Pep-talk for Paris

Sometimes I wonder and think what they'd have done in Paris. What they'd have done in any paradise, even if it wasn't paradise, and what I'd do if paradise existed. I should have done my field study in New Orleans. I should have gone down there and been a volunteer, helping rebuild something, somewhere. I should have asked people about jazz. I should have read Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston at night. Is it ridiculous to say that my mother would probably be more nervous about me going to New Orleans than me going to Paris? Not to mention, Caitlin would never forgive me.

It's funny, that I'm less than a month away now, and more than aware that I'm doing the craziest thing I've ever done before, but also aware that this is just a stepping stone for doing things that are crazier in the future. I was watching The Music Man last night with some friends, and I realized how good it was for me that I wasn't born in a small town. The old women talked of the librarian in a way that I realized people would talk about me if the people from where I'm from weren't used to people hauling off and doing crazy things. For most of them, moving to LA from wherever they were from was the crazy thing. So me going off to Paris is surprising, maybe, but not unexpected, if they know me, which many of them do.

My mom says she's afraid I'll never come back.

I'm not afraid of that, though it wouldn't upset me if I found a reason to stay somewhere.

Going over culture shock again I realized what I'm most prone to is holing myself up in whatever apartment I get or wherever I'm living, reading, writing, but never going out because it means I'll have to go out on my own. That's how I am at home. I love getting in the car and driving somewhere, but I always have to have a purpose, and directions. But then again, I am prone to wander. But wandering for me usually comes with the need for comfort--not total comfort, just an understanding that I can control myself, or...something. I haven't figured that one out yet.

I wanted a way to "mitigate"--I hate that word--this issue. I hate the word because it's so impersonal, and it means nothing to me. It's just meaningless. Anyway, I've decided that I'm going to chose one place that I have to visit every day. Not the same place, a new place. Something to get me out of the apartment. When I went to London, and realized I had no idea what I was doing there, and I didn't have alone time, and it was brand new, and I'd never been abroad, I got an email from my father telling me to go to St. Paul's. Honestly, to make him proud, to tell him I had gone, to write back to him about it, was all that got me out that first weekend. And that was all I needed.

I'm not afraid of the romanticism of Paris. I'm afraid that'll all melt away as soon as I'm in that city alone, and part of me wants to just sit on a park bench for two or three days after Kate leaves and force myself to realize that this city will be kind. I think that's why I might need Langston Hughes with me, to keep me company. I may have found something to love. But which love? And in which life? Kate says that God let me listen to the music, enter those speakeasies and listen. I feel I can remember asking, please let me go. Please. And I imagine God rolled his eyes at me. But it makes me wonder if perhaps I've been to these places before, and if I have, then why be nervous?

I remember thinking when I was in Heathrow for the second time, so nervous because it was such a big airport, and that taxi driver had just cheated me out of about £20 and I was angry at him (and will not be speaking for him in the trials of heaven) and I was afraid of never getting home. Getting into JFK airport was like coming home. You could feel America in the soil, coming up through your feet. Everything clean and in straight lines, the shops on the right in the left, rather than circling around you, and I knew I'd get there. On the plane to JFK they gave us these horrible airplane pizzas but on the cover of the pizza box was the Coliseum, the Eiffel tower, and the London Gherkin, all of which I had seen and been to, if not inside of, and it occurred to me that 4 months ago I hadn't at all been to those places, just seen pictures of them. This wonderful sense of accomplishment came over me. The boy sitting next to me laughed at me, and I explained. He said he was going on holiday to Florida with some friends. I thought that a very odd place to decide to go on holiday, but didn't say so. All of this goes back to the point that I said to myself, "If you can get through Heathrow, you can do anything." I honestly believed that, because I was nervous about it, and I was afraid, and it seems a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, if you've done it, but I hadn't. So when I got back home, an occurrence I don't actually remember, Heathrow had been done. And I knew I could do anything.

Why shouldn't that apply now? Why can't I use that as my reason for going to Paris alone on a Field Study? Gosh I'm crazy, but going crazy--so I've been told--can be a fun experience. If I just let it happen. Damn. I've been through Heathrow! What can't I do? Learn and speak a foreign language? Sure! Travel a foreign country on one's lonesome? Done! Live abroad for as long as a tourist visa will let you stay? Not a problem. I mean let's be clear about this: Heathrow is 10 miles in diameter. 5 terminals. Outside of London. It's got really circular design, so its easy to get lost, and there are a trillion people so it's easy to not be certain where you are. It's only when the plane is going to board that they actually tell you where your gate is, so you have to stave off sleep while you wait for the board to update your gate, meanwhile you may be on the other end of the terminal from your gate. That's not nerve-racking at all.  (In another time-continuum, by the way, Jennifer is still sleeping in Heathrow; she missed her plane and just became an illegal immigrant of the UK.) My question is, if I've been through Heathrow, what can't I do? Well, honestly, I'm aware there are plenty of things I can't do. Like speak Romanian. Or French, for that matter. But you know, people have been doing this for centuries. Americans have been doing this for centuries. What really is the problem?

