rises. Now summer is head on. The heat wave is said to reach its peak today, with 34-35 degrees in Paris. I’m staying at home during the day, trying to get on with at least one of the several blog posts that have been simmering in the back of my heads – and bothering my conscience – for a long time. Many of the neighbours across the courtyard have already left for holidays. The rest have their windows wide open like I have, and let various sounds mix between the houses. From my desk, I see the elderly lady get more visits from caretakers than usual, as the French authorities want to avoid the disaster from three years back when 15000 people, mostly elderly, died as a result of the extreme heat wave hitting Europe. Yesterday, some West African women – dressed in even more elegant dresses than usual, so I guess they had some kind of party or celebration – discussed and argued for hours somewhere in the yard. (Someone from a nearby window, who obviously understood their language, called one of them a sarkozyst on one occasion (apparently a summer hit invective – I also heard it in the park a few days ago)).
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I like it when all windows in the city are open and you can hear the clattering of plates at your neighbours’ dinner table or perhaps they’re arguing a little, or listen to which football teams the apartment building is cheering for in front of their telly. (I remember when I lived in Athens some years ago, during football matches in the Greek series, we could hear who cheered for the archrival Olympiakos (half of the building) and who were on the right side with Panathinaikos (as my flatmates)). The theme of this text, is exactly emotions like that: The slightly different sensations, emotions, atmospheres and everyday routines that slowly have become part of a (long-time) fieldworkers experiences to such an extent that that they can be difficult to pinpoint and describe. But they’ll be even harder to remember when I get home and quickly get absorbed by my Oslo way of life with own, and different state of mind. Before I know it, Paris will appear as a parallel and distinctly separate universe, and I’ve many reasons to try to struggle against this mental amnesia. One of them I’ll return to in a post soon (hopefully), titled I and politics (part three of My blog, my project and I).

As I’ve written some posts ago, in the day the blistering hot boulevard is almost empty. However, in the evenings it fills up, as people gather at the terraces in front of the bistros and cafés. I’ve been hanging around there for a couple of nights, with some people playing chess for hours and hours until closing time (I don’t play though, as socialising, fieldworking and speaking two foreign languages keep my mind sufficiently occupied). When taking a break from the game, they would play some guitar, sing some variété, believe it or not – including some Edith Piaf imitation (a musical genre the banlieusard in the company knew almost as little about as I, but which a tramp who had put his chair next to us enjoyed immensely) –, or discuss the etymological roots of words with each other or neighbouring tables, and once in a while one at the table was even making few half-hearted chatting-up attempts of passing girls.

(The tramp in fact, got a free drink with us at closing time, as someone included him when we asked if the house wouldn’t give us all a drink in return for our consumption. Apropos levels of alcohol consumption; generally, people seem to drink less here than in Norway when they go out – but I think they go more out – and I’ve got the impression that its usually one in the company who’s drinking quite a lot more than the others. – In Norway, isn’t it often the case that if one (man) is drinking quickly, then the rest of his mates will do the same? – It was in fact about time that I wrote something on alcohol here, and if I haven’t mentioned cannabis yet, I should soon, as both intoxicants are very widely used. The French also consume more antidepressants than others, but that is – probably – a different matter. Or perhaps not, this is after all the country of Baudelaire’s Spleen et Idéal as well as his Paradis Artificiel…).

Almost everywhere in Paris there is a good mix between flats, cafés and local shops, and people often go out in their neighbourhood. (One of the few exceptions to this mix is in the 13e Arrondissement, along the river – that is also the only place I’ve felt unsafe when cycling home at night, as there are very few pedestrians in the streets after the offices close and the employees go home). And in their neighbourhood, or in other public places, I notice to my delight that Parisians speak with strangers and meet new people… It would’ve been interesting to make a survey on where people in Norway and France have met their friends (and partners, as I’ve already mentioned public attempts at picking up strangers seems quite acceptable here. Many years ago I actually read a survey on how many had found their future partners on the metro in respectively Oslo and in Paris. I don’t remember the numbers, but the two cities were of course wide apart). When I ask a group of friends here where they’ve met, I rarely hear “work”, “studies” or “school”, as I think the overwhelming answer would have been in Oslo, instead they say bars or even on the street – or through friends, which is of course also the case chez nous.

As all the interaction in public spaces here continues to amaze me, I was surprised to hear a girl complain about how little she thought the French used the streets. She compared France to a non-European country where she had just spent some months, and like with so much else here in France, she said that the situation for creative street-life also was getting worse under the present government – with all the “securitarian” policing. I’ve got – yet – another example of that, which perhaps I’ll post on another occasion…

Parc Floral, during the weekly weekend jazz concert.

