The Childhood Stories

Over the past month or so I had had a collection of stories published up on Life with my Little Duck starting off during my teenage years, moving into my 20's and then ending today. It was a really interesting trip through thoughts and memories so I thought I would provide a little recap here and link them all in one place for anyone who would like to take a little journey through a few decades and a few countries... Five years ago I started to write a book loosely based on my life/experiences, but I gave up because it was both too close to home and because I didn't think anyone would be interested. I am now putting together several collections of essays which I think will be easier for me to work on and actually finish. In any case, here are the links to all of the stories... Thanks to Ally for publishing all of these stories, as well as many other wonderful and heartbreaking ones. You can see all of the stories from her Childhood Series up on her blog here. 

The Invisibility Cloak - wrap yourself in it as soon as you leave the house...

Survival Modes - high school is a real minefield.

Run, Run Away - everything is just too much and there is no escape.

Young Heart, Old Soul - a different life in different places.

Never Let Go of the Rainbow - a decade in a city that never sleeps.

Everything will be alright
Everything will turn out fine
Some nights I still can't sleep
And the voices pass with time
The Sisters of Mercy - Time To Cry

Immigration Series: Serial Immigrant

This week's story is my own mother's... We have lived thousands and thousands of miles away from each other for many years, but now all live together in sunny California. 

Serial Immigrant

I am an immigrant. I have been an immigrant, and an émigré, for much of my adult life: not because of dire need, or suffering, but from a desire to travel, to experience the world, and to provide a good life for my family. I’d always dreamed of travelling; as a child it was to Canada and France, or exploring the South Pole, as a teen I wanted to work on a kibbutz or travel the desert on the back of a camel; as an adult, to visit the ancient sites of Greece and Turkey and Jerusalem and Egypt and Japan. (I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do all of those, except Greece the South Pole, and while a visit to the Galapagos is still on the bucket list, I’m a little more wary of the cold these days.)

It all began when I was offered a short-term contract in the Netherlands when I was looking for full-time employment in Thatcher’s UK. The idea of spending a few months outside of what had become a depressed and gloomy Britain under Thatcher’s iron rule, in the country of windmills and clogs and Edam, was exciting and liberating. We packed a very few belongings into a mini-bus and took the ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland, and never looked back. The children went to Dutch schools and my daughters were fluent in the language within a very few months. The short-term contract became three years, we experienced life as Europeans, and then a new job offer came along, from an American multinational with a large site in France.

Nine years in France, a country full of culture and life and history and strong friendships, and then, once again, I’m offered another job—with the same company, but this time, in the mothership—in the USA. Moving between European countries, pre-Brexit, was one thing. Across the world was another. It was a major decision: three children, divorced parents, oldest child already in university in France… but it was another adventure, it felt right, and it was an opportunity to experience yet-another way of life.

I entered the USA on an L-1 visa. That’s a visa specifically for “management transfers”: companies can bring in their managerial staff and workers with specialized knowledge, transferring them from overseas locations to a (new) location in the USA.

My employer provided help with the visa. They also provided legal help to make sure that the green card I applied for, for myself and children, were expedited, because my second child would celebrate their twenty-first birthday a few months after our arrival in the USA. Wait. Why is that important??? Because after 21, a child is considered “just another relative”, and you have to petition for them to join you, and wait years. But what about my eldest child, who is already over 21, yet still in full-time education and supported by me? Oh tough. They’ve “aged out”. No green card. You have to petition for them to join you, once you have a green card yourself, and then wait. And wait. And wait. At least seven or ten or more years.

My eldest was denied a visa to visit the USA for a few months, on the grounds that, “All your family is in the USA and you might be tempted stay.” Well duh… yes, all close family was in the USA. So you deny a child the right to stay with their only surviving parent???”

We found a work-around. My eldest was able to claim Canadian citizenship due to her father’s own citizenship, and then work in the USA on an annual TN visa, which wasn’t without stress. We waited and waited for her green card to be approved. We paid all the fees. Eventually, after several years, the green card was approved… but there would be another seven or more years before “the number would come up”, and the card would be issued. I learned that if I became a US citizen—by this time I was eligible, having held a green card for five years—then the wait for my daughter’s green card would be cut to just a few months.

So I paid all the fees, studied for the exam, and became a US Citizen. I now hold two passports, British and USA. My daughter has a green card, issued a few months after I became a citizen, and can live and work in the USA. The family is together. But am I a proud US citizen? Do I feel this glowing patriotism, and the need to put hand-on-heart when the Stars and Stripes are played? The belief in the right to bear arms? Not for one second… Do I feel somewhat compromised, and coerced into embracing a nationality, just to enable my family to be together? Some days, indeed I do. Resentful? No… I’m happy with the life we have, though I miss the history, the discussions, the cultural richness that is outside the USA. I don’t understand the American money-based mentality that drives everything and blinds people to the fact that there are better ways to manage health care and social welfare and ensure that everyone – EVERYONE – is taken care of. I don’t understand the shoot first mentality. And I really, really don’t want to live in the USA that Trump is proposing. I’m disturbed by the way the world is turning, whether it’s insulting click-bait political lies here in the USA, Brexit votes in the UK that will deny future generations the freedom of movement we enjoyed, and the rise in fear and hatred and intolerance around the globe… Maybe once you’ve seen more of different cultures and languages, you ask more questions, and are more frustrated by a brick wall of ignorance. I don’t know.

Those people who talk about immigration “done the right way”, obviously have no clue about how broken the “right way” is, how it can divide families, how much stress and anguish it can cause, how many years of wondering if your child will be allowed safely through the airport “this time”, or if they will be deported, or worse… and yes, that’s doing immigration “the right way”.

#iamanimmigrant. But I’m one of the lucky ones who had a choice, and tried to make the right decision. Was it? Ask my kids. I think you’ll get mixed answers.

In addition to being a wonderful parent and all-around great person, my mother (Alison Toon) is also a fantastic photographer and you can check out her work on her website, Facebook page and Instagram.

Immigration Series: The Ten Year Wait (Part 2)

If you missed the first half of this story you can find it right HERE.

One Friday afternoon in March of 2005 I received a call from a foreign number. I let it go to voicemail, left the office under the guise of needing a smoke break and listened to an American woman tell me that they had received my resume and were wondering if I would be interested in talking about a project management position within a large translation company in NYC. She also followed up with an email with a little more information. Since 2002 my only concern had been California, I had never even considered another part of the US. Unlike many people in the world, I had never dreamed of going to, let alone living in, NYC. NYC was that place in many TV shows and movies and the place of a tragedy that was forever etched in my brain, but never a place that I wanted to consider my home. But then again, NYC was also a hell of a lot closer to Sacramento than London was. Ever since I had become determined to move to the US my mother had sent my resume out to different contacts in the translation industry and one ended up in the right hands at the right time.

After several phone interviews, language tests, back and forths and a job offer based on the fact that I would receive a TN visa on landing (specialty visa offered to Canadian and Mexican citizens to perform jobs that no qualified American can perform), I handed my notice in and flew off into the unknown at the end of May 2005. Everything was a big risk really, for both myself and the company, but I had a one year visa, a shitty starting salary that was a tiny bit more than the pittance I was earning in London, and a possibility that I may transfer to California one day if things worked out. But then, the moment I saw the Manhattan skyline I knew I had come home. If you have ever traveled a lot, wondered where your roots are or were and wandered the soil of this earth trying to find a place to call home, then you know that feeling, a peace within your soul, a sigh of relief, of knowing that this is it. Home.

