As I take my last few walks throughout the city it’s a sad moment for me not because I am leaving, but because the environments and spaces that I have come to frequent have changed in their nature. The antique bird markets have now been overtaken with parking spaces for buses. Musicians who used to fill the streets no longer do so because of the sheer number of tourists coming and going forcing them to either go home, or fight to be heard. Even the cafés have a different air to them, announcing the start of the tourism season.
It’s fleeting… the sound that is. Lasting for only a few seconds, hitting every surface while splitting into millions of fragments, evolving into echoes. And yet, it is so paramount in telling the narrative of the city. One day, the sounds I’ve recorded over the past few months will have become nostalgic in the same way we listen to the music of the 1950s or an old radio broadcasting telling the mystery of a detective in New York. It say’s something to the anthropological nature of the work, becoming a fly on the wall, fly in the soup, and a fly in the eye.
Sound, more importantly music, had a distinct purpose in my life in Paris. Whether it was in way-finding, encouraging discoveries of spaces not seen by an eye, moving the body, or changing the mood of a street it enhanced the architecture in a way that architecture could not achieve itself.
I know I haven’t blogged (I don’t really like that word) over the last week, but I honestly didn't think anyone was reading so I retreated back to my thoughts giving the ideas time to marinade in my head before I wrote them down. Don’t worry in the coming days and weeks, I will, and depending on the publisher’s thoughts you might be able to read them here. I’ll be doing a complete overhaul of the website changing it from blog to a reservoir of sensations, memories, and intelligible findings of my time here (fingers crossed). For those of you who have been reading this blog, you were the lucky few because I didn't really publicize it, or gave it the graphic identity I would have. I just wanted it to be pure thoughts and words. For the past two months, I think it has been, but now the real work starts (the publicizing, marketing, identity package, the business of the beast), and I won’t stop until I’ve reached a point of thick description, until something is learned, until the itch, the curiosity is satiated.
From Paris, this is Matthew Jamieson Abiva signing off. I’ll be enjoying my new view soon.
Thanks for writing this final entry!
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