La Défense & Seattle: Predictions of Our Future(s).
I went to La Défense this evening. It’s all glass and the future out there and one straight line from one arch to another.
For me, living in Paris is kind of like having been invited to a celebrity party, by some mistake or by virtue of knowing some minor person (a chef or something) who got me on the list somehow, and I’m kind of in awe and I don’t quite know why I’m there but am not going to question it, and in each room there’s a new flock fancy this-or-that, hors d’oeuvres or something, and it’s just overwhelming, but next to the overly-decadent cocktails in Murano glasses, there’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp chatting genteelly with Oprah and they stop talking about Hunter S. Thompson and the wild days, and smile at me and offer me one of the fancy Murano glasses with an overly-decadent cocktail and some kind of caviar hors d’oeuvre and I don’t even like caviar, but I take it anyway because it’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp and Oprah offering it me. Then Tom Hiddleston dances into the parlor. I’ve never lived in a big city and Paris might be the big city.
I had a picnic of cheese, grapes, baguette and avocado in the park in Levallois and read L’Enchanteur. It was cold, so I decided to walk to La Défense and see the buildings I had been seeing from the train each day to Saint Lazare. On my way towards Courbevoie, I looked down a street, really kind of an alley, with Queen Anne roofs and those brick chimneys with four or five pipe chimneys, and perfectly framed and aligned, there’s the Eiffel Tower. Paris. A surprise behind every corner. Two husky-wolves on a roof behind a FranPrix. Flowers that smell like honey.
La Défense made me feel like I had never been to a city. Simultaneously, it reminded me of (what) Seattle (could have/wanted to be). I entered by way of le parc Diderot. And it was the park of the future. Part park and part art-installment—which I think is the nature of the whole of La Défense—between the two stairways, which rolled like gentle waves, was a representation of perhaps a river running down a mountain or a steep course of rapids that salmon would try to swim up. I watched some young boys play with a soccer ball in the sunken courtyard. The youngest looked up and said bonjour.
Seattle is the future we lost. It’s a future as seen from 1961 when they built the Space Needle and the monorails for the World’s Fair and we still thought that in 2001, we’d be space odyssey’ing and things on earth would be better, too, full of world peace and understanding. In the middle of the Cold War and a national fear/hope of technology, we had the Space Needle and Seattle. Now the monorail is not novel, and the Space Needle is retro and kind of campy. Seattle is the future’s past. La Défense is the future’s present. It’s us 50 years later, setting up a predicted utopia of how things could be if we really got it right. Fifty years from now, La Défense will be the future’s past.
I took the Esplanade. I went into a building. It was darkened glass and I wasn’t sure I was supposed to be there. The doors were open and lead to a courtyard centered around a mosaic statue that reminded me of fountains. Encouraged and delighted, I followed the some people to the other side, which continued the elevated esplanade. The initial object of my wandering was immediately to my right: a glass tower with a metal trellis, vaguely reminiscent of Faberge eggs. I thought, I’ll go to the top of this bridge and go home. I went to the top of the bridge, and again, casually, between two planters of Japanese-lotus looking trees, was the Eiffel Tower traced in dark steel grey, monument to and of the 19th century. How could I go home now.
There were picnic tables that seemed to be in and overlooking a swimming pool and swirling rods topped with different colors of shapes were in the field of water, like 20-foot flowers. I was initially excited about the picnic tables, and I looked over the water, and it’s Haussman’s doing and it’s a straight line down Avenue Charles de Gaulle and a perfect view of the Arc de Triomphe.
How do people deal with this? How do people really wake up everyday and see these things just like that? I mean, sure, New York has a lot of famous buildings and spots and Washington D.C. has the White House and the Smithsonians and the Obelisk and so does Boston, and I have fetishized the Space Needle, but I don’t know how anyone gets used to this in Paris. This is Hemmingway and the Lost Generation’s town. This is the land that fought for liberty. This town is the darling of the silver screen, and here’s looking at you, we will, truly, always have Paris. People come here to live and die and be buried next to Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison and Heloïse and Abelard. This is the capital of the 19th century and I haven’t even mentioned the Medieval significance. Maybe I’m too sentimental. Or maybe Woody Allen was right that “in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there's nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe”. Maybe Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.
I sat and watched evening come from the steps of the window of the world. I watched the people from the top of the steps and watched a photographer taking pictures. I listened to the French and English and other languages I didn’t know being spoken around me. I saw businessmen and businesswomen going home from their businessdays. I saw baguettes and bicycles and somewhere farther off, I heard a violin. I thought about how lucky I am to be young and be living in Paris, and how I’m really living a life now, and how pretty and pink the Arc de Triomphe was as the sunset. This was the future we always wanted.
I sat, and I watched, and I listened, and when I was too cold, I took the train back to Asnières.