The gamble paid off. I worked extremely hard, and for quite a few years I played extremely hard, but for the first five years it still felt like I was on borrowed time. I was reluctant to get too close to people in case I would have to leave suddenly. My visa got rejected the first time I tried to renew it, and I had to do a mad rush to Toronto to try again. Every time I had to renew my visa I felt anxious, at the mercy of some immigration official who could stamp my passport for another year or see through all of the lies and deny me entrance. The company grew and merged and HR began to realize that I wasn’t going to last much longer on a temporary visa and finally gave it one last chance before they would make a more permanent gesture. I suppose everything worked out for them right then because the TN visa was extended to three years instead of one. But by then I was done. I was overworked and completely burnt out, I felt trapped but I also had no real interest in leaving the country.  I continued working in a job I had begun to resent because it was the only way I could legally stay in the country and benefit from things like health insurance.

Leaving and entering the country on a TN visa is always touch and go, even if you still have time remaining on it. The best time was the one where the official checked through my papers and waved me on through. The worst was the time I went to Mexico and we flew back through Arizona. Unfortunately my Canadian passport renewal had been held up and was still stuck in Canada so I traveled on my British passport. As my visa was associated with my Canadian citizenship and not my British I assumed that I would get a slap on my hands, but I didn’t assume that I would be threatened with deportation, told that I was an idiot for traveling on the “wrong” passport, and then after all that fined $800 for not having the right “paperwork” on me (I actually DID have all of the paperwork, including my old passport and my valid British passport)- thankfully I had the money on my credit card, because if I hadn’t been able to pay I would have been detained. They also told me that I was “lucky” because the main immigration dude wanted to send me before the immigration court, but in the end they decided to just fine me. And all I could think about after I ran across the terminal to make my connecting flight that was leaving in five minutes was: I’m very, very lucky. I can’t even imagine how they would have treated me if I had been of a different skin colour and/or nationality. I learnt two important lessons that day: never move to Arizona and never put yourself in a situation where you feel frightened of an official again. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and for over an hour they made me feel like I was a piece of scum on the carpet. Of course, part of that issue WAS my own fault, but at the same time there was no need to treat me like a criminal. It really reinforced my opinion that it doesn’t matter if you have a visa or not, you are still going to be treated like a lesser individual until you have either a green card or a US passport.

My mother checked my green card status in 2010 and we were years and years off, so she filed for citizenship and became a US citizen about 6 months later. About 6 months after that, in the middle of 2011, I suddenly received an appointment to get my fingerprints and photographs done, as well as a request to get a full physical with a USCIS-approved doctor. It was also around that time that I was functioning on auto-pilot at work, depressed, barely able to drag my feet through the door every day. I was messing up left, right and centre, and all I wanted to do was release myself of the chains that I had tied around my ankles, and soar high, find myself and my real desires again. Over the weekend of Hurricane Irene I walked out and never looked back, and by doing so I became an undocumented immigrant, part of the huge underground network in this country. I was done. I didn’t care anymore, after years and years of waiting, of doing the right thing, of watching friends marry other friends and get their statuses adjusted, of convincing myself that I didn’t need to do that, I gave up. I would find work and I would be OK.

I did both. I also began to breathe again. And yes, I paid taxes. I didn’t claim any type of state health insurance, because that isn’t possible, despite what you hear. I used the social security number I had been given with my temporary visa, the same one I still use today, and I continued to live my life, hoping that my good health would hold up and that I wouldn’t get sick, ever. And then, at the end of 2011 I received a letter from the USCIS with an interview appointment. THE interview that I had been waiting for, for so many years (TEN to be exact). I arrived there with snacks and a book and my journal, prepared to be waiting for hours, but instead I was called in within five minutes, my interview lasted 30 minutes, and I was told I would receive their decision in the mail within six weeks.

A week later, to the day, I received my green card in the mail.

I still remember the river of emotions that flew through my body, not being able to breathe, running upstairs to my apartment so that I could burst into tears, of happiness, of sadness, of pure relief. That little piece of ID opened up so many doors again, I could work wherever I wanted, I could study again if I wanted to, and most importantly, I could leave the country and come back, as many times as I wanted. A few months later my beloved Nana passed away, and I was able to go to the funeral and read the eulogy that I had written for her. I was able to hop on a plane in NYC and pop over to Sacramento without worrying about someone demanding to see my visa or immigration ID. All of a sudden I had the exact thing that I had been waiting for since 2001.

It did come with a certain price though, because the only reason that I am not still waiting for my green card today is because my mother became a citizen. Yes, there are perks with being a citizen like the right to vote against men like Trump, but there is also the fact that for the rest of her life my mother will have to pay US taxes, wherever she lives in the world. Something to think about if you ever have to make that decision. And I haven’t even touched upon the money that my mother spent on the USCIS (previously INS) over the years, sometimes even double price because they provided conflicting information on what we needed to pay and where (non-refundable of course). She didn’t have to give up her British citizenship, I doubt she would have become a US citizen if she had to, but there are some countries that require you do.

So, my story is one of many, many years of waiting. There is no grey area when it comes to immigration here, no possibility of talking to people face to face and coming to some sort of agreement. You either choose to be part of the system and become a number, waiting year after year for yours to advance one or two steps, or you do it your own way. If I am asked what I would change if I had to do it all over again I say everything. I used to say that I would only get married if I were madly in love, nowadays marriage is only a piece of paper, and if that piece of paper helps moves things along a little faster, then why not. And before you flame me for saying that, just put yourself in my, or someone else’s shoes for a year, and see what it is like. Telling a 21 year old that she cannot come back to visit her family for a year is pretty despicable in my opinion. And I had it easy. Some of the stories that will be featured in this series are a million times more difficult to digest than mine are. Mine is just unfair, and in the end it all kind of worked out.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t spent all of those years waiting and waiting because I didn’t live life as fully as I should have. But at the same time I don’t have any regrets because I now have my own family, my own family of immigrants. My children were born here which makes them US citizens, but there will always be that worry at the back of my mind that one day they will be forced to live without me, just because my and their father’s immigration status could technically be revoked at any time. And that is a story for another day and another time…

Next week on Monday I will be posting someone else's story. If you would like to be featured in this series please feel free to contact me!

Immigration Series: The Ten Year Wait (Part 1)

Kicking off this guest post series with the first part of my own US immigration story. Over the next few weeks there will be all kinds of immigration stories appearing on this blog, and if you would like to see your own featured don't hesitate to contact me. This series is in no shape or form limited to the US, I am interested in featuring all types of stories from anywhere in the world.

When I hear people discussing immigration in the US I often hear terms like “the right way” and “the wrong way” being thrown around. Or that someone came here to steal someone else’s job, or on the contrary came to find a better life. It seems that everything is black or white and that there is nothing in between: either you are a “good” immigrant or a “bad” immigrant. So I’m going to tell you a little story about someone who didn’t come here for a better life, who didn’t come here because she was particularly enamoured by the country, and who didn’t come here to steal someone else’s job. Actually this person just ended up here and just stayed here for a lot longer than she had planned to. This story is my story and I feel that it is a perfect example of how everyone’s immigration story is different, how no one’s story is “good” or “bad” and how there is no right or wrong way. Instead of looking at all of the blacks and whites let us look at the greys and pinks and blues and yellows and reds.

