This is my first visit to Paris for around 20 years or so. The demographic changes in that time are stark indeed. It is almost as if the centre of this once great metropolis has been all but abandoned to another culture, one that has little sympathy for, or understanding of, the history of this fantastic city.
Before arriving in Paris, the previous few days had been spent deep in the Normandy countryside in a tiny, one bedroom gite just to the west of Falaise. The contrast between rural, small town France which barely seems to have changed at all, and the capital, is huge. The borgoisie seem more discretely charming than ever in the villages, towns and smaller cities such as Caen, Falaise, Flers and Bayeaux. Life seems relatively slow, relaxed and polite in such places. Paris, however, is completely different; fast paced, frenetic, distinctly rude and often more than a little dangerous.
Much the same difference can be seen in Britain where London seems to be in the process of becoming a distant satellite of the UK in general, as are some of the other larger cities. The distance in politics, philosophy and outlook is vast and ever widening. Witness such occurrences as last year’s EU referendum – the people away from the larger urban conurbations voted emphatically for leave, those within them just as emphatically for remain.
Twenty years ago one espied the odd armed gendarme as one wandered along the boulevards of Paris. Now armed police, and even soldiers, are to be seen everywhere. Just recently, two policemen were attacked by a machete wielding fanatic on the Champs Elysee itself, not far from this very spot. Reading the BBC news today, a similar incident occurred in Brussels last night where fortunately the terrorist was promptly dispatched, though not before injuring two policemen, and a further incident was reported to have occurred just outside Buckingham Palace.
And so it goes on. Small incidents, followed by larger incidents, random sacrifices made to a random god. It speaks ill of man’s credulity that so many can still believe in the vacuous nonsense that inspired these attacks in the 21st century. For this rather liberal flaneur though, what is really unforgivable is the wish supporters of this particular superstition have to forcibly impose such a palpably illogical, unscientific and, in all honesty, ignorant view of the world on others.
The philosopher Karl Popper once pointed out the paradox of tolerance. If you extend that tolerance too far you end up tolerating the intolerant, thereby killing tolerance itself. We seem, through a mixture of pesonal, moral and political cowardice, to have gone a long way down that particular road now, each concession to the intolerant leading to the demand for yet more concessions.
Fortunately, there are still parts of Paris that retain much the same charm as ever. Strolling around Montmartre one still comes across the artists, the writers, the bon viveurs and the simply joyous, although admittedly the hordes of tourists are beginning to erode the authenticity of the place, but such is modern life. For now, at least, Montmartre’s charm still attracts enough of the creatives, the eccentrics and the downright weird to make life interesting.
It is now nearly ten p.m., and a pleasant young man has informed me that Starbucks will be closing in ten minutes. I quickly finish off my coffee and swallow the last of the customary glass of water that I like to accompany it with. I wonder if this will be my last evening in Paris. I have spent quite a few here in the past but...that was a Paris that has slithered slowly into history now. The city of the Enlightenment, of the birth of liberal democracy, of the Revolution, of Bonaparte, of Jean Paul Sartre, of Simone de Beauvoir, of Jean Jacques Rousseau, of the dadaists, of the surrealists, of Ernest Hemingway, Gertude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, of Josephine Baker, Anias Nin and HenryMiller, home of the flaneur, of the intellectually daring and the avant garde, the city that encapsulated the notion of joie de vivre, is all but abandoned to another culture now, a culture that cares little for joy and even less for life.
Au revoir Paris, it was good to know you...