One of my first blog posts in the autumn was on Le Square and the after-school socialisation among children and parents. Then came the grey and cold winter and street-life almost disappeared. Since…

Monday

Published on July 10, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Places

What a drama, and what a deception! People were so eager for a party and it seemed to be so much at stake…

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Yesterday afternoon while the preparations for the match was going out outside, I sat at home, absorbed in the excess of newspaper articles reporting and commenting on the political fallouts of the merits of the French national team. Will France be more tolerant and less discriminatory and racist due to its multicoloured team? Will its success lead to optimism and economic growth? I’d guess neither of the two, but the last couple of days have convinced me that there is much more than football at stake. Perhaps it is right that the French national team is the team of the real, but yet unrecognised, France? Here, in East Paris where I live, if you see someone in the national football shirt you should not be surprised if he (or she) has a skin colour in shades darker than white. And who have been fiercest celebrators of the victories so far if not the kids from the infamous banlieues?

A couple of hours before the match, when I finally tore myself away from the media and got down on the street into the real world, I was met by three children singing and waving Le tricolore just outside my door. Le tricolore was waving from the local greengrocer’s and bistro too, as well as from numerous cafés, shops and flats along the boulevard. Flags were waving from cars and scooters, and the drivers were hooting at every possible and impossible opportunity. Amongst the tricolores, there were a couple of Algerian flags as well, apparently with at least one of the passengers wearing the French national jersey (which reminded me about a newspaper report I had just read from a bar in Marseille: after Zidane scored against Portugal someone had shouted “the ones who doesn’t jump now is not Kabyle” (Zidane’s parents were immigrants from Kabylia)…). From the fourth floor, a three year old (Chinese) was shouting Allez les Bleus! and a smiling father in a car was teaching his toddler the same chant.

All along the boulevard through eastern Paris the preparation for the match was well on its way. Two elderly ladies in a bistro at Place de Ménilmontant had – like so many others – drawn the flag on their cheeks. Some large blacks all in blue football shirts and with rastas, drunk on prematurely shared bottles of champagne, had painted their faces with red, white and blue stripes. A drunkard had put on an old blue jersey for tonight’s reunion with his drinking mates by Gare de Nord. The trip up the boulevard made me think that this was surely a team for everybody, even the most excluded, and I was probably smiling all the way.

We saw the match in a Kabylian bistro up north in the 18th arrondissement, behind Sacré Coeur. The atmosphere was tense. The manager, dressed in Thuram’s shirt, was among the anxious who went in and out, and who ended up seeing the penalty shootout from outside through the windows of the bar. The trickery and theatrics of the Italians didn’t go well with the French supporters: one called them “casseurs”, and another commented on how they where the ones who committed faults as well as falling afterwards and receiving the free kick. And today, the day after, quite a few here in France, as probably elsewhere in the world, ask themselves what Materazzi could have said that made Zidane entirely loose his temper and turn to such an unacceptably act as a headbutt to conclude his career. And in the media today, Zidane’s inexplicable exit undoubtedly adds an extra dimension to the huge disappointment people are expressing.

What a drama, and what a deception! People were so eager for a party and it seemed to be so much at stake…

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Yesterday afternoon while the preparations for the match was going out outside, I sat at home, absorbed…

La rage du peuple

Published on June 18, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Music, literature, arts..., Politics

Clearly this sunny Sunday is not made for sitting at home writing blog posts (nor is my head today, I notice as I try to express myself in English…), so I’ll just be very brief before I head off to my “office” in the shade of a tree in Parc Floral (Vincennes). (It’s a beautiful park in itself, and every Saturday and Sunday there are excellent and free jazz concerts there all summer, which makes it a perfect place for sitting down with a notebook and reflect on the last days’ events).

But before I go, I just have to share this video I just came across (as usual via Paris.Indymedia). Someone had already told me to check out the young rapeuse Keny Arkana from Marseille; – and her

(now with English subtitles!) is certainly great indeed. This video, with its’ lyrics and aesthetics capture so much of what’s going on in France (and the world) at the moment. I know this sounds a bit strange, exotic and perhaps even slightly ridiculous to Norwegian readers (oh, please someone, tell me that I’m mistaken…:) ), but I’m not getting the least surprised when someone is starting to talk about la revolution mondiale (global revolution). But that’s it for today, now I’m off to the park with my notebook, to do some writing on the previous nights’ discussions on, amongst other things, the rage of the people.