I wasn’t the easiest teen, but then again who was? I dropped out of school at the age of 16 because I couldn’t stand being there anymore, but by the age of 18 I realised I actually wanted to be one of the first people in my family to earn a degree. So I sat my Baccalauréat, passed, and went to university. I loved university. French universities have an element of freedom to them and you are treated like an adult, not like an annoying child. Since you are treated like an adult it is also assumed that you will act like an adult (for the most part anyway), so I went to the classes I found interesting, winged my way through my first year exams and passed with flying colours. My second year was a lot more interesting, and the third year, my BA year, even more so. That was also the year that my mother decided to take her company’s job opportunity up in California. It was the year 2000, and while I was super happy for her to go, there was no question about the fact that I would be staying put. My life was mainly in France, a little in England my country of birth, but mainly in France. I had lived there for so many years, going through school and adolescence and everything you go through and more when you are growing up.

I had never even been to the States, let alone move there. I had a couple of close friends in California, but they had their own lives and friends, and I had no intention of starting over somewhere else. France, Grenoble, was my home. I flew over to California with my mother to look for a house before her big move, liked the area, saw NIN in concert, and came home, with no desire to move anywhere except into my new apartment by the train station in Grenoble.

I hadn’t considered how my fourth year, my MA year, at university would affect me mentally, how depressed I would get after 9/11, and also how spending holidays and birthdays far away from my family would take its toll. When I read through my journals from that period I can see how I withdrew myself bit by bit from my usual life, preferring to hole myself up at home, writing about Sylvia Plath for my thesis and listening to Bob Dylan and Tim Buckley on repeat. Something had to give and I decided that I wanted to move. All of a sudden I needed to see something different, not for the first time in my life and definitely not for the last. So, on the spur of the moment I decided I was moving to the US. I spent my last summer in France with my friends, signed my half of the lease over to someone else, packed up my stuff and sent it over to my mother’s, and got on a flight with my cat.

It was September 2002 and I was 24 years old.

You become an adult in the US on your 21st birthday. If you immigrate to the US with your parents and you are under the age of 21 you will automatically fall under their immigration plan/set-up/visa etc. My mother’s work visa was fast-tracked into a green card, and her immigration lawyer made sure that my sister’s was pushed through fast too, so that it came through before she turned 21 (this was before 9/11, a lot changed after that, understandably so). My brother was 16 when he moved over to the US and got his green card pretty much immediately too. I, as an adult child of an alien, had to apply for my own green card with no idea when or if I would ever receive it.

So there I was, in the US, with no ability to work or to get a student visa/pay for tuition (and my tuition in France had been free anyway) and no idea if I would ever be able to live with my family again. Even if I had decided to move with my mother in 2000 it wouldn’t have changed a thing as I was over 21.

I went back and forth using the visa waiver program a few times, applied for a 6 month tourist visa in London and got rejected immediately because I “had too many family ties in the US and there was no guarantee I wouldn’t overstay my visa or coerce someone into giving me a job”.  I flew back to the US right after that and was immediately sent to the second room (if you have ever been there before you know what I mean, I’ve been there too many times to remember). I was yelled at, told that I was obviously working in the US if I kept coming back (I wasn’t, my mother was actually supporting me at that point), and that I was stupid to keep coming back. Then, after leaving me in a freezing cold room for 30 minutes, the official stamped my passport and told me that I could stay another three months, and after that if I came back within a year I would immediately be deported.

To be honest, I really don’t want to know how many “comments” I have on my immigration file. That wasn’t the last time I was threatened with deportation. It also wasn’t the last time I was sent to that “second” room.

I was totally and utterly depressed. I missed my life in France and I wanted to start a new life in the US, but instead I was stuck in limbo, with no real direction anywhere. I spent three months feeling lethargic and anti-social, forcing myself to leave the house, preferring to stay holed up inside with my cat, my books, my music and the internet. The end of the three months loomed in front of me and I kept pushing any kind of decision-making until the next day. Then my aunt, a world traveler who had settled in Israel, converted to Judaism and started a family there on a moshav in the desert, invited me to come over and help her with her two little children. At the same time my mother pushed me to send off my Canadian citizenship paperwork. My father was born in Canada, and while he was back in Britain before he could walk, he retained dual citizenship until he died. At the time if you had a Canadian parent, dead or alive, you were eligible for citizenship, even if you had never been to the country. It was a long shot and we were told could take a year or so, but there was no harm in trying.

I ended up living in Israel for well over a year, a life-changing experience, and came back to the US with more drive, focus and plans up my sleeve, and my Canadian citizenship was waiting for me on arrival. My original plan was to stay in California for three months, go to London and work there for a while and wait for the person I had fallen in love with to join me. The latter part never happened, and for the best as he proved to be as flighty as I always knew he was, but I did move to London and spent ten months there waiting to see where I would go next.

London was both home and away. I had my first “real” job after university (“real” meaning I worked in an office and was doing something that resembled what I had studied to do), I lived in a lovely house with really wonderful people, and I was able to spend time with my family in England whenever I wanted to. It was away because while England is the country of my birth it isn’t the country I grew up in. Familiar and foreign, and London was so expensive and big and hard to actually live in. I had kind of given up on moving to the States at that point and was just treading water in London until I could figure out my next steps (and once I had given up on waiting for the boy to make his way over to England I started to think about my future in a little more depth too). 

To be continued... Part 2 will be featured at the same time, same day next week!

Fiction: A Story of Oblivion

Ah, those years between 18 and 22 when you are supposed to be "sorting your life out"... When your emotions range from euphoric to despair in the space of minutes, even seconds. Another chapter from the book I never finished. Another excerpt can be found on the blog under the title Run, Run Away.

It’s too hard to get out of bed today. I know that the moment I step out from under the covers I am going to have to deal with life again, and I just wish, for one day, that I didn’t have to deal with it. Just one day, world, just one day of peace and quiet and silence. No classes, no work, no bars, no alcohol, no talks, no demands, no… No him. I mean that I need a day when he doesn’t pop into my head every two seconds and distracts me from life. A day away from life, where I can disappear for a time, be it into some oblivious sleep, some faraway country or just some dream world I concocted when I was a child.

I first learned what the word “oblivion” meant during my first week at the Lycee back in the 90’s. My English teacher had the words “oblivion” and its antonym (it could have been “consciousness” but I really can’t remember anymore) stuck up on one of his pin boards that were hanging on the wall. It attracted my attention, and when I finally had enough courage to ask him what it meant, I decided that it had to be used in my first book. I think I may have told my teacher that, and I hope that somewhere, somehow, he will see this and remember too, although he unfortunately isn’t here with us anymore. In any case, oblivion is one of my favourite words and also the word that will always be the best explanation of what we want to fall into during those times when we fall down, down, down.

 What is oblivion to you? To me it is just somewhere where none of all this that we have to live with and deal with every day exists, and where we don’t have to remember or listen to anything or anyone, and when we come back from it, well, we won’t even remember that it existed anyway. Kind of like the characters in an episode of Lost. You don’t remember the island or anything that happened on it once you are away from it. But once you are there you are away. Maybe I just have a rosy vision of what oblivion really means, maybe it means just gone away for good, unaware of anything, in a catatonic state? I prefer my view. Oblivion is a soft, down-filled bed that I can sink into, like a fluffy white cloud on a sunny day in spring.

