Billy's Lines Of Gibberish

I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody. A film that could help bury forever all those dead things we carry within ourselves. Instead, I'm the one without the courage to bury anything at all. When did I go wrong? I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same. Guido, in 8½ by F. Fellini)

The movie depicts the crisis of a creative mind, the despondency of an artist who doesn't succeed in creating any more.

[BbN #8.5]

Guido, played by Marcello Mastroianni — and a transparent alter ego of Fellini himself — has lost inspiration. He is overwhelmed by an uncontrolled flood of dreams, fantasies, and hallucinations.
From this movie on, Federico Fellini took up a style of Realistic Fantasy, where extravagance is more real than reality, filled up with humanity, fantasizing and imagination.

Taking a Sunbath in Paris

I love Paris in August. Because many people have the month of August off in France, several hundred thousand Parisians then leave the city for weeks. Fewer Parisians, many tourists, warm and sunny weather usually, there is a special atmosphere. The air is filled with tranquillity, like a Sunday that would last for one month.

You must go and work every day as usual; you feel as if you were in vacation though. For lunch, you will improvise a picnic with colleagues, in the Jardins du Luxembourg or the Buttes-Chaumont. On the evening, you will stroll around, have a beer at the terrace of a café. You will sit on the grass in a garden perhaps, to take a nap or read a book.

It's August. The eighth month in the year, and a blessed month in Paris, when the City of Lights gets rid of its usual frenzy. Traffic jams, subway's crowd, all that makes it a hard place to live in sometimes, has disappeared for a while. The city reveals itself, warm and cheerful. It has put on its leisure clothes, for the sake of tourists, most of whom don't realize how special the atmosphere is.

Paris-Plages, on the banks of the Seine River

Paris is weightless in August. It's culture without stress, moving around without hurry. No more queues in front of movie theatres. No more traffic jams on the Boulevard Périphérique. You will find a parking space anywhere at once, and it's free! You can sit in the bus. Metro cars are empty.

You can take a Vélib' (Paris' self-service bike-hire system) safely and bike everywhere, even on the Champs-Élysées.

[BbN #8]

You may decide to go to Paris-Plages ('Paris-Beaches', eighth occurrence this year) and have a sunbath on the banks of the Seine River or Bassin de la Villette, why not? You feel as if you were a tourist yourself.

In August, Parisians rediscover space in a city that misses it so much during the rest of the year. La Joie de Vivre is back, it is almost Italy. Oh yes. I do love Paris in August.

"What do I wear to bed? Why, Chanel N°5, of course"  (Marilyn Monroe)

Since my entry entitled Blogging by Numbers, I have written blogs under the constraint stated as 'Write blogs on topics one can associate with successive ascending numbers' — and still am I now. It was not the first time I assigned myself a constraint as a challenge, and a help to my inspiration as well: I did the same two years ago with a constraint of writing about the 5 senses and Paris. It ended up in blogs about Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, and Smell.

When you talk about the five senses, it is but logical to name sight and hearing first, because they are the most important senses in humans. Taste, and essentially smell, on the contrary, will be named last, because they are of much lesser use in humans than many animals.

It is the same when it comes to arts. Arts are usually based on one sense only, and arts based on a sense that acts from a distance — sight or hearing — are seen as noble arts. Painters, sculptors, composers, musicians, are undisputed artists. On the opposite, few people will spontaneously consider that chefs, wine experts and perfumers are artists as well. There is a hierarchy among senses: senses that need closeness are trivial. Touch, taste, and smell, especially.

Every art needs education and practice. It is the case especially with arts that rely upon underused senses. It is probably not only coincidental then that France, a country where even body smell has traditionally been considered a normal feature of men and women, is especially famous for its cuisine, cheeses, wines, and perfumes.

Everybody knows Leonardo, Picasso, Rodin, Mozart, and so many other artists relying on sight or hearing. Few people, on the opposite, have heard of Giovanni Marina Farina, who invented the Eau de Cologne and served as a model for the character of César Birotteau in the novel by Honoré de Balzac, or Ernest Beaux, who created Chanel n°5, probably the most famous perfume ever.

I want to give women an artificial perfume. Yes, I really do mean artificial, like a dress, something that has been made. I am a fashion craft worker. I don’t want any rose or lily of the valley, I want a perfume that is a composition. Coco Chanel

When Mademoiselle Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel commissioned Ernest Beaux to make several perfumes for her choosing, she was already a famous fashion designer who had imposed her conception of elegance, with modern women feeling free because they wore simple and comfortable clothing.

At the time though, fashion and perfumes were distinct areas, and the idea of creating a perfume that would be an image of the brand was new. Beaux produced two series of samples numbered 1 to 5 and 20 to 24. Chanel chose the bottle labelled as N°5 and decided to keep the name, probably for superstitious reasons.

[BbN #5]

The new perfume was introduced on May 5, 1921, on the 5th day of the 5th month of the year. In the light of what its destiny has been for more than 80 years, Coco Chanel was undoubtedly right in thinking that 5 was her lucky number.

