January in Paris. Many had said that all I
could expect was rain and darkness. 2015 felt different. The seventeenth of
January was my first true day in the city of love; at least I thought it was,
for I felt as if I was having an out of body experience due to the surreal
change in my life I had just made. Although jet lag had taken over my body, my
soul was alive as the sun glistened through the marshmallow clouds swirling in
pink and purple shades as if the sky had turned into cotton candy. Like the
expatriate’s of 1920s Paris, I too was escaping from a world that I felt had
nothing to offer me for the time being and came to Paris to find something that
I wasn’t quite sure was looking for. Reality was beginning to appear
psychedelic, filling my lungs with anxiety and pollution every time I stepped
outside of my Brooklyn apartment. What I was running away from is subjective,
partly because I wasn’t quite sure what it exactly was. What I did know was
that I could no longer create my art because I did not know who I was anymore.
Out of everywhere in the world I could have traveled to, Paris seemed to be a
place that would offer me answers.
The expatriate’s
of the 1920s can be referred to as, how Gertrude Stein would say, the “Lost
Generation”. This includes writers and other artists such as Ernest Hemingway,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, etc. Being one of Post World War I, this
generation had suffered and was looking for an intellectual haven to ease their
confusion of the war. For artists, Paris was the ideal place to be at that
time. America was full of “restrictions”. Some of these restrictions included
those of behavioral, example of alcohol being illegal, and the culture being
somewhat “ready made” or, as a life already being planned out for you as in:
school, work, get married, have kids, etc. From this, what I understand from
this lost generation is that these artists broke loose from America to avoid
the responsibilities of life. Paris was full of freedom; freedom to drink,
dance, dine, sit in café’s for hours on end and write, etc. After a period of
suffering, these artists found happiness and liveliness within the city of
love; there was romance, warm food aromas swarming the streets, and fellow
artists struggling to make a living by selling their creations. Because there
was so much art being produced in various types of ways- writing, music,
painting, etc.- there was an open possibility to achieve inspiration from
another’s peers.
The generation
that I am currently growing up in today has been given several titles by many.
I think one of the most popular might be the generation of technology, due to
the advancements in the 2000’s that grow more and more every day. Although this
might be one of the assorted titles labeled to my “generation” in the United
States, I consider associating myself in a different kind of “generation”. When
I think about “The Lost Generation”, I think: a group of artists confused with
life, who have traveled to an unknown place of beauty to try and find answers
through intellect with other artists in the same tract. With this, I have
myself thinking of The New School. Like the Lost Generation, I see The New
School as a place that people, rather than coming from one place, come from all
over the world to find truth in the art they want to pursue. Some come knowing
exactly what specific art that is, others come in searching of it. I cannot
compare The New School and The Lost Generation with the same meaning of “lost”
because it is not the same suffering. However, each and every individual at The
New School is lost in some way or another in their own way. And by this, we
gather in social conversation of culture, philosophy, literature, politics,
religion, etc., whether it is over a joint in the courtyard, a class seminar, a
critique of one’s own art work in the studio, or a happy hour beer at a local
bar down the street.
After studying and
analyzing Hemingway and his life as an expatriate in Paris, he has now become a
personal symbol in my life when I think of the city and my experience here.
Like the other expatriates, Hemingway seemed to be trying to find his own
meaning of life. Throughout my whole stay here, I felt as if I was in a way
experiencing the same journey Hemingway was in his novel, A Moveable Feast. “As a
whole, A Moveable Feast discusses his current life as a writer in the
1920s of Paris. Out of everything he is, in this book Hemingway presents
himself as someone sort of on the outside of things. He goes along his days
wandering the streets of Paris coming upon many different interactions with
many different types of people, sitting in cafes very clearly in detail
describing the food he eats and the aromas of the restaurants he walks by; so
much that one can identify with the tastes and the smells while reading of it.