Merriam-Webster defines oblivion as being one of the following: “the fact or condition of forgetting or having forgotten; especially : the condition of being oblivious” or “the condition or state of being forgotten or unknown”. I still prefer my definition, it’s just more… Poetic maybe? In any case, this week I just want a day of what I see as oblivion, and although I know that it won’t happen, it doesn’t hurt to dream.

Anyway, I just don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to have to go on the tram and be squished up against some pervy man again like yesterday. I don’t want to have to have another attack of the low blood sugars in the middle of class, just because I couldn’t face breakfast again before I left the house. I don’t want to have to deal with all of the idiots who are still in my class because they haven’t dropped out yet, the ones who think they are just too cool. I don’t want one of my professors to yet again ask me what I think about such and such writer, just because they know I am the only one who will dare to say something at least meaningful, or at least thoughtful. Or maybe I just think my responses are meaningful, and they only ask me because I can be bothered to answer. I’m probably already taking myself too seriously, and I haven’t even left my bed yet. I suppose oblivion is not for today, yet again.

The phone is back on the hook again, with at least 5 messages from him. I can’t bear to be woken up by the sound of it ringing and ringing, all night long, with both of them telling me that I should be with them, that they miss me, singing me songs and telling me that I should be out on the town with them, getting drunk, laughing, hugging, kissing, talking to the late hours of the night about everything and nothing. We are not going to save the world, and the world is not going to save us, but we can still talk about the impending doom and the sunrises over the horizon, contemplating what life would be and what life could be and listening to our favourite voices push us on through the night towards a goal that still hasn’t been created in our minds.

I love these boys. I suppose I should really say men, because we are all adults now, but I can’t bring myself to. We are all still so naïve but bolshy at the same time, we know it all but haven’t built those walls of protection around ourselves to save ourselves from the pain that is obviously going to come hurtling down on us at some point. The other night we were all sitting around my make-shift coffee table, drinking Desperados out of cans, listening to Tom Waits on vinyl, smoking Gauloises Blondes and talking about Israel and the anti-Israel politics in France. Sometimes I feel like a few of us pretend to be right wing, but are really left-wing, and I live my life on my own political spectrum terms, which go from the far left to left of center, sometimes hopping over the border to dip my toes and always running back again to my safe haven. We are all so smart and full of ideas, but they always only end up being coffee table ideas, as no one really has the energy to really go for it. It’s come to a point though where I need to move along, make my own way. While I was sitting there mainly listening to them all talk I just realized that I needed more. Instead of talking I need to see, feel, hear, be there.  I can’t stay here like this, dreaming about being born in another century, or at least another year, pretending that everything is allright, that one day I will miraculously wake up somewhere else, somewhere better, in a different life, in a different place.  Back to that oblivion, maybe it’s time to make the oblivion I want a reality.

I listened to the 5 voicemails, all drunken laughter, songs, mainly Jacques Brel and Leonard Cohen, “we love you” and “wish you were here”. I know you wish I were there, but I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t continue to be in love with someone who is in love with someone else, it’s just not possible anymore. If I stick around long enough he will marry me, that’s what he has always said, but I know that I need to live a life for myself before I can accept that and even agree to that. Only because I know that I am the comfort zone, and the others are all the chase, the idea of something different. I don’t want to be someone’s comfort zone, I want to be someone’s muse, I want to inspire someone and to be inspired at the same time.

Hiding away in my apartment and just concentrating on my thesis, my classes, my books, my writing and my depression is my only way of letting go. Leaving the protection of my house is always a chore, that nervous bubble that grows in my stomach, then the building of those protective layers to stave away the pokes and the stabs that are surely going to come my way in the outside world. Eyes to the ground and book in hand I make my way to each destination as fast as possible, hide away in my tiny classes at university, sit in the library for hours taking notes and doing research, teaching my students in the different locations, shopping and then home, to the pure comfort of my bed. I love to have people over, and to cook for them, but I am really struggling with being sociable and happy in public right now. If I go out he will be there, we will drink and talk and kiss, and then I will go home and watch him walk away to the new girlfriend’s house, knowing full well that she is waiting for him there, and I am going home alone. So what if I have his mind and his sociable hours? She has his love and she has him in her bed at night. I am just not pretty enough for him, or just not young enough, or just not something enough, I don’t know. In any case, this is my way of letting go of him. It’s time to branch out, it’s also time to leave the protective group of all my male friends and find someone who will love me for who I want to be. Or something in that vein. In the meantime I need to stave off that feeling of worthlessness, and hide from wanting oblivion too much. Every day I battle these feelings and every day I feel like I fail a little bit more.

Once I finish this thesis it will all be over, unless I want to continue and study for a PhD, and I know now that it’s too early for that. So what next? Run away? Start a new life somewhere else? This world is so large and there are so many places I have to see, but I just don’t know how. Can I leave the comforts of today and go? Can I just pick up and see where the wind drops me? What about my family and friends and cat and belongings? Will I feel the same any place I go or will I feel like a different person? All of these questions keep going around and around in my head, and I can’t keep my brain quiet any longer. I just want to get out of all of this. I need to remove myself from the feeling that if I throw myself in front of a tram on the B line that it will be a quick end. Or take a lot of pills and just fall asleep. Or just never wake up one morning and it will all be over. No more pain or feelings or sadness or confusion or hurt or shyness. No more keeping my mouth shut to avoid confrontation, no more wondering what life would have been like if certain things hadn’t happened. No more missing a person who will never ever come back. And no more hating a person who I can’t fully hate, even if I have every right to. There are so many days that I just want it to end. Too early, too late, never the right time. I just want it to end.

But I know I could never do that, only because I know what the pain is to lose someone in that way and I don’t have the heart to put anyone else through that. No one deserves that, however bad it may be, it could be worse, right? I’m sure there is an answer for me, and I am determined to find it.

Oblivion can wait another day.

Ramblings: Let All the Children Boogie

I wrote this on Monday and sat on it for a few days, but decided after a round of editing to leave as is. There are so many memories that I could have added, but it would have most likely resulted in a memoir of sorts, so I shall post it now so that it can find its place amongst all of the other stories about this special man who became a legend and a hero for so many.

I was 7 or 8 years old and we were practicing our (Christmas?) play at school when our hip new teacher (Mr. Adams, I still remember his name), decided we should add a choreography to the first act. He chose Bowie’s Space Oddity, and we all had to dance around like robots. I was so happy about it because I knew my dad was coming and I hoped that he would like us doing something a little less boring than the usual kids’ songs. I was also very familiar with Bowie, hearing him played at home all the time, so it felt really great for home and school to collide a little. I don’t have many memories of being excited to show or tell my dad something as he died when I was so young, so I will always see him sitting there, dark glasses and mohawk, completely and wonderfully out of place amidst the other parents. I’ve since thought how painfully perfect that was, Space Oddity and being out of place amongst others. I think it’s something that was passed along the line somehow.

Another young memory involves Bowie and Mick Jagger and that terribly happy and fantastic video for Dancing in the Street. I remember it being on the telly all the time and I just loved seeing these two artists singing together and literally dancing their feet off in the streets. I remember already admiring both artists at the time, but I don’t know if that is just because my parents listened to them a lot, or if I really just loved them (I was also in love with George Michael at the ripe old age of 6 so I wasn’t all that cool, and that was in no shape or form due to my parents). I really owe my music roots to my parents, that gift of great music is one that will never, ever be forgotten. Anyway, Dancing in the Street just pulls you up on your feet and makes you dance around with abandon, letting loose and letting go. 31 years after its release and it still has the same effect on me. Incredible.