If you haven't figured it out, this is my pep-talk. Because it's easy to tell yourself its all going to be fine when you've got 3 months until you go. But now it's a couple of weeks, and I really have to do myself some convincing.

I am white and white is black and black is white and black is black

I need a post to do some thinking, or else the thinking just won't get done.  Lately I've been asking myself what I'm doing this for.  What's the point of doing all this work?  How does it apply to me when I'm looking at history and not necessarily interviewing people?  And who will I talk to, and what will I spend my time doing?  And what do I want to come out of this field study with?  What do I want to know?  Why do I have to go to France to know it?

People have written all sorts of things on the blacks in France, especially those who went there after the Great War.  And I think most of the people who have written biographies or histories of appreciating these people have far more authority and understanding than I do.  I'm not really trying to compete with them on any publishing level, and I'm aware that next to no one will read whatever it is I come up with in the end, but I have to do something that I find worthwhile.

What got me interested in this idea is that I haven't met a whole lot of people who know about the blacks in Paris the way they know about the whites in Paris.  The elephant in the room is Midnight in Paris in which no black expatriates are present apart from Josephine Baker in the back of the room.  Sure you see F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Zelda, Gertrude Stein, and Hemingway--all important American players in Paris at the time, but why the hell didn't he talk to Josephine Baker, and where were Ada "Bricktop" Smith, James Reese Europe and Gene Bullard?  Why wasn't he having conversations with intellectuals like Langston Hughes?  Or at the very least, why weren't they present the way they should have been?

This is what American Studies is about for me--why are we so certain that American=white when it doesn't?  What I want for myself is to put these people in an American context as Americans and I don't want the most famous of these people--Josephine Baker--to be a "who's that?" anymore.  Now I guess I can't change anything, and I'm more than aware of that.  So what's the point then?  What do I want out of this given that I can't make a difference?  If this is just a jumping off point, a place where I can learn how to develop some important skills.

More and more I'm thinking maybe I do want to find an African-American community in Paris and talk to the people I find.  In English, in French.  But whose to assume they'll let me if I do find them?  And that's why I want a backup plan.  What I would want to interview these people for is to put the people I'm currently interested in, in context.

Why I have to go to France is a harder question to answer because I could theoretically just study African-Americans in Paris and Paris itself and the 1920s and black history and then apply all the things I want to about American Studies to my book-learned understanding.  The reason I want to go to France is purely selfish.  I want to be an American in Paris.  I want to know what it's like, and I want to know how it differs from the things I read about these people going through.  I want to walk the streets they walked, and I want to learn they language they had to learn.  I want to live in the city that is well-known for racial equality, and I want to know if that's true.  I want to meet people, especially black Americans, and I want to know what life has been like for them in Paris.  Is it like the Paris of the 1920s in any way?  But most of all--what is it about France and Paris in particular that attracted these people?  Is it just the romance of the place, or is it something else?

I never believe that romance jazz about Paris.  Then I went there, and somehow I understood what people meant.  That's why I think I need to go for a longer period of time.  Because you can be told a lot of things about a place, but can you really put yourself in the context of it without experiencing it?  I don't think you can.

Why are we so set on not including the African-American experience in with the study of "America."  We talk about how slavery affected the black American population, but always with the intention of switching back to "white mode" and how it affects whites now.  Who the hell cares how it affects whites now when it's still something that's present in this country for blacks now?

I loved Midnight in Paris, but I remember thinking at the end of that movie, after thinking about how much I thoroughly enjoyed it, that it was still a white-washed American history, even if it was in Paris.  And I KNOW you can't tell every story at once, but I don't understand why it has to be a white story OR a black story, when we've been together, whites and blacks, all this time.  It's the 21st century.  Isn't it about time we started talking about how separate our histories are?  Isn't it about time we started melding them?  After all, I, a white girl from Los Angeles couldn't be American without the African presence, and a black girl from Virginia certainly couldn't be American without the Anglo presence.  That's kind of what makes us uniquely American.  Is anyone else willing to admit that?

This project idea still needs a lot of work, I guess that much is obvious.