Seasonal sensations

Published on June 15, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Fieldwork

The summer heat has come to Paris. For some days no, it’s been so hot in the afternoon that the boulevards are almost empty. Only in the shade under the trees are there a few pedestrians strolling slowly. However the Jehovah’s Witness people with their Watchtower are as usual in place by the metro Père Lachaise: A black man and a blonde woman, both decently dressed – in shirt and trousers, blouse and skirt – as usual with these missionaries. Metro Père Lachaise is about as far as I get up the deserted boulevard. This is not the time to be outside. Only some sweaty tourists defy the climatic condition and walk in the sun. I return home, and wait a couple of hours in front of my laptop, with all the windows wide open, mixing the music from my trashy little ghetto blaster with voices and other people’s music in the courtyard. (All these open windows facing the yard are great now during the Championship; the neighbourhood is reverberating when the right team scores – which unfortunately for the moment is not France…).
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But in the evening, the streets and parks and public spaces buzz with life. It was such a pleasure cycling through the city last evening, that I just kept on lazily watching the people drinking beer and wine along the canal, a whiff of cannabis coming my way once in a while, children of all colours were playing in the playgrounds, watched by chatting parents equally of all colours and in the costumes of the world (though the West African women are definitely the best at keeping up their proud dress traditions, with their brightly coloured and neatly cut dresses, and perhaps a intricately tied headscarf in the same fabric and maybe a child at the back – by the way, many here, mostly women but also men, have taken up this tradition of tying their child to the back or front without more equipment than a large scarf. When I see someone with a complicated baby carrying-equipment, I always suppose it’s a tourist). In Parc de la Villette, I can hear drums, someone is playing football, people are training, some men are showing off, but most are just lazily hanging around. It’s in the middle of the week, but it feels like the end of it… As I write now, I realise that the ever-present summer-in-the-park odour in Norway, is absent here. By googling barbecue jetable I get confirmed my suspicion that this is a very Norwegian phenomenon, indeed. One of the first hits on “barbecue jetable” was a blog by a French in Norway: “My Norwegian Wood”.

About two months ago, late April, I had another strong sensation that the season was about to change. It was Friday and afternoon, and standing on the crossroad of the boulevard up the street here, in the sun and busy monde, I suddenly felt like coming out into the world after a long hibernation. I don’t know exactly what gave me that feeling; the unfamiliar heat of the afternoon sun, the expressions in people’s faces and in their movements – a regained enthusiasm, energy, excitement, I don’t know – or just the atmosphere of the street-life… or perhaps even all the sirens? As it was in the middle of the anti-CPE mobilisations, the sirens that afternoon caught my attention. In a few hours, Chirac was going to make his long anticipated speech where he possibly would abrogate the CPE… The sensation that something was about to happen increased as all the passengers were thrown off the bus at Bastille because there was supposed to be a demo somewhere around. (Most passengers don’t seem to be very surprised by such changing bus itineraries, as a demonstration now and then is quite an ordinary happening).

The sound of sirens continued at Bastille. As I had an hour or two before I was supposed to be on a conference on France and slavery at Centre Pompidou, I walked around for a while around La Sorbonne and the Latin Quarter, trying to get at the heart of all this spring-like police activity. However, it just seemed to be everywhere so I gave up and went to the conference. (It was interesting, despite that Edouard Glissant didn’t show up in person).

When I got out on the street again I understood that something had happened, but unfortunately I didn’t find out what exactly it was before the day after when I read euphoric reports on Paris.Indymedia. After Chirac had said very little indeed in his speech, a so-called manif sauvage had set off from Bastille (where the speech had been broadcasted on a screen). All anthropologists who has read Levi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage (The savage mind, Den ville tanke), are familiar with the concept sauvage (it’s neither the equivalent of English “savage” nor “primitive, nor the Norwegian “vill”, I don’t know how to translate it), thus they would understand that a manif sauvage ought to be pretty cool. The un-cultivated demo had moved from Bastille, to the Presidential Palace where they got dispersed by the police, in order to meet again in front of La Sorbonne, and finally cross the whole city up to Sacre Coeur… thus crossing the city from east to west, and from south to north, and finishing in the early hours. It seemed to have been a little bit for everybody; a good street-party, a little fighting with the police, and a little wreckage of an office belonging to a depute from the ruling party. Thus, a real Parisian spring experience ;)

However, I shouldn’t perhaps joke too much about the recurrent sound of sirens. I’ve never seen so much police in my life before, as in the last 6 months. I even wonder if the reason for the town-hall to not put up the usual giant screen for the World Cup has anything to do with fear of public law and order… I watched almost every match in front of the town-hall here four years ago and it was so very, very nice that I just cannot understand why they’re not doing the same thing this year. (Another less romantic reason might be that the French team doesn’t really deserve a giant screen this year, as they’re really playing le foot de spleen as a Norwegian friend and Baudelaire fan suggested).

