Op. 0178

"...Look his eyes are here in the space, but he's listening to his music..."

Friday mornings find me in the upper level of the Louvre's main atrium, a place where I can watch the silhouettes move across and through the corridors. For breakfast, I usually have an espresso and a petite tart de pomme depending on my mood that day. Once I sat down, I got settled, and started to paint the sound. Two women, one who was Italian and the other possibly from Iran, sat down next to me. Five minutes into the recording, this is what I heard.

"Look at this guy across from me...

Look his eyes are here in the space, but he's listening to his music

See, look, he's in his own world. He's listening to his music, but his eyes are here.

It's nice."

[I was definitely listening to my own music]

"His pen has water inside, look I've never seen anything like that. It's like a fountain pen, with water."

Their conversation continued, and I finished the recording about 10 minutes later. But as I finished up my drawing they said this:

"Wait watch his eyes move, he's not looking at the space.

What is he painting?"

At this point I laughed which was my mistake. It hinted at the fact that although I was wearing headphones, I heard everything that they were saying. The woman directly across from me leaned in and whispered, 'Can you hear me?'

Without even looking in their direction, I nodded and the three of us had a huge laugh.

They had been watching me, I had been listening to them. We had a dialogue before we even exchanged a single word. We talked for another 2 hours or so as I explained the project to them. It was the first honest conversation I've had in Paris and I'm glad I have the recording and the sketch to remember it by.

(quotes in blue are taken from opus 0178)