LAX Immigration and Customs, first time:
“Have a nice stay, enjoy California!”
Second time:
“Are you on vacation here? Allright”
Third time:
“What are you doing here? Where’s the plane ticket to get back to your country? What are you doing here? Why staying for so long? Let me see your card. So why are you coming here?”
Immigration. It seems fair until you’re on the other side.
It was the french president Sarkozy talking to suburbs and saying that about France.
Well I’d rather do both.
I’m stupid: I started working with this idea that it always seems to be greener there while it seems shit where you actually are, but that is on average (well in the western world) the same wherever you go. There’s down and upside. So I believed France and Europe would be a good playground to do stuff, no need to go away in Canada or CA. There is plenty of good things in here and a cultural melting-pot quite unmatched on Earth. Paris is amazing for that (and weird, I’d talk about it). I was thinking about the challenges and the potentials. There are still here.
But nothing big happened. Or it’s so slow it’s invisible.
No real good signs of society improvements just some willing to move forward but nothing happens really. France is lagging. In so many ways it even goes backward (wtf is this religious vivacity these days?? or Hadopi or this amazing rampant bigotry..).
People don’t give a shit. Globally, French don’t give a shit. Progress is difficult in this context.
Wherever I am, since I’ve been living outside a bit, I can’t believe how France don’t care from the airport to sidewalks to services, whatever. It’s not that it’s bad behaviors, it’s more like it’s dull and selfish ones (boss kidnapping I mean, come on!). It’s even more irritating when people apologize. Sometimes I want to stab the dude in the eye and say “SORRY I DIDNT KNOW IT COULD HURT I MEAN I HAVE THE RIGHT TO PLAY WITH A KNIFE RIGHT?”.
I love the independence state of mind of France, questioning everything, all the time. I think it’s good to be not sure of anything, because that’s what life is. I hate the careless rude, rough, mean side of it.
We don’t have to have them both. We could have the positive one and ditch the stupid side but no, that would be totally not french to do so.
I guess.
Anyway, I feel angry against myself for giving up, against french people for having all the pain in the ass to believe, adapt, build and finish stuff instead of always talk and criticize it (because if they are not like this, they usually are not in France anymore) against California for being so awesome despite its own downside.
I hate waste in every way and I can’t stop thinking about it when I remind myself of these last years or when I listen to my friends or public transports conversations. Social, society opportunities falling and failing.
And then I just have to see some smart witty funny french people and..
Man I feel weird. But I’m doing it. Both.
Après un mois et des poussières sans nuages, ça fait bizarre quand même. Juste après le Groenland, mer de nuage. A 10 km c’est magnifique, j’ai même vu un château dans le ciel. A 3 km sur Paris, on plonge doucement dedans. C’est doux, c’est gris.
C’est du moisi.
N’empêche le lever du soleil sur la planète blue en altitude, c’est le pied.
What to say?
That I have never been that happy in life? That it’s the best summer ever? Or that it’s gonna be the best autumn of the galaxy at least for me?
I don’t want to make you more jealous that you already are.
Seriously though, there is still some unsolved and important stuff to deal with but at the same time it’s always the case whatever you do so..
I don’t know which subject to talk about living here, on Sunset blvd. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be about food and diet though :) I’m still in the process of assimilation of cultural differences. I miss nothing in the everyday life compared to France, at least for now. At the opposite getting back to Paris scared me and made me regret L.A. Not only for Her.
I have unleashed the archives to december 2005 and re-reading some stuff I can’t say I’m not having what I wanted. It’s all happening. It’s scary fabulous. I’m suspicious about the scary part.
Maybe I miss to speak/hear french. That’s why I’m finding myself listening to “Libre comme l’air” from Reciprok french hiphop band (la hontassse). I feel so constricted in english, checking so many times my grammar and all. Eventually it’s gonna be automatic.
But man, this weather.. I breath better with roads everywhere and an ocean breeze than in Paris with woods but no breeze at all, just a big annoying wind. And fucking rain.
It’s awkward to listen to the music I know in a completely different environment like one song was reminding how much I wanted some change, looking at the moon, freezing in my appartment while playing before having some soup.
Paris, I’m not missing your cloudy mood. At all. I need an amp though.
