Paris is full. There is not a square centimetre left empty. My eyes keep pulling in the details, packing sights, sounds, smells, impressions, random reactions into every crevice of my brain. And so, now my head is full. Not a fold of grey matter left untouched, not a neuron allowed a moment’s hesitation, the rafters of my mind ring with the vibrations of activity keeping my body moving by day and my thoughts running rampant at night long after I reluctantly allow my head to hit the pillow.
If I could figure out how to survive without sleep, I would.
At times my thought processes trick me, switching to survival mode almost without a conscious decision made on my part. Filters get thrown up, much of what surrounds me is shrouded in a gaussian blur, and yet unexpected details make their way through hyper focused. The bas relief over the window on the building across the street, the way the unevenness of the cobblestones feel under my feet, the sudden odor of cigarette smoke puffed from the lips of a pedestrian I barely registered, the one gleaming chestnut out of thousands littering the ground in the Luxembourg gardens, the bubbled up flakes on my pain au chocolat, the hunch of a woman asking for change outside Notre Dame…
This is what I find myself sketching, these details which provide my perspective moments of micro meditations.
Why oh why do we not have this level of art and detail in Vancouver architecture?
Horse chestnuts, pain au chocolat, cigarette butts – these will aways make me think back to my days in Paris.
Sketching to Mozart’s Requiem performed live in a moody Eglise… heaven.