John, Paul, Ringo and George (Cover of Let it Be – 1970)

Paul McCartney had only just woke up in his room in London, one morning in 1964, when he hurried to the piano and turned on a tape recorder. During the night, he had dreamed of a melody he did not want to let slip into the recesses of his mind.

In order not to lose it then, he played it with temporary lyrics inspired by the breakfast he was just about to take with his girlfriend: 'Scrambled Eggs… Oh, baby, you've got so lovely legs'.

The music was here, the whole of its melody so precisely composed that McCartney was not sure at first it was truly a creation of his own. He feared it might be involuntary plagiarism, that he subconsciously remembered a music composed by someone else. 'For about a month', he told later, 'I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it.'

Beatlemania was as its peaks at the time. The group of four boys from Liverpool — whose name was a pun made of The Beetles (one among their many first names, and a tribute to Buddy Holly's group The Crickets) and 'to beat' — had turned into the world's most famous band in the history of popular music in the 20th century. Even, first dissensions had appeared, that would make the band break in 1970.

In 1964 though, John, Paul, George and Ringo would always sing together. John Lennon and Paul McCartney composed most of the songs, they would always sign together — Lennon/McCartney. It was the case also with Scrambled Eggs when McCartney succeeded at last to add real lyrics to the music composed during his sleep. Yet, for the first time, the song was not sung by the whole Beatles but Paul alone, accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar, with a string quartet on the background.

Yesterday has become one of the world's most popular songs ever, with more than 3,000 recorded versions. In a poll of  British music experts and listeners in 1999, it was even voted the best song of the 20th century. I do love the song, but I somewhat regret it has not remained an Ode to Scrambled Eggs, just for the sake of fun and originality.

[BbN #4]

Forensics for Dummies by B.T. Kidney and G. Grissom

I used to have an old friend, who was a reputable doctor. Nobody would have asked him about their symptoms or small complaints though, because with him, you would never know where such questions could lead you.

You should not think he was a dangerous doctor or a charlatan though. He was not at risk to be struck off the medical register, although his career was punctuated with a lot of death: my friend was an expert in forensics. He was even a leading expert in his field, among the best in the world.

A specialist in difficult diagnoses, death in suspicious circumstances, questionable suicides and unequivocal murders, he would find the diagnosis that explained the inexplicable. He was able to turn the irrational into the rational, and bring mysterious death back to normality.

You will not be surprised then that he was often asked for a diagnosis about victims from all over the globe. He was always between two planes, always in a hurry. A globe-trotting doctor, although he did not have the look. Several years older than me, he was a very unobtrusive person, with a quiet elegance and temperate language. He looked like a man of law, a solicitor, a judge, rather than a doctor.

For that matter, his area of specialisation required frequent contacts with men of law because his offices would often come to settlement of complex inheritance issues, sometimes in a way quite unexpected by the heirs of the dear departed, when coveted legacies turned into sentences of life imprisonment.

I had another very dear friend, who was quite different. About ten years younger than me, she was a very beautiful woman and a talented nude dancer at a famous Parisian cabaret.

I had followed her career and supported her for long. We were very hopeful she would become the first dancer soon.

My two friends met for the first time at a reception I gave on the occasion of my birthday. Between them, it was love at first sight. A few months later, my old friend divorced his wife, and mother of three grown-up children, and married her.

Yet aging persons are possessive sometimes. He made her interrupt her career. The young bride suffered a great deal, I can tell you. Her husband thanked her with long travels abroad rather than tokens of his affection. Soon, she only thought of keeping boredom at bay, and succeeded in this purpose in the most pleasant and Parisian way... I can surely tell you too.

Murder is always a mistake — one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner. Oscar Wilde

My friend died shortly after their third anniversary. Nobody found the cause of his death, despite two autopsies: the first one performed at the request of his children, the other one by letters rogatory demanded by his insurance company, obviously reluctant to pay his young widow a premium that amounted to three million euros.

"No one will ever know why my poor husband died", she used to moan. "He was the only one who could find it out, but he cannot do it any more. He was the only one who knew how to kill your fellow man so that nobody can prove it." She would burst into tears then, and I comforted her in her grief the best I could.

She wanted to publish his fascinating last book, that was almost finished when he passed on. When he was away from home, we both used to read the manuscript during our long evenings alone together. She deemed it her duty towards the deceased to publish the book — a last way to show him how grateful she was.

The book was truly of utmost scientific importance: in particular, it revealed the formula of a new toxic substance, unknown to the most eminent of specialists, that anyone could easily extract from the stamens of a common wild flower, thanks to a clever and innovative process.

If the book was to be published, no doubt that the plant poison would be called by my friend's name, giving him post-mortem fame, and immortality,  sort of.

Anyway, at the end, my old friend's widow bowed to my reasons. Hardly silencing her scruples, with a lot of tears in her eyes, she burned the manuscript in the bonfire we lit in our home's hearth, the very day we received the check from the insurance company.

[BbN #3]

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I first published this short story a couple of years ago in a previous blog, now deleted. My friend Vanessa was kind enough at the time to read it and point out several English errors. Thank you again, Vanessa.