I still have a tape with Bowie’s earlier hits on it that would be played on a loop during my last few years at university (along with Marilyn Manson’s Mechanical Animals, Tim Buckley’s Greatest Hits, Tom Waits’ Used Songs and Bob Dylan’s Desire). Life on Mars? is still and always will be my favourite Bowie song. There are so many possible interpretations but I love the underlying sadness battling with the need to escape, rebel, and evolve. Look at the bigger picture and follow your own dream. And I’ve always loved the Lennon/Lenin reference for some reason. Maybe just the working class reference, I don’t know. I won’t ever forget where I came from, and I think Bowie is a fabulous example of what you can make of yourself when you create new limits. (Oh and I am keeping all of my tapes for my kids to use – I loved inheriting all of my parents LPs, so maybe they will like my tapes and CDs).

New York City has always been full of Bowie for me. From demanding China Girl at Darkroom, to dancing away to Suffragette City at The Annex, to guest DJing the Rebel Rebel party at Lit, as well as walking all the way down Park Avenue listening to the entirety of Let’s Dance just to get away from reality for a while. I remember slipping a Sisters of Mercy tune after a Bowie hit and the crowd continuing to dance like mad, and realizing just how big of an influence he was on music in general, not just pop or rock but many, many genres. Back in the 90’s in France when I was a hardcore metal and goth fan and my sister was into illegal raves and dance parties we would all meet in the middle with Bowie. Modern Love and Let’s Dance will always bring me straight back to the mid 90’s and those parties that Karli and I would tend to throw when our mother was out of town on business.

I give my father and step-father a lot of credit for my music tastes, but when I think about it properly my mother should get a huge chunk of that credit. Without her who knows when I would have discovered my love for Tim Buckley or Stevie Nicks or the Sisters of Mercy (and therefore The Cure and Nick Cave and Hole and so on and so forth). Because of her (and thanks to her) I don’t have any memory of David Bowie not being in my life. He’s always been there, as simple as that. I think everyone has a few artists who have always been there, threaded through their lives, appearing, maybe moving out of sight for a while, reappearing in times of need or joy, taking you through the good and the bad and making such an impact that he, she or they feel like a part of you. Bowie was one of these artists for me.

His ability to be take his talents and make something that would continuously touch so many people, and then go back to the drawing board and reinvent himself into something equally, if not even more, original and wonderful was amazing. There hasn’t ever been someone who continued to enlighten, engage and push boundaries like he did. All while still remaining himself. There is only one David Bowie: an inspiration and a talent who will most likely never be matched. And that’s fine, because even if we don’t become legends we should at least thrive to be as prolific and creative as he was, all the while pushing those walls away.

There is a meme going around that says “If you’re ever sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.” – which, when you think about it is pretty exceptional, no? And maybe some of us got to see him rise to stardom in the late 60’s, early 70’s, like my mother, some of us were born with his music, like me, and maybe others discovered him along the way, all of that doesn’t matter. What does matter is how he always managed to touch each and every one of us in some way or another. All I can say is that wherever I am in my life there is and will always be a Bowie song that happens to fit perfectly with the moment.

It’s in times like these when social media really shows its beautiful side… All of my newsfeeds and Twitter feeds and whatever else there is, are continuous tributes to David Bowie. Memories, videos, stories and photos and it really warms my heart to see so many friends from different parts of my life equally as devastated by his death and as touched by his life as I am. Let him be an inspiration to us every day to never stop creating, pushing our boundaries, and to never stop smiling, even at the end.

And now I shall go and play his last gift to us, Blackstar, hoping that my daughters will appreciate his legacy and what he meant to us as much as I do one day, and then we shall watch Labyrinth. January 11th will forever be David Bowie day in this house.

Photo by the legendary Mick Rock

I added photos by Mick Rock because I adore him and his photography (I once embarrassingly asked him for a hug when he was quietly having a drink at the bar, not my greatest moment, although he did give me a huge bear hug!). I can spend hours browsing through his amazing portfolio. 

Ramblings: A Little Village by the Mountains

The photos in this post have been taken from the Ville de Sassenage Facebook page, and are official postcards. My mother has many, many beautiful photos of the village, our house and the mountains surrounding it but they are all in print and I didn't want to ask her to scan pictures for me while she is busy travelling the world shooting bands and working! I've posted some links below for more information on the area.

Some days when the sky is blue I find myself wandering back to summers of many, many years ago, where mornings were very young and evenings crept a long way past a normal bedtime. Nightfall came with the songs of the cicadas, hiding in the long grass by the stream, talking to each other over the sound of the frogs and the water rats scurrying around. The occasional car would race down the back road that passed in front of our house, but other than the rare, muffled sounds from the not-very-close neighbours, the bats, the cicadas and Led Zeppelin or Lou Reed were the soundtrack to those summer nights. A large village on the outskirts of Grenoble, surrounded by mountains that literally loomed everywhere you looked, Sassenage was one of those places that remained somewhat suspended in time while trying half-heartedly to keep up here and there. While you could find small supermarchés  and even a Mexican restaurant down at the foot of the village, the centre was up the hill along a windy cobbled road, lined with buildings that were being renovated to create an image of what they looked like in their heyday, before the pollution of Grenoble started its graying damage. Boulangeries and épicéries and boucheries and Tabac/Presse, your odd little old bar and PMU where the older men would grab their Pastis and gossip before dinner, maybe partake in some afternoon pétanque beforehand. The Post Office was at the top of the hill, in an old building, and I spent a lot of time there, posting letters and packages and walking back down the hill in the afternoon heat, shops closed for the siesta until 3 or 4pm, shutters firmly closed over windows to keep the sun out and the cool air in.

Summer afternoon calm, no rush to get anything done, just the tranquil sounds of the water moving through the fountain in the square, the birds hiding out in the shadows of tree leaves and the occasional car driving past. Around 3 or 4pm the old village would start to wake up again, the sun lower in the sky and naps having revigorated everyone after their solid lunches. The boulangerie and the fromagerie would open their doors for 3 or 4 more hours and the square would get a little busier again. The little parks would fill with parents and children and we would sometimes join them, my sister, brother and I, and play there until dinner time. Unless that day had been pool day, when we would rush to the pool in the morning with sandwiches and crisps and drinks and stay there all day, basking in the sun and jumping in the cold water, refreshing even under the hot sunlight. The village was a strange one, unlike the villages where I had lived as a young child in England, with its “old” part and its “new” part, no real border between the two, probably just a little village that had slowly grown towards the next little village towards the city of Grenoble. The A tram would leave you in Fontaine, and we would either walk the 15/20 minute journey home or we would jump on the 51 bus for a couple of stops along the main road. And then off, past the high school and the side road by the stream towards our house, a sizeable standalone villa in cream and brown with the peach tree that we planted from seed in front of it and the lawn neatly trimmed and the flowers and bushes and grapevines popping up all around you.

It was a beautiful house, with real marble floors that were heated by the hot water pipes underneath them in the winter and the sun would shine brightly through the windows and doors. The balcony was huge and looked out onto the road and the walnut tree across from us, and the kitchen was always cool in the summer. Our bedrooms were upstairs, in the rafters, with secret cubby holes and sanctuaries, light coming in through the skylights, peaceful until it would rain and then all hell would break loose on the roof, a symphony of raindrops clattering down, drowning out all other sound. The summer storms in the Isère were always quite spectacular, the city and surrounding areas protected by the mass of the Vercors, Chartreuse and  Belledonne mountain ranges, but these walls of stone never stopped the sudden lashings of torrential rain, booms of thunder pounding over your head and rays of lightning landing wherever they felt destined to land. And an hour later the sky would be a pure blue for a little while, until the pollution crept back in again to change it to grey-blue.