It’s weird because I didn’t believe that I would find something or someone in the US. I was just fed up with Paris and parisians. I even wondered if I would not return in the french countryside, making music and growing vegetables. Even if I know that I’m too urban for that, it was tempting. Living cheaply, independantly, no bullshit, just jokes weed&wine. I was thinking about it so hard when back in my less than 300 people village.
And then a few weeks later, I’m starting a life in a 11 million people city. It makes me wonder what is next? Well for now some funk legends live. It’s like that my friend!
“Happy birthzzzzZZZ”
Thirty years old ala old school with family. I had this idea of throwing a party at my place letting everybody write on the walls but I was too busy falling in love 10K kms away. Sorry.
This picture makes me smile and sad at the same time. Smile because I remember my grandfather getting grumpy while we would make him go to his bed for the afternoon nap seeing that the wine and the champagne had some effect on him. It’s sunday of course he can have all the alcohol he wants, one of the last funny stuff he can appreciate these days.
Sad because this picture –and pictures in general- are sure not enough to describe someone. Here’s my grandfather so silent, so sleepy so like nothing special. I remember him as always having some joke or some funny thing to say. Like I would make fun of him and he would just look casually at my grandmother and say “punch your little son on the head please” so that it would always crack me up.
it’s like pictures are not enough. Videos are silly. I’d love to only have the sound of him during some dinner or something when he was not at 10pills/day (Parkinson’s). I have some ninja recording from 10 years ago, it’s quite amazing. It makes you feel the past like nothing else. No filters, no photoshop. No pretending in front of a camera. Just naked people minds communicating. Raw Past.
Anyway at my birthday Raymond asked me to come to see him in his bedroom. “I want to ask you something son”. I was thinking about getting him something, like some cakes from the north of France from where he comes from or some diapers because uh, it’s part of his life now.
He asked me with his sweet and soft tone voice “Could you write me on a paper the name of your girlfriend please?”
“Aww sure, I’m gonna do it right now!”
So I wrote it on a post-it with my best handwrite style possible.
v e r d e l l w i l s o n.
I think he couldn’t understand when I was talking about her (you). He may not meet her (you) but he knows what is going on. All stooped as he is, he heard the smile in my voice saying those two words.
Is it a gang sign?
I’m watching MJ’s funerals in L.A. Streets are calm, it seems like the entire city is watching it too.
Michael Jackson from my french countryside point of view.
He was so all over the medias in the 80s, even in my little village in the middle of France. I forgot about that.
The big memory is of course the 1982’s first broadcast of his video clip of Thriller in Champs-Elysées, a french famous tv show at that time. It was scary as hell for my little age but the dance part was so amazing I couldn’t stop watching and listen to this grawl synth and thick bass sound with claps and percussions.
More than just an amazing blend of groove, horror and dance, watching this man was something very special for me: I had no brothers, no black people around me, all I had was Diff’rent Strokes, Sydney on TF1 –a black dude introducing african american music in France, especially hip-hop- and Michael Jackson. The last one was so above everybody, he couldn’t be no more than a reference to me.
It was awkward because I was feeling that either you’re black and invisible in a village or you’re black and you’re the most known person on earth, ever. No real in-between.
Either you’re the supreme or you’re nothing. Either you entertain or you don’t. it gave me infinite hope and fear at the same time.
Now that I do music and play his songs regularly, now that he has passed away I can feel how influential he has been on me. I mean if I look at my 80s tapes, there’s MJ and MJ. BAD has been the soundtrack of my ten-ish years. Everytime I was starting to walk her street I would synchronize my walkman on Man In The Mirror intro and smile while throwing her some croissant at her window. Her father was kind of racist. Maybe the first materialization of that feeling I didn’t know about. I was ahead of that.
Al Sharpton MJ’s funerals speech was right, MJ did a lot to make me feel that I could be at the top of the world even if the world was totally different from me, physically. Giving and sharing love has no such barrier. It was kind of The 80s message. And the messenger, with his glove and his famous moves was Michael Jackson. RIP.
Believe it or not, at this time I was a fan of Tchaïkowsky too.
Allez un petit post en français. Pour la faire travailler un peu :)
Période folle. Mon poignet droit est en feu de tant de souris, de clavier et de basse. Excitation extrème, malaise profond, temps qui passe super vite en même temps qu’affreusement lentement.
Bien sur, plus de détails dans quelques temps. Oh putain.
Donc ouais un nouveau titre.
