[score base: A faded green British Library Card for Mr B Morris; photo and score: Mathilda (2021); score text: Scene in Paris/‘momentary excitement’/at a table, in the subway, among friends/SMALL BITS/entertainment/facilitated a metaphysical transformation]
Mel Anie, Mathilda, Bernie, Tamsin, and Blake; 28 November, 30 November and 3 December 2021; Kendal, Paris, Tynemouth, Paris and New York City
A Weekend in Paris (Part 1):
Tamsin and Mathilda visited Paris for their walks, applying the dictate ‘Scene in Paris’ literally. Fittingly, Tamsin started her walk with a visit to the score’s backdrop, The British Library, before promptly forgetting the gifts she had bought there for her hosts in Paris in the rush of boarding the Eurostar at St. Pancras. In Paris to teach Shiatsu, she walked le Petite Ceinture and explored feathers at Linda’s and the Musée Cernuschi. Bernie considered two walks, ten years apart: the first in Paris, from Café de Flore to Shakespeare and Company, the other from Rene’s of Tynemouth to Keel Row Bookshop. A metaphysical transformation facilitated by the memory of a scene in Paris. Mel found bottled metaphysics and subways of the sandwich variety. A green scene in itself.
Mathilda and I had planned to make calls during our walks, but practicalities dictated otherwise and instead we spoke on the phone before my walk and after hers. She walked between libraries in Paris through the rain; I walked on a sunny day through the French enclave of the Upper East Side to New York City’s only French language bookstore, considering all those French films about trains. When I sent her a snap of the alliance française she commented that we had formed our own French Alliance with Mel, Bernie and Tamsin.
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