Hey, you! I’m going to Paris to save my life. If you tell me, “oh how romantic… Paris” I will punch you in the mouth, OK?
It’s so boring and obfuscating to talk about Paris as a romantic city. The romantic Paris you think of, is not Paris, it is a fabricated created-by-someone-else fantasy that you believe and play into. Paris doesn’t really belong to itself anymore either, that stopped in the 70s. Most, if not all, Parisians will tell you that.
The day before my flight I am presenting at the Film Studies Association Graduate Colloquium. I am nervous as shit. My paper is scattered and more of a survey than any sort of deep insight I am used to presenting to the world. I will be judged so badly too, because I know all my peers will be there. I don’t know why I let Claudia convince me to submit an abstract (for a paper I hadn’t written no less). Probably because I didn’t think they would choose it, so I dreamed up the fantasy paper I would like to write. I guess I am really excited about my topic, “locative-media” and I possess a fair bit of knowledge about it; it just doesn’t seem to be coming out right now. I have to live with that.
Those first two paragraphs are why I like you.
I hate and loathe the romantic ideas surrounding Paris that are held by people over the Atlantic.
Besides, everyone knows that London is better than Paris!