Un petit workout aussi. 2 en fait. J’irais bien jusqu’à 999.
Et quoi d’autre… Je finis le website de ma boite, j’ai reçu mes business cards, Les jeux? Ouais ça avance.. No comment.
Et sinon je suis amoureux like, you don’t really want to know.
Hiiiii
I love that word. I think it’s a really important one.
Scarcity is the problem of infinite human needs in a world of finite ressources.Yeah it comes with about everything in this world.
From that, you find yourself doing things you would usually not do when not having issues of lacking something. You adapt to a new situation and that seems to be good for a lot of stuffs.
Countless important things in science or art have been discovered or are born from scarcity, was it on purpose or not. Here’s my last experiences on that:
Hey, thanks scarcity!
Little résumé of my bag and my trip.
Back monday, I’m still talking to people in english. I was biking and the guy told me “il y en a une ici une piste de vélo (sur le trottoir)” to what I answered “yeah but there’s one here too!” with a natural flow and US cali accent. He couldn’t answer me. And I was like “what did I just say? It was so automatic”
I’m not really back in fact. I’m hitting 30 years old monday and I didn’t do anything, nothing about that.
Yeah it was that great. I could talk about The Room, driving L.A., visiting SF, the best coffee of the world, scorpions and black widows, The Hills of Silver Lake, Santa Monica BBQs, eating tacos or ceviche, good french cheese on Sunset Blvd, smoking good and sweet pot, talking trend in games with big names..
That was too awesome. I took my chances in fact and it worked. I’m back in L.A. soon.
It’s like, everything is just logical. Totally random but still making sense. That’s life when it works right?
I have good personal exciting projects that are maybe gonna get me some noise or even a big job.
I have fantastic friends there.
And then there is her.
She can teach you, but you’ll have to charge.
The most amazing girl I have ever met. What am I doing here right now? I know dude, I know!
Dear Sun you’re so good and yet so virtual.
I have this memorie getting back often these days. I was 5 or 6 years old, in my foster family and things were getting good. Ok it was weird, I was kind of special, little black dude in a 300 pl white village. The first black I ever saw in my life was a little boy in the same situation that I was. He lived down two houses and didn’t stay more than a few months. I stayed 6 years.
Anyway I was starting to feel good and legitimate even. Then they were telling me things like “you know you don’t belong here right?” explaining to me that it would not be like this for long, that it was exceptional and that I’ll have to choose some parents.
I can remember that blues getting as huge as the entire oceans of this world. I would just stay in awe, looking at my feet, frowning. So what now? Street maybe?
Suddenly I had to think hard, to evaluate things like an adult. My foster ones knew that I was able to understand Iaw already asking questions. It was hard for them too.
So no choice. Move forward Harold. Think of the future and as you have no choice but doing things the best you can to make people happy and be thankful and stay with them, do it.
It’s in my skin and bones now.
The thing is, I can’t share it with nobody as a unique child. Of course I’ve been interested with people with weird pasts all my life, from my 12years old friend fan of horror movies with just a mother and a brother to friends with abusive parents etc.
Well I always find out that everybody has at least at a moment in his or her life or laying beneath, something someone fucking real to stick to and maybe rest a bit. In movies too. In litterature too. In all the culture, there is something not virtual to get a grip on and move on for people. As social mammals that we are, if you don’t have that, you are just using energy to avoid to go down emotional hell. I don’t.
That’s why I’m quite a control freak sometimes. Managing is a survival thing for me.
The other day in France I was having my little sister who can now have a conversation on family stuffs with interest, at my place. She can’t stop saying “my parents” like yeah, she’s really the child of my parents. But I could also share my feelings with her and it felt good. I wish I had someone to talk to these years, share with pain like Q with his brother or his father. And then his own son that he left in Sweden –Q had seven child from five women-, he came back at one point and they shared to tears.
I can’t do that with nobody. And it doesn’t seem to happen to others.
Doing so with a girlfriend is very temptative but a disaster. In couples sharing pain is maybe not a very good thing especially in my weird case. I’d rather not base a relation on pity. So I’m more in a position where I’m running away of those bad things.
All of that made me as I am though. And the result is not too bad.
I can only keep the blues away with music and love. They just ease my mind so easily no other things can. The first one is always around. The second seems to hide from me.
But when I find it, when I have it for real right here right now, it can’t be better. Ever.