THERE'S A BROKEN SORTIE FOR EVERY OPEN DOOR IN PARIS!

This isn't about the musées, the monuments, the tree-lined boulevards, the world soccer cup matches, or the Tour de France. It's about a New Orleanian from the French Quarter with no knowledge of the French language whatsoever visiting Paris for the first time. Up until now the only French word I knew was "cerveza". Now I'm an expert! Parlez Vieux Carré? I used to tell folks that were going to Europe for the first time to break in at Holland. Everyone speaks English there. Don't go to England or Ireland, whatever you do. You can't understand a word they're saying. Now I can include France. In fifteen days I only spoke English to four people: Joseph, our host, George Whitman, an eccentric old bookstore owner of Shakespeare & Co., a Japanese student who was lost in the Metro trying to find the Versailles palace, and our Algerian- born cab driver taking us back to DeGaulle.

In the course of running my own art and photography gallery these past 50 years, I got to meet many Frenchmen, notably Jacques Tati, the award winning director and actor, Stephane Grappelli, the world renowned jazz violinist, and once while working as a forensic artist for the U. S. Secret Service, I got to meet French President Giscard D'estang on his visit to our city. Two of them later became famous. When my friend Stephane Grappelli died last December, we wanted to attend his funeral at the Pere Lachaise in Paris, but my wife Joan, being a CPA, could not possibly leave during the tax season. We did promise ourselves to go there as soon as we could get away, which turned out to be the end of July. Stephane's agent and close friend, Joseph invited us to come visit and even offered us a flat for as long as we cared to stay. While we were at the studio, Joseph said, "here, Stephane would have wanted you to have this". He handed me Stephane's Chevallier du Legion of Honor pin along with a photograph of Stephane wearing it on his lapel while talking to Madame Bernadette Chirac, the French President's wife. He also drew a detailed map for us to go find Stephane's space. While we were paying our respects with flowers and prayers, I happened to remember that an old photographer friend was also interred there. I went to the administration building and checked out the location and number of his vault. When we got there we found it empty. We were shocked! Surely they had given us some bad information. I went back to complain, and when they ran his name through the computer again, it turned out that his rent hadn't been paid since 1995, (Can you imagine paying rent..even in death?) so they removed his ashes to a large lawn at the back of the cemetery. He's still there, but not in the same slot. I'm told that this happens a lot. In fact, Jim Morrison, their most famous resident's rent is up real soon, and unless some of his many worshippers come up with the cash, he'll be spread around the North lawn too. I have a feeling that the cemetery fathers will be glad to see him go as they have to station a full time guard to control the hundreds of faithful fans that appear religiously each day. They smoke pot in unison. They bring flowers, old manuscripts, poetry, empty whiskey bottles, condoms, crayola drawings and candles stolen from Notre Dame. They also paint-spray on a lot of cult symbols and graffiti. We went there several times, making us probably his oldest groupies.

We also had a couple of other interesting situations occur. The first one started twenty-eight years ago when trombonist Scotty Hill returned from Paris. He played in a jazz nightclub and restaurant called La Louisiane. He saw a lot of my framed jazz photographs on the walls, and a local artist had used one of my compositions to do a 10 ft. stained glass mural from it. (Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism). I made up my mind that I'd try to find it if ever I went to France, and sure enough, while returning home to our place in Montmartre, we spotted it from a bus. We found it again the next day, but the windows had been whitewashed and it was boarded up except for one small door that was half open. We peeked in and saw two men in charge of renovating the place. One of them turned out to be the owner. I introduced myself and with the help of our English-French dictionary told them that I did many of the photographs that were hanging there all these years. They were thrilled to meet me, and went through all of the stacks of pictures they had just taken down to be shipped off by van in the next day or so. Had we gone there a few days later, we would have missed them forever, as they were converting to a Cuban theme. Cuban food is almost the same as Creole, and Cuban music is the hot thing in Paris these days.

The other happened on our return flight. We boarded in Newark after Customs, and a young lady passed me and said "Didn't I see you in Paris?" I got to thinking, "Why would she remember me out of all the people in Paris", so I went back and asked her. She explained that she was sitting across from us in the airport while waiting to board. I said "Oh, thank goodness." You see.. the day before, we had visited a planetarium -–you know the kind, with 360 degree vision and a domed ceiling showing all of the stars, constellations, and planets. Well, they put you in a large comfortable seat that reclines so that you're looking straight up. I was so relaxed..I fell asleep and let out a large snore. The auditorium at the entrance had a sign saying "422 capacity". Well, 421 of them, including my wife, laughed and laughed and laughed. I thought maybe that's where she remembered me from.

This is just a rough draft. I still have to overwork it. In fact, I'm still trying to find a place to add in "to think I've been using papier photographique all this time and didn't even know it".

* Inspired by an old vaudeville tune: "There's a broken light for every heart on Broadway".

--Johhny Donnels, 1998 (revised 1999)

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