There are memories of hiking in the Vercors, around the areas where Jean Prévost and his contemporaries fought the Nazis and were betrayed; along the little streams and rivers that fell down the mountain sides, sometimes grouping up into waterfalls and natural pools under the trees, a slight danger if you got too close, the rushing and the clashing of the water over the century smoothed stone and down into the pool below. Fresher and cleaner than the swimming pool, with big rocks to use for sunbathing and picnicking and caves up ahead for those who would rather explore the inside of the rock than the outside.

I’m not one for rose-tinting my childhood, but there was something special about those years lived in Sassenage, the summers spent free and sometimes carefree, outside in the sun and the rain, running errands through the village, learning French as the days and the years passed. Writing letters to friends far away and waiting impatiently for the postman to stop by on his bike every morning, hoping that he would leave something in the letterbox for me.  I used to write and receive so many letters, and I have kept every single letter received, but that is a story for another time.

I’m sure Sassenage is nowadays more of a little town than a village, but I do hope that the old village centre has kept its sleepy charm, the little river cascading through it, down from the mountain above, and that all of the little streets and shops and old stone houses still carry the stories from different eras, from war and Occupation and Liberation, from Revolution, from bustling market days of centuries past and those days when the roads were carved into the mountains and the legend of the mermaid was not even a legend yet, but real llife. Special little place that will always be dear to my heart… I wonder how our walnut tree is faring and if the cherry trees in the back still bloom as strongly as they did back then…

Chemin du Vinay… <3

Jean Prévost

Sassenage in Photos

We could see this beautiful chateau from our house - many a day I would daydream about living there.

Ramblings: Best Live Music Experiences

I think about the things I should be missing sometimes, and I realize that there are not many at all. I think part of why I am happy to have had kids later rather than earlier is that I got a lot of stuff out of my system, stuff that I would be very happy never to do again. If I never have a shot of whiskey again I won’t be upset.  If I never set foot in a club again I won’t be sad. If I never end up in some random party full of celebrities again I won’t care. But one thing I do miss is going to shows. Live music.

The anticipation of waiting to see one of your favourite bands go on stage and play those songs that you have listened to day in, day out, right there in front of you. Randomly going to a venue and hearing a new band that sends you into a tizzy of excitement and emotions. Standing with two feet on the alcohol-sticky ground of ages being transported to another place by the sheer sound of a voice or a guitar. Of course, you can do this at home with your stereo, or in the streets with your headphones, or blast music from your car or your workplace, but there is nothing comparable to seeing musicians on stage playing the music that makes you happy (or sad, or both). Whatever type, or types, of music you may like, whether you prefer stripped bare or spectacle, there is something so amazing about a live show that has the ability to make you feel like a different person, to inspire you and to take you to places you couldn’t really imagine.

It’s not that I will never go to a concert again, or that I can’t physically go now, it’s just a little difficult right now. Hopefully we will be able to take Luna to some outdoor shows this summer, before her sister arrives, and then when the little ones are toddlers and not in any weird separation anxiety phase we will be able to start going out here and there and leaving them with a babysitter. But until then I shall reminisce on some of my favourite live music experiences. This is going to be a tough one as there are so many! I feel very, very lucky to have lived in a city where most artists play, and also very, very lucky to have seen most of the artists that I have wanted to see. There remain a few, such as Tom Waits or the Rolling Stones that I would really love to see, and some that I unfortunately will never get to see, such as Tim Buckley, who will always remain my number one favourite singer of all time, or Type O Negative, that I could have seen and now never will due to the untimely death of Peter Steele. And then also some that I regret not seeing when I could, like Marilyn Manson, but will hopefully have a chance to see again. There are also those that I regretted spending money on as they weren’t what I thought of them, and others that I thought I didn’t really care about but who changed my mind once they were on stage.

Here are some highlights of my favourite moments, in no particular order and definitely not exhaustive:

Anytime I have seen Nick Cave. I can’t choose a favourite time, he is has blown my mind in both the Bad Seeds and in Grinderman live, multiple times. I’ve seen him perform in both Lyon once and NYC many times and will never get enough! He has so much charisma and talent, but it’s not just him alone, his band makes every performance into everything. That voice! Deep, sexy roar, sarcastic shout and oftentimes beautifully in tone and fitting to the music. One day I will put my 20 favourite Bad Seed songs together, but in the meantime all I can say is that every song has its place live, whether stripped down of full force. I actually posted a review I wrote of the 2001 tour here .

The Cure Beacon Theater (Reflections Tour 2011) - I wrote about this one here . Although I don’t really think I actually wrote about the show, more like I strung a few sentences together to say that I was there and that I couldn’t explain how amazing it was. Another band that I have seen more than once, and also one of my absolute favourite bands of all times, so every time I see them I leave giddy and happy. But this performance was just way above anything else. One of my good friends scored us last minute tickets and we ended up making our way to the front of the venue (the act of which got us kicked out during the encore, but by that point we had seen what we needed to see anyway). I saw the entire performance of Three Imaginary Boys, Seventeen Seconds and Faith with the original line-up from about 10 feet from Robert Smith and Simon Gallup. Amazing. Seeing as these albums were released when I was learning to walk, talk and try to pull my baby sister’s head off I’ve only ever seen certain songs performed, never the entire albums. Actually, I’m going to listen to them in their entirety now. I doubt I will ever see such an amazing Cure show again in person (one can hope), but it was definitely a lifetime experience for a fan like myself. Oh, and if you haven’t already realised, I LOVE THE CURE.

Interpol’s last show of Antics tour Webster Hall – October 2005. I had only been in NYC for a few months, and one of my best friends was over from Ireland, and we were a little giddy about seeing Interpol together on the last show of the tour. We managed to get the really enviable spot on the right side balcony right above the stage at Webster Hall (still my favourite spot for any show). While it was my second time seeing them amongst many to come, this one was just really special. That tour had been really long and extensive and you could tell they were so happy to be home, and really gave it their all. And for me it was kind of a closure of my days walking the streets of NYC city alone, exploring and discovering, while listening to Interpol, because not long after that I started to find good friends and places to go.

Each and every Spiritualized show – just like with Nick Cave, I can’t seem to choose one that stood out more than any other to me, they were all just absolutely brilliant. Wait… Ok, maybe I lied. Radio City Music Hall, July 2010. Spiritualized played Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space in its entirety and it was sublime. The acoustics in that venue are the best and the album resonated perfectly. The album itself is already just wonderful (and I think most likely still my favourite), it just sounded even more exceptional that night. Spiritualized are also the last band that I saw live, Webster Hall September 2013. The only band that my daughter has seen live too, albeit in utero. Every time I have seen them has a very special meaning to me, one that I share with one of my best and closest friends. A Spiritualized show is not the same without her.

Portishead – Autumn 2011. I blogged about my Portishead experience here .  Not only did I get to see my wonderfully talented friends Thought Forms open for them, I got to see one of the bands I never thought I would get to see. I think my previous blog post says it all, so I will only add that the experience was just magical.

