From seventh grade to senior year of college I took French classes and one of the most disappointing things I can say about my life is that I still have very little idea of just how the hell to speak it. Two years ago in Rio I managed to converse a bit with a beauty on the beach since she spoke only Portuguese and French but in retrospect I think she liked me and I could have spoken English and achieved the same result. There was a time in Curacao when I embarrassed myself with two French stewardesses, another in St. Maarten with a cab driver, once in Montreal with a waiter until I finally ceased my attempts of conversing in any tongue other than my native one.
In America speaking poorly about the French is a national pastime, below football and baseball but above most else. There are a few banal reasons of why we embrace such a pastime but in the end I must say that I love the French. And what is not to like? They are rude, speak their minds, smoke, drink, live forever, care little of what others speak, stunning women with delicate accents, are stylish with ease, and for those who love to bring up the fact that they are pussies there is always Légion Etrangère who has been kicking ass since their inception in 1831. In addition, while much of their music is terribly kitsch the fraction of it that is not flows into the veins and warms one's soul.
Translated literally as "Two Loves Have I" this French masterpiece written by Vincent Scotto in the early twentieth century is my favorite song sung in the French language. The singer is lamenting over her two loves, her country and Paris. Madeleine's voice is a fairytale, the orchestration sublime, the stroking brushes, fluttering piano, accompanying guitar all embrace with a kiss on each cheek and introduce one to three hour work days and five hour lunches.
I am in a bathtub in L'Hôtel Raphaël smoking a cigarette with a glass of Bordeaux, the only thing illuminating the room a candle that has melted across the black and white hexagonal tiled floor with my Citroën DS parked on the street below. Apres I will return to the streets for more coffee and Steak Frites in a grey perfectly tailored short suit, black square sunglasses, red cashmere scarf with the fallen leaves crunching under my Berlutis, a fabulous blond avec wavy blond hair and blood red lipstick hanging onto my arm. Or on the streets of New York at Le Bilboquet with the owner and a few of his friends who for this day are some of my own drinking red wine by the case with not a minute gone by sans cigarette smoke wafting through the air as horns blast and suits stumble out of the Post House across the street. Until I am back again in my Citroën driving on the D1098 along the coast eastbound with Hélène sitting shotgun, the sun shinning on her Hermès scarf protecting her hair from the warm southern wind blowing in through the window until we stop at an overlook and swim naked in the Med as we watch the ferry barely visible on the horizon make way for Corsica.
When I picture these scenes I suddenly don't care that I can't decipher every word in this song nor the fact that I wasted nine years of schooling for a language I still can't quite grasp. Because even without the linguistic skills I know what Madeleine is crooning about, and I know that the education I have received over the years in such scenes is terribly more important than what the present perfect form of the verb être is. One of these days I will finish off my education of the French language in the proper classroom, one filled with the proper romance such a beautiful language demands. When I do I will return to my college professor who constantly gave me D minuses (even though he found a case of Champagne outside his office every semester) and cry: Vous ne savez pas la signification de la France! But I'll leave you to your own Francophile dreams and draw up your own personal translations, if you are looking for THE Rosetta Stone I suggest the '98 Chateau Ausone.
On dit qu'au dela des mers
La-bas sous le ciel clair
Il existe une cite
Au sejour enchante
Et sous les grands arbres noirs
Chaque soir
Vers elle s'en va tout mon espoir
J'ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris
Par eux toujours
Mon coeur est ravi
Manhattan est belle
Mais a quoi bon le nier
Ce qui m'ensorcelle
C'est Paris, c'est Paris tout entier
Le voir un jour
C'est mon reve joli
J'ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris
Manhattan est belle
Mais a quoi bon le nier
Ce qui m'ensorcelle
C'est Paris, c'est Paris tout entier
Le voir un jour
C'est mon reve joli
J'ai deux amours
Mon pays et Paris
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