It’s amazing how much street-life here has changed with the season. I’ve always thought that there can’t be any place on earth where the seasons change more than in Norway. After endless months with ice, snow, sleet, darkness and the question why on earth have the human kind settled on this god-deserted place nagging my mind, spring in Norway just comes as a divine revelation (almost) every year. It’s a really strong experience, and of course the habitants change with it. So it came as a surprise to me that Parisians change perhaps even more. They speak even more to each other in public spaces.

– I’m starting to realise that Norwegians tend to smile to each other in situations where Parisians rather would express themselves with words. The smile is not a valid form of communication among strangers in public spaces. Only suggesting the shadow of a smile to any male above the age of, I don’t know… somewhere before adolescence I guess, is sheer country bumpkin stupidity. However, neither women seem to understand exactly how to respond if I try a little Norwegian smile in order to say, for instance, “sorry for being in the way” or any other fleeting bit of communication. When I think of it, it’s obvious; why not use words when you can? Because that’s exactly the point; a smile among strangers here occurs only when it’s impossible to speak: Amongst other occasions, I’ve got smiles from a man inside a car trying to get out of my bike’s way, a teacher whose pupils stared at my little bike with awe, and who understood it was my bike but was too far away to say something to me, and from a surprisingly large number of CRS and other police at the end of demos who noticed that I was looking at them. Well, that was today’s digression, on the incomprehension of the Scandinavian smile. –

The final and probably most important seasonal change is, again, the intensification of la drague (“picking up someone…”). It should be said that Parisians don’t only find their future partners in the streets, but they find friends there as well. I suspect that this sounds completely natural to people around the world – and Brazilians for instance, or French from the province, tend to find Parisians cold, inward-looking and non-communicative – however, for a Norwegian, all this street interaction is not an everyday experience. Just after spring had set in for real, I noticed that quite a lot of the male Parisians seemed to be so moved by the seasonal change that they couldn’t avoid expressing it, and not at all necessarily in order to chat me up. For instance, the number of people who jokingly tried to hitchhike with my tiny little bike in one single springy day was quite surprising. (And apropos the meaning of smiles; at such occasions I think I communicated correctly by responding with a smile).

As I had a strong impression that people – or rather, men – were in a hurry to find une femme, it was quite funny to hear a friend mention how he observed people in a bar he passes every day: According to his perspective, it started with the women wearing lighter and lighter clothes, and then more and more couples were formed, and soon all the opportunities will be gone, so if you hadn’t found someone before the end of June, you’re in trouble…

Studying French masculinities wasn’t my intention at the outset, but I’m starting to find certain differences between how (certain) men behave here and how they behave in Norway (and Britain), striking enough to be worth a study. And, well… as I have an inquisitive nature, I guess it goes without saying that I don’t mind very much the prospect of finding out more about it :D

“Liberté, Égalité, tes papiers!”

Published on June 4, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Distinctions, Politics

Blonde and blue-eyed as I am, I’m not treated as an immigrant here. I often think of my privileged position and how much better I’m treated than many of the locals. While the kids in Clichy-sous-Bois, and elsewhere, are asked for identity papers up to four times daily, I’ve never ever been asked for mine. That’s really lucky, because it’s actually obligatory to carry an id card here, and I always forget mine…
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Last night I got reminded of the sheer sickening injustice of this once more. I found myself in the awkward situation of being on a bus… with a bike instead of a valid ticket, and as usual, without identity papers. But, as I’m not a black woman – which was the unfortunate case for another passenger – I didn’t have to first cry as the nazi looking brute of a ticket controller loudly threatened to bring her to the commissariat since she didn’t have her papers on her, and then, put up forced giggles as the brute found it suitable to use his powerful position to try to chat her up instead of bringing her in. No, that was not what happened to me. I gave the brute a ticket from earlier in the evening and hoped for the best. Apparently everything was all right. Then he asked whose bike it was, and after a little back and forth (lasting maybe 30 sec) he said; “I’m just telling you it’s not allowed with bikes here”.

My company all had their season tickets, which however was not valid for the zone we were. But as they were neither female, nor black, there wasn’t any need to fine and harass them… For all the other passengers in the bus it must have seemed like the four of us had valid tickets, which wasn’t the case with none of us. The incident with the black lady dragged on for the better part of the quite long bus ride, and on our way we passed a stop named “Nouvelle France”. We found that very, very symbolic indeed, and one of them suggested that I write a blog post on what had happened with the title “New France”. I replied that I for months had planned to write about this subject, as this was not the first time I experienced such things.