With every interaction he has, Hemingway always seems to kind of be a sort of
therapist figure. It seems as if he positions himself as a listener while the
people he meets discuss with him their life stories, experiences and most of
all, problems. But maybe this is the point of the whole book? Maybe Hemingway
acts as that therapist figure in order to derive stories out of it, maybe this
is the answer of his writing.” This is how I questioned Hemingway and his
outlook of life when I wrote this post earlier semester. After reading A Sun Also Rises, I could see that
Hemingway himself was indeed a listener and an outsider, but he was doing so to
find the meaning of life; it as if this novel was a fictional interpretation to
A Moveable Feast. In both novels,
Hemingway distinguishes his characters so clearly as if one can feel that they
actually know them. There are reoccurring themes of love, money, animals,
writing, values and nature. I believe that through these themes, Hemingway was
attempting to write in a realistic approach to the way he perceived life by the
places he went, what he did and who he was surrounded with. Whether it was in
the 1920s or now to this day, there is so much truth in what he writes and how
he describes life. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway rarely speaks about
his personal life. When he does, it’s usually simple joys out of simple
activities between him and his wife; for example, “and we would swim and be
healthy and brown and have one aperitif before lunch and one before dinner”.
This is one trait that I admire of him; he seems to find the simple things of
life as the most joyous. I find this extremely relevant in my experience of
living in Paris. In both novels, I find myself relating to the characters
immensely in my experience in coming to Paris, mostly with how I see Hemingway,
as I quote, “finding the simple things of life as the most joyous” attitude in
A Moveable Feast and to Jake’s separate reality with nature in A Sun Also Rises. I too have a separate
reality and relationship with nature, but for me now in my life, my
psychological shift and separate reality has been Paris. Here is one of my
posts from when I started to realize this during my semester here:
“When I was living in New York, it was as if I took everything I had for
granted. But then again it seems as if every New Yorker takes everything for
granted. An example could be as small as the dread of partaking in the simple
act of the five to seven minute walk (depending how fast or slow I was feeling
that day) down 5th Avenue because there was a class switch from
Twelfth Street to Sixteenth Street. I would dread this walk whenever I was
forced to take it—this was remotely out of pure laziness. Oddly enough, the
past week here in sunny and warm Paris I have been thinking of that walk
everyday. I have been thinking of the people I would pass by exchanging nods
and smiles, sometimes fist touches, that 1:35 pm every Tuesday and Thursday to
my 1:50 pm class, just so I had enough time to receive my large iced coffee with
skim milk from the one and only hole in the wall, Mapi. And then when class was
over, I would light up a Turkish royal cigarette with my friend Ellis and we’d
take our time puffing our smokes, enjoying the sun, making our way back to the
courtyard on Twelfth Street to be greeted with the gleaming souls of positivity
from our people. This small act of walking down a street for five to seven
minutes is something that I would give anything to partake in right now. Just
from this, I am positive that once I get back to New York, I am going to be
saying the exact same things about Paris. Maybe I will think about how I have a
yearn to go to Monoprix, pick up a Pain au Chocolat and stroll down Rue
Saint-Roch and then onto Rue de Rivoli to make my way to the Jardin des
Tuileries, find a nice spot in the sun, light up a camel blue along with a
bottle of Rose all while having Radiohead playing in my ears. You certainly
cannot find in New York. It is uncontrollable to think about the past, but
being so far away from my past, I have learned to notice and love every single
detail of the present; because soon it will be gone and I will wish I had taken
advantage of the things I could have when I had it.”
Like the Expatriates, I came to Paris looking for answers. Not only was
I looking for answers; I was looking for freedom and meaning. I was looking to
escape the stress and issues being forced upon me in New York. I was looking to
fall in love with life again and to have the freedom to live my own life,
unlike the one that was being forced upon me in New York. Reading about the
expatriates of the 1920s while living in Paris aided me in finding what I was
looking for—life is clearer, my mind and soul are back into place, I am ready
to face reality.