Leonard Cohen, Radio City Music Hall, May 2009. If I’m not mistaken he played here for three nights, and he hadn’t toured in a while. I never actually thought I would get to see Leonard Cohen perform. He is one of those artists who came to me from my parents, his voice soothing and probing at the same time. I tried to get tickets as soon as they went on sale, but they sold out in seconds, so I paid double. I would have paid triple if need be, because this is without a doubt one of the best shows I will ever get to see in my life. I went alone, although I had friends with seats elsewhere and ended up laughing and crying with the lady sitting next to me. He sang for 3 hours and I just didn’t want it to end, pieces from his entire repertoire. He danced, he joked, he talked, and that smile!!! Amazing. Since then he has released a couple of albums and has toured some more, but I haven’t had the chance to see him again. It doesn’t matter; I will always, always remember this!

NIN Summer 2000 – I’d never been to the US before, and as my mother was moving to California with her work she took me with her on a trip to look for a house. A couple of her friends were going to see NIN on The Fragile tour, so they got me a ticket and took me with them. It was in an amphitheater in the middle of the desert at the end of June and it was BOILING. We were right down at the front, in the pit, and A Perfect Circle opened (it was around that time that Maynard had shaved his head and started the shows with a wig on and then whipped it, and most of his clothes, off a couple of songs in. When dusk fell NIN started their set, with the awesome lights, projections and sound I was completely blown away. I had loved them for so long (and still do), and it was absolutely amazing to see them live, there, in the middle of the desert, under the stars. I lived in a small city in France where you didn’t have that many big bands come (although we did have a few, The Cure played there once, as did Oasis and The Verve), and Paris always seemed so far away as a teen and then a poor student. Just for a show anyway.

Bauhaus 2005 – I bought tickets for this gig as soon as they went on sale. Bauhaus reforming just to tour?! Dream come true!! I then interviewed the drummer Kevin Haskins for a zine, and he actually put me and two friends on his guest list, so I not only got to see the whole show from an awesome spot, I also got to meet and hang out with the band members (apart from Peter Murphy who had disappeared off to a private location). We all went down to Lit where David J’s photography was being exhibited. I had only been in NYC about 6 months and I remember being in awe of the fact that I was hanging out with some of my idols. The show itself was sublime. As much as Peter Murphy doesn’t seem to get along with anyone else anymore (or maybe that is just hearsay), they were all in it together and made it work. I’ve seen Peter on his solo tours multiple times since then and he is a real showman. But this was just so cool, all my favourite Bauhaus songs live, right in front of me. I posted my interview with Kevin Haskins on my blog a few years ago right here 

I could add a few more, but I don’t want to overdo it… If you have actually read this far then I applaud you! It’s taken me about 4 days to write it, 5 or 10 minutes here and there. If I start thinking of more it will take me another week! I have to start looking into which bands and musicians I can take Luna to see this year. I want her to have the same love for music as her parents do, and as my parents instilled in me. My mother is still an awesome music photographer, averaging one or two shows a week, and if you want to check out her work you can peruse her website here. We have to keep the love going through the generations! If anyone saw the same shows as I did (listed above) I would love to hear about your experiences!

Photograph: Beth Gibbons, Portishead, NYC 2011 ©JadeAnnaHughes

Ramblings: Of Christmasses Past, Present & Future

I wrote this on Christmas night, after a beautiful day with my family.

And while Luna sleeps curled around my full belly, that sleep that only babies have when they have had their fill of sleepy mothers milk, I reflect on Christmasses past, those of many, many years ago, those of not that far ago in the recent past.

Those times in the tiny village in England, a few decades ago, a pretty Christmas tree and snow on the ground, Listening for Father Christmas from the top of my bunk bed, wondering if I would be able to hear the reindeer land on the roof. Pillow cases full of presents under the tree on Christmas morning, playing in the snow with Daddy and eating our full of dinner made by Mummy.The same food that I continue to make at Christmas today, in some shape or form.

There was that Christmas is Holland that wasn't really Christmas because everyone celebrated Sinterklaas on December 5th, where we felt a little strange and out of place, as if Christmas had just been postponed for a year and would be back the next when we flew back home to be with the rest of our family. England just always felt just the way it should at Christmas with the lights and the bells and the shops and the TV shows and the tinsel and the songs. While I spent many a Christmas in France growing up, amidst the snowy mountains, a fairytale Winter city, nothing beat the Christmas feeling in England. Mainly due to nostalgia of those Christmasses spent as a child waiting for Father Christmas to surprise us, leaving mince pies for the reindeer and school plays with The Snowman song in the background. Watching Scrooge (the one with Albert Finney and Alec Guinness) and listening to The Pogues and Wham and Band Aid.

Then came the time when I would travel across the ocean to California to spend Christmas with my family, discover new friends and new traditions, Christmas in the warmer weather and the sun, everything so much newer and cleaner and bigger. A strange type of Christmas which felt paradoxically home-like and very, very foreign. There was one Christmas spent in Israel where 12 of us  all banded together and had our own Christmas dinner and party in the volunteer house, the kibbutzniks helping us have a merry Christmas away from home, in a country where the majority of the population does not celebrate the holiday. A mix of different traditions and foods from all around the world, celebrated altogether. A Christmas Day spent on the beach in Tel Aviv, sunshine, falafel, bourekas and sachleb, with bare feet in the sea.

And then, 10 years ago, New York City became my home. The city that brings Christmas to life like no other. Christmas trees for sale on the streets, beautiful lights all over the city, pop-up ice skating rinks and beautifully decorated trees, snow and ice and shows and laughter. Christmas parties and Christmas dinners, the search for Christmas crackers and Mr Kipling’s mince pies. Every year new traditions were created, until this year when for the first time in our lives, I spent my first Christmas with both of my loves together, my wonderful boyfriend and my beautiful daughter. The excitement at finding that perfect present, wrapping it up and putting it under the tree, waiting to see how she would unwrap it on Christmas morning. Devising menus for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, based on our own childhood traditions and ones that we wanted to create. Waking up together and dressing up, just because we felt like it. Wishing people a Merry Christmas on our walk and feeling so happy and blessed, as this is how life should be.

While I reflect on all of those special moments in the past and this Christmas that has just gone by, I also have to think of those in the future, and how one day I hope that Cesar and I will be able to sit back and watch our children and grandchildren create their own traditions. Christmas will always be my favourite holiday, and there will always be something so special about it, something that transcends the gifts and the food, a feeling of happiness, joy and gratefulness.

Music: Varsovie - L'Heure et la Trajectoire

What is nostalgia? For me it’s that warm, fuzzy, bittersweet and yearning feeling to a time gone by. A memory, a moment, a thought, a sound, an emotion, a place, a mix of all of those things. I am a nostalgic person by nature; I don’t exactly yearn for the past as I do enjoy my present nowadays, but I do love all the memories surrounding me. I love to think back to all that has made me into what I am, I love to jump into history and to imagine myself there. I used to spend many a day reading 19th century literature and immersing myself in a time gone by, where life was different and probably better. Nowadays my nostalgia is more an acceptance that a time gone by is a time gone by, and that it will always remain as it is imprinted in my mind.

