Le Bon Mot
Welcome to Biddy Sounds Off, a place for episodic writing and music I love. I'm Biddy. Almost all of my international travel has been solo, and I don't tend to be someone who naturally has a head for logistics, specifically maps and time management. Living or traveling internationally means I spend a lot of time being lost. If life is about the journey and not the destination, then one must learn to embrace the disequilibrium.
Biddy Bops:Gross. So corny. Cosette agrees. But not any less true, as cliches tend to be. But cliche is not only a moment of cringe.
Biddy Bops:It's an actual place in Paris, an arrondissement, or rather, when I looked it up, it's called a commune. A neighborhood would be more accurate vernacular. Clichy, as it is apparently pronounced, is near the Arc de Triomphe, where I eventually rented a garret apartment. When I first arrived in Paris, I was still lugging around a ton of bags, up and down the subway stairs, massive suitcases, bulging, loaded, full of many hopeful outfits I would end up ditching along the way. Disco outfits, office attire for my first ever career in teaching.
Biddy Bops:I didn't know it would become a career yet. At the time, I had been working in the library, and completing my BA in English letters and literature. I thought I'd be a school librarian. Hi. But wound up enjoying the children more than I expected.
Biddy Bops:I was a rain sodden mess when I first arrived at the hostel in Clichy. Unsurprisingly, I arrived alone and in keeping with my shy personality and poor self image, it stayed that way, alone. Still, Paris is a beautiful city to be alone. Don't trust all those ecstatic lovers. Too many endorphins.
Biddy Bops:We all make mistakes in love after all. Break time. Let's listen to some music.
Biddy Bops:Good boy. Much refreshed. 1st we heard Dead and Gone by the Ettes followed by Big Joni who brought us the classic Fall Asleep.
Biddy Bops:After that, we heard thirsty buddy finds refreshment. When we left off, I had just arrived in Paris, laden down with baggage as I was, all of which I would shed soon enough, layer after layer, the way one sheds her hopes, dreams and dignity, either willingly, in ready submission to the big bad world, or unwittingly becoming stripped of them over time and a forced resistance to change. Pride, in particular, is one of those easily lost to the winds, if not secured deeply enough within the self. Pride can be wasteful, a folly, a place for the ego to nest. If humiliation is the opposite of pride, then what is the harm in letting go of pride? Humiliation can be good for all of us, especially those who have taken themselves more seriously than we should have, myself in particular, especially with regard to my life in Paris, hubris would be a better term.
Biddy Bops:I touched down in Paris like a hot air balloon, ready for her new life to begin. I'd never lived full time in a big city, had crippling self esteem issues, passable French skills at that time, and the big blow up dream, which had gotten in my way of researching the company which hired me, I arrived dependent on this company and expectant that things would all work out. And when they did not, my wages were far less than expected, housing was not provided despite advertisements to the contrary, and although I slugged it out and stayed on for the duration of my contract, my pride was the first to go, to deflate. Pride is public to my mind. Dignity is a more private thing.
Biddy Bops:1 night, I accepted an offer to go out to the discotheque with a few other disgruntled ESL teachers. Among us was an outgoing leggy blonde woman who'd attracted a couple of French admirers. They joined us on the metro, and as we shuttled towards another arrondissement in search of another disc or tech, we laughed and sang along to the music being piped through the subway cars. The song was Blackstreet, no diggity. The Frenchmen, who joined us, sang along, and about halfway through the song we noticed that they'd got the lyrics wrong.
Biddy Bops:We often talk about what is lost in translation, not what is gained. For me, it was a whole new perspective. Cue the neon pink cloud letters. Instead of no diggity, no doubt', they sang no dignity. I like the way you work it.
Biddy Bops:No dignity. Got to bag it up. No dignity. Play on, playa, play on. Let's take another break.
Biddy Bops:We heard Your Kind of Life from Vivian Girls. Then A Strange World by La Luz from a new album that comes out in May. When we try new things and put our precious energy towards the goal of expanding our perspectives and including new experiences, we can only gain, grow. Pride is a trap. When we fear humiliation, we stay silent and still.
Biddy Bops:For me, those are big markers of depression, or as my dad would call it, that depression. Getting out of my comfort zone improves my mood and embracing variables beyond my control has improved my life. My mental health and well-being is the focus of my life now. I try to do my best, unless I don't. And sometimes I do fall back into old habits of mind, but I don't stay there anymore the way I did and I count this as progress.
Biddy Bops:Having survived my share of humiliations and no doubt a motley miscellany of humiliations await, but I've gained quite a bit in return. I get to share with you now, my friend. On the other end, progress. I got to live in Paris, even though I had to shower in my kitchen sink, and shared a single doorless bathroom with my fellow residents of the 7th inside an ornate looking building on the Avenue in 17th. The shared bathroom was home to the largest floor drain, the drain every studio occupant in the 7th visited frequently, much happier on return, having been relieved of whatever they wanted to flush.
Biddy Bops:I shared a wall with my Haitian neighbors, a large and lively family who traipsed in and out of the bathroom, dumping the remains of wide, heavy cooking pots, the size families used to entertain. Once, I don't know how because the place couldn't have been that big, I heard them late one night, a piano sing along. I jumped out of bed and held my ear to the wall. How did they get a piano in there? It was Imagine by John Lennon, my mom's all time favorite song.
Biddy Bops:I even went out into the hall, no time for shoes, only socks to protect me from the grungy red and yellow ornate carpet. The exterior outdoor elements of apartment buildings were more of concern to owners and landlords who gave less care to the dwellings of the poor who lived in the towers or the bowels of those grandiose mansion homes and stately manner appearing places. Some of the apartments that were in my price range, were literally behind the interior walls of larger, more lavish apartments. No lighting but bare bulbs and the drain ran sideways along the front of every had hallways. I stood there in my socks and listened at the front door of the Haitian family.
Biddy Bops:I wondered if I was hallucinating. I did stop taking my antidepressants at that time, thinking, cheers to a new life. Hubris, like I said. These were not auditory hallucinations, hell below us. Above us, only sky.
Biddy Bops:Hell below us, above us only sky. I closed my eyes and fell asleep to the piano next door. The songs and laughter faded. Our last song today comes from Grace Jones. This is I've Seen That Face Before from the album Nightclubbing.
Biddy Bops:If you'd like to get in touch, email me at biddybiddybops@gmail.com. That's 2 biddies and bops with an s, all lowercase, at gmail.com. This has been Biddy Sounds Off. Thank you for listening.