Varsovie are seeped in nostalgia, and not only on a personal level for me. I grew up with these guys and we have been friends for many years now. I have always been a huge fan of their musical endeavours, but as Varsovie they hold an extra special place in my heart. Their first EP, Neuf Millimètres, was released in 2006 (memories of flying back to NYC from Paris with Leningrad in my ears and tears in my eyes), their first album, Etat Civil, in 2010 (I used to always slip in a couple of songs into my playlists at work while bartending), and their second album, L’Heure et la Trajectoire, in October of this year. Based in Grenoble, France, Arnault Destal (lyrics, drums, arrangements, management) and Grégory Cathérina (music, vocals, guitar), are long-standing figures on the music scene in France. Varsovie (Warsaw in English) grew from the embers of the dark metal band Forbidden Site and took a more rock/post-punk direction in the vein of Joy Division and Bauhaus, or maybe an Interpol if you are looking for a more modern band to compare them to. I hate making comparisons though, and as much as I love all of those bands, Varsovie are stand-alone. What makes Varsovie stand out in my opinion is not just the fact that their songs are pretty much exclusively in French, but that they meld poetry with the dark melodies of their music. Gregory sings, growls, howls Arnault’s verses, words that are crafted with such talent that it is impossible not to see how beauty can be married with despair and darkness. And even if you don’t speak French, the music will force you to sit up and listen, because without the music the words wouldn’t have the power they do. Be prepared to be pulled into the darkness, to see a light and to stare right into it.

L’Heure and la Trajectoire is one of those albums that is already excellent the first time you play it and then it grows more and more so with each listen, becoming what I can only describe as an epic collection of songs. Kicking off the album with the somber Austerlitz, moving through the beauty of L’Eclaircie and Sunsiaré, finishing off with the damning Jusqu’au Jour, L’Heure et la Trajectoire is a complete story of love, hate, passion, nostalgia, past, present and future. Oh, and anger, despair, darkness. But this isn’t a cry for help, this is a strong voice against all that is wrong, all that was wrong and all that can be different. This is strength and purity, using stories of conflicts and people to describe everything that is wrong and everything that is right. Read between the lines and immerse yourself in the melodies that in turn soothe you and shake you, like the ocean waves on the day after a hurricane. There is always beauty, even within darkness. You just need to pull off the layers of grit to reveal what is clear.

French is the most beautiful language in the world and Varsovie does it complete justice. And these guys deserve to be played by anyone, not just by Francophones. You don’t need to completely understand the words to comprehend the atmosphere and the message. Try it. You will not be disappointed.

I asked Arnault a few questions about the band and the album. I kept his responses in French and wrote a (very) quick translation in English for those interested underneath. I would love to see these guys play here in NYC, maybe with Thought Forms, another one of my absolute favourites. Please check out the links for more information on the band, the album and videos below.

From The Inside: Please explain what the word nostalgia means for you.

Arnault Destal: Une fidélité extrême aux objectifs de sa jeunesse, une promesse non tenue, un désenchantement précoce, le fantasme de jours qui auraient pu être, le sentiment que tout ce que l'on aime n'est plus aimé…

(An extreme faithfulness towards the objectives one had as a youth, a promise that hasn’t been kept, an early disappointment, a fantasy of days that could have been, the feeling that everything that we love is not loved anymore…)

FTI: You often play in France and Eastern Europe. Any plans on expanding out to Britain or the US?

AD: Nous avons joué à Londres avec Scarlet's Remains en 2007 à l'invitation de "Dead & Buried", mais c'est vrai que nous n'avons pas renouvelé l'expérience, plus pour des raisons d'organisation que par choix. Quant au Canada et aux États-Unis, nous aimerions beaucoup…

(We played with Scarlet’s Remains in London in 2007 when we were invited by “Dead & Buried”, but it’s true that we haven’t played there again, more because of organization reasons rather than choice. We would really like to play in Canada and the US…)

FTI: Now that your second album has been released, in what direction do you see Varsovie going over the next year?

AD: Retourner sur scène en Europe dès 2015, mais aussi poursuivre la composition du troisième album, puisque nous sommes dedans.

(Touring Europe in 2015 and also continuing work on our third album seeing as we have already started on it).

FTI: Any current musical or literary influences that you can share?

AD: Nous n'avons pas vraiment d'influences actuelles. Nous avons beaucoup d'influences indirectes de groupes passés que nous citons souvent comme Bauhaus, The Sound, The Chameleons (UK), Siekiera, And Also the Trees ou Joy Division. Pas mal de choses dans les vagues post-punk, cold-wave et deathrock traditionnelles, et même dans le black-metal primitif, où les atmosphères et la tension collent parfois à la saison mentale de Varsovie… Mais aussi tout simplement dans le rock classique, plutôt sombre si possible, si tant est qu'il ne soit pas seulement du divertissement, de la pose ou de la soupe pour bobos. Nous tâchons surtout de nous influencer de l'intérieur, un peu comme si Varsovie était une entité à part, plutôt autoritaire. Il est souvent plus difficile de faire le tri, de se défaire, que de cumuler les fausses bonnes idées piquées çà et là…

En tout cas, parmi les vivants, et en français, j'aime pas mal de morceaux de Jean-Louis Murat et aussi de Gérard Manset, qui est très loin d'être un petit nouveau, mais qui a le mérite d'être vraiment à part et actif. Sinon, toujours en France, dans un tout autre registre : Peste Noire, qui est plutôt radical et unique dans le paysage – du moins jusqu'ici, puisque ce groupe influence déjà un paquet de monde. Le prochain Glaciation risque d'être pas mal du tout aussi… Sinon, quelques noms hors France : Rome, Voyvoda, Monozid, Christ vs Warhol et quelques autres que j'oublie évidemment…

Question littérature, rien de récent et de vivant qui ne mérite d'être cité, ou ne me vient l'esprit. Je n'ai pas eu le temps de lire ces derniers temps, sinon pour le travail. Quant à notre nouvel album, les fantômes de Fitzgerald, Cesare Pavese, Roger Nimier et Sunsiaré de Larcône hantent certains morceaux, mais plus à travers ce qu'ils ont vécu et ce qu'ils ont été, que par l'aspect purement littéraire de leurs travaux, bien que, dans ces cas précis, vies et œuvres se confondent.

We don’t really have any current influences. We are influenced indirectly by old bands that we often quote, such as Bauhaus, The Sound, The Chamaleons (UK), Siekera, And Also The Trees or Joy Division. Many things in the post-punk, cold wave, traditional deathrock movements, even some early black metal, where the atmosphere and tension sometimes match Varsovie’s. But we are also influenced by classic rock, mainly the darker stuff, as long as it isn’t just music for light entertainment, posers or hipster soup. But mainly we try to keep Varsovie as a separate entity or authority, to find our influences on the inside. It is sometimes hard to select, or strip away from influences than to gather fake good ideas taken from here and there…

In any case, amidst those French artists who are still alive, I like quite a few of Jean-Louis Murat’s pieces, as well as Gérard Manset, who is far from being new, but who deserves to be mentioned. Otherwise, still in France, but a different style: Peste Noire, pretty unique and radical in what they do, at least up until now, because they have influenced a lot of people. The next Glaciation shouldn’t be too bad either… Some names outside of France: Rome, Voyvoda, Monozid, Christ vs Warhol and a few more that I am most likely forgetting.

In regards to literature, I can’t think of anything recent or anyone alive who deserves to be mentioned. In regards to our latest album, the ghosts of Fitzgerald, Cesare Pavese, Roger Nimier and Sunsiaré de Larcône haunt certain songs, but mostly through what they lived through and what they were, more than the purely literary aspect of their work, although in these cases, lives and art were merged together.

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You can order the album on Infrastition HERE